Joe Lieberman angered a lot of liberals recently with his declaration of opposition to Harry Reid's opt-out public-option provision. But liberals who also care about climate-change legislation may want to temper their rage. Lieberman has long championed climate-change legislation in the Senate, and is emerging as a critical player in the current effort. Politico reported back in September that Lieberman had been busy meeting with a bipartisan group to figure out a path forward on climate change. In a recent interview with the National Journal, Lieberman gave some insight into his negotiating strategy.

Lieberman knows they won't get to 60 without concessions on four key areas: nuclear, coal, agriculture, and manufacturing. Satisfying a few senators with interests in each of those industries might be enough to get the bill across the line. It looks as though Lieberman and his pals have found people to champion each issue. Tom Carper from Delaware is working on coal; Debbie Stabenow from Michigan is taking the lead on agriculture; and Sherrod Brown from Ohio is active on manufacturing. It sounds as though Lieberman himself will be central to nuclear negotiations, which makes sense given that he's close to Republicans like Lindsey Graham and John McCain who care deeply about expanding the nuclear sector.

By Jerry Adler

I. Carbon Country

Oh beautiful for spacious skies

Beneath which cows metabolize

All those amber waves of grain

And fill the heavens with methane.

For purple mountain majesties

Whose glaciers melt and lakes won’t freeze

Yes, my country, ‘tis of thee--

Land of private property--

I sing. And of the fruited plains

Which someday soon will sprout plantains.

And coconuts to fill the cargo

Holds of ships that dock in Fargo

When shining sea meets shining sea

In Iowa or Tennessee.

I would add one thing to Holly's post on Charlie Crist yesterday. As she notes, Crist's denials that he ever endorsed President Obama's stimulus package are deeply unconvincing. Today, the St. Petersburg Times's PolitiFact amply documents the many ways Crist has displayed support for the program. The fact-checking crew there delivered a resounding "Pants on Fire" verdict.

But let's assume for a moment that Crist's pants aren't on fire. Let's accept his comment to CNN on Wednesday that "I understood [the bill] was going to pass, and I wanted to be able to utilize it for the benefit of my fellow Floridians." Well, if that was the case, he hasn't done a very good job. As The Miami Herald reported back in August, Florida ranked last among the states for federal stimulus dollars promised per capita. It also ranked last in spending the federal highway stimulus money it had been allotted.

A look at the conservative media this morning shows a variety of approaches to the Fort Hood shooting. While most commentators are interested in addressing the question of Islamic terror, and particularly homegrown Islamism, there's clearly a concern in many quarters to avoid generalizations or overstatements--although others, like Michelle Malkin, have decided to go full-speed ahead. But that caution has not prevented sharp criticism of mainstream media reporting or of President Barack Obama's response to the incident.

Several outlets are counseling caution before jumping to conclusions about alleged shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The National Review's Corner blog is characteristically prolific but is hewing close to the facts, mostly noting what's being reported about Hasan, much of which deals with his religion. The magazine's Victor Davis Hanson, however, grapples directly with the question of Islam in the case, and argues that Americans' understanding of Islamic terror has not progressed in the last eight years and needs to be updated.

In other words, the narrative after 9/11 largely remains that Americans have given in to illegitimate "fear and mistrust" of Muslims in general. A saner approach would be to acknowledge that there is a small minority of Muslims who channel generic Islamist fantasies, so that we can assume that either formal terrorist plots or individual acts of murder will more or less occur here every three to six months.

Earlier this week Holly wrote a really interesting piece about the electoral parallels between now and 1993—and the fact that the GOP is hoping for a dramatic Democratic defeat in next year's midterms, similar to what happened in 1994. Holly points out several flaws in the analogy: Republicans have more baggage going into next year's elections than they did in' 94, congressional Republicans have exceptionally low approval ratings, the GOP lacks strong national leadership, and there's damaging infighting between conservatives and moderates. But I'd like to add another difference to the list: health-care reform.

Here's an update to an entry I posted last week. As I noted then, the 2010 census has sparked a battle over whether undocumented immigrants should be part of the count and thus included in state tallies used to reapportion congressional seats, as has been the case in past cycles. The opening round of that fight was a proposed amendment sponsored by Republican Sens. David Vitter and Robert Bennett that would have added a question to the census survey asking whether the respondent is a citizen or not. The aim was to later strip out noncitizens when it came time for reapportionment.

Well, the senators lost that round. Earlier today, the amendment was blocked when the Senate voted 60-39 to end debate on an appropriations bill. But don't expect the issue to go away anytime soon. A Vitter spokesman, Joel DiGrado, says the senator will try to find other legislative vehicles for the amendment and will continue to press the matter. He's "not going to just stop talking about the issue," says DiGrado.

Marriage-equality proponents are staring blankly into their coffee mugs today, wondering just what went wrong in Maine. It was supposed to be the place that proved the national tide is turning on gay rights. Yet voters endorsed a proposal to overturn an existing gay-marriage sanction. It's certainly a setback for the movement, but it's not the end. Not even close.

I tend to think of gay rights as a generational issue. Nate Silver, the FiveThirtyEight blogger who builds extraordinarily insightful electoral models, finds that support for banning gay marriage is eroding at a pace of 2 percentage points each year. Young people tend to be more supportive, and over time, I think that view will prevail. In years to come, opposition to gay rights will be as outdated a mindset as denying women the vote seems today.  The train is moving in one direction, and, like many movements before it, young people are driving.

