The Washington Post is just catching on to the president’s “blame Bush” fetish. Had the paper been listening rather than swooning they would have heard plenty of that in the Inaugural Address and noticed that dinging Bush has been a staple of these public signing ceremonies for a while.

Republicans have some openings in 2010: “Election data recently released by Congressional Quarterly shows 49 districts voted for a Democrat in the House and GOP nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) for president, providing an early cheat sheet of potential GOP targets.”

The effort to short circuit a potential filibuster by throwing cap-and-trade into the budget reconciliation process seems to have hit a snag. Seems like many Democrats aren’t interested in junking Senate rules to jam through a $600B-plus energy tax.

Meanwhile, some House Democrats aren’t keen on Obama’s healthcare plan: “Blue Dog Democrats are asking President Obama to come up with a revenue-neutral healthcare plan in lieu of his initial proposal, according to a letter being drafted by the growing bloc of fiscally conservative House Democrats. Blue Dog Co-Chairman Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) said the coalition is in the midst of writing the letter, in which it will be calling on the White House to put forth an alternative healthcare proposal to the one it offered up in its budget.”

If you watch nothing else, spend six minutes viewing John Stossel, who gets bailout and stimulus mania exactly right. And, better than just about anyone else, he makes the politicians look rather ignorant or dishonest — or both. Why isn’t he the moderator for Meet the Press?

Ben Smith bizarrely terms Chas Freeman’s interview with the former Lyndon LaRouche-ite Robert Dreyfuss “calmer,” and neatly fails to mention the “Lieberman Lobby” slur. When Politico declared itself to be on par with the New York Times’ political reporting they were apparently right — and this is not a good thing.

At 10:36 in his interview with Jake Tapper, hear Eric Cantor discuss being an observant Jew in the Republican Party.

Separately, Cantor leads the charge to dump the Virginia GOP Chairman.

Card check continues to tie up the Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidates in knots.