Gonna save a couple stories until tomorrow. For now:

• Leaks are everywhere that the AARP will endorse health care reform tomorrow. They’ve scheduled a morning press conference to make an announcement. Having the leading senior organization on the bill will be a big win for Democrats, particularly to tell their more nervous members that seniors won’t abandon them if they vote for this bill.

• Will Harry Reid let health care slip past the end of the year? I doubt it, he immediately retracted the comment.

• Chris Dodd has given up on bipartisanship and will bring a financial reform bill to the Senate Banking Committee without the support of Republican ranking member Richard Shelby. The bill does not give the kind of responsibilities to the Fed that the White House and the House sought, and would represent a more aggressive shift to stronger regulation. Meanwhile, competing committees in the House are scuffling about some provisions in the bill, particularly over the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

• Zachary Roth has a great story about another “pay-to-play” media/industry “salon,” this one between Newsweek and the oil lobby.

• A big story out of Italy, as a court convicted 23 former CIA agents for their role in abducting a terror suspect off the streets of Milan and “rendering” him to a third country. However, the agents were convicted in absentia, and the top Italian officials who aided the rendition were acquitted (because of state secrets, no less), with some lesser officers going to jail instead. As Kevin Drum said, this isn’t quite a triumph of legal jurisprudence.

• Jay Rockefeller is fighting very hard on the topic of “medical loss ratio,” the percentage of coverage that insurers put toward actual medical care. He believes they’re cooking the books and over-counting their loss ratios, and he wants strong legislation to stop it in the new reform bill. Similarly, Tom Harkin wants insurers to give up information about premium increases, and is threatening a subpoena. The war between Congress and the insurance industry continues.

• The final installment in McClatchy’s four-part series on Goldman Sachs is out. Meanwhile, Corzine’s loss brings into focus the track record of former Goldman execs in politics. It’s not pretty.

• A new report shows that Wal-Mart may be contributing to the swine flu by forcing its sick employees to work. I wouldn’t limit it to Wal-Mart – our bad labor policies that allow no mandatory sick days are universally bad for public health.

• That judge in Louisiana who refused to grant a marriage license to an interracial couple? He resigned. Good thing anti-miscegenation laws weren’t put up for a popular vote, or we might not have interracial couples in some states, either.

• It would be nice if the major progressive victories in Washington state last night got a mention in the national media.

• OMG, ACORN might run the insurance exchanges! So says David Vitter.

• The British government is downsizing some of the banks they bailed out. Timothy Geithner, take note.

• Warren Buffet is buying up railroads. He’s making a bet that freight rail is more efficient and actually a boost on battling climate change – believe it or not, it is.

• Michele Bachmann has a tea party rally scheduled at the Capitol tomorrow, but her chief of staff won’t be there. She resigned today. One lawmaker remarked, “When your captain’s crazy, it’s time to find a new ship.”

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