Yes, Virginia, spines exist.  And, yes, even some Democrats have them.  We know this to be true because Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) went to the House floor this week and said this:

The whole discussion of executive compensation seems, like so many discussions these days, to have gone a bit off the rails.  The point is not whether an executive is being paid X number of dollars or whether the figure X is Y times the wage of the average worker within the firm, though the second question here is fodder for a discussion all its own.  The real crux of the issue is moral hazard.

The AP just broke a story that Bill Sparkman, a 51 year-old U.S. Census worker, has been found hanged in Kentucky, apparently with the word "fed" written on his chest.  Door-to-door operations have been suspended in Clay County, where the body was found.  The FBI is investigating.

I can say unequivocally that I love Dr. Strangelove.  Kubrick is almost universally renowned as an auteur, but Dr. Strangelove stands out for many reasons, not the least of which were the fantastic contributions of George C. Scott and the multiple personalites of Peter Sellers.  Even the opening and closing credits are memorable.

What happens when 300 million people, selected by fate to live together in one nation, stop being polite and start being real?

Maybe it's something in the air.  Or the water.  Or my Harvey Wallbanger.  Whatever the case, there's no denying that Americans have been letting it all hang out lately.

You've probably heard by now of the videos being promoted by Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com and Fox News that purport to show Acorn employees engaging in some rather unethical behavior.  I don't know to what extent the videos have been edited, because they have clearly been edited, but there certainly seems to be some rotten behavior on display.  The SF chronicle has reported that that these employees have already been fired, although the sa

There's been much made over the presence or absence of a public option in whatever healthcare bill finally ends up emerging from Washington.  Proponents regard it as the raison d'être in the battle to reform America's healthcare system, noting that it's a far cry from a true, single-payer system.  Opponents have responded by doing everything from branding it socialist to brandishing guns to drawing Hitler's moustache on Obama.  That's cool.  As a buddy of mine recently remarked, "I used to do that in my middle school textbooks."  Did Hitler ever make tepid overtures to being open to

He's the Senate majority leader.  He's up for re-election next year.  He also might as well be a ghost in the healthcare debate.

Where is this dude?

We've got a tiny cabal of Senators from states with a collective population smaller than Los Angeles gumming up the works in the Place Where Legislation Goes To Die.  Where is the majority leader in all of this?  Shouldn't we be seeing a united front here?  Pelosi, Reid and Obama all on the same page, all getting the message out?

I'm loving Rep. Weiner on this issue.  Straight and to the point, he asks a subsequently stunned Joe Scarborough what value health insurance companies are adding to the equation.  Watch (awesomeness occurs at the 5:00 mark, culminating in a lovely pregnant pause at around 5:30):

When I first heard reports of the armed man outside of Obama's townhall in Portsmouth, NH, I had a feeling that we would see an escalation of this behavior.  Today there were estimated to be a dozen armed outside of his appearance in Arizona.

It's a tricky situation.  Technically, these people are acting within their rights.  Realistically, they're bringing loaded weapons to incredibly tense gatherings.  As the tension and the number of weapons increases, so does the chance that something unwarranted occurs.

That's what we have in America today in terms of the casualties caused by our corrupt insurance regime.  About 18,000 deaths occur annually in America due to lack of health insurance.  That's 1,500 deaths per month, or a casualty total equalling all of the casualties of September 11th, 2001, every two months.

I am baffled.

Last night, Ann Coulter was a guest on Hannity.  During her appearance, in typical Coulter fashion, she made the over-the-top claim that she was just fine with "death panels", which in her interpretation sound more like execution panels, so long as she was a panel member.  Oh, and she apparently has a list of people she'd like to kill, Zeke Emanuel being among them.  Watch:

I don't have a whole lot of time to write this, but I'm hoping that the core questions I'm going to forward here will be compelling enough to stand on their own.  As I prepare to leave for the day, I'm listening to NPR.  I've been quite busy lately and haven't had the time to read as much as I like, but I've been trying to follow the political developments of health care reform.  It seems to me that this week we've gotten down to a new meme: "How will we pay for it?"

The titular question is one that my old man used to ask me when the going got tough and he could see that I was thinking of packing it in.

"You're going to give up, huh?"

"I don't know, dad.  This is hard!"

"Well, did you ever hear of Oliver Twiddledee?"

"No."

"That's because he gave up."

This Bill Moyers interview is a must-watch for anyone who cares about meaningful healthcare reform:

Washington's abuzz about health care, but why isn't a single-payer plan an option on the table? Public Citizen's Dr. Sidney Wolfe and Physicians for a National Health Program's Dr. David Himmelstein on the political and logistical feasibility of health care reform.

I don't think that many people would be all that shocked or alarmed if I were to write that politics can be downright silly at times.  Even so, creative legislators continue to come up new tactics that seem to defy all logic.

Nancy Pelosi ought to be ashamed of herself for daring to suggest that the CIA has ever done anything untoward, much less that they have misled Congress.  The CIA is 100% on the up-and-up.  They have never bungled analyses, been involved in drugs or arms t

What do you do when herd immunity among children is being destroyed by parents who have been scared by unfounded claims that vaccinations cause autism, an idea being promoted in the media by celebrities like Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, who has recently been annointed by the Poperah?  It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but than