Those armed men were police, and the man Maye shot and killed was Officer Ron Jones.

The police were executing a so-called “no knock warrant” where officers will go into a home without announcing themselves because of fear that a suspect will flush drugs. It turned out that Maye had a small amount of marijuana.

The police had gotten a warrant for Jamie Smith, who lived in the apartment across from Maye, while Maye and his girlfriend were only identified as occupants of an apartment adjacent to the suspected drug dealer’s. Although there was considerable reason to believe that Maye acted in self-defense, Maye was indicted and prosecuted for capital murder, convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection.

What happened to Maye, however, was hardly atypical for a black man accused of shooting a white cop in Mississippi. According to Radley Balko, who was largely responsible for publicizing Maye’s story with an article in Reason, Maye’s trial was rife with misconduct by the prosecution and procedural shortcomings; due to incompetence on the part of his defense attorney, Maye was convicted. Maye, however, is not completely doomed.

Because of sustained uproar and the persistent work of a new legal team, Maye was able to get the death penalty thrown out because he did not have an adequate defense in the penalty stage of his trial. But life in prison without parole by no means seems just for a man whose house was probably illegally invaded by police and in all likelihood only fired in self defense.

Maye, following a ruling by the Mississippi State Court of Appeals, will now get a new trial, this time in his home county. The prosecutors are still going to try Maye, barely shamed by the shady story behind the warrant and the considerable evidence that Maye acted in self defense.  They won’t even take the face-saving route, suggested by Balko, of offering Maye a plea and letting him out after serving time. But Maye, at least, has a chance at justice.

Cameron Todd Willingham was not so lucky. Willingham was convicted of murdering his three daughters by burning down their house one night in December 1991. He was given the death penalty and executed in 2004. The linchpin of the case was forensic evidence that apparently showed that Willingham had burned down the house — this evidence has been vigorously disputed by many of the most highly regarded arson scientists.

Willingham, like Maye, has prominent defenders in the legal and journalistic worlds. In an article published in the country’s most venerable and respected newsweekly, considerable doubt is cast upon the central thesis of the prosecution. Many now think him to be innocent. One of the country’s most prominent forensic arson investigators has prepared a lengthy report saying that the evidence left by the fire which consumed the Willingham home and killed his three young daughters is unsubstantiated.

Govenror Rick Perry, of Willingham’s home state of Texas, is under fire for removing three members from a state commission charged with investigating the forensic evidence that was at the heart of state’s case against Willingham. The former head of the commission has accused Perry and his legal staff of interfering with the commission’s work.

But Willingham, unlike Maye, is dead. Even if he can be redeemed, in the eyes of the public and perhaps, one day, legally, he will never be able to enjoy it. Maye and Willingham are two of the most prominent likely-innocent men who have been railroaded by criminal justice systems that are practically designed to secure convictions, and after that, death sentences. Maye, purely by the luck of getting attention for his case and being sentenced in a state where the gears of death are not as well oiled as in Texas, is still alive and has a chance to plead his innocence in front of a judge.

Both cases are examples of where journalists have been responsible for bringing these cases attention beyond the areas where they occurred. The New Yorker didn’t publish their article until only a few months ago, more than five years after Willingham’s execution in February of 2005. The Chicago Tribune in 2004 had published an article reporting the opinions of several legal and forensic experts that it was highly unlikely that the fire that killed Willingham’s three kids could have been intentionally set.

The best the heroic journalistic efforts of the Tribune and New Yorker can lead to is future faulty death sentences being exposed before they are carried out, or better yet, such prosecutions never being initiated in the first place. But who will be able to do this type of leg work? The New Yorker and Tribune, like just about every other print news title these days, are not profitable ventures. Even worse, such investigations of criminal sentences are some of the most expensive pieces for a magazine or newspaper.

A possible alternative to print newspapers and magazines are universities, which have both the resources and the inclination to perform this type of public-spirited work. One of the best examples of universities picking up where the press and the criminal justice system collide is, of course, the Medill Innocence Project, which is being famously hounded by Cook County prosecutors.

There may be no great way to promote and sustain the type of boring, unglamorous and expensive work that, more cases than not, ends up with little actual news produced. But it’s imperative that we find a way to do so. If we simply didn’t think that holding prosecutors and the criminal justice system as a whole accountable was worth anything, Cory Maye would be dead and Cameron Todd Willingham would be forgotten.

