Jon Stewart got the ball rolling, and now even Shepard Smith is so disgusted by GOP obstructionism on the 9/11 health care bill that he read a list of the names of Republican senators who would not appear on Fox News to speak on the issue. DeMint, McConnell, Graham, Hatch, McCain… nobody wants to appear on TV and take responsibility for what they are doing. It’s revolting that the GOP has demagogued 9/11 to facilitate the wholesale looting of the U.S. Treasury in just about every conceivable fashion, but they don’t want to take responsibility for what happened to those we sent in to clean up the mess.

The Republican Party recently told its leaders to call the Obama administration’s new health law “Exhibit A” of a “runaway Washington government.” But that’s not how longtime GOP health expert Thomas Scully sees it.

This week was actually big victory for progressivism. Not in health care, but in student loan reform. Finally, a wasteful and worthless corporate welfare program was eliminated. The taxpayer dollars that were being thrown away on private profits will now be redirected to help low income students attend college and pay down the debt. This is what progressive victories look like.

The government is paying these private plans 12% more than it would cost to cover the same people with traditional Medicare. Some of this extra money is used by private insurance to offer additional benefits to entice more customers, and some of it is just pocketed by the insurance companies. This attempt to use private insurance to save the government money has turned into an extremely costly failure.