With the votes to pass health care in the Senate a fait accompli, everyone has turned their attention to the conference committee, and the numerous knotty issues involved in reconciling the House and Senate bills and arriving at something that can pass both chambers. Democratic Senators spent the weekend vowing that whatever comes out in [...]

A corporate front group funded polls in Nevada and Colorado to show opposition to the group’s only issue: the Employee Free Choice Act. And of course, media outlets not only printed the results as unchallenged fact, but failed to do the most basic fact check on the poll’s questions and on their own reports of the poll. It’s so wrong, in fact, I have to break this post into two parts.

President Nelson extracted more than a pound of flesh and women’s rights for this vote on the Senate health reform bill. His corrupt contributors got millions.

Brittany Huckabee’s film The Mosque in Morgantown documents the struggles of journalist Asra Nomani to counter what she sees as rising extremism in the Morgantown, West Virginia mosque, the Islamic Center of Morgantown, which her father co-founded which serves students and teachers at the nearby University of West Virginia.

The filibuster is finally getting a reputation as the progenitor of Senate dysfunction, in a way we hadn’t seen before. Republicans in the minority have used the filibuster more and more since 2007, but this year, with a Democrat in the White House and no backstop of a Presidential veto, the number has just skyrocketed

Ezra Klein attempts to rebut Jane’s reasons for opposing the bill. Many of his arguments are weak at best.

When a German reported called Sen. Inhofe an idiot, he showed America’s media how to treat frauds. Our press should be using that lesson when confronting the White House and Senate leadership for the travesty of a health “reform” bill.

Today on MSNBC, Howard Dean was asked if he agreed with Feingold’s statement that the Obama Administration bore responsibility for the public option’s removal. He was unequivocal. “Yes” was his one-word answer.

This Senate bill is bad and there are many ways to improve it. Right now, it is not real reform–it is only a corporate giveaway that might trickle down to help a few Americans. The ideas listed here are a guide to transform this legislation into real reform.

The House and Senate differ fundamentally on the design of their exchanges. The House bill has a nationwide exchange where people can purchase insurance coverage; the Senate has a series of state-based exchanges; plans can be sold across state lines if states agree to a health care choice compact, however.