HB 218 passed to engrossment yesterday night, on a nearly party-line vote; Reps. Jones and Merritt were the two dissenters from the Republican majority.

Why are such Herculean efforts being made to pass bills which remedy a problem that doesn't exist?

We'll start the afternoon edition of the roundup with some good news coming out of the TYC debacle — or at least good compared to the situation previously, I suppose. TYC conservator Jay Kimbrough has announced that he expects to release about 400 youth from the program by the end of this week.

Miss the weekend roundup this Sunday? April Fool's! There wasn't one. Everyone was too busy following the slow trickle of campaign finance reports being released.

I'm sure many of you following national Congressional politics caught the procedural wrangling House Republicans pulled to kill discussion of HR 1433, giving the District of Columbia a voting representative in the House and adding another Utah representative to balance that out. Well, it seems that some folks in D.C. were paying pretty close attention to what was being said in floor discussion of that bill. I received an email this morning from a D.C. resident with an interesting take on that discussion:

you can't get a home loan?

The Washington Post reports today on businesses using a suspected terrorists list from the Treasury Department as a criterion for denying "home and car loans, apartments and even exercise equipment" in response to an executive order issued by President Bush after 9/11.

Why are congressional Democrats and Democratic analysts letting themselves be blamed for the pork in the Iraq spending bill?

It is impossible to write about John Edwards' press conference without first mentioning Elizabeth Edwards' indomitable attitude when dealing with times of trouble. We Texans consider ourselves fortunate to have had a number of strong women in the public eye whose presence was almost larger than life. It is significant, then, that seeing Elizabeth Edwards unscripted in front of the press brought up recollections for me of Molly Ivins' own struggles against cancer. No one can envy her position, but her composure and strength in a situation like this are laudable.

Presidential candidate John Edwards has announced that he will hold a press conference today. No details were given as to the subject of the conference. The announcement came late last night, a day after his wife, Elizabeth, saw the doctors monitoring her cancer recovery. Many are concerned that this does not bode well for Elizabeth's health, or for the Edwards campaign. Keep reading; we'll be reporting on the press conference as soon as it happens.

Consider this an open thread: what do you think Edwards has planned for the press conference? What do you think it means for the campaign, and the '08 election cycle?

I love the idea of public campaign financing. I love the idea of making the candidate process accessible to anyone regardless of income, and I think it would be great if our elected officials could be less beholden to big-money interests. But let's be honest — the only way public financing would work is if it were mandatory, so everyone would have to play by the same rules. Otherwise, those with ties to those big-money interests could simply bypass public financing and raise much more than a public system would ever be able to provide. And mandatory public financing is a tough sell to people who were elected by and whose incumbent advantage largely relies on the system as it stands now. It will be a very long time before we see that happen, if at all. And voluntary public financing is simply not viable.

Or is it?