The best on the issues that matter most from today’s news and opinion.

(1) Report: Obama will not demand public option from lawmakers.

Wow. What ever happened to Obama willing to be a one-term president in order to enact REAL health care reform? Remember my most recent column about mission not so accomplished in which I asked: Is the whole ideal of Obama’s presidency over? This is literally the battle that tests his movement and the entire promise of his presidency and he won’t even throw his own hat in the ring? Call me naive, but the one thing I wanted most in my new president was the quality of being a fighter. I mean you are trying to tell me that we cannot even get a public option with huge majorities in the House and the Senate? Without a public option we are turning everyone who is currently uninsured over to the private industry and hoping that they’ll do the right thing. Hoping that they will for some reason have less of an insatiable appetite for profit. Hoping that without strong competition that they will finally control their costs. Is there even enough votes for a bill without the public option when so many progressives in the house are demanding that any bill they are willing to vote for must have it? What about labor unions saying they’ll sit out the next election without a public option? If Obama is going to give up on his movement already, why won’t he at least go down fighting? This isn’t change I can believe in.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/26672.html

(2) WSJ: U.S. Economy Gets Lift From Stimulus

Win another one for Keynesian economics. With so much skepticism about the proposed increase in the government’s role in health care, maybe more people should be paying attention to good government intervention in the market. The good government has been doing lately doesn’t stop with the stimulus either. How about public universities, veteran’s hospitals, medicare, or even our national defense? I would go on, but we could be here for a while.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125185379218478087.html

(3) Obama Weighing Afghanistan Conundrum

This isn’t the first time a great empire hasn’t been able to subdue Afghanistan’s “fiercely independent tribes” — Britain had its go at that as well. In fact, if history is any indication of what lies ahead, Obama has potentially got a different Waterloo to deal with that posed by his push for health reform.

With the political circus known as health care reform now going in Washington, it is easy to forget that little thing called the war in Afghanistan. David Ignatius discusses the notion of Afghanistan being a “good” war (as opposed to Iraq being a “bad” one) and the important strategic decision Obama is faced with of either going with the more limited counterinsurgency proposed by Biden and others, or a new broader counterinsurgency doctrine being championed by General McChrystal.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/09/02/the_afghanistan_conundrum_98124.html

(4) Supreme Court Justice Stevens Begins to Pack Up his Office.

With the pending retirement of the Court’s oldest and perhaps most liberal Justice, what qualities should the next appointee have? Send us your thoughts as we prepare a column on the next pending vacancy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090902/ap_on_go_su_co/us_supreme_court_stevens;_ylt=AmYA.9iwNVQlQxNrd0BorFSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlNnNpNHNoBHBvcwM4OARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3BvbGl0aWNzBHNsawNqdXN0aWNlc3RldmU-

(5) “Labor Draws a Line in the Sand On Public Option”

Speaking of the pending political fallout from dropping the public option, labor sends some credible warnings to the White House and lawmakers. I’m starting to sense a third-party candidate running in 2012, who actually will fight for things like the public option, and stealing enough votes to allow the GOP to take pivotal swing states like Florida and Ohio. Remember Ralph Nader in 2000? Remember just how close the vote count in Florida turned out to be?

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/01/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5279879.shtml