[A] military official said [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates wanted the review to extend beyond the Fort Hood case and also look at broader questions about how the military identifies, tracks and potentially moves against troops who may have violent tendencies or radical beliefs.

The official said Mr. Gates wanted a shorter, initial report within the next few weeks, followed by a longer-term systemic report sometime early next year.

And of course, right now the Senate government-affairs committee is holding its own hearing into what happened at Fort Hood.

The massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 soldiers were shot and killed by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, paradoxically took my memory back to April 2004, when I was embedded with a Marine battalion during the first battle of Fallujah. The battalion just happened to have in the ranks a corporal of Syrian descent who did double duty as the commander’s translator for his meetings with the Iraqis. The young Muslim corporal was arguably the most valuable member of the battalion: simply by his presence he was able to cast the battalion in a different, more positive light among the locals.

The United States military needs more troops of Muslim origin within its ranks. We need a military that looks like the larger world for the global challenges ahead, such as helping to protect the “commons,” the air space and sea lanes. Think of the Navy’s slogan in its new television recruitment commercials: “A Global Force for Good.”

There are a whole bunch of right wingers who ought to read this piece. Quite possibly Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), too.

Update: Have I taken Kaplan’s argument a step too far? I don’t think so. But James Joyner does, and he’s a smart guy, so you make the call.

Today’s Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the shooting incident at Fort Hood, Texas, has been postponed. The committee will send out a notice when the new date for the briefing has been scheduled.

In the aftermath of the Fort Hood shooting, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the committee’s chairman, requested a “detailed account” on the circumstances behind Nidal Hasan’s alleged rampage. The statement from the committee doesn’t explain why the hearing was postponed, and a spokeswoman hasn’t immediately returned an email requesting elaboration. But over the weekend, President Obama asked Congress to fall back on hearings about Fort Hood until military and law-enforcement inquiries conclude. Two senators who’ve resisted the call: Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), who will begin hearings on Thursday in the Senate Government Affairs Committee.

Update: Committee spokeswoman Tara Andringa clarifies that, indeed, the postponement came “at the request of the administration.”

Her amendment, which she first tried to attach to an appropriations bill without success, would also require their offices to submit periodic reports about their activities to congressional oversight committees. If they failed to comply, their departments could lose some federal dollars, she has previously suggested.

Collins makes an intellectually honest argument here — it’s all about government transparency. That doesn’t change the fact that something considered a normal part of presidential power one year ago has become a hot-button issue, basically because Glenn Beck said it should.

Due, in large measure, to the efforts of Senator Olympia Snowe, who has worked tirelessly, the legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee represents a substantial improvement over the costly and flawed alternative approved by the Senate Health Committee as well as the House bills.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Collins would support the bill as it stands. Indeed, her statement also takes time to blast provisions she said would raise costs and steal choices from consumers and businesses. A final proposal, she said, shouldn’t slow Medicare growth to the extent that the Finance bill does, and it should take longer steps to limit medical malpractice suits.

Still, Collins said she “share[s] the goal of passing responsible health care reform and, working with members on both sides of the aisle who share these concerns, I am hopeful that many improvements will continue to be made to produce a bill that can achieve bipartisan support.

Our goal should be legislation that protects affordable health care choices, safeguards Medicare, and reduces costs to the consumer and the taxpayer especially at a time when we simply cannot afford to pay more.

That’s not an endorsement, but it’s certainly a more tempered approach than that coming from GOP leadership.

Notwithstanding Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-S.C.) infamous outburst, President Obama’s big speech Wednesday before both houses of Congress appears to have been a success — at least for now. According to several recent polls, support for health care reform is enjoying a bit of a bounce, ranging from a one-point increase in the number of people who approve of Obama’s handling of health care in a Washington Post/ABC poll to a whopping 12-point bump in the newest CBS/New York Times survey. Perhaps most surprising, Rasmussen Reports — a public opinion firm favored by the Republican Party — found a healthy seven-point rise in support for health care reform following Obama’s address.

Over the weekend, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) — Sen. Ted Kennedy’s replacement as the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — boldly predicted that Congress would pass a health care bill by Christmas, and it would contain a public option — a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers. “Mark my word — I’m the chairman — it’s going to have a strong public option,” he said. But Susan Collins (R-Maine), a key swing senator who some expected to follow the lead of her colleague Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), backed further away from the public option yesterday when she rejected a trigger that would allow a delayed implementation of the public option if insurance companies don’t meet cost and coverage mandates. Meanwhile, Snowe reiterated her opposition to an immediate public option, although she remains open to a co-op solution.

For their part, according to a new study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a sizable majority of the nation’s doctors favor the inclusion of a public option in a health care reform package.

This post has been updated for clarity.

Or so says Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a member of the Finance panel who told MSNBC today that he “can’t support what Sen. Baucus is arguing for, and I’m not sure any Republicans can.”

Hatch said “there’s no question” that the bill that emerges will be a partisan proposal, adding that he “really sincerely doubt[s]” that it would win the votes of even the moderate Maine Republicans, Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

So much for the art of compromise from the world’s greatest deliberative body.

h/t: The Hill

The tremendous number of sales in the first week of this program demonstrates that the CARS Act has succeeded in increasing new vehicle sales, but Congress needs this data in order to determine if the fleet modernization program delivered significant fuel economy gains and oil savings.

They have an ulterior motive. Even as Detroit’s defenders successfully pushed through legislation encouraging sales of new gus-guzzlers, Feinstein and Collins were among the critics urging that the purchased vehicles get better gas mileage in order to qualify for the thousands of dollars in cash vouchers. Along with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), they have sponsored of a more environmentally minded cash for clunkers program.

They lost that fight, but considering the popularity of the program, they might have more leverage the second time around. Indeed, the defenders of the existing program can no longer fall back on the argument that lax eligibility is needed to encourage participation.

Earlier in the year, Detroit’s powerful defenders on Capitol Hill pushed through legislation that effectively allowed consumers to trade clunkers for new clunkers — a boon to the automakers and dealers who were having trouble selling larger vehicles, but hardly a recipe to reduce emissions in any meaningful way.

At least one member of the Michigan delegation, Sen. Carl Levin (D), is already urging additional funding for the program.

“We have been told by the White House that people can keep buying cars under the program until further notice,” Levin said in a statement Friday. “We don’t know how long it will last, so people should go to their car dealers now if they want to take advantage of the program.  We’re also going to seek additional funding to hopefully make the program last longer.”

But others are vowing that, if the program is to be extended, the eligible vehicles should get better gas mileage. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), who had pushed legislation hinging the cash subsidies on better fuel efficiencies, issued a statement yesterday vowing to fight additional funding unless some changes are made.

We believe that any extension of the ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program must go further in advancing the goals of better fuel efficiency and greater emissions reductions. We will not support any bill that does not meet these goals.

They have this in their favor: Levin and the other automaker defenders can no longer claim that eligibility thresholds have to be kept low to encourage participation.

“While we are committed to providing relief for American families as quickly as possible,” the lawmakers wrote, “we believe taking additional time to achieve a bipartisan result is critical for legislation that affects 17 percent of our economy and every individual in the U.S.”

The letter to Senate leaders Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was spearheaded by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) also signing on, according to Roll Call.

The concern stems from the Congressional Budget Office’s damning assessment yesterday of two health reform proposals already in the works — one from House leaders and the other from the Senate health committee. CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf told the Senate Budget Committee yesterday that both proposals would make the country’s health-spending dilemma worse, rather than reining in costs as they were designed to do.

A third proposal, currently being drafted by leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, was expected for release this week, but that timeline was extended in the wake of the Elmendorf testimony.