A new poll finds more than six in 10 Americans are in favor of the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. The Washington Post/ABC News poll, conducted June 18-21 of 1,001 adults, finds 62% think she should be confirmed and 25% don't think she should.

Going back to Robert Bork's nomination in 1987, Sotomayor receives the second most initial support of a nominee -- Justice Clarence Thomas received the most support in 1991, with 63%.

By party, 79% of Democrats favor her confirmation, as do 64% of independents and 36% of Republicans. Just 11% of Democrats oppose her confirmation, as do 26% of independents and 43% of Republicans.

The Supreme Court this morning overturned a ruling endorsed by Sotomayor when she sat on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, and Judiciary hearings on her nomination are set to begin next month.

In his Newsweek column this week (One Nation Under Medicare) liberal pundit Jonathan Alter made the following assertion about the administrative costs of Medicare:

But the administration of Medicare is a miracle of low overhead and a model, despite all the fraud and abuse, of what government can do right. Three percent of Medicare's premiums go for administrative costs. By contrast, 10 to 20 percent of private-insurance premiums go for administrative costs. Roll that figure around on your tongue. When you swallow and digest it, you'll understand that any hope of significantly reducing health-care costs depends on a public option.

How is it possible, you may wonder, that the federal government, which is notoriously inefficient in almost everything it does, is suddenly a model of efficiency and able to create a "miracle of low overhead" when it comes to Medicare? Such a claim flies in the face of common sense.

Yet there was Paul Krugman yesterday morning, repeating the claim almost verbatim:

And that's why the public plan is an important part of reform: it would help keep costs down through a combination of low overhead and bargaining power. That's not an abstract hypothesis, it's a conclusion based on solid experience. Currently, Medicare has much lower administrative costs than private insurance companies, while federal health care programs other than Medicare (which isn't allowed to bargain over drug prices) pay much less for prescription drugs than non-federal buyers. There's every reason to believe that a public option could achieve similar savings.

In fact, President Obama has made this claim several times. This statistic about Medicare's low administrative costs has become one of the linchpins in the argument for a "public option" on health care. The only problem, not surprisingly, is that it's hogwash.

The explanation is really quite simple, and it's provided here by Robert Book of the Heritage Foundation. The statistic cited by Alter and Krugman uses "administrative costs" calculated as a percentage of total health care costs (For Medicare it's roughly 3 percent and for private insurers its roughly 12 percent).

But here's the catch: because Medicare is devoted to serving a population that is elderly, and therefore in need of greater levels of medical care, it generates significantly higher expenditures than private insurance plans, thus making administrative costs smaller as a percentage of total costs. This creates the appearance that Medicare is a model of administrative efficiency. What Jon Alter sees as a "miracle" is really just a statistical sleight of hand.

Furthermore, Book notes that private insurers have a number of additional expenditures which fall into the category of "administrative costs" (like state health insurance premium taxes of 2-4%, marketing costs, etc) that Medicare does not have, further inflating the apparent differences in cost.

But, as you might expect, when you compare administrative costs on a per-person basis, Medicare is dramatically less efficient than private insurance plans. As you can see from the chart below, between 2001-2005, Medicare's administrative costs on a per-person basis were 24.8% higher, on average, than private insurers:

So, contrary to claims of Alter, Krugman, and President Obama, moving tens of millions of Americans into a government run health care option won't generate any costs savings through lower administrative costs. Just the opposite.

This confirms two things most Americans already know: 1) government is rarely, if ever, more efficient than the private sector, and 2) if something sounds too good to be true, it almost always is.

It's not for political reporters to eulogize Michael Jackson. But a day after his death, I found this video, posted below, on YouTube. It evokes the power of celebrity and the modern gray era between it and politics, an apt subject in the time of another celebrity president. Here you have a TV reporter noting the superstar of the eighties meeting the super-politician of the eighties. It's a reminder that somewhere between politics and entertainment is winning the audience. And while the quiet and crawling impact of Alzheimer's on Reagan was not as outlandish or public as all that took down Jackson, you see both men here free of their decline, on one day in 1984, at the top of their worlds.

