The Patient Accountability and Affordability Act passed the Senate on Christmas Eve -- but our work isn't done yet. Here is a short video with my thoughts on this historic legislation, and where we go from here.

here are actually four Marines who rotate in half hour shifts, standing sentry whenever the President is in the West Wing. Learn more about these Marines -- and the source of their ambivalence towards Christmas trees -- in the latest "Inside the White House" video.

Anger is growing among Americans - who say less money should be spent on the country's overseas military campaigns and more on tackling the country's domestic problems. U.S. congressman Dennis Kucinich says America can no longer afford war-based economy.Rep. Kucinich also said that U.S. generals who spoke publicly about the nation's Afghan strategy during the president's deliberations should lose their jobs.  Kucinich, who is known for his anti-war views, told Russia Today in an interview Wednesday that Congress should be making the final decision on whether to go to war, not the president or his generals.  Kucinich's comments come weeks after he introduced a resolution in Congress calling for American forces to withdraw from the war-torn country Watch It:

For the first time in a weekly address, the President is joined by the First Lady as they celebrate Christmas. They both honor those serving overseas, those who have sacrificed for their country, and the families that stand by them. Find ways to lend our troops and their families a home through DOD’s Military Homefront, OurMilitary.mil, and of course the USO.

Speaking not long after the Senate passed the $871 billion bill by a 60-39 vote, Obama welcomed the vote as bringing America "toward the end of a nearly century-long struggle." He said presidents since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 have been trying unsuccessfully to overhaul medical care.

Standing in the State Room of the White House before leaving on a holiday trip to his home state of Hawaii, Obama said the measure the Senate passed "includes the toughest measures ever taken to hold the insurance industry a

Senator John McCain recently took to the floor of the Senate and proclaimed his outrage over a fellow congressman not being allowed additional speaking time by another senator's objection.  Mr. McCain said "I've never seen a member denied an extra minute or so as the chair just did."  The problem with that stance?  C-Span archives--recently re-digitized to the web--show just how hypocritical that stance can be.Watch It:

The Republicans are tired of being humiliated by Al Franken and they aren't going to take it anymore. Behold their new tactic for stalling health care reform on the Senate floor

The holidays through the lens of the White House Photo Office.

What the president and the Congress have essentially done is to expand the existing system, not to reform the system. There are a lot of things that have been changed.

There are faults as we talked about last week. In the intervening week, they tightened up the cost control. Money was added for community health centers, for wellness and prevention. They increased doctor reimbursements for rural physicians.

So they`ve done a number of things that will make this approach more likely to work. It also is goin

First Lady Michelle Obama visits Children's National Medial Center in Washington D.C. to read "The Night Before Christmas". Joined by daughters Malia and Sasha, along with dog Bo, the First Lady continues this tradition of visiting with patients which dates back to Bess Truman

The EPA leaves a little coal ash in everybody's stocking for another year.A year ago, a massive coal ash spill took place in Tennessee. About 5.4 million cubic yards of ash ended up in a river and covering the private property of local citizens. The EPA this week called the spill at TVA's Kingston plant "one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind in history." Now the EPA is delaying it's decision on whether to  regulate the toxic waste.CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The Obama administration announced Thursday it would delay the release of proposed new rules on the handling and disposal of toxic ash from coal-fired power plants. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson had promised the rules proposal would be issued before the end of the year. In a prepared statement, EPA did not offer a new timeline, but said the delay was for a "short period" and that the proposal would be issued "in the near future." EPA cited the "complexity of the analysis" involved in the issue and said agency officials are "still actively clarifying and refining parts of the proposal." Merry Christnas to all from the EPA.Watch It:

Husted tweets about Parker Griffith's party affiliation switch today. Jon, let’s put the news that Alabama Representative Parker Griffith has switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in its proper context: that of his policy behavior in the House of Representatives. In his consequential voting and co-sponsorship behavior, it’s clear that Parker Griffith switched over to the Republican Party long ago. But Jon Husted apparently doesn't know all this.  In fact he clearly doesn't know that this is what his own party had to say about Griffith just last year:Watch It:Or better yet this where the NRCC alludes that Griffith is treasonous.Watch It

A glimpse of this year's holiday decorations at the White House.

Outgoing Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine hosted his last call-in radio show this morning and greeted a guest who employed a surprise moniker:

"Barry from DC."

Turned out to be none other than Pennsylvania Avenue resident Barack Obama.

"Barry" dialed in to "Ask The Governor" to pay tribute to the man he almost picked for vice president and did tap for Democratic Party chair -- after first joking that he wanted to complain about traffic in Northern Virginia.

BlogHer, the popular blogging community focused on women, collected questions over several days from their readers for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on health insurance reform. Secretary Sebelius answers some of those questions live with BlogHer’s Morra Aarons-Mele. December 21, 2009.

President Obama reads from “The Polar Express” and talks about the meaning of Christmas as he delivers cookies to a Boys and Girls Club in Washington, DC.

Each year, the White House Pastry Team comes together with other members of the White House staff to work on a favorite holiday tradition: The White House Gingerbread House. Everyone from White House carpenters to plumbers to electricians lend their expertise to help make this project a success. The recipe called for more than 150 pounds of gingerbread dough and 250 lbs of white chocolate. Special features of this year's gingerbread house include a shadow box view of the State Dining Room and marzipan rende

 In a powerful speech from the Senate floor Sunday, Sheldon Whitehouse (RI-D), took his Republican colleagues to task for their "no-holds barred mission of propaganda, obstruction and fear." Whitehouse concluded: "There will be a reckoning. There will come a day of judgment about who was telling the truth." Watch It: "[Republicans have engaged in] a campaign of falsehood about death panels and cuts to Medicare benefits and benefits for illegal aliens and bureaucrats to be parachuted in between you and your doctor. Our colleagues terrify the public with this parade of imagined horrors.  They whip up concerns and anxiety about socialized medicine and careening deficits and then they tell use the public is concerned about the bill." McCain objects to Whitehouse quoting from Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," in which the Pulitzer Prize winning historian examines how traditional conservative politics was influenced, to its detriment, by conservative fringe movements like the John Birch Society and McCarthyism in the 1950s. It shouldn't surprise any conservative today that Hofstadter's warnings come to mind in light of recent political events, or that they ignore the historical warnings at their own peril:"Vindictive passions often arise, [Hofstadter] points out, when an aggrieved minority believes that America has been taken away from them their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. Does that sound familiar . . . in this health debate? . . . [Hofstadter] wrote of the dangers of an aggrieved right-wing minority with the power to create what he called a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible." Notably, Whitehouse also lambasted Republicans for abusing senate employees--a reference to a Republican delay tactic that forced the Senate clerk to read all 767 pages of an entire single payer amend

President Barack Obama on Monday touted the federal government's efforts to become more efficient, highlighting a new report that shows billions of dollars in savings on contract costs.

The report by the Office of Management and Budget shows that agencies have identified more than $19 billion in contract savings for fiscal year 2010, which began Oct. 1. Obama said that puts the government on track to meet its goal of saving $40 billion annually by fiscal year 2011.

Glenn Beck's well of ridiculous was deep and poisonous before he launched his Fox News show, but the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States -- and the permissive cheerleading of his Fox News honchos -- uncorked the former Morning Zoo shock jock's unique brand of vitriol, stage theatrics, and hyperbolic fright, making him an easy choice for Media Matters' 2009 Misinformer of the Year.

When he wasn't calling the president a racist, portraying progressive leaders as vampires who can only be s