What irks him the most in the current bill, he said, is that it permits insurance companies to charge as much as 300 percent more to some customers than others. So even though they must provide coverage to anyone who applies -- known as "guaranteed issue" -- the price differential that can be charged to older or sicker customers virtually erases that promise. "If you have to pay $20,000 a year for insurance, what good does it do if you have guaranteed issue?" he asked rhetorically. "Which is in fact what you'd have to pay if they can charge you three times as much as they do ordinary people. They have 300 percent rate differences in that bill. In Vermont, we have 20 percent rate differences, and that works."

The bill lacks sufficiently stringent controls on insurance company pay for executives and other wasteful expenditures as well, Dean argues, which is why he also opposes its mandate requiring all Americans (with few exceptions) to buy health insurance. "Why should you force Americans into a system that takes between 20 and 30 percent off the top for CEO salaries and return on equity?" he asked. "You're forcing them into that system and it's unfair." There should be no mandate without a public option, he said.

The best way to remedy this fundamental flaw, according to Dean, is to expand Medicare, because that avoids all of the political and market problems of a system based on private insurance. In the current legislation, he supports the insurance "exchange mechanism, because I assume we would need that no matter what else we do in the bill -- it is the most sensible way to buy insurance, and it was pioneered in Massachusetts," where insurance costs have declined. "I would certainly leave in the expansion of Medicaid," he added, "and make it bigger and have the feds put more money in it so the states don't get left on the hook. That's how we did universal insurance for kids [in Vermont] and I'm a huge fan of that." He also supports the expansion of community health centers and for wellness and preventive care in poor communities.

At the center of his argument with the Senate leadership and the White House is his insistence that their bill is a hodgepodge of "hocus pocus" and not "real insurance reform." He still believes that Congress could pass a Medicare expansion next year using the reconciliation process, needing only 51 votes rather than 60 -- and including $500 billion in cuts applied to Medicare Advantage subsidies to private insurers to pay the cost.

So does he really want to kill this bill? "Oh, I think they should vote no on it. I would like to see it redone," he said. "You can't vote for a bill like this ... You can't say, oh, we'll all vote for this piece of junk now, just to get it to the conference committee [with the House], because it's not going to get any better when it comes out of the conference committee if four Senators from the insurance industry can veto the result." He declined to name those four Senators, because "I'm trying not to get too much into ad hominem attacks."

Regardless of the nasty personal remarks about him that have been emanating from the White House, Dean wanted to emphasize that he still supports the president. He dismissed any talk of another run for president. "I plan to support President Obama vigorously in 2012. I think he's done a terrific job on things like the environment and restoring America's name in the rest of the world," he said. "I remember what it was like to have George Bush as president and I'm not on a mission to destroy the Democratic Party, having rebuilt it. But we didn't elect Democrats to pass crap. We elected Democrats to make a difference"

Will this bill make a difference despite its flaws? He doesn't think so. Although much of Dean's critique makes sense -- and he is hardly alone in his disappointment -- some of his arguments have been disputed by other progressive experts, notably Ezra Klein and Paul Starr.

But the real crux of the argument between Dean and the bill's supporters is less about the details than over what this act means for the future of healthcare in America. For those who want the bill to pass despite its defects -- a position that I have come to share -- this is the moment when the nation decides that health insurance must be provided to every citizen, period. That tidal shift is why right-wing politicians and pundits are so ferociously opposed to this bill -- and why its passage would represent an important victory on the way to restoration of the American social contract.

Although Harshbarger found that the ACORN employees who were taped surreptitiously by video producers James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles had committed no illegal acts, he sharply criticizes the group's present and former leadership for the negligence and stupidity that led to the embarrassing incidents recorded in the group's offices in several cities, including New York, Washington and San Diego. He excoriates ACORN founder Wade Rathke and other former leaders of the group, whose drive for growth and power, Harshbarger writes, led them to abandon basic standards of governance, accountability and fiscal probity.

The videos, he writes, "represent the byproduct of ACORN's long-standing management weaknesses, including a lack of training, a lack of procedures and a lack of onsite supervision."