On Monday, federal officials visited Illinois to consider housing Guantanamo Bay prisoners in the Land of Lincoln. The current proposal is to house about 100 Gitmo prisoners in the Thomson Correctional Center, located in Thomson, Illinois – about 150 miles west of Chicago. While many know that the Gitmo prisoners need to be transferred somewhere, the idea of housing terrorists in Illinois has many residents, specifically Republican lawmakers, worried.

Illinois Congressman Mark Kirk, the leading GOP candidate to fill President Obama’s old Senate seat, blasted the idea of bringing terrorists to Illinois, saying, “As home to America’s tallest building and her busiest airport, this is not a risk we should impose on Illinois families.”

In fact, every Republican in Illinois’ delegation to Congress has come out against the plan, fearing that hosting terrorists in our state could prove to be very detrimental to Illinois. But how much of this claim is valid, and how much is just fear-mongering?

This is a quintessential case of the “Not in My Back Yard” phenomenon. “Nimby” occurs when government projects that benefit the greater good are opposed because they could harm those whose backyards are the sites of these projects. The Nimby threat identified by Republicans is twofold: terrorists will target Chicago, and Thomson isn’t capable of holding them. These claims, however, don’t have much substance.

First, Kirk fears that Chicago would receive “attention from the Jihadist world,” particularly because other terrorists could be flying through O’hare International Airport to visit the detainees at Thomson. It’s clear that Kirk is looking out for the security of Illinoisans, but it’s really for naught; terrorists already know that Chicago is a lucrative target, and they already use our airports. This may be hard to accept, but blocking the use of Thomson won’t prevent terrorists from thinking what they’re already thinking, or doing what they’re already doing. Kirk’s argument that using Thomson will finally open up terrorists’ eyes to Chicago is an unlikely reality; their eyes are already open.

Second, many also fear that having terrorists in Illinois is a major liability because it can create a strong terror cell that Thomson can’t handle. This is also based on a flawed premise. Thomson Correctional Center is a maximum security prison that currently uses around 10% of its available space. At similar Illinois prisons, inmates are in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and are not able to interact with each other.  Inadvertently fostering a base for a terrorist network at Thomson is not possible.

Similarly, there is concern that a terrorist could escape. If the federal government were to use Thomson, there is a plan to outfit the Gitmo wing with extra confinement and security measures, creating a Supermax security atmosphere. No inmate has ever escaped a Supermax prison in America.

It’s equally important to understand the benefits of bringing Gitmo detainees to Illinois, considering that Governor Pat Quinn, both Senators Durbin and Burris and a plethora of Democrats across Illinois support the plan.

While no real imminent threat would be placed upon Illinois for housing terrorists, the state could economically gain from the proposal. For example, approximately $1 billion could be funneled into Illinois as a result of the federal government’s purchase of Thomson. The plan is also good news for those in Carroll County, where Thomson resides, because it would decrease joblessness. The unemployment rate in Carroll County is 10.5%, which is higher than the national unemployment rate of 10.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. To make up for the fact that Thomson is virtually unused right now, nearly 3,000 jobs will be added at the prison.

The salient issue of this debate is more psychological than anything. Illinois politicians aren’t speaking out against hosting detainees in Kansas, or Michigan, the latter of which is nearly as close to Chicago as Thomson is. It’s only when their own backyards, their own states, are in danger that they really start to care. For example, Thomson is on the Illinois border with neighboring Iowa. Had this prison actually been built a few miles west on the other side of the border (and not in our backyard), would Illinois Republicans still care? Probably not.

Guantanamo Bay is an international symbol of torture and dehumanization, despite what many government officials will tell you, and that’s just one of the many reasons it’s being shut down. But those prisoners need to go somewhere. By bringing the detainees to Illinois, we would have nothing to lose and a lot to gain.

Thus Oprah Winfrey introduced her interview with the polarizing phenom from Wasilla, Alaska. Palin, who spent her time since she inexplicably resigned as governor of Alaska posting Facebook missives and working on her memoir, is now on a media blitz, pimping said memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life.

The title of the book gave a hint to what Palin loves talking about the most: those people who would hold her and her all-American normalcy back. The phrase “going rogue” is a reference to a disgruntled McCain staffer’s worries that Palin, in the waning weeks of the campaign, was making too many of her own decisions and ignoring the campaign staff’s advice.

