Former President Bill Clinton is due to visit Capitol Hill today to talk healthcare reform with Senate Democrats and their independent allies.

The meeting’s important because Democrats have yet to find the 60 votes they need to stop Senate Republicans from blocking President Barack Obama’s signature domestic issue. House Democrats got their end of the job done over the weekend by passing landmark legislation.

Clinton’s presidency was overshadowed by his own failed bid to reform the healthcare system in the 1990s. But NBC said he could help sway Democrats wavering in the current debate, including Sen. Blanche Lincoln of his home state, Arkansas. 

A big obstacle that Clinton, Obama and Senate Democrats face seems as old as human nature: people who will cooperate — if they get their own way.

This time, a small clutch of moderates want their own way on the so-called public option, a proposal to offer government supported low-cost health coverage that is anathema to Republicans and the insurance industry.

Some senators are categorical about what they want.

For independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut — a state long associated with insurance interests — opposition to the public option is a moral issue. “If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote,” he said at the weekend on Fox News.

But his independent neighbor to the north, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, sounds like Lieberman’s polar opposite: “It would be outrageous to me, that when you have an overwhelming majority of Americans wanting a strong public option, that we do not deliver that.”

Others are not so categorical — until you get to the nitty gritty.

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska told NBC he could back a public option, but not if states have to make the effort to opt out. Why? Because he doesn’t want them in the system unless they want to be there.

“I don’t think there is anything to be gained by opting out,” Nelson said. “I would look at the ability of the states to opt in, so that the states could make the decisions themselves.”

It seems a small distinction but may prove important. Reform advocates fear their adversaries could easily defeat healthcare reform at the state level, where small numbers of health insurers can sometimes hold a near monopoly.

Obama hopes to sign a healthcare reform bill by the end of the year.

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Photo Credits: Reuters/Chip East (Clinton); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Lincoln); Reuters/Mike Segar (Lieberman); Reuters/Chris Helgren (Sanders); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Nelson)

Barack Obama says he probably makes one mistake a day, but doesn’t think he has made any fundamental ones in almost 10 months as president of the United States.

Toward the end of his first term, his predecessor George W. Bush famously said in answer to a question that he could not think of any mistakes he had made — a comment which long dogged him as the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 led to chaos in Iraq.

When Obama was asked the same question on Monday, he was quicker on his feet.

“Oh, we make at least one mistake a day,” he said with a smile.

“But I will say this, I don’t think we’ve made big mistakes,” he told Reuters in an interview in the Oval Office. “I don’t think we’ve made fundamental mistakes.”

When asked to give a few examples of errors, Obama regretted how his team had handled some of the early vetting of administration appointments, a reference to problems with personal taxes that knocked some key picks out of contention.

He also mentioned regret over how he had “phrased commentary” on the controversial arrest of a prominent African American Harvard University scholar in Cambridge earlier this year, when he said police had acted stupidly and was later forced to backtrack.

“I mean, there are constant sort of things that I think have proven unnecessary distractions,” he said.

“But in terms of the core decisions that we’ve made to rescue the economy, to move forward on a path for moving our troops from Iraq, on making sure that we’ve gone through a rigorous process in Afghanistan, to how we have moved healthcare to a place that seven presidents have not been able to get to, I feel very good about our progress.”

Highlights from the Interview

For more from the interview, click on the story links below:

Obama warns of strains with China

Obama on Iran nuclear deal

Obama on Copenhagen climate summit

Obama says expect to sign START pact in December

Obama reading Life of Pi

Photo Credit:Reuters/Jim Young (Obama answers questions during Reuters interview in Oval Office)

Like it or not, the healthcare debate has turned into a fracas over abortion rights.

U.S. House Democratic leaders had hoped to avoid just that in their push to expand healthcare coverage and reform the health insurance market.

But getting the votes to pass the historic legislation on Saturday boiled down to settling a dispute between pro-choice and pro-life forces over abortion.

Abortion foes won. The House passed an amendment restricting the availability of insurance policies that include elective abortion services even though many medical plans currently offer such coverage.

The debate over abortion highlights broader questions surrounding the government’s reach in healthcare.  Once the government starts subsidizing insurance premiums, it will dictate what can and cannot be included in that coverage.

Democrat Congressman Louis Capps underscored that in arguing the amendment “will mean more women will have their reproductive health choices made by politicians and anti-choice zealots in Washington, DC, instead of by themselves and their doctors.”

With abortion-rights supporters vowing to strip the amendment out of the bill as it moves through the legislative process, the debate now shifts over to the Senate.