He notes that the "hidden camera controversy is perceived by many as a third strike against ACORN on the heels of the disclosure in June 2008 of an embezzlement cover-up, which triggered the firing of ACORN's founder, and the allegations of voter registration fraud during the 2008 election, done in collaboration with Project Vote," although he goes on to note that several U.S. attorneys found no basis to prosecute ACORN in the registration cases.

So rather than the "whitewash" reflexively denounced on right-wing Web sites, Harshbarger's report forthrightly reprimands the ACORN leadership for failing to "meet the expectations and requirements of the stakeholders who supported and benefited from its advocacy and service work." The report sets forth nine detailed recommendations for improved performance that Harshbarger says the organization must implement immediately.

Yet while the Harshbarger report focuses chiefly on the structural and managerial shortcomings of ACORN itself, its findings strongly suggest that the coverage of the "scandal" was overblown and mishandled by the media outlets that played those videotapes over and over again.

Amateurish as those recordings were, with their grainy images and muddy sound, they presented the bizarre tableau of prostitution and fraud as right-wing cinema vérité. The tapes' raw appearance was, however, highly misleading, according to Harshbarger, because the broadcast versions were edited and voiced over in ways that distorted the actual encounters between Giles and O'Keefe and the duped ACORN personnel.

To assess the meaning and accuracy of the videotapes, Harshbarger and his colleagues did the job that journalists ought to have done from the beginning. They interviewed ACORN employees. Later, they reviewed both the tapes and the transcripts made available on BigGovernment, a Web site owned by Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing impresario behind Giles and O'Keefe.

What Harshbarger discovered, as his report's Appendix D reveals, is that much of what appeared on Fox News Channel and in other media outlets, let alone on right-wing Web sites, was not what had actually occurred in the ACORN offices -- and that exculpatory material was edited out of the tapes.

In San Diego, for example, the ACORN employee shown on the tapes is someone whose primary language is Spanish, not English. The report notes that "in the released video, his participation amounts mostly to nodding or saying 'OK.' It is difficult to determine what this employee is responding to because the videographers' statements are obscured by a voiceover inserted later."

After O'Keefe and Giles left the San Diego office, that same employee called a cousin who worked in a local police department "to ask him general advice regarding information he had received about possible human smuggling" -- a reference to O'Keefe's claim that he was bringing in young girls from El Salvador to work as prostitutes. The police report concerning that call shows that officers followed up later, only to be informed by the ACORN employee that the incident was a "ruse."

In Philadelphia, O'Keefe's suspicious behavior likewise alerted the ACORN staff that something was amiss, and the police were informed there as well. No video of the visit to the Philly office was ever released by O'Keefe and Breitbart, although Harshbarger notes that "some of the released videos contain scenes of the sign of the Philadelphia ACORN office and shots of Philadelphia's head organizer with no audio."

Contrary to the claims of right-wing critics, who complain that Harshbarger failed to interview any of ACORN's adversaries, the lawyer and his colleagues were rebuffed when they tried to speak with O'Keefe and Giles. Amy Crafts, a Proskauer associate who co-authored the report, told me that she made several efforts to contact the video producers both in person and through their attorneys.

On Oct. 21, Crafts said, she was barred from the press conference held by O'Keefe and Giles at the National Press Club in Washington, even though she promised not to ask any questions. Then in November, she wrote to O'Keefe and Giles requesting interviews through their Washington attorneys. O'Keefe's lawyer replied that his client would not participate, while Giles' lawyer didn't bother to answer at all.

None of this should be surprising to anyone familiar with the backgrounds of O'Keefe, Giles and Breitbart -- a former employee of the Drudge Report. But it is now clear that the ACORN videotapes were an exercise in propaganda, not journalism.

What's worse is that the mistakes committed by most news outlets in the early coverage of this incident continue. Reporting on Harshbarger's findings, the Associated Press story published in the Washington Post on Tuesday doesn't mention his questions about the videotapes, his rebuffed attempt to interview the video producers, or the producers' staunch refusal to permit him to review the unedited tapes for comparison with the versions that were released.

