Sans my own commentary, here’s what the compromise on Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s controversial derivatives reform proposal looks like. House and Senate leaders today said they will approve the new legislation by July 4, which should pave the way for financial reform.

The deal, negotiated between the White House and Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., eliminated one of the last major sticking points.

Derivatives are complex securities often used by corporations to hedge against market fluctuations. But they also have become speculative instruments for financial institutions, the most notorious of which were credit default swaps that hedged against loan failures.

In the House, moderate Democrats and members of the New York congressional delegation fought to remove Lincoln’s language.

Under the agreement banks would only spin off their riskiest derivatives trades. Banks get to keep some of their lucrative business based on trades in derivatives related to interest rates, foreign exchanges, gold and silver. They could even arrange credit default swaps, the notorious instruments blamed for the meltdown, as long as they were traded through clearing houses. Banks could trade in derivatives with their own money to hedge against market fluctuations.

More, via the Associated Press.

There are plenty of reasoned observations about why Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070 (full text, .pdf), is racist and deplorable. But there are far fewer reasoned observations, beyond it being racist and deplorable, about why it’s bad policy as well.

Because the shenanigans of Arizona state lawmakers have resulted in an abysmal piece of actual policy, questions about important federal immigration reform, which happens to include not-quite-abysmal-but-still-flawed pieces of proposed policy, aren’t getting adequate attention. So taking the Arizona law seriously on policy grounds, while challenging, is pretty crucial in the context of accomplishing any meaningful federal reform.

Here’s an honest attempt at critiquing the law purely on policy grounds:

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Ezra Klein, the progressive Washington Post columnist, has some thoughts on Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) that are pretty tough to disagree with:

Accusing a politician of deficit hypocrisy isn’t a particularly serious slur. Pretty much every politician is guilty of it. It’s a bit like trumpeting the fact that some politician or another wears a suit. But if Bayh’s sins are ordinary, so too was his career.

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By most reasonable accounts, the public discourse around healthcare reform, from Sarah Palin’s made-up death panels and others’ hyperbole to conservatives actually bringing assault rifles to Presidential events, was pretty pathetic.

But as bad as the healthcare debate became, brewing climate-change policy reform will draw an even-more-foot-stompy reaction from conservatives.

Here are five reasons why:

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