The New Republic

My argument that Republicans blew it by not offering Democrats a much smaller health care deal has drawn some dissent. Ross Douthat argues that Republicans got most of what they wanted in the bill anyway -- moderate Democrats did their work for them by taking out the public option and forcing deficit neutrality. READ MORE >>

Conservatives have lined up in near-unanimous opposition to any progressive legislation introduced during President Obama’s first year in office. Whether they’ve been railing against health care reform, a climate bill, or financial regulation, their ire has stemmed less from legislative specifics than from a generalized prophecy of doom: Obama’s proposals will move the country toward socialism, bankrupt entire industries and small businesses, and deny Americans their basic freedoms. These arguments, however, aren’t new. READ MORE >>

In a new column posted this morning, Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher renews her call to defeat the Senate health bill--a position, I know, many of our mutual friends on the left share. I respect her right to that opinion. I respect the fact that she's making substantive arguments about what the Senate bill would mean for real people. And I really respect the effort she's made, over the last few months, to promote the cause of health reform. READ MORE >>

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Barack Obama: “One of the things that I’ve felt very strongly about during the course of this year is that hard stuff requires not paralysis, but it requires going ahead and trying to make the best of the situation that you’re in.” Doesn't have quite the same ring as "the fierce urgency of now," does it? And in fact, MLK's next line was this: "This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism." Of course, Martin Luther King never met Ben Nelson. READ MORE >>

At a Washington, D.C., restaurant, a child looking at a picture of Barack Obama turns to his mother and says: "Is he always going to be the president, mommy?" "No," the mother replied. "Four years." Maybe she's a Palin voter? READ MORE >>

Geopolitical realities force Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to visit Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who probably orchestrated a massive car bomb that killed Hariri's father in 2005. READ MORE >>

The United States is on the doorstep of comprehensive health care reform. It's a staggering achievement, about which I'll have more to say later. but the under-appreciated thing that strikes me at the moment is that it never would have happened if the Republican Party had played its cards right. READ MORE >>

The Great Animator: Charles Dickens's Obsession With Ghosts, Bottled Fetuses, and Other Dead Things, by Adam Thirwell Cohn vs. Kos on Whether to Blow up the Health Care Bill, by John Cohn READ MORE >>