"Insurgencies of this nature," he writes, "typically conclude through military operations and political efforts driving some degree of host-nation reconciliation with elements of the insurgency." 

The general alluded to this fundamental truth knowing that historically, civil conflicts end with neither a capital overrun by rebels nor an unconditional surrender by them, but with a negotiated solution. In the Afghan conflict, writes McChrystal, "reconciliation may involve ... high-level political settlements" led by the government in Kabul, such as it is. He carefully notes that such negotiations would not be "within the domain of ISAF, but ISAF must be in a position to support appropriate Afghan reconciliation policies," and then goes on to explain why providing jobs and other support to former insurgents must be part of the overall mission. 

Perhaps that is why Obama's sober speech omitted the Churchillian flourishes that the right-wing country-club commandos always want to hear. But the prospect of a negotiated solution could explain why the president and his war cabinet have laid out a timeline that proceeds from the onset of the surge to the beginning of withdrawal over a period of less than two years. It may also explain why the rhetoric of both the president and his commanders promises to "stop the momentum" of the insurgency over the coming year or so, rather than vowing the extirpation of the Taliban and its allies. 

If a "properly resourced" counterinsurgency force could blunt the Taliban's initiative between now and the summer of 2011, then it is conceivable that some "elements" of the insurgent movement, which is composed of three major and many minor groups, would agree to sit down for talks with the Karzai regime. At the moment -- with everyone agreeing that the insurgents gained the upper hand during the Bush administration's neglect of Afghanistan -- there is little incentive for Mullah Omar or any of the other insurgents to stop fighting and start talking. 

As McChrystal acknowledged last summer, he cannot even accurately estimate how much of the country is controlled by insurgent forces because ISAF has no intelligence about so much of the terrain. Under those conditions, the ambitions of the Taliban remain the same as they were eight years ago -- to regain total control of the "Islamic caliphate" of Afghanistan. So from Obama's perspective, the best and only way to blunt those ambitions is to reverse the course of the conflict, forcing the Taliban and its allies to reconsider their long-term interests. 

The argument of the president's critics is that by setting a deadline for troop withdrawals to begin, his plan will allow the insurgents to "lay low" for a year or two. But laying low by definition would require the insurgents to slow down or cease their own momentum -- and let the ISAF and Afghan forces gain ground. The result would be the same: a stalemate on the ground that might encourage negotiations instead of protracted civil war. 

Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether American and NATO escalation is self-defeating -- as it may very well be for many reasons -- the urge to drive a bargain might well underlie the Obama strategy. He understands that Afghanistan presents a complex problem and that after eight years of incompetence, arrogance and abuse by the former administration, its troubles are not susceptible to a military solution, if they ever were. Much of the dispute between the insurgents and the government represents long-standing ethnic, tribal and regional grievances, as well as a divide between urban, educated elites and rural, traditional populations. 

For negotiations to serve American interests as articulated by Obama, the Taliban and its allies would have to renounce al-Qaida, convincingly and permanently. Some observers have argued that those connections are not as close as they appeared to be in the past -- and the insurgents have tried to portray themselves as nationalist defenders of Afghan sovereignty, not as puppets of a foreign jihadi movement. The latest signal came in their response to Obama's speech, in which they indicated that they will take no terrorist actions against the United States or any other Western governments, merely wishing to drive the invaders off their soil. 

From the outset of his campaign, Obama always said he regarded securing Afghanistan as a vital national interest of the United States, and pledged to commit additional troops there if needed. The plan he enunciated and the resources he has committed are unlikely to win a military victory or even achieve stability. What he may hope to do, by preventing a Taliban victory, is to enlist the international community and especially Afghanistan's neighboring states in a diplomatic effort, leading to a cease-fire by the summer of 2011. Then American forces could begin to come home -- and he could plausibly claim to have ended both of the wars he inherited before running for reelection. 

Having accumulated five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington, according to the Seattle Times, Clemmons was undoubtedly a danger to the community who ought to have been returned to prison long ago by law enforcement authorities. Only days before the police shooting, he was released on $150,000 bail from a jail in Pierce County, Wash., where he was incarcerated on charges of raping a child.

