For anyone still questioning whether this President is the beacon of compassionate conservatism he claims to be, look no further than his veto of SCHIP.  Vetoing a popular children's health insurance program on the merits of fiscal conservatism is a new low even for our misguided President.

Tomorrow's vote marks the culmination of the most disingenuous and deliberately misleading debate I have ever witnessed. The partisan, deceptive talking points from the Bush White House have been parroted on Capitol Hill by extremist Republicans.  Their message points have been disputed not only by independent experts, but by dozens of sensible Republicans, including Senators Grassley, Roberts and Hatch, some of the most respected members of the Senate.

On the Fourth of July, The New York Times wrote a couple of paragraphs on the efforts to reform federal food and farm policy that I think sum up the fight really well.

Mary Kay Thatcher, a policy specialist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest farm lobbying group, said current subsidies, which the federation supports, might be tweaked, but added, “I think it is highly unlikely that we will see huge changes.”

That may depend on whether the new activists can counteract the power of lobbyists.

This, in essence, is a large part of what this battle is all about: the people versus the entrenched special interests. And it is exactly why your action is so needed today.

To say I'm disappointed with the President's decision to commute Scooter Libby's felony prison sentence is an understatement.  

As many of you know from my blogging on TPM Cafe Table for One or from the BlogAds that have been running on a number of sites (including this one), last week I laid out a Food and Farm Bill of Rights - a set of ten principles of reform I believe we in Congress should adhere to as we take up this year's Farm Bill.

The cause of reform takes a large step forward this week with the introduction of FARM 21 - The Food & Agriculture Risk Management for the 21st Century Act. I am an original cosponsor of this bipartisan piece of legislation, which was introduced by U.S. Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ).

FARM 21 is consistent with the spirit of the Food and Farm Bill of Rights. If enacted into law, it would move America away from the type of special interest politics that have guided the subsidy system in the current Farm Bill towards a system that helps promote sustainable agricultural policies that allow small family farmers to continue working their land. In this way it supports all farmers, not just the few in a few states who are most served by the current agriculture policy.

I flew into Greenland a few days ago with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and some of my colleagues on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming; with me was the most recent copy of National Geographic.  I glanced at the title of the cover story on global warming, "The Big Thaw" and looked, fascinated, out the window, knowing the vast Greenland Ice Sheet below is rapidly melting. A few hours later, I was sitting in a boat in the harbor in Ilulissat, looking at a massive glacier - 54 cubic miles of ice -- that is moving to the sea at twice the rate it was just 10 years ago.  Global warming is real; I could see it happen before me.

Having made the decision to begin a war of choice in Iraq, we have a particular responsibility to Iraqis whose only crime has been working with Americans.

Four years after the fall of Baghdad, as many of my worst fears have come to pass, Iraq has become the fastest growing refugee population in the world. The United States has a responsibility to protect the innocent victims of mass violence wherever it can - particularly in areas where suffering is a result of America's actions.

I continue visiting the House floor to listen to the Iraq debate.  I've been reading a lot about history and, increasingly, about the institution of Congress; about men and women who served in the House and Senate during great moments in history. What a sense of motivation it gives me.  I've been the reading the Doris Kearns Goodwin story of Lincoln and his war cabinet - a delicious work of history that I'm rationing, so I only read a few dozen pages a night to make it last.  

Wednesday night I stopped by the House floor, and as luck would have it Dave Reichert, a Republican out of the Seattle area, invoked Kearns and her work on Lincoln as justification for the war and a rationalization for voting against the resolution.

Now begins a critical phase of Congress rediscovering its voice and appropriate role in matters of war and peace. We've had more than 50 hearings already on the long-delayed oversight of this tragically flawed Iraq War.  Despite all the gymnastics in the Senate, yesterday we started to see Congress making clear its opposition to sending more troops into Iraq.