After clearing up that there wasn’t any beef between the two of them dating back to Winfrey not inviting Palin (or any other candidate) on the show when she was nominated, Winfrey started chronologically. She asked about the call during which John McCain offered Palin the nomination and then the vetting process, which went over all sorts of details of Palin’s personal and professional lives, including Bristol’s pregnancy. Palin claimed that she thought the vetting would be “the extent of controversy of Sarah Palin’s life.”

After some light prompting from Oprah, Palin began to criticize the McCain campaign, accusing them of “glamorizing” Bristol’s pregnancy and putting out a statement which neither Palin nor her husband Todd signed off on, saying they were happy to be grandparents.  This would not be the last time that some nefarious force would prevent Palin from “speaking her heart.”

Pivoting off this initial foray into her family, Palin started criticizing the media for delving into her family life, and said that she was “naïve to think that the media would leave my kids alone.”

Winfrey, briefly treating Palin like one of the put-upon, victimized women that are so often her guests, mentioned that the McCain campaign told her “how to dress, what to say, what not to say, who to talk to and even what to eat.” Palin made it clear that the infamous $150,000 shopping spree to outfit her and her family was totally at the behest of the RNC and the McCain campaign, which made her feel like she was “starring in an episode of What Not to Wear.” The video footage of Palin working out and preparing for Halloween in Wasilla made sure to capture her in the most quotidian — for Alaska — possible duds.

At this point, we had only seen the charming, spunky Palin who was really excited about maybe being vice president and was being constantly condescended to by imperious campaign staffers. Where was the Palin that was so starkly polarizing, the one that is, for some, the future of the Republican Party and for others, a walking joke?

Oprah soon zeroed in on the defining moment of Palin’s brief time as vice presidential nominee: the Katie Couric interview. When Oprah broached the subject, saying “Let’s talk about the interview with Katie Couric,” Palin giggled and said “must we?” Palin’s version of the story casts Couric as a dishonest manipulator who originally said the interview was “supposed to be working mom talking with working mom about the challenges of having teenage daughters.” This is an interesting notion for someone who had recently accepted the vice presidential nomination. Like anyone who gives a bad interview, she made the typical excuse, that “those few minutes were edited and packaged together from hours” and even admitted that she didn’t “blame people for thinking that I was unqualified and unprepared.”

The most surreal moment of the interview came after Oprah showed the infamous “what books and magazines do you read up there in Alaska” clip. “Obviously you’ve read books and magazines. Why didn’t you just name any books and magazines?” Palin responded, “Obviously, I have been a lover of books, all my life.” At no point did she name a book (or magazine) she had read. But apparently the disaster of an interview was all “the perky one’s” fault because “She did not want to hear, I guess, about my pro-life views.”

After some discussion of Levi Johnson’s, Bristol’s ex, forays into the media, including an upcoming spread for Playgirl, Oprah rolled some footage of Palin at home, with her family in Wasilla. Filmed on Halloween, we saw Palin help out her young daughter Piper assemble her BMX biker Halloween costume and then watch over Piper as she trick-or-treated. Best I can tell, trick-or-treating in Wasilla really sucks. Palin had promised to “keep her distance” and was watching over Piper from an SUV as she went to the house — all this while the sun was still up.

Oprah, after some discussion of Palin’s relationship with her husband Todd, returned to the campaign, specifically to election night, where Palin had prepared a speech that McCain and his handlers wouldn’t let her give. Circling back around to the theme of silencing and victimization, Oprah empathetically asked Palin about her being “silenced” and mentioned that she “looked sad.” Palin was upset that she “didn’t take one last opportunity to remind Americans that together we have to move forward.” This coming from a candidate whose first major national speech brimmed with contempt for people from the coasts and is one of the most divisive figures in recent history.

As for her inexplicable decision to resign as governor of Alaska, after repeating her usual lines about being hampered by ethics investigations and not wanting to be a lame duck, Palin said that her dad explained it best, “she’s not retreating, she’s reloading.”

Palin then dodged any questions about her running for president in 2012, saying, “I don’t know what I’m going to be doing in 2012.” Oprah mentioned that Palin was thinking about starting a talk show, to which Palin dutifully responded that “Oprah, you are the queen of talk shows, so there’s nothing to worry about,” once again blatantly avoiding the question. Or was she just reloading?

You see a girl hanging out across the room, and she looks really drunk and really desperate. So you figure, “Hey, I could totally have sex with her, or maybe take her oil at a decreased price.” Sounds sexy, doesn’t it? So you saunter up to her and say, “Hey baby, how would like me to enrich your uranium?” (Seriously guys, try this one. I’m 72.3 percent sure it’ll work.) Anyway, she gives you an odd glance, says no, and turns away to talk with her girlies.

