Nora, updated.

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.

The arguments for passing this bill and ending the subsidy program are powerful. But the Republican leadership has distorted the debate by describing the bill as a plan for pushing private capital out of student lending. It would be more accurate to describe it as a plan for pushing corporate welfare out of student lending.

Palm has chosen a different trade-off than Apple in this regard, and it might help them carve out a segment of the market that the iPhone does not, and probably never will, appeal to — the “don’t treat me like a child, let me shoot myself in the foot if I want to, I despise artificial constraints imposed upon me” crowd.

Simply put, webOS is absolutely gorgeous. As far as phones go, it’s not just the only device we’ve seen which competes with the iPhone for looks, but we’d go as far to say that it bests the iPhone in some categories. The selection of fonts and font styling, use of transparencies, unified look of all of the elements, smooth transitions, and detailed application icons tie together in a really elegant way.

If you are in a situation where your attention should be focused on others, you should not be texting.” And she means no e-mailing, either.