The American Prospect Online

In Washington, Supreme Court nominations have become campaigns in and of themselves, with staff detailed to nominees, extensive congressional vetting, and outside groups spending on ads to defeat or confirm the nominee in question.

The most toxic word in politics today is "bailout," and Sen. Chuck Grassley had no qualms about deploying it to describe the Build America Bonds program. According to the senator, it's just one more way to funnel taxpayer money to the banks and to profligate local government. A Washington Post article followed, focusing on fees major banks earned through the program.

Year after year, Republicans try to pass legislation that would limit medical malpractice awards. Fix the tort system, they argue, and we fix rising health-care costs. And year after year, Democrats resist placing arbitrary caps on awards to people who may have suffered from an egregious medical error. The fight plays out like a predictable old Western -- good guys versus bad guys. Depending on your politics, the villain is either the greedy doctor or the greedy trial lawyer.

Health reform invites a fresh look at malpractice.

In the spring of 2005, David Stockman at last reaped the reward of the monopolist.

Stockman, who once served as Ronald Reagan's budget director, spent two decades on Wall Street preparing for this moment. After stints at Salomon Brothers and the Blackstone Group, Stockman in 1999 set up his own private investment fund, Heartland Industrial Partners. He then used Heartland to shape a set of companies -- mainly in the automotive sector -- each dedicated to dominating a particular group of production activities.

The first rule of Jerry Brown's campaign for governor is that he doesn't talk about his campaign for governor.

There are two battling story lines about the career of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy: Here at the Prospect, we recall the Lion of Liberalism, treating his 1980 convention speech as the hinge of his long career. Meanwhile, on cable news, or in the hands of Dan Balz at The Washington Post, he is the icon of bipartisan compromise, whose close working partnership with Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah among others was legendary.

Economists, particularly those of the ascendant Chicago school of free market enthusiasts, were in a triumphant mood at the beginning of this decade. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in 2003, Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas went so far as to say that macro-economics -- with its focus on the stable maintenance of national economies -- could safely be retired.

"This is a way for Daschle to institutionalize his preeminence," says Len Nichols, director of the New America Foundation's Health Policy Program, "so when he's on the Hill, he's speaking for health reform. It's a reaction to the Clinton structure and shows the world he's in the White House on a daily basis." Original article

President-elect Barack Obama and his new health reform chief Tom Daschle made clear on Thursday that even amid tremendous economic crisis, their New New Deal would take on that persistent piece of unfinished business from the Old New Deal -- health care.

"Some may ask how at this moment of economic challenge we can afford to invest in reforming our health care system," Obama said. "And I ask a different question. I ask how can we afford not to."