Most Americans hadn't heard of ACORN until FOX News began bashing it earlier this year. The recent dust-up over "prostitutes" and "pimps" didn't help the community organizing group much. But ACORN isn't the only group that deserves Congress's attention:

Throughout the health care debate, I have stressed that more Americans will gain access ... once costs are controlled and reduced. I continue to advocate for... medical liability reform, an increased emphasis on wellness and disease prevention, providing tax incentives to low-income families to retain or purchase private health insurance, implementation of health information technology, and training more medical professionals and encouraging them to practice in underserved areas. I also support finding responsible ways to address the problems caused by pre-existing conditions and to increase the size of the pool of insured. - U.S. Representative Jerry Moran (R-Kansas)

In your special edition of "This Week in Congress" you listed several ways that you believe will fix health care.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. - Napolean Bonaparte

I joined Facebook five years ago, as a joke. Several of my students had created a group "honoring" a professor and I thought it would be great to join. Facebook was a new, strange thing in 2004, and most people did not have access to it, except for those with university email addresses.

Over the last year or so, it seemed as if everyone suddenly joined Facebook. I reconnected with old friends and acquaintances from high school and past employers. It hasn't been an entirely meaningful experience - I don't take Facebook as seriously as some, and most of the time I never chat with someone after adding them as a friend. But I've had the chance to talk and reconnect with 3 people that I lost touch with.

Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson delivered a sharp message yesterday to the board that oversees higher education in the state: Shape Up. Change Priorities. Set Higher Goals. Achieve Better Results. Specifically, Parkinson told the Kansas Board of Regents that:

All of us take pride in the rankings of our football and basketball teams. We talk endlessly about these teams when they succeed, and sulk when they drop out of the top 10 in the country. We would not be satisfied if we didn’t have a single sports team in the top 90; so why are we satisfied that we don’t have a single University in the top 90? I’m not satisfied. It’s far more important to me that we have a university academically in the top 20 than that we have a basketball or football team in the top 20.

Ah, the good ol' days, when today's complainers were in power:

Tom Ridge, the first head of the 9/11-inspired Department of Homeland Security...was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election...

Over the last couple months, I have listened to conversations at work, in the grocery store, and at the barber shop as folks attempt to discuss health care reform. It's an amazing exercise in democracy, and best of all, it's generally unencumbered by the thought process.

Anyway, I've discovered that most people do not understand the term "health care reform." So with the permission of our editor, Dr. Pam, I will attempt to answer several thought provoking queries.

...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.. - President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933

Do what we can, summer will have its flies. Ralph Waldo Emerson

South Carolina Governor Mark Sandford dodged a bullet on June 25th.

The devoted husband, loving father, dedicated public servant, and champion of family values admitted in a lengthy, tearful confession that he had an affair. And lied about it. And used taxpayer money to do it. And felt really, really bad about it. Before cable news outlets, bloggers, newspapers, radio call in shows and every other conceivable news outlet could pile on the story, something bigger happened: Michael Jackson died.

Gov. Sandford was a lucky man. But the twenty-four hour news cycle was hungry for more.

Dear Governor Palin,

Gee, I don't know what to say.

I mean, there you were, last August, so strong and beautiful - you looked like such a leader!

Then, you gave that speech - I loved the joke about the pit bull and the hockey mom. That was great.

It made you seem more real, more down to earth, but a fighter, too. Remember that old movie where Bette Davis runs that cotton mill? You were just like that, only clever and cute, too.

Kansas' junior U.S. Senator (sic), CarPATbagger Roberts, became the first Senator to state that he would not support U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. PAT told Kansas City radio station that:

"I do not plan to vote for her," Roberts told radio host Chris Stigall on KCMO Talk Radio 710 this morning.

"I voted no in 1998. I did not feel she was appropriate on the appeals court," Roberts said. "Since that time, she has made statements on the role of the appeals court I think is improper and incorrect."