Charlie Savage, the Boston Globe reporter who wrote the article on the Shrubbery’s 750 signing statements, was on Fresh Air from WHYY tonight. Worth hearing a reporter who still reports.

There are links to his article and to a searchable database of signing statements.

He stood up well to the relentless probing of Terry Gross, the hard-hitting interviewer that scared Bill O’Reilly off her program by asking direct questions. [If you’ve never listened to Ms. Gross, Halloween costumes for babies are scarier than she is. She asks good questions and gets good interviews, but it certainly isn’t by intimidating her guests.]

Atrios proposes a list of issues on which he believes most people on the Left can agree:

• Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration
• Repeal the estate tax repeal
• Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI
• Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one)
• Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation
• Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. On the last one there’s probably some disagreement around the edges (parental notification, for example), but otherwise.
• Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code
• Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination.
• Reduce corporate giveaways
• Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan
• Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions.
• Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards “more decriminalization” of drugs, though the details complicated there too.
• Imprison Jeff Goldstein for crimes against humanity for his never ending stupidity
• Paper ballots
• Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. Obviously details matter.
• Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes.
• Torture is bad
• Imprisoning citizens without charges is bad
• Playing Calvinball with the Geneva Conventions and treaties generally is bad
• Imprisoning anyone indefinitely without charges is bad
• Stating that the president can break any law he wants any time “just because” is bad
• Marriage rights for all, which includes “gay marriage” and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens.

Other than the Goldstein comment I can live with it. I have no desire to find out who Goldstein is, and see no reason to single him out from among the mass of stupid people on the planet.