By Jesse Ellison

Yesterday, Mainers turned out in unexpectedly high numbers to vote yes on 1, which actually meant voting no on gay marriage. Voting yes to say no wasn't the only thing that happened that might confound those watching from out of state. Despite making a socially conservative choice on gay marriage, voters made the fairly liberal decision not to limit state government spending, and an almost radical move to expand and regulate the distribution of medical marijuana. Together, it doesn't seem to make much sense.

So what happened? Opponents of same-sex marriage waged essentially the same campaign run last year in California, with endless television ads claiming that not repealing gay marriage, which Democratic Gov. John Baldacci had signed into law in May, would mean that it would be taught in school. One of them showed a forlorn-looking couple from Massachusetts claiming that since their state had legalized same-sex marriage, "our son came home and told us the school taught him that boys can marry other boys.  He's in second grade." In another, a Maine teacher implored voters to "vote yes on Question 1 to prevent homosexual marriage from being taught in Maine schools." The state attorney general publicly disputed the claims, but there's no question that they were effective.

One theme emerging from the post-Election Day chatter is that the results augur well for Marco Rubio, the upstart challenging Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in next year's Senate primary in the Sunshine State. Running as a "true conservative" opposed to Crist's centrism, Rubio has energized some of the same anti-establishment forces that helped elbow aside Dede Scozzafava in New York's 23rd Congressional District. So, the reasoning goes, Rubio just got a fresh jolt of momentum. National conservatives are fired up and turning their attention to Florida. And Rubio is likely to get lots more attention and a fresh infusion of campaign cash. Already, the Club for Growth, which reportedly pumped $1 million into Doug Hoffman's campaign in New York's23rd Congressional District, has signaled its interest in Rubio.

Certainly, this is good news for Rubio, particularly in the short term. But I'd point to some caveats. For starters, conditions are likely to start turning more hostile for him. Until now, he's basically gotten a free ride. The mainstream media has largely covered his campaign in inspirational, David-versus-Goliath terms. That won't last much longer. The race, which has already drawn national attention, will now move more fully into the spotlight. With that will come greater scrutiny—of Rubio's record, of his perceived contradictions, of his tenure as Florida House speaker (which came under plenty of criticism)

Unlike the New York City Mayoral, or the Virginia Governor's race, there is a really bad sign for Democrats out of the East Coast. Via The Times, Republicans made inroads in New York's suburbs. "In Westchester County, where Democrats have a solid advantage in voter registration, a Republican challenger, Rob Astorino, upset the incumbent Democratic County Executive, Andrew Spano, who was seeking his fourth term.... In Nassau County, Republicans recaptured the county legislature, and have come close to unseating the Democratic County Executive, Thomas R. Suozzi, in a race that remained too close to call on Wednesday morning."

Why does this matter so much? Because the New York suburbs epitomize the new Blue America.

Maine should have been an example of strength in numbers for gay marriage proponents, but instead turned into heartache. If you don't count D.C., according to Gary Gates of the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA's school of law devoted to gay-rights policies, Maine "has the highest number of same-sex couples per 1000 households (so the highest per capita) of any state." So what happened?

With gains on the national front, such as gay marriages being officially counted (with figures released) for the first time in the 2010 census  and the recent passage of hate crimes legislation that includes protection for gays, the movement is seeing more momentum in the past half year than it has in decades.

Maine should have been part of that momentum. The state is known for its moderate, independent electorate, and gay right activists had mounted a sophisticated media campaign in support of same-sex marriage. But movement on the national stage, it seems, is not translating into progress on the state level.

Bush and Koizumi, together again. (Photo by JIJI PRESS/AFP/Getty Images)

Ahhh, to be a former president. While we were all consumed with the outcome of the 2009 elections, George W. Bush was overseas in Tokyo, throwing out the first pitch at Japan’s equivalent of the World Series. At his side: Junichiro Koizumi, the former prime minister of Japan and Elvis Presley superfan who was widely considered one of Bush’s best friends, among foreign leaders anyway. Back in 2006, Bush gave Koizumi a restored 1950s-era jukebox full of Elvis tunes and took him to Graceland. Koizumi gave Bush a mix CD of him singing Elvis’s greatest hits. But your Gaggler suspects their friendship was set for life when Bush indulged Koizumi’s real weakness: Juicy Fruit gum. The former PM spotted it in a candy dish on Marine One—“Juicy Fruit!” he shrieked, according to a former Bush administration official, who recounted the story to me later. Turns out Koizumi used to chew the gum as a kid, when U.S. soldiers passed it out to Japanese citizens on the street in the aftermath of World War II. According to the White House, Bush bought him a case to take back to Japan.

Last week Glenn Beck prophesied that Sarah Palin was on a potential roll with her upcoming book tour, one that might carry her into 2012—as a real rogue. Beck told Bill O’Reilly that her resignation as governor was a smart move, and that “she’s also positioning herself for a third party. By the time this election runs around for the president, I'm sorry, but unless the Republicans and the Democrats wake up, a third party will win,” he said.

Given the Republican victories—and losses in New York—is that idea still alive? We all know that Dede Scozzafava got essentially “ground up in the gears of the Palin machine,” in the words of one Huffington Post blogger, after which Palin told her Facebook fans: "I want to personally thank Republican Dede Scozzafava for acting so selflessly today in the NY District 23 race. Now it's time to cross the finish line with Doug Hoffman so that he can get to work for District 23 and the rest of America."

Whoops.