C-SPAN on Your iPhone

I'm a geek.

I just downloaded the C-SPAN iPhone app.

With this app you can listen to your choice of C-SPAN 1, 2 or C-SPAN radio. You can also link to their podcasts through iTunes. No video yet, but maybe someday!

This could be useful if Brian Lamb's request for media access to Obamacare deliberations is successful!

Obamacare on CSPAN

C-SPAN is trying to keep the most transparent administration in history honest. CEO Brian Lamb has written a letter to Congressional leaders requesting media access to the reconciliation of the two health care bills:

As your respective chambers work to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate health care bills, C-SPAN requests that you open all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings, to electronic media coverage.

You will remember, of course, that in January 2008, Obama vowed to hold all such discussions in the open, in public, and on C-SPAN. Much of the work on the health care bill has been done in private behind closed doors. Oh, we've seen a lot of debate on the floor, but most of the crafting of the bill was hashed out in secret.

Mary Katharine Ham points out the obvious:

For a bill that's faced a thousand p.r. obstacles in its legislative marathon, the coalescing conventional wisdom suggests this last effort to get it over the finish line may shape up to be another obstacle itself. And even if it works, which it very well may, the president will have to chalk up another chunk of political capital and another huge chink in his reputation as an honest, change agent.

I suspect Obama will be willing to give up a large chunk of political capital to get this behemoth through Congress. After all, he has said he'd accept being a one-term president if it came down to it. He may get his wish.

Update: Ed Morrissey doesn't have a lot of faith in Obama's transparency:

This, then, is transparency as defined by Democrats: votes in the dead of night, committee processes that produce strawman bills, and Senators scurrying from camera lenses to dole out favors and cash to one another.

(Illustration by Ed Wexler for USN&WR)

The Senate is Just Like High School

I'm watching CSPAN coverage of the Senate vote on a couple of issues and I am reminded of my own high school classroom at times, especially when the call for order goes out: "Take your conversations outside!" And then the request has to be repeated because nobody listens or obeys.

I'm going to blame it on the time change but my kids were nuts today. That, and maybe the fact that we're in the State basketball playoffs and everyone is keyed up.

Our students are not supposed to have cell phones at school. Of course they all do (including my own child who attends there.) So at best, they are certainly not supposed to have them out in class. Today I busted two different kids in two different classes texting during class. Both refused to turn over their phones - a big "no no." They have to serve detention to get them back; when you refuse to turn it over, you get suspended. So WHY would you refuse to turn it over?

Craziness.

Then The Teenager sends me a text (from his Art class) to inform me that he is dying and needs to go home (to die in the comfort of his own bed, I presume.) He aches and has a sore throat. So on my planning block I took him home. Shortly after I get another text. "I'm dying. I threw up. Come home now."

I was in class and didn't respond right away. I get another text. "I'm still dying."

When I finally got home (and called him in sick to work, twenty minutes before his shift) I took him to the doctor; probably strep. He will live.

So now I'm watching CSPAN and thinking, "God, these Senators are like my high school students. They pay no attention to anybody and do exactly what they want to do."