'Health care reform 2010: The obituary'

The Delaware County Daily Times puts a fitting epitaph on Obamacare in a recent editorial:

Health care reform died for the umpteenth time on Tuesday, strangled in its crib by a mix of vindictiveness and ineptitude. It was stillborn.

What was supposed to be the crown jewel of President Obama's first year in office was killed on the first anniversary of his arrival at the White House. The place of death was Massachusetts, where the electorate awarded an open U.S. Senate seat to Republican Scott Brown, making him the 41st GOP vote in that body and ending the 60-vote filibuster-proof majority enjoyed by the Democrats.

The fact that 60 votes are required to get anything substantive done in "the world's greatest deliberative body" is one symptom of the malady that contributed to reform's death. Another is the mixture of money, greed and fear that motivates members of Congress in this age, which resulted in two separate bills approved by each chamber that, as of this writing, cannot be reconciled into one.

Read the full editorial at the newspaper's Web site.