Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy I’m surprised this isn’t a bigger story, though perhaps it hasn’t yet migrated from England to the US. The vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International, Lord Griffiths (and doesn’t it just fit that he’s a lord), said yesterday in London at conference on “morality [...]

The public option would on average have premiums 11 percent cheaper than private insurance and the public option would end up also making private insurance cheaper.

Tomorrow, Susan Pearl is coming to Washington, D.C. She’s coming on behalf of her son, Ian Pearl. Ian survives on a ventilator, a lasting condition stemming from respiratory collapse he suffered in 1991. His premiums from a Guardian Insurance policy Susan bought in 1981 have risen from $100 per month to over $3,000 per month. [...]

  A potential victory for diplomacy is brewing in Vienna. After initial reports about Iranian nuclear talks were termed “slow,” today negotiators have reached a draft deal on shipping Iran’s nuclear enrichment to Russia for processing.   Under the draft deal, most of Iran’s stockpile of low enriched uranium would be shipped out of the [...]

At least Deeds has done progressives one favor. He has shot a giant hole in one of the main arguments for the public option opt-out “compromise.” The argument is that no Republican governor (and/or state legislature) would be stupid enough to deny their constituents a public option that could save them thousands of dollars a year. Here we have a Democrat saying he might opt out a purple state. Then again, Deeds is not yet governor–and if he keeps this up, he never will be.

Given that we’re about to engage in a big battle between the House funding (taxing millionaires) and the Senate funding (excise tax on employer-based health care), I thought it worth examining this more closely–as well as focusing on recent changes in employers’ choices which may–if we have the kind of crappy recovery many people expect–moot all the data that Ezra draws upon.

Will it be Palin or Romney in 2012? That’s the question Matt Lewis explored in his latest column.

Colorado senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet are joining with their Governor, Bill Ritter, in asking for an up-or-down vote on the public option. The public option has majority support in the Senate, but likely lacks to 60 votes needed to add it as a stand-alone amendment to a bill without it. By the same token, if Reid put the public option in the merged bill, it would also take 60 votes to remove it.

The question many health reform advocates have been asking about the public option debate is “what’s the problem???” Why isn’t the President demanding it, pushing it, selling it? Well, maybe he doesn’t want it. Why, given strong Congressional majorities in favor of a public option, continuing strong polling support across the country, and overwhelming support [...]

More than 5 million have been killed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and rape and violence against women are so common that it’s been called femicide–genocide against women. What can we here in the U.S. do about it? Joining us live to discuss are Eve Ensler, founder of V-Day and the activist behind [...]