Do you:

A) give up, walk away, and go after someone else? Or:
B) relentlessly hit on her and make multiple concessions, until all you get is a kiss on the cheek before she whacks you in the balls with her purse because you’ve been such a creeper?

Most people would choose A, because they know a lost cause when they see one. But the members of the United Nations are not most people, which is not surprising, because many of them were probably never in this situation when they were in college.

Recently, Iran has been given a stern talking to by the UN Security Council about their uranium enriching facilities. The UN logically assumes that if Iran were to be allowed to enrich their own uranium, they would enrich it to the point where they would be able to make a bomb. The Council has decided to try and divert Iran’s interests by offering to enrich it in places like Russia or China. There, the uranium can be enriched to the point that Iran can have nuclear power, but not make a nuclear bomb. However, after multiple offers, Iran has declined to have other people do something they could be doing themselves. Spearheaded by the U.S., the international community has continued to reach out, specifically offering to enrich the uranium to nearly weapons grade.

Why can’t the U.S. — and by extension the rest of the UN — take a hint? The U.S. needs to stop its courtship of a girl who just doesn’t want it. She’s not even that attractive — she’s crazy, she hates Jews and she has this nasty little habit of violating election laws and human rights. And, to complicate matters, there’s an ex involved.

You see, we used to be dating Israel, but she got upset with our philandering with girls she hates. Now we’re on a bit of a break. But instead of making up with Israel, we’re fighting Iran’s cruelty with kindness. We’re conveniently overlooking the human rights atrocities perpetrated in Iran. We’re forgetting that their president ignored election results (while we’re trying to reinstate a deposed dictator in Honduras. Seriously, Honduras over Iran?) and took power over constant riots and protests. We’re ignoring the fact that they hid a nuclear power plant from us for over three months. We’re forgetting they’ve made blatant threats against Israel. And yet we’ve done nothing, all in the name of trying to get on their good side for oil reasons. Even though they’re clearly the aggressors, we gladly come to the negotiating table and make concessions with a country that will have none of it.

So what do we do about this situation? Well, to go back to the party scene, we could do a couple of things. We could continue to hit on Iran and make concessions left and right until we’re the one who gets bitch-slapped. Or we could do the sensible thing and make peace with our ex. When we were together, it was a great relationship — she was a peaceful democracy, we were a peaceful democracy, and best of all, we were able to keep her calm. If Israel sees us continue to hit on Iran, her jealousy might get the best of her and she could launch a preemptive strike — a roofie would totally mess Iran up.

But what if Iran gets jealous? I mean, we were hitting on her and then we dumped her for a much hotter girl. She could get angry and start sending threatening text messages, or launching Scud missiles. The important thing is to realize that if we try and make Iran shut up, then we’ll seem like the aggressors. Until Iran shows up in your dorm with some Play-Doh and some duct tape, all we can do is simply dismiss her texts as the ramblings of a crazy person. Until Iran comes after us or Israel with a direct hit, there’s no reason to hurt her. But in the long run, letting her have the tools to hurt people like Israel is probably not the best idea.

The point is that we need to stop pandering to a crazy drunk who obviously doesn’t want anything to do with us. It’s clear that this girl won’t listen to reason, so we need to stop talking and start acting. Otherwise, she (or our jealous ex) might make a drunken mistake that we’d all regret the morning after.

Last Saturday, it became apparent that some of our current Fathers were also being a little hypocritical. As they sat down to create health care coverage for all Americans, the House of Representatives debated whether their plan should cover abortion. Should all women have the equal right to receive quality reproductive health care? Not yet, they decided. The Stupak/Pitts amendment to the legislation stipulates that any insurance plan covered by federal money cannot cover abortion, and it passed (ironically with the help of normally pro-choice representatives) 220-215.

The issue, of course, is larger than mere hypocrisy. Pro-life legislators would have never voted on health care reform with abortion coverage included, and the legislation would have never left the House. As the bill awaits discussion in the Senate, pro-choice Democrats are faced with a tough moral dilemma: whether it is better to make progress in some areas while hindering it in others. Is it acceptable to compromise some values so that others prevail?

