Massachusetts Sets Health Plan for Nearly All

The Massachusetts bill was hammered out with proposals and input from state Democratic legislators; Mr. Romney, a Republican; Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Democrat; insurers; academics; businesses; hospitals; and advocates for the poor, including religious leaders.

You mean, bipartisanship isn't really like date rape?

You mean, competing interests and philosophies can come together to craft a solution to an obvious problem?

You mean, the trench warfare that is so much of our current political climate is preventing us from addressing actual problems in this country?

I just don't know what to think any more. I thought that one side is right, and the other side is crazy, that one side is just, and the other side are traitors.

There must be something missing from this story. There does not seem to be an inch of scorched earth anywhere.

Update: It's fitting that the Mass. health insurance plan is reported the day after DeLay announces he's leaving.

But he was also a man who, perhaps more than any other, embodied the fierce partisanship of his era — a prime mover behind the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, a practitioner of take-no-prisoners electoral politics and a legislative strategist who many Democrats asserted saw no real role for the minority in the legislative process.

It's enough to make a crotchety bastard like myself have some hope for the future.