But we still haven’t heard from Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln and others who might hold out.

Writers David Herszenhorn and David Kirkpatrick hammer Lieberman as a tool of the insurance industry who is thwarting the will of the people of the Nutmeg State. You can almost hear them snorting as they pasted in the kicker quote from Lieberman.

“‘There is a wonderful core health care reform bill on the Senate floor. Would my liberal friends in the caucus stop that from happening and prevent the president from getting this major goal that he has set because they want to add more on to that? Why won’t they be reasonable?’”

Ezra Klein – The death of the public option

Washington Post blogger Klein has been urging Senate Democrats to quit sweating details and just get a national health plan in place so the party can get the hell away from the thing as quickly as possible. That will let the president talk about his new fiscal discipline in his State of the Union address next month.

But if Senate holdouts take his advice, Klein says it’s going to set up what could be the worst Christmas ever in Washington.

“That means Reid has to finish his bill by the end of next week. Moving to the manager’s amendment — the “deal” amendment, as it is — will take a few days. Voting to replace the underlying bill with the manager’s amendment will take a few days. And then voting on the modified bill will take a few days. Each step is delayed by the day or so required for a cloture vote to ‘ripen,’ and then the 30 hours of post-cloture debate. So an accelerated schedule would see the first cloture vote called Thursday, with the vote to move to the manager’s amendment on Saturday. Cloture would then be called to actually vote on the manager’s amendment on Sunday, and the manager’s amendment would be approved the following Tuesday, the 22nd. And cloture would be called for the actual bill on Wednesday, Dec. 23rd, with the final vote coming, at the earliest, on Friday, the 25th — Christmas Day.”

New York Times — U.S. Said to Pick Illinois Prison to House Detainees

The White House is hoping to prove that there is nothing to fear from bringing terrorists into U.S. prisons by choosing a site in President Obama’s adopted home state of Illinois.

It will prove to be a political issue nonpareil for Republicans looking for a resurgence in Illinois next year as Democrats have stepped forward to say that bringing al Qaeda to the state would be good for economic development.

Writer Charlie Savage points out that the president’s reason for importing the terrorists – closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay – depends on the indefinite detention of dozens of baddies who can’t be tried in U.S. courts for fear of exposing secrets or a failure to get a conviction.

“In May, Mr. Obama proposed bringing some detainees to a facility inside the United States, including some who officials have decided are too difficult to prosecute and too dangerous to release. They would continue to be held without trial as “combatants” under the laws of war.

Under the proposal for Thomson, the Bureau of Prisons would buy the facility and improve its security.

Most of the prison would house ordinary high-security inmates, but a part would be leased to the Defense Department to hold terror suspects.”

New York Times — Military Faces Challenges in Deploying More Troops to Afghanistan

The deadlines for the end of the president’s second Afghan troop surge will depend on how quickly it can begin.

And the military is already managing expectations:

“The senior allied operational commander in Afghanistan warned Monday that the military faced stiff challenges to deploying 30,000 additional American troops here on the tight schedule that President Obama has ordered.

The officer, Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the deputy commander of American and NATO forces here, said that bad weather, limited capacity to send supplies by air and potential attacks on ground convoys carrying equipment for the troops from Pakistan and other neighboring countries presented formidable hurdles to meeting the goal of sending all of the reinforcements by next fall.”

Wall Street Journal — Tensions Increase as Poor Nations Stage a Protest

Part of the reason President Obama postponed his visit to the U.N. global warming summit in Copenhagen was to avoid some of the controversy surrounding emails that show a scientific scam on climate data.

With two days before his second Scandinavian trip in a week, Obama is now facing a new controversy as Western nations come under attack from Asian and African countries for asking too much and giving too little.

When Obama and his foreign counterparts arrive later this week there will be little to celebrate as China – the world’s largest carbon emitter – has been leading the charge for more subsidies from the West or more exemptions for themselves.

Now, U.S. officials are scrambling for some kind of symbolic win to save Obama from an awkward visit.

Jeffrey Ball, Alessandro Torello and Stephen Power have the details.

“But the talk in Copenhagen is increasingly about scaled-back expectations. One possibility is a very general agreement in which developed countries promise to try to reduce their collective emissions by some amount and to provide a pot of money to help pay for a cleanup in the developing world. But such an agreement would leave the toughest questions — how much each country would cut, and how much each would pay — up in the air.”

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