The House of Representatives, under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, passed historic health care reform late Sunday night. That's a fact. Also a fact is that the bill is far from perfect, and legislators from all sides will be working to shape the bill more to their liking. Progressives regret the lack of a public option, let alone single payer, and the use of women's reproductive choice as a political football in the negotiations--Obama was forced into an executive order reaffirming the Hyde Amendment's commitment not to use federal dollars for abortions.

The flawed health care bill that finally made it through Congress might show the limitations of democracy in the U.S., but Gary Younge, correspondent for the Guardian and the Nation, assures us that it's worse in Europe.

With all the news over health care reform's passage, the beginning of the eighth year of the war in Iraq seems to have slipped out of the headlines. But over the weekend, antiwar protesters took to the street across the U.S.

So this is what I learned from the last weekend of the health care reform debate.

The House of Representatives, under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, passed historic health care reform late Sunday night. That's a fact. Also a fact is that the bill is far from perfect, and legislators from all sides will be working to shape the bill more to their liking. Progressives regret the lack of a public option, let alone single payer, and the use of women's reproductive choice as a political football in the negotiations--Obama was forced into an executive order reaffirming the Hyde Amendment's commitment not to use federal dollars for abortions.

As the health care bill drags toward a finish line, conservative opponents of the bill are raising a specter with some long history--"States' Rights." They claim to be able to nullify the federal reform bill on the state level, but the argument for states' rights has been made before to prevent progressive action from being taken, particularly around racial equality

One Palestinian village provides a hopeful note for the conflict in this week's featured documentary, Budrus. An unlikely organizer unites Hamas and Fatah, Palestinian and Israeli, men and women in an nonviolent campaign of resistance to the construction of the separation wall.

Continuing our coverage of the seventh anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we bring you artist Wafaa Bilal. This Iraqi-American, who has lost family members in the conflict, garnered headlines around the world in 2007 when he lived in a gallery for 30 days with a webcam and a Web-controlled paintball gun: anyone around the world could try and shoot an Iraqi with a yellow paintball--and over 65,000 paintballs, from over 130 countries, were shot his way.

Poor Bart Stupak. Apparently his life has become a living hell. That's according to a recent profile in The Hill. Ever since he started trying to hold health care reform for ransom over abortion, he's had to deal with critics. He's had to deal, for example, with receiving letters from religious leaders representing 59,000 Catholic nuns.

As the health care bill drags toward a finish line, conservative opponents of the bill are raising a specter with some long history--"States' Rights." They claim to be able to nullify the federal reform bill on the state level, but the argument for states' rights has been made before to prevent progressive action from being taken, particularly around racial equality