Many House Democrats answered this by voting — 177 out of 194 Democrats that voted Nay on the Stupak/Pitts Amendment then voted Yes on the entire health care bill, amendment included. With health care reform so close, they seemed to think that the abortion amendment was not worth fighting over.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an ardent supporter of reproductive rights, decided last Friday to allow a vote on the adoption of strict abortion coverage regulations to the bill. To win the votes of conservative Democrats needed to pass health care reform, the speaker felt the amendment was necessary. Politico justified that she is “more ruthlessly practical than her frequent caricature as an activist, upper-crust liberal from San Francisco would suggest.” Pelosi had her eye on a prize for which she had to pull strings to win.

Other pro-choice Dems were outraged. “This amendment takes away that same freedom of conscience from America’s women. It invades women’s personal decisions,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. in a New York Times article. The San Francisco Chronicle politics blog quoted Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill calling the amendment “ridiculous” and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif saying it will “‘take us back to the days of back-alley abortions,’ and is a dangerous intrusion of religion into the state.”

Pro-choice representatives resisted a vote on the amendment with strong emotions deeply rooted in a more than 30-year struggle to further abortion rights. “This was like making pro-choice democrats choose between their children,” says Jordan Fein, president of Northwestern University College Democrats.

But most of these angry Democrats voted to pass the whole enchilada anyway. They seemed flaky by first fighting passionately against the amendment and then voting for a bill including it, but pro-choice Dems figured they would vote in favor of the House bill and later fight for changes when the final legislation is negotiated with the Senate. According to the same Politico article, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y. rationalized before the health care vote, “I don’t believe any of us believe we can hold up what we’ve been fighting for [...] and that’s health care.”

The legislation places pro-choice Democrats in a difficult position. “Getting a comprehensive health care reform bill passed is incredibly important. The process would sort of lose momentum if it were to be delayed any further,” says Emily Raymond, Co-director of Northwestern University College Feminists. It was likely that the Dems would lose on both fronts if they tried to fight the two battles at once.

And it’s not like major abortion rights victories were overturned. Jasmin Avila, president of Northwestern Students for Life, feels that the Stupak/Pitts Amendment is a mere reaffirmation of the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which banned Medicaid-funded abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or if the woman’s life is endangered. “It doesn’t speak to the future legality or illegality of abortion. It simply prevents abortion from being government funded,” she says.

But Fein says the new amendment could do more damage than reaffirm an existing law; it builds on Hyde, curtailing abortion rights even further. “This amendment basically tells people if they want to have health insurance, they’re not going to be able to spend their own money on abortion,” he says.

Ellen R. Malcolm, president of Emily’s List, an organization that works to elect pro-choice Democratic women to office, blogged on The Huffington Post that private insurers who participate in the government health insurance exchange would not be able to cover abortion, which is currently available in many private plans. Many also argue that women with low socioeconomic status will be negatively targeted and that private insurance companies will no longer have incentive to offer abortion coverage.

The pro-choice Dems will have another chance to defeat the Stupak/Pitts Amendment in the Senate. Women’s rights organizations are gearing up to lobby for a fight that they feel cannot be lost. Fein is not optimistic, though, since the Senate tends to be more conservative than the House. Raymond also has doubts. “There are enough people in Congress who don’t respect reproductive rights and don’t even want a comprehensive health care bill to be passed in the first place,” she says. “I think it might be kind of an uphill battle at this point.” According to TheHill.com, however, 40 legislators promised to oppose the final health care bill if the current language on abortion is included. Only time will tell.

As we wait, perhaps Congress should consider the consequences of our forefathers’ decision. Instead of being dealt with behind Convention doors, the slavery issue was eventually resolved in the form of the Civil War. Although it will never be clear whether this war was inevitable, it does evoke the question of what will happen down the road if the abortion issue is continuously left on the backburner.

There’s also the commander of the international troops in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, who has requested a 40,000 troop increase on top of the total of 68,000 U.S. troops. While Obama probably won’t give McChrystal everything he wants, his personal appointment by Obama basically assured that there would some sort of increase. But is the war in Afghanistan really necessary? Should we perhaps be withdrawing our troops instead of putting more in?

More than eight years after the war in Afghanistan started, it’s worth remembering why we went there in the first place. Pretty simply, it was to destroy Al Qaeda and not allow the Taliban to continue ruling the country. In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in American history, this rationale made sense. We couldn’t allow a terrorist organization that had already shown itself capable of inflicting huge damage on our country to have free rein in a country that’s conveniently on the border of one of the most unstable and dangerous countries on earth: Pakistan.

