Before we get too far down the road of a short week:

• You would think that one of the leading terrorism experts in the world asserting in Congressional testimony that Al Qaeda is now just a second-order threat and incapable of large-scale attacks would be a significant story. Didn’t get much play, though. Peter Bergen believes that the US Muslim community’s rejection of the radical perversion of their religion has been the key.

• Hard to argue with Marcy Wheeler’s breakdown of how Barack Obama caved to Dick Cheney’s national security fearmongering.

• There’s actually a big primary in the Senate race to replace Ted Kennedy in a little over two weeks, and it looks very good for Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts Attorney General. She’s up 20 points over her Democratic rivals.

• The latest polls out of Florida, however, show Charlie Crist in a tight spot. Marco Rubio continues to gain on him, and his options are extremely limited unless he switches parties or goes independent. I don’t see that happening, but clearly the conservative movement is looking for another scalp here.

• I guess the GOP talking point about whether Congress would live under the same health care system as the one they would offer to the nation has been answered by the Senate bill, where federal employees would participate in the exchanges rather than their current employee benefits plan. Among other things, this puts millions of federal employees into the exchanges, strengthening the risk pool.

• South Carolina could yet impeach Mark Sanford.

• With Iran continuing to drag its feet on a deal over uranium enrichment, Western powers are looking into sanctions. The surest way to unite the many factions in Iran, including the opposition movement, is through sanctions.

• If this Guardian article is true, it’s very good news:

President Barack Obama is considering setting a provisional target for cutting America’s huge greenhouse gas emissions, removing the greatest single obstacle to a landmark global agreement to fight climate change.

He may have trouble backing it up in the US, but offering the targets would be bold.

• As health care consumes the debate in Washington, a raft of other legislation, including some must-pass bills, are piling up. I don’t know how it all gets done, and it’s a consequence of a deliberate Republican strategy of obstructionism. Deadline legislation is sloppy legislation.

• Yes, the stimulus is working, and no, it wasn’t big enough to deal with the enormity of the problems in the economy, so more is needed. Those points are not mutually exclusive.

• Some progressives are making a strategy, in my view the right one, out of highlighting America’s lack of paid sick leave as unnecessarily endangering the country during the H1N1 epidemic. These are the tangible pieces of legislation that people would see and feel, and be gracious that a Democratic majority secured for them.

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