With Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) standing in triumph passing a healthcare bill in the Senate with every Republican united against him and the president doing nothing to help him, it is time to pass out our first Lie of the Year award. It involves the healthcare bill, and was told by former Mayor of Wasilla and quitting partial-term Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin!

Almost 16 years ago, in California's 36th congressional district, Republican Susan Brooks lost by 812 votes to Democrat Jane Harman, with absentees providing the margin of victory.

After the election, Brooks’s campaign compiled a detailed list of more than 2,000 apparently invalid votes. As Reader's Digest put it, ''findings indicated that of 5,292 absentee ballots from 20 Venice precincts that went overwhelmingly for Harman, 1,337 (26 per cent) had been cast by voters whose addresses on the rolls turned out to be abandoned homes, empty apartments, vacant lots."

The Nancy and Harry show suggests a mad adolescent rush, like in those classic Hollywood B-movies where the parents go out of town and the teens take over the house (read: the Senate) for the weekend. Or the drunken euphoria of Billy Wilder’s “The Lost Weekend.” Or “Animal House,” maybe, staring Barney Frank as John Belushi.

We need to cut Michael Steele some slack. If someone is willing to pay him big bucks to make a speech, he'd be a fool to say no. True, he has gotten into trouble about some of the dopey things he's said, but he may as well make some money for them.

It's not that there's a conflict of interest; Democrats in particular should realize that. They constantly charge that Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Steele heads a party that always favors the wealthy — those who can afford to pay for his words of wisdom.

Now we know the price for continuing insurance price-fixing and preventing insurance competition. Now Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), always a low-key figure, is fast becoming a national symbol of what many believe has gone wrong with Congress.

The corrupting power of lobbyists is the great closing end-of-year story. It’s everywhere. National TV. National print. Talk radio. And all over Nebraska. Read more...

The United States Senate is marching toward history this week, but not the kind they will welcome once the dust settles from the fallout of the healthcare reform debate. There are so many political favors buried in this bill that reporters simply don’t have the time to uncover them all. Read more...

Those who look for meaning in swirling things in the sky will find them, especially on Winter Solstice. But the older rabbis tell us to look beneath the surface to find essentials, and what happened beneath the surface at Copenhagen is worth reporting. It was a modest nightmare, like one of those unsettling dreams like you are walking on the edge of a cliff, or strolling in public to suddenly realize you are naked, or that you go to your office and someone has taken your chair away. That’s what happened to America in Copenhagen. The new world order came together and they forgot to set a chair for Obama.

Remember Sen. Ben Nelson's (D-Neb.) concerns over abortion? That he almost opposed healthcare reform over it? With a compromise cut on that thorny issue, Nelson has far bigger problems on his plate now.

The backroom dealing that normally seals huge bills has backfired and become a huge story. The permanent exemption from Medicaid expansion Nelson received for Nebraska has cast the spotlight back on him, just when he was finally ready to relinquish it.

Let me begin and end this otherwise negative comment with some good news. While the president will do nothing to fight for a better healthcare bill in conference, there are sign that Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are feeling some heat after taking a beating from the press. The conference battle now begins, and while the president will be the legislative bystander he has been so far, House Democrats will weight in, and if they fight, they can win something back.