And while we were quickly successful in removing the Taliban from power, we were never able to actually crush Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden, not to mention Mohammed Omar, the head of the Afghani Taliban, are still free (probably in Pakistan), even if their capacities for inflicting harm have been diminished.

As for the efforts in turning Afghanistan into a stable country that’s more than a factitious, drug-exporting hellhole, they have been even less successful. The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, “won” a recent election that was marred by accusations of fraud. After a runoff election was announced, his challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, dropped out of the race, giving Karzai another term as president by default. Karzai not only has questionable legitimacy, he does not even have complete control of his own country; corrupt as he is, he’s still dependent on local warlords to keep the peace.

These extra troops’ mission would be to help a central government with questionable legitimacy centralize its power and hunt down and kill terrorists and Taliban who have managed to survive eight years of American and allied assault. But is this a worthwhile goal to pursue, especially at the cost of more American lives and money?

The main justification for our continued engagement in Afghanistan is that we cannot allow Al Qaeda to have a “safe haven” there. The thinking goes that, from the mid 1990s through the invasion of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda was able to plan and execute attacks because they had a country whose leadership did not care about their presence. Even though the U.S. fired the occasional cruise missile into a training camp, their safe haven remained relatively unmolested.

But there’s a problem with this analysis. A terrorist group can do all the planning, funding and training they want in their landlocked, Central Asian safe haven — but in order to actually execute terrorist attacks, some of them have to to be in the United States. The 9/11 plotters, for instance, did most of their planning in Hamburg, Germany, not Afghanistan. Would occupying Hamburg make sense as a response to 9/11? They learned how to fly planes in Florida, but does that mean we should attack Florida? The point is that to carry out a terrorist attack in the United States, you have to be in the United States in the first place. And while sending more troops to Afghanistan might make things more difficult for potential terrorists and their leaders, it is simply impossible to eliminate all potential safe havens.

And it’s not like our adventure in the Graveyard of Empires is free. David Obey, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, put it best: “As an Appropriator I must ask, what will that policy cost and how will we pay for it?” In America, the political system seems to assume that money spent on wars doesn’t really count. But that’s obviously not true. Democrats in the House and Senate spent months agonizing over how to get a health care bill that had a price tag of 900 billion dollars or less over ten years, even though their final bill is deficit-neutral. An increase of troops to Afghanistan, not to mention continued engagement there at current levels, would add considerable cost to the some 223 billion dollars we have already spent there.

There are, of course, reasons to stay in Afghanistan besides the possibility of a safe haven for Al Qaeda. There are worries that if we leave Afghanistan, Pakistan could further destabilized. There are also concerns about the human rights of Afghans, especially girls and women, which could suffer a setback if we left and the Taliban was able to regain control of Afghanistan. But while these concerns are compelling, it’s unlikely for the American public to support wars unless they can be convinced that our national security vitally depends on military engagement. It’s just not at all clear if that’s the case in Afghanistan.

Well, not quite. The Senate still has to vote on their own bill and then the two houses have to get together over beer and pizza and reconcile the two bills. They then send the new consensus bill to each house to be voted on and then it’s off to the President’s desk to be signed into law. The big problem with all of this is that first part: the Senate has to vote on their own bill. Seeing as how the Senate isn’t even scheduled to debate the issue this week, it might be a while before that happens.

But when they do finally get to the debate, the floor of the Senate will turn into a battlefield of banter, a fight for the policy-pennant. Okay, enough of that. Here are the X-Factors for this Super Bowl of legislative throw-downs:

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana) — Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee

The Senate Finance Committee cranked out a health care reform a while back that did not include a public option. Otherwise, it’s a similar bill to the one just passed in the House: it has mandatory coverage, creates a health insurance exchange and, unlike the House bill, it includes a tax on high-priced insurance plans. As the flag-bearer for one of the two major bills in the Senate, Baucus will definitely be a key player in this match-up as he aims to keep a public option out of a final bill.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) — Chairman of Senate HELP committee

The other main bill in the Senate comes from Tom Harkin’s Heath, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. It contains many similar (if not identical) provisions to the finance committee’s bill, except for one major inclusion: a public option. Harkin will be one of the several Senate liberals out on the field fighting to get a public option into the final bill.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) — Senate Majority Leader

