Columnist Paul Krugman sees the health care hubbub as signaling the death of “Obama’s dream of moving beyond divisive politics,” observing that the situation may be even worse than the Clinton years “because the collapse of the Bush administration has left the GOP with no real leaders other than Rush Limbaugh.” From Obama, Krugman would like to see “a sense of passion and outrage — passion for the goal of ensuring that every American gets the health care he or she needs, outrage at the lies and fearmongering that are being used to block that goal. “So can Mr. Obama, who can be so eloquent when delivering a message of uplift, rise to the challenge of unreasoning, unappeasable opposition? Only time will tell.”
Columnist Peggy Noonan credits the disastrous health care debate with one thing. “The Obama White House has done the near impossible: It has united the Republican Party,” she wrote. “Social conservatives, economic conservatives, libertarians — they’re all against the health care schemes as presented so far. They’re shoulder-to-shoulder at the barricade again.”
Even lawmakers ideologically disinclined to support health care reform have a responsibility to be informed and clear about what’s being proposed. The hands-off attitude 
“I’m proposing something that will be paid for and they signed into law something that wasn’t, and they had no problem with it. Same people, same folks. And they say with a straight face how we’ve got to be fiscally responsible.” — President Barack Obama at a health reform town hall meeting Tuesday, 
The federal stimulus devoted $2.4 billion to pilot projects aimed at capturing carbon dioxide emissions and making coal-fired power plants “cleaner.” Such plants account for a third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. “Yet carbon capture and storage remains the elusive holy grail of the coal industry, an idea that could contain the damage inflicted by coal-burning power plants but a technology that remains expensive, energy intensive and largely untested,” a Washington Post article Follow us