Senate Democratic leaders are struggling to build enough support for the healthcare overhaul to overcome procedural hurdles that stand in the way of major legislation.

The biggest point of contention has been whether the government should offer a new health plan option.  But the abortion debate will likely prove impossible to avoid.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, acknowledged the issue will come up when the Senate takes up healthcare reform possibly as early as next week.

“It is an issue that we are going to have to deal with over here,” he said. “Senator Reid will need to talk to his caucus about how to proceed.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas ( U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi following House vote on healthcare reform legislation)

A U.S. judge on Friday will sentence former Congressman William “Cold Cash” Jefferson after he was convicted on multiple bribery and money laundering charges. And prosecutors want to throw the book at him.

The former Louisiana lawmaker faces between 27 and 33 years in prison according to federal sentencing guidelines and prosecutors said that sounds good to them. Authorities discovered $90,000 in Jefferson’s freezer during their investigation.

“As the defendant stands convicted of some of the most serious corrupt schemes uncovered in recent history, he is without remorse and has yet to accept responsibility for his actions,” according to a memorandum filed with the court late Friday.

“A severe sentence would send the message to the public that such egregious and criminal behavior will not be tolerated in our society,” the prosecutors counseled. They also asked that Jefferson, 62, immediately go to prison for fear he would flee the country before his appeals are exhausted.

The ex-congressman was convicted in August on 11 of 16 counts of bribery, racketeering and money laundering. He was accused in 2007 of soliciting millions of dollars in bribes from companies while using his office to broker business deals in Africa.

Jefferson lost re-election last year to Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao — yes, the lone Republican who voted for the Democrats’ health care reform bill that passed the House of Representatives late Saturday. (The district is heavily Democratic and includes most of New Orleans.)

Jefferson acknowledged when he was first charged that he had made mistakes in judgment that he regretted, but denied selling his office or trading official acts for money.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Jefferson after his arraignment in federal court in 2007)

When the Berlin Wall topples for a second time Monday, more may be laid bare than the inherent weakness of a political system.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall, Berliners have erected a wall of giant painted dominoes.

During the evening’s festivities the domino wall will be toppled along several blocks near Brandenburg Gate.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to visit the domino sponsored by the U.S. Embassy.

She met with the east Berlin school students and teachers who designed and painted the giant block and pronounced it “very impressive.”

The scene on the domino shows the back of a popular East German car traveling through a wall from darkness into light. Overhead are a rainbow and a white dove of peace.

Clinton said she liked “the light breaking through the dark.”

“Let’s do a picture with everybody in front of it, on both sides. I don’t want to cover it up,” she said.

“Thank you so very much for doing this and for coming out to see me,” Clinton told the youths. “Good job. Good job.”

The scene on the other side of the domino?

The back of a nude angel ascending toward heavenly light, all discreetly hidden by a U.S. Embassy sign during Clinton’s appearance.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski (Clinton poses with students in front of U.S.-sponsored domino)

First came questions about whether anyone missed emotional signals that suspected Fort Hood shooter, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was close to cracking. Now U.S. media say Congress wants to know if he was also veering toward Islamist militancy.

A preliminary review of Hasan’s computer has revealed no evidence of any connection to terror groups or conspirators, according to a report by CBS News.

But lawmakers have asked the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to preserve documents on Hasan. That’s according to ABC News, which says the spooks believe he may have been trying to contact U.S.-born imam Anwar al Awlaki, who is based in Yemen and supports holy war against the West.

It’s not clear whether the U.S. military knew one of its officers was under intelligence surveillance, ABC said.

U.S. law enforcement and military investigators are also looking into associations between Hasan and the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, in early 2001, about the same time Awlaki and two of the Sept. 11 hijackers were there, the Los Angeles Times reported.  The mosque is one of the biggest in the United States and thousands of people go there for prayer services and other events.

Witnesses at Fort Hood told investigators that Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is Greatest”  — before killing 13 people and wounding another 30 last week. The 39-year-old psychiatrist was shot four times by police and remains hospitalized.

It is unclear what motivated Hasan and the Army’s chief of staff, General George Casey, is afraid the shooting spree could cause a backlash against Muslims in the military.

But Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who is a hard-liner on security issues, sees the Fort Hood melee as a possible act of terrorism.

“We don’t know enough to say now. But there are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act,” Lieberman told Fox News over the weekend.

Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, wants the Pentagon to launch an independent probe of whether defense officials missed early signs of stress and statements that might have expressed Islamist sentiment.

