The Senate passed the Labor-HHS appropriations bill last night by a veto-proof majority, and then some (75-19). Now the bill heads to a conference and then to the President, who has promised to veto it. But given the margin of victory in the Senate, does he still think a veto is the wisest way to go?

"A pretty brazen act" -- Washington Post In the classic Monty Python film, "The Search for the Holy Grail," an already diminutive swordsman stuns his foe by insisting on fighting on, despite having already lost both arms and legs. It would appear that President Bush, too, has no legs to stand on, having lost the nation's support for his war in Iraq, lost Congress last November, and floundering at sub-Nixonian approval rating levels in the latest Zogby poll.

Via, Lawrence Lessig, Robert Reich's new book, Supercapitalism, makes a point regarding the place of corporations in civil society well worth highlighting: This is a critically important point for people to get -- and one that many good thinking souls don't yet agree with. [...] Corporations are not more efficient governments. They are instead increasingly efficient money making machines. And while there's nothing at all wrong with money making machines -- indeed, wealth and growth depends upon them -- there is something fundamentally wrong with trusting these machines to restrain the drive for profits in the name of doing the right thing. Lessig's whole post is worth a read. However, below the fold is a fuller excerpt from his review.

Michael Tomasky asks a vital question in The Guardian: That is, Americans have now experienced a conservative government failing them. But what lesson will they take? That conservatism itself is exhausted and without answers to the problems that confront American and the world today? Or will they conclude that the problem hasn't been conservatism per se, just Bush, and that a conservatism that is competent and comparatively honest will suit them just fine?