I have a side-splitting headache today. Prepare to be rounded up.

• The Connecticut Post wanted an explanation from Joe Lieberman today on why he told them he supported the Medicare buy-in concept, but the one they got was an incoherent mess. The ConnPost fared better than Rep. Rosa DeLauro today, who seems not to know that you cannot recall a federal official through a statewide election.

• The latest Republican stall tactic is to ask for an entirely new CBO score of the entire health care bill before voting on final passage. The “read the bill” chant is going to get louder in coming days. With the timeline so tight this could easily put the bill off until 2010.

• Global warming is a threat to national security, according to the Pentagon.

• A potential special election in Hawaii, necessitated by Neil Abercrombie’s imminent resignation to run for Governor, could get dicey because Hawaii doesn’t use a primary process, and the two Democrats running could shrink one another’s vote totals enough to elect the lone Republican in the race.

• Democrats are trying to stop that mini-wave of retirements in the House before it becomes a flood, and they secured a bunch of commitments from Dems in tough seats to run again.

• HCAN has very quietly offered support to cloture on the Senate health care bill. Their message was “we’ll fix it in conference,” essentially. They announced that message very quietly with the lowest amplification possible.

• Evan Bayh, who voted to eliminate the estate tax at a cost of $750 billion dollars over ten years, wants Barack Obama to veto the omnibus spending bill because it has $3 billion in earmarks. To strengthen his point, he says that some of his fellow Democrats don’t focus on economics and “that they don’t pay as much attention to the deficit.”

This man is a United States Senator.

• Those obsolete weapons systems that President Obama said he would cancel? Yeah, they weren’t all cancelled.

• It’s been a longtime talking point on the left that the Bush Administration went into Afghanistan and installed Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal executive, to secure a pipeline through Central Asia. If that was the case, they have failed at even that – China got the contract for the pipeline.

• Matt Welch, editor of the libertarian Reason magazine, participates in and loves the French health care system but he doesn’t want one in America because he would have to pay higher taxes. This is the bumper sticker for “glibertarianism”.

• If the bankers are being misunderstood about their efforts against financial reform, maybe they should fire their lobbyists who are fighting it constantly.

• Yes, Kirsten Gillibrand is trailing in this poll, but overall her numbers look pretty favorable with 11 months out, and she’s improved her topline numbers against Republican opponents (not one of whom has actually entered what will be an expensive race).

• Amid news that the deployment timeline for Afghanistan will be delayed, meaning the supposed withdrawal will be delayed as well, Alan Grayson eloquently spoke against the escalation.

• This was hilarious. The GOP came up with a site to shorten URLs for Twitter, and liberal pranksters immediately starting using it to link to bondage sites. The GOP took it down.

• And continuing my Silvio Berlusconi obsession, this attack plays perfectly for him, politically speaking. He can mourn the violence of the perfidious left and play the victim to the hilt. He will be Prime Minister for life and will trade off this for decades.