A post-manufacturing economy? Reich blithely insists we accept such a future. A post-manufacturing economy is a post middle class economy, where over 300 million people frantically compete with one another for dwindling economic resources and frantically compete to sell each other foreign-made things so we can stay in perpetual debt to a powerful overclass, possibly one that raids an IMF loan package that forces an unforgiving tax policy down our throats.

For many years I used to think Robert Reich was one of the good guys. But now the former labor department secretary says we need to "just accept" the demise of American manufacturing, and he seems like just another member of the beltway oligarchy, eager to help destroy the future of the US for their short-term benefit, all the while telling us how stupid and unsophisticated the rest of us are to resist change.

Reich further describes GM as having been on a "long downward slide" for some time, without acknowledging decades of trade policies, many of them dating from the Clinton era, that were designed to kill off companies like GM, and kill off big labor, and the US manufacturing sector.

Perhaps if marquee college professors at big name prestigious universities had to fear losing their jobs to Indian and Chinese replacements willing to do the same work for, say, 80-90 per cent less dough, Reich would be less sanguine.

"Most emerging versions of the bill require employers to supply health insurance for workers or contribute to the cost of a plan but exempt small employers."

A bad, no, downright rotten, idea. Requiring employers to supply health insurance will mean more employees, especially less healthy ones, losing their jobs and possibly being invited back as "independent contractors" without benefits.

The only sane solution is single payer. People could still choose private health insurance, as some do in various Western European countries. The only difference is all would have to be taxed to support the federal plan, and in return people with private insurance would know the federal plan was there for them if they lost their private sector insurance(which might, in turn, encourage the private companies to be a bit better behaved in the future).

Idiots like "Glock 45" would lead you to believe a federalized health insurance plan would prohibit private sector health insurance companies from continuing as part of the picture, but it wouldn't.

Sacha Cohen is undoubtedly talented, insofar as even his most ill-conceived ideas occasionally hit as well as miss.

But to anyone who cringed at the sheer meanness of Borat, the notion that he's exploiting rather than skewering homophobia shouldn't be surprising. Cohen knows how to stay in tightly focused character, but his venom isn't satirical so much as just plain cruel.

(A lot of reviewers simply looked past the Anti-muslim prejudice in Borat and pretended it wasn't there, either because they didn't want to rock the boat of a hit commercial product, or maybe their own insensitivity meant it just didn't register.)

The idea of states competing for funding, as opposed to receiving funding based on the needs of their students, is simply disgusting.

The "birthers" don't deserve the remotest amount of legitimacy this accomodation would seem to bestow upon them. Fussing about Obama's place of birth is a contemporary analogue to the people a few years back who thought floridated water was a communist plot.

Additionally, fussing about this possible amendment because of the cult of celebrity and because it's an easy concept for simpletons to grasp doesn't make it a good amendment. Amending the constitution to abolish the electoral college, or to rescind the 11th amendment(forbidding residents of one state from suing the state government of another) may seem more intellectual and less "sexy", but they would make much more sense.

Several people have already objected, and rightly so, that this is a story about a broken mental health system rather than "how we treat new mothers."

Also the point about how Susan Smith doesn't belong to this category. Perhaps the author was lackadaisical in her research and couldn't recall Dena Schlosser's name.

also,

"Let's just ignore stories like this. They are distasteful and perverse. They happen within a very marginalized population that we don't really care about. [...] Face it (fellow) liberals: We want to endlessly discuss classic and safe issues like race, gay or reproductive rights. We step over the homeless and the insane and the other smelly people of our fine country and focus on poor Professor Gates."

I suppose a middle course could have been to run it on top with a different photo, showing the image you used only on the click-through on page 1. But people who don't want to know about this at all? I agree with Pennyblack's comment above and I don't understand wanting to be "protected" from this story.

I recall that in September of 2008 there was this meme being discussed on the Sunday morning talk shows about how McCain was displeased with the pending bill governing curtailing the rights of Gitmo prisoners, and was considering voting against it, presumably floated by McCain staffers.

McCain never publicly objected, which some people decided to interpret as his validation.

So what. McCain ended up voting for it in October.

Also, I second what "no-doz" and robert lewis said.

I'm not writing to knock the man.

Nevertheless-- I know that so many people, on all sides of the issue, will trot out the "let's do it to honor Ted Kennedy" trope, and I just hope people will be properly skeptical, of anybody and everybody who does this, because the devil is in the details.