Jenny Sanford spoke to the Associated Press:

South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford says she warned her husband not to see his mistress before a trip last week and was shocked he met her in Argentina anyway.

Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press that she discovered Gov. Mark Sanford's affair in January when she found a letter from him to the other woman. She said she told him to end the affair and he agreed to.

She said that when the governor told her recently he needed time alone to write, she specifically warned him not to visit the mistress. She was shocked to learn this week that he'd gone to Argentina to do just that.

After watching her graceful, grounded and dignified handling of the press mob in this clip, I'm starting to think Mark Sanford is the one who should go into seclusion on Sullivan's Island and let his wife take over running the state.

A couple of weeks ago, a Republican pollster in Oregon found Congressman Greg Walden surprisingly competitive in a potential race for Governor, trailing former Governor John Kitzhaber and Representative Peter DeFazio by only four points, and leading Secretary of State Bill Bradbury by four points.  As I mentioned there were a couple of problems with the Moore Information poll, which led me to cast some doubt on the state of the race.

From the other side of the political spectrum we get a poll from R2k/DailyKos showing similar results.  Walden trails Kitzhaber and Defazio by six and eight points respectively, and Bradbury by one.  If one assumes Moore's poll is  a few points to the right and DailyKos is a few points to the left, we still end up with a competitive race, albeit one that leans toward the Democrats.

Of course, both polls neglect to test Allen Alley, the only declared Republican candidate.

The NY Post's Page Six carries an item today saying NBC's David Gregory threw a fit when he discovered Joe Scarborough had been booked on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos to promote his new book.

According to this report by Gregor Peter Schmitz, only one member of Congress - ONE - showed up at an event yesterday at the Library of Congress honoring the German Chancellor.

Rasmussen is out with a new poll showing that 46% of South Carolina voters think Governor Sanford should resign. That's the best number yet for the embattled Sanford, after two poll yesterday, one from SurveyUSA and one from Politico/Insider Advantage, showed those in favor of Sanford's stepping down at 60% and 50% respectively.  Overall, that's a three poll average of 52%.

Governor Deval Patrick (D-MA) is in many ways the "Beta" version of President Barack Obama.  Obama strategists David Axelrod and David Plouffe ran Patrick's successful 2006 campaign for Governor, taking Patrick from relative obscurity to the Corner Office. The strategies used were the same. As USA Today noted back in January of 2008: "Both have followed a simple but effective game plan in their political rise: Tell a compelling story about yourself and inspire people who feel left out to take back their government."  Sometimes even the rhetoric was the same.

Things haven't worked out so well for Patrick, who in March sported a -41 net approval rating.  But Plouffe is back to run his new campaign, and it looks like it won't be all hopey-changey.  The Boston Herald's  Hillary Chabot reports:

Self-styled new politics reformer Gov. Deval Patrick is launching his re-election bid as a Beacon Hill brawler, targeting potential rivals with opposition research and openly sparring with fellow Democrats in the Legislature.

Patrick, who once expressed a disdain for political mudslinging, already has hired the state's top opposition researcher, David Stone, to keep any gubernatorial hopefuls against the ropes.

“This is going to get nasty,” said Christy Mihos, a Republican candidate for the Corner Office. “He's going after the Democrat Legislature each and every day, and these are folks that got him elected. He's going to do whatever he has to do to keep his seat.”

Treasurer Timothy Cahill, who is strongly considering a run for governor, has suggested Patrick's office is behind several negative stories questioning his ethical dealings with the state lottery and pension board.

The governor also appears to be taking a page from former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney's campaign playbook, running against lawmakers - even though they are fellow Democrats.

Obama has so far been able to maintain high approval ratings.  Even though he's showing some weakening in his approval rating, they overall remain very high.  But assuming that the economy begins to take its toll and that there is further disenchantment with his administration, one wonders if this will serve as the beta version for Obama's 2012 campaign?

More importantly, how will voters react to this new Obama?  His strength was always his ability to remain somewhat above the fray, running a semi-rose-garden strategy.  The one time he fell behind McCain in the polls for an extended period of time, he didn't look particularly good.  Maybe he'll be able to pull off the street fighter persona if need be, but my guess is that his main strategy will be trying to avoid going there in the first place.