Opinion - Joe Conason

Creators Syndicate - Very soon, Congressional leaders are expected to announce the creation of a new commission to investigate the real causes of America's crippling financial disaster.

Creators Syndicate - The new senator from Minnesota is a comedian, writer and actor who lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and raised a lot of money from friends in Hollywood. The departing governor of Alaska is a hockey mom from a small backwoods town who likes to hunt and fish. Yet today, Al Franken looks wholesomely mainstream, while Sarah Palin seems headed for the tabloid fringe.

Creators Syndicate - If Americans hope to discuss health care, climate change, green economics or public infrastructure with any degree of realism, then the time has come to acknowledge that hearing someone say "a trillion dollars" is no reason to panic.

Creators Syndicate - If Congress fails to enact health care reform this year — or if it enacts a sham reform designed to bail out corporate medicine while excluding the "public option" — then the public will rightly blame Democrats, who have no excuse for failure except their own cowardice and corruption.

Creators Syndicate - Campaigning to build the widest possible consensus for reform of the nation's health care system, Barack Obama told the delegates of the American Medical Association (AMA) that he wants their support, too. Persuasive and always polite, the president did not mention the embarrassing truth about his hosts — namely, that the AMA has undermined universal care with mindless zeal for more than 70 years.