It's the death of an American icon, a working-class woman who stood up for her rights and unionized her workplace. And wouldn't you know it? She fought the mills, but she couldn't make her insurance company do the decent thing until it was too late:

The woman whose life inspired the 1979 film Norma Rae has died of cancer after struggling with her health insurance company, which had delayed her treatment.

Crystal Lee Sutton was 68. She had struggled for several years with meningioma, a form of brain cancer.

She became a hero to the labor movement in the 1970s, when she took on her employer, a North Carolina textile plant, and unionized the factory floor. Her story became famous nationwide in 1975 after New York Times reporter Hank Leiferman wrote Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance.

In 1979, her story was turned into the movie Norma Rae, a thinly-veiled fictional adaptation of Sutton’s struggle to unionize the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. Sally Field won an Oscar for her portrayal of the character inspired by Sutton.

As Daily Kos blogger hissyspit points out, last year Sutton gave an interview to the press where she described a struggle with her health insurer over treatment. The Times-News in Burlington, North Carolina, wrote in 2008:

[Sutton] went two months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn’t cover it, another example of abusing the working poor, she said.

“How in the world can it take so long to find out (whether they would cover the medicine or not) when it could be a matter of life or death,” she said. “It is almost like, in a way, committing murder.”

She eventually received the medication, but the cancer is taking a toll on her strong will and solid frame.

In 2008, the North Carolina branch of the AFL-CIO urged supporters to donate money to Sutton’s medical fund. On its Web site, the union had stated that “after initially being denied coverage by her insurance company for life saving treatment, Sutton is now on drug and chemo therapies and has undergone two surgeries.”

In its obituary the Greensboro News-Record describes her now-legendary struggle to unionize the J.P. Stevens plant:

In 1973, a 33-year-old Sutton was working at the J.P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, where she was making $2.65 an hour folding towels. The poor working conditions she and her fellow employees endured compelled her to join forces with Eli Zivkovich, a mill worker turned union organizer, and attempt to unionize the plant employees.

Sutton eventually lost her job, but the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) won the right to represent the workers at the plant and Sutton briefly became an organizer for the union.

In 1977, she was awarded back wages and her job was reinstated by court order, although she chose to return to work for just two days.

Our food system is broken.

Our nation is collectively getting heavier and heavier and suffering the effects of it in our health (and the taxes that puts on our broken health care system).

In poorer neighborhoods, the issue is even more stark. Access to healthy options are almost non-existent and with uninsured and underinsured populations, the impact is nothing less than killing those least able to defend themselves.

Jill Richardson started writing about the obesity epidemic on Daily Kos back in 2006 to great response. She's expanded her research to look at how agriculture has changed over the last 50 years and how the answer to our broken food system is simply to alter our methods towards sustainability. That research has resulted in the book we're going to discuss today: Recipe For America.

Jill looks at organics, government subsidies, foreign methodology to agriculture, the impact of pesticides and food delivery systems to break down in a easy-to-understand breakdown of the tangled and interdependent food system. She even gives some simple ways that we can change the system that will benefit all of us immeasurably.

So please join me in welcoming Jill Richardson to C&L to discuss Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It.

Nice work from Jed at Daily KOS TV. Fox News didn't bother to let their viewers know that Senator Kennedy voted against cloture and the final bill as well.

h/t The Political Carnival

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h/t Scarce

Oh this is just lovely. From hekebolos at Daily KOS.

So, the story isn't news--go read the diary for the full account--but I'll recap it:

an incident broke out at a town hall at Simpson University in Redding [Northern California] on Tuesday when Herger signaled encouragement to a 67-year-old town hall attendee, Bert Stead, who called himself a "proud right-wing terrorist."

"Amen, God bless you," Herger reportedly replied to the comment. "There is a great American."

Dusty Trice: Bringin' the wacko daily...Michele Bachman predicting Nazis. "Current administration more in line with the Weimar Republic." And this store-bought stooge can't even lie right!

Stinque: Pennsylvania GOP leadership turns to robbing funeral home burial accounts

No More Mister Nice Blog: No, wait...I know this one. The answer to " who does Joe Klein think is the Crazy Left?" Glenn Greenwald for fifty points

Prometheus 6: They're running out of black conservatives

Where’s the Outrage?: Interview with McJoan of the Daily Kos

HOLY CRAP: Warriors for Christ...God Calling...Texas bible scholars...Ayatollah Kit Bond...The kindness of God...Repent...Diseases caused by sin...Liberal Jesus...Are you there, God?...Idaho says no...Lutherans to allow gay pastors...Holy-War Fever...

So the logical question is, exactly who does Max Baucus serve? Surely not the residents of Montana:

Fifty-five percent of Democrats in Montana disapprove of how Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has handled healthcare reform, according to a new Research 2000 poll given to The Hill by a liberal activist.

Liberal advocacy groups and labor unions have been running television ads and running grassroots operations in Montana this summer targeting Baucus and criticizing his tepid support for a government-run health insurance program.

It appears the campaign has begun to impact Baucus’s public standing.

A majority of Montana Democrats disapprove of Baucus’s actions on healthcare reform while only 34 percent of Democrats approve, according to the poll, which was conducted from Aug. 17 to Aug. 19. The poll was commissioned by Daily Kos, an influential liberal website, according to the source.

