She's in the News...

... but she doesn't look quite like this anymore. She is United States Senator from Maine, Olympia Snowe. She is also -- alone -- the only Republican senator to vote for a crucial piece of legislation in the current Obama-inspired attempt to reform health care in America.

(NYTimes:) The Senate Finance Committee voted on Tuesday to approve legislation that would reshape the American health care system and provide subsidies to help millions of people buy insurance, as Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, joined all 13 Democrats on the panel in support of the landmark bill. The vote was 14 to 9, with all of the other Republicans opposed.

On that particular issue, Republicans are freakwently screaming about the cost of health care reform, and that Obama's plan would include artificially fixing the market to accept certain prices for prescription drugs, but no one seems to ask the same people about the cost of the Iraq war: I accept that it does not amount to much of an 'argument', but when did you last hear any sense out of a Republican?

And note this as well: the Obama-inspired reforms are a timid, weak-as-water version of the normal health care systems such as exists in the U.K. or Ireland, and so the Republicans are not even opposing universal health care or anything like it; not even one free check-up with a doctor per year -- they are opposed to making health care insurance more affordable to ordinary Americans. Republicans, of course, are extraordinary Americans.