Congress’ job is to authorize, fund and create the most attractive, sustainable public plan this country can produce, and then put in place the mechanisms to hold it accountable for doing its job. Here are some suggested features.

From the NYT: “As President Obama’s effort to overhaul the health care system seems to hit one roadblock after another in Congress, he is counting on Senator Max Baucus, a political shape-shifter and crafty deal maker who is not fully trusted by either party, to help him clinch his top domestic priority”

For the last year or so, we’ve been dealing with a family health care crisis. Most of you know that both my in-laws were hospitalized for months last summer, only to have my mother-in-law pass away last October.

Since that time, my father-in-law moved in with us because he could not live on his own any longer — he is a grieving, gentle man with health issues of his

• Just bizarre.
• Ya think?
• Nate has a theory.
• With friends like Jim DeMint…
• No recount for you!
• Finally, a climate change bill. Barely.
• No good will come of this.

Instead of the logical response of let’s bomb nobody — let’s bomb the non-culpable party.

Aretha Franklin – Night Life.

What’s on your mind tonight?

This weekend marks the 40st anniversary of Stonewall, the Greenwich Village riots which sparked the gay rights/gay pride movement. Regular raids, sweltering heat, and Judy Garland’s death combined with a desire for civil rights, and the patrons of the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street and their friends let the cops who tried to arrest them for simply being gay, in a bar and having a good time know they were more than over the harassment, arrests and beatings.

The police shoved and pushed, knocking some people down, and the crowd which had finished a chorus of “We Shall Overcome” and a chorus line, got angry, Ten police officers—including two policewomen—barricaded themselves, Howard Smith (a writer for The Village Voice), and several

What is it with the Republicans and their desperate need to be heroic martyrs?

David Brooks and the GOP’s Cost Scare.