Lightning Round: GOP Learns that Broken Bells and Whistles Offer Little Value.

• Now that health-care reform has passed its final committee vote with a highly conditional aye from Olympia Snowe, it's appropriate to ask which other potential Senate obstructionists could get in the way. Will it be Bill Nelson (D-FL), who believes a trigger is a better option than the opt-out compromise from last week? What about the shameless Joe Lieberman, who, despite many of the proposed changes going into effect years from now, continues to insist reform is too costly to do now and cites discredited research to back up his claims.
• Did you hear GOP.com launched a redesign today? Well, you could go check it out but for the fact that, as of this writing, heavy traffic has brought the site to its knees. And the source of all that traffic? Gawking onlookers marveling at this most inept, factually challenged, least self-aware effort from Michael Steele and his crack team of developers who thought offering social networking tools would suddenly make people flock to the party. I'm actually quite impressed they could screw this up so thoroughly, and in so many different ways.
• Matt Yglesias is appalled by the spectacle that is cable news and muses that the only people who watch it during the daytime are political professionals having a conversation with themselves, oblivious to reality outside the Beltway. This is related to the phenomenon of how the eldest of the cable news channels, CNN, went from being widely respected and groundbreaking to an all-too ripe target for parody by Jon Stewart. The simplest explanation is that the introduction of competition did not lead to a strengthening of their own brand. Rather, CNN (and MSNBC) unsuccessfully attempted to imitate Fox News, thus precipitating a race to the bottom that has become the daily spectator sport of the political class.
• Salon presents a useful, if not exactly groundbreaking summary of the clockwork regurgitation of talking points by Republicans after they have appeared on the Glenn Beck show. It's interesting to pair that story with this one from Politico, which chronicles the tea party movement's efforts to challenge establishment Republican candidates with staunch conservatives. The few remaining moderate Republicans are in the unenviable position of taking their cues from a conspiratorial demagogue to appease their base, who in turn want to run the moderates out of office.
  
• Remainders: John McCain loves war; Joe Biden demonstrates the value of choosing a well-qualified presidential running mate; big media starts to pick up on the predatory private security firm story; and Steve Benen earnestly wonders whether Mitt Romney has ever been consistent on any policy issue.
  

--Mori Dinauer