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This story looks like it's about to get more interesting. I wonder if we're going to find out who paid the Dominican hooker to try to frame Sen. Bob Menendez. Report: Dominican Escort Now Says She Made Up Menendez Claims:

One of the women who appeared in a video last fall claiming Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) paid her for sex has now told a different story to the police in the Dominican Republic, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

According to affidavits obtained by the newspaper, the woman said she and a friend appeared in the video after being approached by a lawyer. That lawyer, meanwhile, said a second lawyer provided him with a script and paid him to find the women.

The Post report, which also cites two people “briefed on [the woman’s] claim,” does not identify the women or the lawyers by name, nor does it detail what court the affidavits were filed in, or what kind of proceeding they are related to. It is also not clear how the Post obtained the documents.

The videos referred to in the report are apparently the same ones that appeared, at least in part, on the conservative website The Daily Caller in November. The Daily Caller did not identify the women, and their faces were blurred.

The story was initially ignored by much of the press. But in late January and early February, the rumors resurfaced, in the form of an anonymously posted WordPress blog containing a shadowy tipster’s correspondence with a watchdog group, ABC News and an apparent FBI agent. The tipster said he had information that Menendez had slept with prostitutes while vacationing in the Dominican Republic, where he stayed at the home of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Miami ophthalmologist and businessman who is both a friend and political donor of the senator’s. In late January, the FBI raided Melgen’s Miami offices, reportedly as part of parallel investigations into potential Medicare fraud and Melgen’s relationship with Menendez.

Wonkette has more here: Daily Caller’s Menendez Hooker: I Can’t Believe We Made Up The Whole Thing.

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Don't we wish Orrin. Orrin Hatch pretends that the Republicans weren't involved in the process of putting together the health care bill. Sorry Senator but the ones who were completely shut out of the process were single-payer advocates. They weren't even allowed a seat at the table when Max Baucus was having his hearings. You and your party on the other hand were given ample opportunity to muck up the bill you refused to vote for later. I also can't believe he had the nerve to say the Senate passed the Health Committee bill when that's a blatant lie as well. The end result of that Senate bill was not what came out of the Health Committee and he knows it.

From Slate--This Is What "Bipartisanship" Looks Like:

What do the GOP amendments to this Senate health care bill actually say?

When the Senate health, education, labor, and pensions committee passed its health care bill Wednesday, the Obama administration hailed it as a "bipartisan" effort. No matter that it passed the panel on a strictly party-line vote, with all 13 Democrats voting for and all 10 Republicans voting against. It was bipartisan, administration officials explained, because it contained 160 Republican amendments. Republican senators said that characterization was absurd. After all, they said, most of the 160 amendments were technical, rather than substantive, changes. Lisa Murkowsi of Alaska told the New York Times that, while it was "pretty impressive" that 20 of her amendments were accepted, "they were all technical."

Who's right? There's no real way to resolve this debate without examining the content of these amendments, and the committee has yet to officially release them. But a Senate Republican source sent Slate a summary of many of the amendments, with a short description of each. (Download the Excel file here.) Disclaimer: This is an incomplete list. Of the 788 amendments filed, only 437 appear here. And of the 161 GOP amendments passed or accepted, we have confirmed only 80 as such. We hope to update the document as more information becomes available. Read on...

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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