I discovered that I’d awakened from my enforced Van Winkle-ish hiatus in a different country, politically speaking. When I took to my bed in December, national health care was a done deal, and Massachusetts was a blue state. Now an undistinguished faux-populist Republican, Scott Brown, represents the Bay State in the Senate, which bodes ill for anything beyond an eviscerated health-care bill dictated by the GOP, Big Pharma, and the insurance cartel. More significantly, when I crawled under the covers both federal and state laws prohibited corporations from making substantial contributions to political candidates, and Tom DeLay faced serious jail time for violating those laws. . . . […]