Photo Credits: Reuters/Ho New (Hasan); Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi (Fort Hood); Reuters/Vivek Prakash (Lieberman)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used an awards ceremony Sunday in Berlin to push European allies for greater cooperation in confronting extremism, nuclear proliferation and other challenges of the 21st century.

Her remarks came as thousands of people crowded into the city on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

“We should look to the examples of the generations who brought us successfully through the 20th century and once again together chart a clear and common course to safeguard our people and our planet, defeat violent extremists and prevent nuclear proliferation,” Clinton said.

“We need to form an even stronger partnership to bring down the walls of the 21st century and to confront those who hide behind them,” Clinton said, like suicide bombers and those who attack girls for trying to go to school.

“In place of these new walls, we must renew the trans-Atlantic alliance as a cornerstone of a global architecture of cooperation,” she said.

Clinton’s remarks come as President Barack Obama is facing a difficult decision on whether to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan.

The administration has had difficulty convincing European allies to shoulder a bigger role in the conflict, and analysts said Clinton’s call for renewed commitment was not likely to change that.

“Facing difficult pressures on Afghanistan, the Obama administration marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by revving up a rhetorical trope that President Bush favored –- drawing a parallel between the Cold War and the fight against radical Islamist terrorism,” said Tom Carothers, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Europeans and others never found it very convincing under Bush,” he added. “I suspect they won’t like it much better now.”

The awards ceremony, held by the Atlantic Council, honored the citizens of several countries involved in the Cold War struggle for freedom, from the United States and Germany to Poland and the former Czechoslovakia.

U.S. and European officials reminisced about the collapse of the Iron Curtain on Nov. 9, 1989. The events that led to the collapse of communism were not inevitable, they said, and did not lead to the conflict-free world that many people predicted.

“Challenges are endless,” said former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who introduced Clinton. “Every solution of one problem is an admission ticket to another problem.”

Kissinger, who served Republican President Richard Nixon, said a journalist had asked him to write a thousand-word assessment of Democrat Clinton.

“I said, ‘What do I say after the first three words?” Kissinger said.

“He said, ‘What are those three words?’”

“I said, ‘I like Hillary.’”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach (Clinton and Kissinger at Atlantic Council Freedom’s Challenge awards ceremony in Berlin)

The House passage of healthcare legislation means different things to different folks.

For President Barack Obama it was a “courageous vote” by members of Congress.

Obama went to Capitol Hill Saturday to personally press for passage. Today he was full of praise.

“Given the heated and often misleading rhetoric surrounding this legislation, I know that this was a courageous vote for many members of Congress,” Obama said in the Rose Garden.

For Sarah Palin the healthcare bill was a mess.

“We’ve got to hold on to hope, and we’ve got to fight hard because Congressional action tonight just put America on a path toward an unrecognizable country,” Palin said on her Facebook page.

“This out-of-control bureaucratic mess will be disastrous for our economy, our small businesses, and our personal liberty,” she says.

For Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao, the only Republican to vote for the House bill, it was “the right decision for my district, even though it was not the popular decision for my party.”

Watch CNN’s interview of the first-term congressman from Louisiana below:

Who do you agree with?

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Photo credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas (Obama on way to making statement on healthcare)

General George Casey, the Army’s top officer, is concerned that diversity will become a casualty of the Fort Hood tragedy.

The religious beliefs of suspect Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim Army psychiatrist, have led to speculation about motive in the shooting rampage that killed 13 people.

“I’m concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that,” Casey told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether Muslim soldiers are conflicted in fighting wars in Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, Casey said: “I think that’s something that we have to look at on an individual basis. But I think we as an Army have to be broad enough to bring in people from all walks of life.”

The bottom line is the military benefits from diversity, he said.

“Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse,” Casey said.

President Barack Obama also mentioned military diversity in his Saturday radio address which was focused on Fort Hood.

Veterans Day is a chance to honor Americans who served in battlefields all over the world, Obama said. “They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers.”

“They reflect the diversity that makes this America. But what they share is a patriotism like no other,” Obama said.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi (Casey at Fort Hood after shooting), Reuters/Jim Young (Obama leaving podium after remarks about Fort Hood shooting)

Look out Washington, Sarah Palin is coming.

Palin will be the Republican speaker at the annual winter dinner of the Gridiron Club of journalists in Washington on Dec. 5.

“The governor is very excited and was honored to accept the invitation,” said her spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton.

The former Alaska governor, who rose to fame as John McCain’s vice presidential nominee last year, is about to go on a book tour to promote her memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Nathaniel Wilder (Palin talks to well-wishers in Fairbanks in July)