The AP recently released poll results on how people feel about the health care reform bill. Commenting on it, Kevin Drum says:

President Barack Obama’s decision to appoint Elizabeth Warren to set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) couldn’t have come at a more critical time.

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger

Yesterday, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) took Obama administration officials to task for encouraging Americans to believe that the majority of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico had dispersed.

With the Wall Street reform bill finally cleared through Congress, activists and intellectuals are pushing hard to make sure that this bill isn’t the last word Congress utters about Big Finance. We need deeper and more robust reforms, but it’s also critical to ensure that the new bill is implemented as effectively as possible. Part of that means appointing officials with a proven record as robust reformers—people like Elizabeth Warren.

President Barack Obama is in Louisiana today, and BP is saying it will know in 48 hours if its attempt to “top kill” the leaking oil well in the Gulf Coast by pouring mud and cement over it has worked.

Two disasters flared up this week, one environmental, the other political. Off the coast of Louisiana, oil from a sunken rig is leaking as much as five times faster than scientists originally judged, and the spill reportedly reached land last night. And in Washington, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) jumped from his partnership with Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) just before the scheduled release of the draft of a new Senate climate bill.

by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger

Congress returns from its April recess this week with financial reform at the top of its to-do list. With millions of Americans still bearing the brunt of the worst recession in 80 years, Congress needs to start protecting our economy from Wall Street excess, and repair the shredded social safety net that has allowed the Great Recession to exact a devastating human cost.

Big banks are an economic parasite

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has laid out a strategy to pass health care reform in the next couple of days by allowing the House to vote on the details of the reconciliation package instead of the Senate bill itself. As usual, progressives are fretting that winning will make them look bad. On the other hand, conservatives are baying for blood and calling for revolution.

On Friday, we learned that the U.S. unemployment rate officially broke 10% for the first time since the early Reagan years.

Farm Animal Confinement. YES. This initiative requires that farm animals be penned in cages that allow them to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs, and turn around freely. In practice, it would affect only the egg industry, and it moves California very moderately in the direction of more humane treatment of farm animals. The factory farming industry is running the usual campaign claiming that it would put California farmers out of business entirely, but that dog just won’t hunt anymore.