Some new information from The Hill, a newspaper devoted to covering Congress, came out last night on Barack Obama's service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with regard to Afghanistan. On its face, it is not flattering to Obama.

Disclaimer: I support Hillary Clinton. However, I try to be as objective as possible when understanding the news. No doubt a lot of people will disagree with my conclusions, or my objectivity. I hope we can keep it polite, however. Also, apologies for the length.

There's been a lot of news these last two days about Barack Obama's position on NAFTA, started when CTV, a generally respected Canadian network, reported that a senior Obama campaign official had privately warned the Canadian government via its US ambassador that while Obama would criticize NAFTA, his words shouldn't be taken seriously.

Since then, there's been much back and forth between the Canadian government, the Obama campaign, CTV, a few other news sources, and to a lesser extent, the John McCain campaign and the Clinton campaign. Getting all of this sorted out is difficult, but since this is potentially important, I thought I'd try to assemble and summarize what is known.

In his very moving diary of two months ago, markw gave four reasons he was supporting Hillary Clinton, one for each of his four children.

Link to Original Diary

I'll let his words do the speaking for his oldest son:

What can we learn from the Massachusetts universal health care experiment?

Second in a series of long-winded diaries on health care policy by a non-expert. The first diary, on how well a plan without mandates might work, is here.

As everyone knows, Massachusetts is currently trying to implement a statewide universal health care plan that works partly by requiring state residents to buy health insurance (or obtain an exemption). Since there is fundamental disagreement between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over whether mandates are necessary to achieve universal health care, the Massachusetts example is often cited in policy arguments, usually by Obama supporters who claim that it is failing, and that mandates are therefore a bad policy idea.

Is that really the case? I wasn't well-informed about this, so I went to do some research about how the Massachusetts plan works, what its results are, and whether this has implications on how well a Clinton/Edwards style plan might fare in the real world.

How well will a no-mandates plan work?

Those of you who have spent too much time on MyDD know that my main issue in this election is health care. I think substantially improving our health care system (ideally by implementing universal health care) is the most important thing we can do, from both a policy and political viewpoint.

There have been a lot of heated arguments about whether a plan involving individual mandates (such as that offered by Clinton, Edwards, Richardson, and Dodd) would end up covering everyone. That's not the point of this diary.

Here, I want to discuss how well a plan without individual mandates, such as Obama's, might work if passed. Given that he's the odds-on nominee at this point, it is more than idle speculation.

To me, health care is the single most important issue in this election. Implementing a universal health care plan is the one thing we can do to vastly improve the lives of millions of Americans. So I thought I'd share the following rather stirring case for universal health care, which I happened to stumble across while researching the topic. It's been excerpted, and in some parts, lightly edited for length:

Just like that, it's January 7 again. On that Monday night, reporters and pundits were gleefully predicting a humiliating defeat for Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary, after which the media momentum would gravely wound her campaign. Rumors flew about campaign shakeups, or even a withdrawal. But then something shocking happened--the voters of New Hampshire made up their own minds. Taking control of the primary process from the media, they gave Hillary Clinton one of the biggest upsets in recent primary history. Much to the media's chagrin, she lived to fight for another month.

Now Monday, February 4 is the new eve of reckoning. Once again, the media is writing the story of Hillary Clinton's imminent demise. Tomorrow, they say, the voters will go to the polls and deliver an ambiguous result. Barack Obama, having survived Clinton's best chance of finishing him, will ride a wave of momentum into the remaining contests and sew up the nomination. Once again, unless the voters take control of the primary process again, the media will crown its desired winner.

For those of us who support Hillary Clinton, it's something we at first dismissed, then perhaps feared was true, and now realize can no longer be denied.

In this campaign, the refs are crooked.

For whatever reason, the press as a whole is implacably hostile towards Hillary Clinton. Their coverage of her campaign is relentlessly negative, and reporters are openly rooting for her downfall. Attacks on her are given full voice while any response is criticized as going negative. In terms of political coverage, it is a mugging on par with that administered to Al Gore in 2000.

Is this merely sour grapes from a supporter? No. In a field in which objectivity and balance are paramount virtues, even independent critics of the press acknowledge that something is seriously wrong. To list only a few examples (some of these have been brought up before, but I felt it was helpful to collect them together):

[Obama supporters: This is not meant as a criticism of Obama, but a defense of Hillary Clinton.]

A lot of bloody conflicts in history have started with two sides marching off to war, each absolutely convinced in the rightness of its cause and the wrongness of the enemy's. And eventually, years later, the trenches will run across Europe, a million soldiers will die in a single prolonged battle, and the soldiers on both sides will wonder what the original point of the whole thing was.

As everyone knows, the last week has seen increasingly ugly sparring between the Clinton and Obama campaigns on the issue of race-baiting, and which side is doing more of it, and who started it. Like a lot of others, I happen to think one side's argument is better than the other's, though we don't agree on which side that is. And so we've had some pretty bloody battles here. I've done my share of fighting for my side and even gotten a medal for it--the ability to hand out donuts like Krispy Kreme.

I can't believe it's come to this. A measurable slice of Kossacks are making the argument that Bill Clinton is either a racist, uses racist language, or is trying to race-bait. The only Democratic president in the last 28 years, the one who earned the honorary title "the first black president", is being treated like George Wallace.

About ten years ago, I read First In His Class, David Maraniss' extremely well-received biography of the life of Bill Clinton up to his announcement for the presidency in 1991. A lot of things stood out about him--his long devotion to social progress, his incredible charisma, his sharp intellectualism. But the thing that stood out for me was his views on race. Born into a segregated South, he could very easily have grown up prejudiced, as so many of his contemporaries did. But Bill Clinton was different--much different (all page numbers from the paperback 1996 Touchstone version:

Sadly for all Democrats, there's a minor firefight going on right now about whether Hillary Clinton and her campaign are engaging in racist or race-baiting behavior. The Politico has an article out in which the Obama campaign suggests that they might be. Without getting into my personal opinion on this issue, let me just address one of the issues at hand, that of Andrew Cuomo and his use of the phrase "shuck and jive". It should be noted that Cuomo has no role with the Clinton campaign.

Okay, the primary season is fully engaged now and nerves are getting a little frayed. So in honor of Bill Maher, let me modestly propose some new rules to help us all argue more amicably and successfully. (Why, yes, people do sometimes call me presumptuous. How did you know?)

Cross-posted at MyDD. I hope that's okay.

There's been a small amount of controversy surrounding what former Sen. Bob Kerrey said Monday about Sen. Barack Obama. What did he really mean? With the help of a few probing questions, I think I've figured it out. Please join me after the flip.

Cross-posted at MyDD. I hope that's okay.

I should be buying Christmas presents online after a long day at work, but I get home, do my usual perusal of my favorite liberal blogs, and what do I see? Kos, Atrios, Carpetbagger, and possibly others, are implying that Sen. Bob Kerrey is trying to stir up racist and religious smears against Sen. Obama, in a despicable attempt to boost Hillary Clinton in the primaries. Wow! Serious stuff. So what did he say?