I'll let the ad speak for itself. I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination but when a mainstream-Americana company like Burger King chooses to put such a degrading image of women out there as a way to peddle their junk food to the public, I feel the need to say something.

I've read a number of diaries here from the perspective of the insured (or uninsured), and most of these stories are pretty compelling and persuasive in pushing for single payer or a public option. But I'd like to share with you the perspective of a provider and why I think a public option would benefit us.

The repeated abuse of short selling over the past eighteen months has led to the destruction of businesses, cost countless numbers of jobs and created systematic risk in the global economy. Though some have asserted that short selling aids liquidity and price discovery in the market, the possibility of such functions should not be used to justify the damaging and corrosive consequences of abusive short sales.

Just today I was listening to a debate on Capitol Hill over the proposed health care reform. Lobbyists from the health industry were testifying before a House committee about what a disaster a public option would be, how it would destroy private health care. They kept repeating that there were no studies, no examples to guide us, of what a public option would be like. Allow me to provide one.

The Supreme Court decided last week, in District Attorney's Office v. Osborne, that convicted Americans have no Constitutional right to further DNA testing of evidence. This decision is reprehensible on its own merits, but it leaves open a bigger question. Is actual innocence a ground for relief from a conviction under the United States Constitution?

When folk singer Pete Seeger and some friends launched the Clearwater project in 1969, the Hudson River was an open sewer for industries, cities and towns along its majestic sweep from the Adirondack Mountains to New York Bay. In the years since, the full-sail sight of the Clearwater sloop tacking up and down the river with a pickup crew of excited kids and adults has been paced by outbursts of activism on shore that has prodded cleanups and publicly targeted the major sources of pollution. The inspiration for this hearty brand of environmental activism is a 90-year-old guy who still tramps around with a banjo singing old-fashioned folk songs.

Since the health care debate/fight for our lives seems to be heating up, I thought I would share my own personal story having received health care through a "public option" for the last 4 years. I have been on a New York state program for uninsured people that are HIV+ and make less than $43,000 a year known as ADAP.

Yesterday morning, several Republican Senators took to the Senate floor to make speeches outlining their "concerns" about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. By and large, the speeches were entirely predictable, and if I'd been playing a drinking game keyed to mention of Judge Sotomayor's "wise Latina woman" remark, I'd have been three sheets to the wind by lunchtime. But who could have predicted that Senator Jeff Sessions, Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, would be critical of Judge Sotomayor for following the words of a statute?

Two weeks ago, I mentioned that Sarah Palin hasn't made up her mind on whether she'll run for reelection in 2010. Well, now Politico reports that many Alaska political insiders consider Palin's current silence as a sign she may not run in order to -- wait for it -- play a bigger role on the national scene.

French investments might have seemed like a dreadful idea for the first two years of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's term. After his election in May 2007, Sarkozy looked like a huge disappointment -- unless you really enjoy tabloid stories. He divorced his wife, married the dramatically old fashioned ex-model Carla Bruni, and went on an enviable honeymoon in Egypt -- but appeared to do nothing useful about France's economic problems. But now there's some good news.

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