This guy has a contract-extension with his home state on the line. He’s also made some big promises, like the inclusion of a public option in the bill and said bill being on Obama’s desk by the end of the year. So basically, the future of his political career is riding on a Hail-Mary pass to a receiver in double coverage. But instead of launching the ball down field,  he’ll be calling all the Dems’ shots on the sideline and working hard for those 60 coveted votes.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut)

Don’t panic if you hear footsteps a comin’, it’s only Joe Lieberman and his filibuster. The former Democrat who supposedly caucuses with the Democrats in order to give them a filibuster-proof 60 seats has threatened in the past few days to filibuster any legislation in the Senate that includes a public option. If that happens, good luck to Harry Reid on getting a bill fleshed out by winter break.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)

The pioneer of the “trigger option,” Snowe is an important moderate player in this game, and a vote that Democrats got in the Finance Committee and desperately want on the floor. Though she may be the only Republican senator to vote yes, her assent would still be a trophy of Senate Democrats.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) — Senate Minority Leader

Mitch McConnell is to Harry Reid as Mohammed Ali is to George Foreman. Not really, but he is definitely the man at Reid’s opposing corner in this congressional rumble. McConnell will be vying to keep the Dems from reaching the filibuster-proof 60 votes, and with Lieberman as his cutman, he might have an easier time than he thought.

American Medical Association and AARP

These two associations, which represent doctors and old people respectively, threw the biggest endorsements since Oprah endorsed Obama back in ’08, expressing their support for the House’s health care bill last week. It’ll be interesting to see if either or both take a stance on anything in the Senate and if endorsements from the biggest providers and consumers of medical care can push a bill to the President’s desk.

Congressional Budget Office (Director Doug Elmendorf)

By the end of this week, this non-partisan group might just have numbers on the cost and impact of Reid’s plan (which is gleaned off of the Finance and HELP committees’ bills). These numbers could sway moderate senators one way or the other on a final bill.

Public Option

Probably the biggest player on this list, and it ain’t even human. The national health care debate revolves around the possibility of a government-created health insurance option that individuals could enroll in, and the Senate debate is no different. Whether it’s the trigger-option, the state-by-state opt out plan or a full-fledged public option, be sure to expect this X-factor to have the biggest impact on the passage (or lack thereof) of a Senate health care bill.

Imagine you’re a Taliban militant. You’ve just been offered a shot at amnesty for killing civilians and American soldiers. All you have to do is renounce insurgency and promise not to fight for the Taliban anymore. Oh and you get paid for this, by the way. Deal or no deal?

Last Wednesday, President Obama signed a defense bill including a provision that would allow such a deal to be made. The bill authorizes the existing funds for the Commanders Emergency Response Program (CERP), a fund used for investment at the local level by senior military officials in the field, to pay for this initiative. Essentially, military officials can now use CERP’s $1.3 billion to pay off Taliban militants if they wanted to.

What’s the rationale?

It’s worked before in a different country almost as messed up as Afghanistan: Iraq.  The program, called the “Sons of Iraq”, paid locals to side with the U.S. In April 2008, about 91,000 citizens became employed by the armed services for $300 a month.

Officials in the region touted the success of the program as a leading factor in the overall decline of violence in the region (we’ll just forget about the twin car-bomb attacks in Baghdad last week). It’s difficult to remember a time when we didn’t want Iraqis taking their security into their own hands. But back to Afghanistan.

Why is this plan surreptitiously smart?

We need all the help we can get in Afghanistan: unsuccessful elections (regardless of moderate turnout), entire swaths of land controlled by non-governmental militants, incessant raids on U.S. held territories and civilians, an increase in Taliban numbers, etc. Failed state? It’s getting there if it isn’t already.

The picture in Afghanistan is certainly far from pretty. But just imagine the Kodak moment we might get to see if Afghans take back their country from the Taliban and finally take control of their own political economy. Sure these may be mercenaries under American employ, but they’ll still be soldiers fighting for Afghan sovereignty without the red, white, and blue on their shoulder patch. Such an end would ultimately be more effectual than us staying there and trying our best to get Afghans to like us.

It’s a good deal: Afghans win, Americans win, the Taliban loses, and our troops get to come home.

Why is this plan fantastically inept?

Does any of this sound familiar to you? My global history professor would scoff at this idea. So would George Santayana, who famously declared, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

I could write a dissertation-length article on how U.S. involvement in the Soviet-Afghan war of the late seventies-early eighties led us to 9/11 and the post-9/11 era, but you’ve heard it all before and if not, it’s easy to hear about. Watch Charlie Wilson’s War, if not for the historical commentary, then for Tom Hanks’ Texas charm.