Overall 42 percent of Democratic, Republican and independent voters approve of Baucus on healthcare reform while 44 percent disapprove. Nearly half of Montana Republicans polled, 49 percent, approve of Baucus’s role in healthcare talks.

More than a third of Democrats polled said they would be less likely to vote for Baucus if he opposed a public health insurance option while 52 percent said their vote would not be affected. About one in 10 said they would be more likely to support Baucus if he opposed a public option.

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Well, you can't say Andrew Breitbart doesn't have an active imagination.

The Hollywood right-winger went on Glenn Beck's Fox News show yesterday -- guest-hosted by Judge Napolitano -- and proposed the following conspiracy theory: The White House is collecting e-mail addresses so it can send out "netroots gangs" to physically attack and intimidate its critics.

Breitbart: Well, what people need to understand here is that they're being community organized. And the White House absolutely understands how the Internet works, and understands that there are countless blogs, Media Matters, the Daily Kos, which are collecting information and putting out the disinformation.

What the White House wants to do is create a hierarchy of who its enemies are. Every week, or periodically, they meet with the netroots. And the netroots acts as an action gang that can go out there and attack the enemies of the president and attack the enemies -- the, the, the people who would attack his plan.

So it is vital for this White House to find out who its enemies are, and then to sic its gang of netroots people on the American people.

Breitbart goes on to contend that the non-prosecution of two Black Panthers for polling-place violations was connected to this conspiracy:

Breitbart: That sends a direct message to the netroots people out there: Don't worry, this administration has our back. Those people that would community organize on behalf of the president and his initiatives will be protected.

Yeah, I should have guessed that black-radicals/liberal geek connection from the Black Panthers booth at Netroots Nation last week.

Wotta maroon.

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Markos commissioned a national poll to ascertain just how many people out there are suckering for the right's "Birther" conspiracy theories.

For the country as a whole, it looks good:

Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?

Yes 77
No 11
Not sure 12

But when we look at Republicans alone, it looks pretty grim:

Yes No Not sure
Dem 93 4 3
Rep 42 28 30
Ind 83 8 9

In other words, nearly a third of them believe the Birthers outright, and another third of them think "they may have a point there, Vern."

And where are the bulk of these gullible saps from?

Yes No Not sure
Northeast 93 4 3
South 47 23 30
Midwest 90 6 4
West 87 7 6

These numbers reveal that there's a strong regional component to the abject willingness of some Americans to buy any kind of cockamamie BS available if it bashes liberals.

Kagro at daily kos is sick of the umpire talk in the Sotomayor hearings. In fact, it was always a ridiculous argument, first forwarded by the disingenuous now Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. During his 2005 confirmation hearings, I wrote about how disingenuous Roberts was to use the analogy:

It is an interesting analogy Judge Roberts draws. And it seems to me to be an excellent argument for why Judge Roberts must answer the questions put to him by the Senate. As any baseball fan knows, umpires are not uniform in the delineation of the strike zone. Some are "hitters" umpires. Some are "pitchers" umpires. Some call the high strike. Some call the outside pitch.

And when it comes to the Supreme Court of the United States, it is important that we know what Judge Roberts' "strike zone" is. His record, the part that was not concealed by the Bush Administration, gives many of us pause regarding Judge Roberts' "strike zone." His stated antipathy for the right to privacy, for voting rights measures, for discrimination remedies, etc., demands followup. What does your "rulebook" say about these things Judge Roberts?

Senators Feinstein, Whitehouse, Schumer and Durbin all pointed out today that Chief justice Roberts was less than honest about what his judicial strike zone would be. In that sense, the umpire analogy still has its uses.

There was an article in The Hill the other day about Rep. Jane Harman's plight:
Tangled in wiretap, opposed by left, Harman could face tough primary

Anti-war forces and liberal bloggers have despised Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) for years, and now they smell blood in the water.

Harman has taken plenty of heat from her left flank over the years for supporting the Iraq war and President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. And now that she’s in some political trouble for allegedly offering favors on a federal wiretap, her detractors might just have the ammo they need.

Already, 2006 primary opponent Marcy Winograd has opened an exploratory committee and others are also making their interest known. Plus, bloggers are talking about recruiting one of the their own to challenge Harman.

Experts say the congresswoman looks OK right now, but the situation remains fluid.

That is all pretty much correct, but then Aaron Blake had a bit of other news in the story.

Howie Klein, the Southern California-based author of the DownWithTyranny blog, said the new revelations could help change that.

“When Marcy ran the first time, it was a really tough road for her, because people didn’t understand,” Klein said. “Even on a really great website like Daily Kos, there were a lot of people that didn’t understand.”

Klein said a group of bloggers met earlier this year to discuss challenging Harman in a primary, weeks before the recent revelations. He said many in the blogging community would like a fellow blogger, John Amato, to challenge Harman and that Amato is considering it.

I wanted to confirm to my readers that I am considering running for Jane Harman's seat. I've had meetings with bloggers and activists way before this story broke and they have urged me on. I've also been contacted by established campaign managers who have won elections which included huge upsets in the past that have expressed a serious interest in managing my campaign. This is a very important step in the process. At this point I am considering it, but haven't made a decision yet. I'm going to take my time before I decide, but I thought I owed it to you to confirm this report.
Now back to our regularly scheduled content.

Jed put together this most excellent mash-up of the media's frenzy to tie Rahm Emanuel to the Blagojevich scandal. Read his post at Daily KOS here.