As Huckabee suggested in a statement released on Monday, courts and law enforcement agencies in Washington should probably share the blame for Sunday's carnage. "Should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, " the statement said, referring to Clemmons, "it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State."

In short, Huckabee was arguing, the killings attributed to Clemmons were not Huckabee's fault. Certainly they were not his fault alone. But this incident has revived memories of other decisions he made that later led to terrible consequences. The damage to his political future will hinge on how deeply news organizations now delve into those cases -- and the bizarre faith-based rationale behind his use of the clemency and pardon powers of the governor.

Huckabee has proudly declared on many occasions that he disdains the separation of church and state, insisting that his strict Baptist piety should serve as the bedrock of public policy. Nowhere in his record as governor was the influence of religious zeal felt more heavily than in the distribution of pardons and commutations, as his own explanations have indicated. During those years he granted more commutations and pardons than any governor during the previous four decades, many of them surely justified as a response to excessive penalties under the state's draconian narcotics laws. But others were deeply controversial, especially because so many of his acts of mercy appeared to depend on interventions by fellow Baptist preachers and by inmate professions of renewed Christian faith.

No doubt word spread among the prison population that the affable governor was vulnerable to appeals from convicts who claimed to be born again. Clemmons too was among those who benefited from Huckabee's tendency to believe such pious testimonials. "I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak," he explained in his clemency application in 2000. "I'm still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought upon my family's name ... I have never done anything good for God, but I've prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a start. Now, I'm humbly appealing to you for a brand new start."

Surely the most notorious instance of misplaced mercy involved Wayne Dumond, a rapist and murderer now deceased, who was originally sent to prison in Arkansas for raping a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. During Clinton's presidency the Dumond case became an obsession among certain right-wing pundits and politicians, who insisted that Dumond had been framed and brutalized by the "Clinton machine." When Huckabee became governor, he supported a parole for Dumond, winning applause from the Republican right -- until the former prisoner raped and killed a young woman in Missouri. Dumond later died in prison, under suspicion that he had murdered at least one other woman after his Arkansas release -- a tragic outcome for which Huckabee has repeatedly tried to blame others, including his two Democratic predecessors in the statehouse.

The real engine behind Dumond's release, however, was a Baptist minister and ultra-conservative ideologue named Jay Cole, who also happened to be a friend of Huckabee. Cole would tell the governor about his visits with the supposedly innocent Dumond, when the minister and the prisoner would read the Bible and pray together.

Perhaps the worst instance of that same syndrome, chronicled in detail by Arkansas journalists, concerned an Air Force sergeant named Glen Green, who was sentenced to prison for life after confessing that he had raped and killed a teenage girl. After beating the woman with nunchucks, he violated her almost lifeless body, ran over her with his car and buried her in a swamp. But yet another preacher friend of Huckabee's named Rev. Johnny Jackson somehow persuaded the governor that this incredibly brutal killing had been an "accident" -- and that Green had repented, come to Jesus and therefore should be freed.

Two years ago, I noted that Huckabee knew almost nothing about the Green case beyond what his preacher pal had told him. He consulted neither the prosecutor nor the victim's family, and overruled the dissent of his own parole board. After he announced that Green would be released, the furious public reaction forced him to reverse the decision. Yet he continued to release murderers and other violent criminals despite angry dissent from local prosecutors.

Huckabee granted mercy to prisoners whom he chanced to meet, to prisoners who had personal connections to him or his family, and especially to prisoners who were vouchsafed to him by the pastors he had befriended during his years as a Baptist minister and denominational leader. Among the thugs who benefited from his mercy was a robber who beat an old man to death with a lead pipe.

During the 2008 campaign, Huckabee's arrogance and stupidity mostly escaped the full scrutiny of the national press corps, in part because his stint as a contender was so brief. But next time, if there is a next time, he should get no such free pass -- and his claims to divine guidance ought to be thoroughly debunked. 

Note: This story was updated after publication with news of Clemmons' reported death.

