Looks like this is going to be a quiet week, but I have a couple good stories for tomorrow and a whole mess of links for today:

• While Blanche Lincoln threatened to filibuster health reform if she didn’t get her way on the public option, over a thousand of her constituents in dire need of health care visited a free clinic in Little Rock. Lee Fang has some unforgettable video from the event. Steve Benen recalls many of these throughout the country, and the same pattern emerges – everyone who witnesses them is shocked by the state of the system in the world’s richest country.

• A new gun control group composed of hundreds of the nation’s mayors are demanding an end to the gun show loophole, which allows the purchase of firearms with no criminal background check. In the past decade, this has led to hundreds of people on the terror watch list purchasing guns. They placed an ad in the Washington Post today, and have a petition up.

• One ally in the pro-gun control mayors’ cause? It’s none other than Rahm Emanuel. The group unveiled video of the White House Chief of Staff speaking to the Brady Center in 2007, saying exactly what they advocate: “If you are on the no-fly list, because you are known as maybe a possible terrorist, you cannot buy a handgun in America.”

• Chuck Schumer continues to say Democrats can go it alone on health care, but he’s the one devising a compromise to satisfy the conservative end of the caucus and even the Olympia Snowes of the world.

• Mark Sanford has an all-new set of problems – 37 counts of ethics charges related to unlawful travel and campaign expenses. I’d say impeachment has crossed the Rubicon from unlikely to likely.

• Jeremy Scahill has the latest on Blackwater, and their deepening involvement in counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan, almost an underground war there.

• Read Ron Brownstein on cost control, delivery system reform and the Senate health care bill. He’s much higher on those reforms than I would have expected.

• Who decided that the Senate bill cost $2.5 trillion dollars? It seems like some staffer for Judd Gregg threw a dart against a board.

• The Obama Administration will offer an emissions target at the Copenhagen conference, roughly similar to what has kicked around in the House and Senate climate bills. It’s at least something.

• Top management at Fox News is tired of being embarrassed by on-air mistakes, and they are vowing serious consequences for any further screw-ups. On the same day, their Chicago affiliate – a Fox O&O organization – ran a graph that adds up to 193%. So who’s going down for that?