This journalist does a great job of clearly and simply explaining the broken American political system. And he captures the reader's attention with the shocking story of the female contractor who was raped and locked in a box for 24 hours by her male co workers in Iraq. More shocking was the way the male U.S. senators dismissed her plight and sided with the corporations. This short simple story is a stunning indictment of the corrupt banana republic the U.S. has become.

I don't think bringing in the Edwards to prove a point benefits science. The Edwards also had a earlier tragedy in the death of their son. What was their marriage like before and after that? Was their blame? There is a great deal of stuff that goes on in a marriage. There are bargains made. What were their bargains? What were their secrets? We don't know. The writer should have stuck to the percentages i.e. the facts and left out the celebrity aspect.

John Adams is a quality reporter who has often taken on the powers in Montana. I would have liked Adams to talk to one more source outside the Democratic Party machine in the state. The head of the labor union, Feaver, was a good source. One more Baucus skeptic might have given a little more balance to the conventional wisdom of Bergren, Elliott and Sabato. The idea that the people of Montana will forget what happened in the Finance Committee is also conventional wisdom that may not work this time around. But it is what Baucus is counting on.

There is nothing new about health care reform in this story. It is just reporting inside the beltway maneuvering and sausage making. What are the real costs of health care reform? Will the CBO factor in bankruptcies caused by medical bills? Will the CBO factor in our American companies growing disadvantage world wide because they have the burden of health care expenses for their employees that the companies in the grown up countries don't have? Who were these doctors summoned to the White House? Who paid their travel expenses? What are they supposed to pitch? The reporter should have stuck to one topic; what is the CBO and how do they calculate "cost"? My recollection is that the CBO report of 1993 was largely ... More »

Yes, it is an example of a clearly thought out refutation of the propaganda put out by the sickness industry.

I no longer consider a story on health care a story of quality if the reporter only interviews congress people. Without the perspective of organizations like Physicians for a National Health Care Plan, we simply get conventional wisdom. So we get cliches like Schumer's "keeping insurance companies honest" with a public option. How do you keep insurance companies "hones"? Isn't it their mandate to make profits and deny care? Why should there be profit in health care? Isn't there a difference between health care and making cars? Why don't you ask Grassley how he would get more competition in his state that has one company controlling 71% of the business.

This is quality journalism. It is a critique of the coverage of health care reform and how the same mistakes of 1993 are being repeated now.This article goes beyond the usual suspects and identifies key figures in health care analysis. It also talks about health care issues and not just the sausage making process of how legislation gets done. It identifies how most reporting has used a similar meme to tell the story i.e. that this time things are different than 1993. But the people that the author interviews say it's not different at all.

This journalist has been at this a long time and so adds great historical perspective. It is also timely and a call to action for young people to take up journalism as a vocation and not a way to make a quick buck.

Okay, so let me get this straight. We are supposed to forget the “finer points i.e. what Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Rutledge, Madison, Paine, etc honed down to the essence of democracy and instead rely on somebody who just won’t embarrass us and somebody who wants to negotiate rather than dictate? How thin our sense of democracy has become. So for trying to make a silk purse out of sow's ear (rationalizing/weaseling out of his early choice), Cesca gets a C. For not having done his reporting homework in the first place, as a journalist he gets a D. Cesca should have checked out how Obama felt about these "finer points" of the core of liberalism as worked out with great personal cost by our framers. He might have discovered a ... More »

From the author of "The Wisdom of Crowds" we get yet another terrific and easy to understand view of economics and how it effects our world. Having work in Hollywood, I can attest to the lousy way that many projects are chosen. There is more "monkey see, monkey do" than real risk taking. Suroweicki doesn't tell us how MediaPredict will pay it's on line readers, if at all. But I'm interested in the application of large, diverse, and independent decision making to take the place of really bad analysis that we see now on television. Hey, it's worth a try.

It's an opinion piece about the old idea that you can defang the Democrats by making them appear as wussies. He uses George McGovern's loss and John Kerry's loss as examples of what the Republicans need to do in 2008. In 1972 the country was bitterly divided still over the war. Today, the majority of Americans want out and fast. I don't think his thesis then holds water now. He also uses the word "sniping" for Democrats criticizing each other which, of course, is an attempt to make them appear wussie. Get rid of "columnists" like Cohen and we won't have to put up with another superficial election.

Showing a picture of Edwards speaking at Cooper Union where he gave a substanitive speech on problems facing the middle class and poor and how government can help enforce standards and protect its citizens from abuses such as predatory lending, but then not commenting on the substance of the speech in the entire article is bizarre. Instead the author takes a story already reported and implies that Edwards has no business talking about these issues because he spent 1.3 million of money from his policy institute to tour the country talking about poverty. Obsession with non-scandals such as Whitewater and now this is becoming the NYTimes stock and trade while they tout fictitious stories such as WMD's in Iraq that led us into a ... More »

This is an interview by a Pundit and not a story by a reporter. Everyone knows that Russert plays "gotcha" journalism. But Biden and Edwards, his first two Democrats did very well. Richardson flunked. For all the hoopla about his resume, he didn't seem ready for prime time. He admitted to not one but many mistakes or saying "I'm not a model of perfection". His resume may be long but it is also lacklustre. His state is at the bottom of the wage scale. His record as Energy Secretary was dismal enough to get him scratched from Al Gore's VP list. But I did like his answer to Russert when Russert asked if it was a good thing to work for an energy company and Richardson say, "Hey, I had to make a living." Richardson may be trying to ... More »

The authors got some interesting quotes from a variety of people. They were able to put Senator Obama's fundraising in the larger context of his rise as a politician and what groups he was able to tap for money. The authors also showed some of the insides of Chicago Democratic Politics. There's a lot of money and power in Chicago and it has always been an important if not the most important player in many primaries. Fundraising stories can be hard to follow, but this one was easy to understand. The story points out too how important a candidates alma mater can be in fundraising with access to well heeled and well connected alumni. It also peels back yet another layer to expose how heavily invested in campaigns huge corporations ... More »

This "report" basically uses corporate news talking points to discredit the "Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party" as Howard Dean would say. I've been following this "reporter" since 2003 and am amazed that he is still considered a reporter rather than a commentator. His attack on Democrats is well documented in "Fubar" by Sam Seder. So here again, it's the same old same old and not "news". He throws in a couple comments from Schumer and the political science professor saying that the Democrats are not doing the same thing as the subpoena crazy Republicans during the Clinton years but are , in fact, doing the people's will. But he weights his sources towards the DLC view that moderation is everything and that the American ... More »

The reporter sees no nuance in the three leading Democratic presidential contenders position on Iraq. But just taking one example of John Edwards. The sentence prior to his "all options are on the table" was "The recent UN resolution ordering Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium was not enough. We need meaningful political and economic sanctions." This he fleshed out in an interview with Ezra Klein in which he talked about carrots and sticks. The carrots being providing nuclear fuel for power plants and help to their struggling economy with help from European banks. The sticks would be economic sanctions, not military. Every President says "but all options are on the table." The point is who do you trust to NOT use nuclear ... More »