Among the handful of Democratic senators who have threatened to support a Republican filibuster, Lincoln is alone in facing reelection next year. Her weakness in recent polls, which suggest that well under half of her home state's voters approve of her performance, has clearly frightened her and emboldened nearly a dozen Republican candidates who want to run against her. Despite careful pandering to right-wing opinion, she has inevitably become a prime target of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has vowed to punish her for voting with her party on healthcare.

But as that fateful tally approaches, Lincoln is at last feeling serious pressure from Democrats as well. The man who brought the free clinic to Little Rock -- along with "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann -- is Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who could be encouraged to enter a primary against her should she uphold the Republican filibuster. A former Clinton administration official and Rhodes scholar, Halter raised his profile by establishing a popular statewide lottery, with proceeds dedicated to education.

When Halter was asked on "Countdown" whether he might run for Lincoln's seat, he didn't say no. No doubt he knows that the activists who belong to Moveon.org and Democrats for America have vowed to raise millions of dollars to support a primary opponent for Lincoln unless she votes for cloture.

Lincoln's position is especially perilous at the moment because no matter what she says or does, her ratings seem to decline. Back in July, she wrote an Op-Ed essay on healthcare reform for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the state's largest daily newspaper, indicating that she supported "real" reform, including either "a quality, affordable public plan or non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals as those of a public plan." In that same essay she went on to berate "the opponents of reform, who have no real plan for improving health care," for reviving the "tired arguments of the past," with their warnings about "a Washington takeover of health care which will raise your taxes, get between you and your doctor, and eliminate private insurance." She warned Arkansans not to be misled by those who would use such "misinformation" to stimulate fear and block change.

But as her poll numbers plummeted and her position shifted sharply to the right, Lincoln herself quickly became a purveyor of misinformation, particularly concerning the public option. In a September speech at the University of Arkansas medical school, the senator described a bill that does not exist. "For some in my caucus, when they talk about a public option they're talking about another entitlement program, and we can't afford that right now as a nation," she said. "I'm not going to vote for a bill that's not deficit-neutral, and I'm not going to vote for a bill that doesn't do something about curbing the cost in the out years, because it would be pointless ... I would not support a solely government-funded public option."

As Lincoln certainly knows by now, because she claims to have read every page of the pending bills, the public option is neither an entitlement nor solely government-funded, but is to be financed with premiums from its beneficiaries. As for the cost of reform, she also knows that the Senate bill saves hundreds of billions of dollars over the next two decades, according to Congressional Budget Office scoring.

Running away from reform, Lincoln looked weak rather than thoughtful, and cowardly rather than centrist. Her numbers have not improved, and the Republicans are mocking her as a flip-flopper. The damage to her standing among Democrats could make the difference on Election Day, because many voters who pulled the lever for her in 2004 will simply fail to show up. A Democratic state senator who has supported Lincoln in the past told me that she recently sent a message to Lincoln's office: Healthcare is a "line in the sand," not just another issue.

It was Bill Clinton who uttered the most pungent criticism of Lincoln in recent days, however, although he didn't mention her by name. Speaking at a luncheon to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the opening of his presidential library in Little Rock on Wednesday afternoon, he berated the opponents of reform for preserving a system that spends far more than other developed countries for worse care -- at least $900 billion annually, according to his back-of-the-envelope calculations.

Clinton asked his audience, which included hundreds of Democratic donors and activists, to imagine a scenario in which he could somehow run for a third term as president (which drew enthusiastic applause). Then he asked them to consider what would happen if he offered the following campaign promise:

"If you elect me again, the first thing I'm going to do is put a $900 billion tax on you ... I'm going to have the government print the money, and put it on elevated flatbeds, and display it along the national mall. And we're going to broadcast this ceremony on national television. And then I'm going to motor myself from one end of that $900 billion to the other, sprinkling Kerosene on it, and then I'm going to set it afire and watch it burn.

"How many people do you think would vote for me?" he demanded. "If you don't want to reform healthcare, that is your position. That is what you are advocating."

Lincoln wasn't there, but she could have heard the roaring laughter all the way back in Washington.