I should mention that we didn’t exactly pay Afghans to fight the Soviets back in the 80’s, but we did supply them with the necessary arms and training in an attempt to 1) beat our Cold War foe and 2) win the hearts and minds of Afghans (or at least try and throw enough money at their cause to do so). Replace “Soviets” with “Taliban” and “Cold War” with “The Global War on Terrorism” and you’ve pretty much got the same dynamic.

As the saying goes, you can rent an Afghan but you can’t buy him. And it’s true. These mercenaries will only be happy as long as they keep getting a paycheck from Uncle Sam. But when he leaves, they’ll still have to feed their families. All they’ll have then are really awful farming prospects, opium and guns. You connect the dots.

It’s a raw deal: short-term gains, but likely plenty of pains on the horizon. Again.

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The repercussions of this program could be extremely beneficial, but also catastrophic. Unlike looking normal at the Keg, this program won’t ruin social standing: it has the potential to ruin a nation and a people, but end a war.

In sum, the plan definitely has its pros but they may not exactly outweigh the cons: fewer guns pointed at us, more guns pointed at our foes, and a whole lot of problems facing us in the future if we play this as poorly as we did in 1989.

Considering the kids applies to more than just haunted houses and Southern rappers — it is also a good way to think about economic policy. In conventional political conversation, it’s often presumed that the policy that matters most to young people is the deficit. After all, if there’s a mismatch between revenues and spending that cannot go on forever, it will be young people and future generations who end up making the painful sacrifices to put the country’s budget back in order. So, when it comes to the most pressing economic policy debate, whether or not the government should continue to stimulate the economy through deficit spending, anyone thinking of the kids should prefer to cut down the deficit, right?

Wrong. Here’s the thing — deficits are bad, but an economy floundering with unemployment hovering around 10 percent is even worse. If there is a short-term tradeoff between larger deficits and lower unemployment due to increased government spending, we should err on the side of spending more to get unemployment down.

An economy where unemployment is high won’t grow fast enough to help eat back at deficits through increased tax receipts. If the economy’s output is higher and wages go up, it will be easier to reduce the deficit in the future. The first stimulus, which Obama’s own economic advisers thought was too small, is probably responsible for much of the recent 3.5 percent jump in GDP which officially signaled the end of the recession and kept unemployment from potentially spiraling out of control. But just because we are not in an official recession does not mean the economic situation — especially unemployment — is no longer dire. For instance, the last time unemployment was this high, following the 1981-1982 recession, it took six quarters of 5 percent plus growth just to get down to 7 percent unemployment.

Decreasing unemployment and getting the economy back on track, even if doing so creates higher deficits, is not just good economic policy for everyone, but it’s essential for the kids as well. That’s because people who enter the job market during a recession see decreased wages for their entire time in the labor force. Also, young workers tend to have the least skills and experience, so they are the least likely workers to get hired and the first to get fired during a downturn. If anyone cares about the economic welfare of college students and recent graduates, they should be committing all their efforts to decreasing unemployment.

Government stimulus, of course, is not a solution to all our problems and certainly is not the preferred method for keeping unemployment low in the down-turn. In a world, however, where all other tools to goose the economy have been exhausted — namely lowering real interest rates — then stimulus spending is all that’s left.

But there’s a more immediate concern associated with large deficit spending, especially when it’s used to employ more people and buy more stuff — inflation. If, at the end of the day, inflation just bites back the gains from stimulus, then it was all pointless. But, oddly enough, if you’re really thinking of the kids, a little inflation might be a good thing.

I’m not arguing for the double digit inflation of the late 1970s, but instead that we are perhaps a bit too inflation-obsessed. Chris Hayes of the New America Foundation has argued that America is incredibly saddled down by debt — both personal and national — and that steady economic growth will not be able to resume until the value of this debt is lowered. And the best way of decreasing debts is through inflation; because loans are issued in set dollar amounts, if the dollars become less valuable because of inflation, then the loans are easier to pay back. If you view the issue of low versus moderately low inflation through “what’s best for the kids,” the answer becomes even clearer. The kids will benefit from moderate inflation if it means more economic growth, less unemployment and a lower value for their often crippling credit card and student debt.

So, if you hear anyone advocating more stimulus and less concern about the possibility of modest inflation, you have to remember that even if they didn’t growed up the way Trick did, they love the kids.