You can't tell from Pelosi public announcements where she's at in her quest for health-care votes--everything is always peachy. Others are telegraphing something closer to the truth.

Bart Stupak let drop that House leadership is no longer courting the 12 votes he allegedly controls, which suggests, one way or another that Nancy has gotten all the votes she's going to get out of that crew.

That leaves the option of mining the previous no votes--37 of them. That apparently isn't going so well either.

As of today, Speaker Pelosi's Treasure Hunt for votes isn't going well. Not one of the Democrats who voted against health care last year has proclaimed support for the Senate bill, while dozens of members who voted for it last year say they are undecided.

Its probably even worse than it looks--and it looks pretty bad.

Anyone whose been in a situation where someone wants something from you real, real bad, understands that its both an opportunity and a problem. Say no, and you're the enemy, and you can expect to be treated as one. Say yes and you're in the bag--the negotiation stops and you've possibly left money on the table. The trick is to appear persuadable but noncommital. Saying yes as late as as you can, guarantees you the maxiumum concessions. Saying no as long as you can is also a good idea, because it keeps the hammer off your skull for as long as possible, and as circumstances change, its very possible that you might not have to say no at all.

Here's Nancy's problem though--this late in the game, and baby, its late, all the money on the table is all the money on the table. Anybody who could be bought, has been. That leaves a lot of people who don't want to incur the wrath of Rahm and are playing for time.

If there is no vote next week, I would bet big money that there never will be.

Wanting their cake and a chance to eat it, Democrats appear to be playing both ends against the middle.

...all those claims were put to the test -- all those bluffs were called -- once the White House decided that it had to use reconciliation to pass a final health care reform bill. That meant that any changes to the Senate bill (which had passed with 60 votes) -- including the addition of the public option -- would only require 50 votes, which Democrats assured progressives all year long that they had. Great news for the public option, right? Wrong. As soon as it actually became possible to pass it, the 50 votes magically vanished. Senate Democrats (and the White House) were willing to pretend they supported a public option only as long as it was impossible to pass it. Once reconciliation gave them the opportunity they claimed all year long they needed -- a "majority rule" system -- they began concocting ways to ensure that it lacked 50 votes.

Sounds like black helicopters, but Glenn Greenwald isn't without some evidence.

If that's true -- if they lack the votes to pass the public option through reconciliation? -- why is Dick Durbin now whipping against it, telling Senators -- in his own words -- "You just have to swallow hard' and say that putting an amendment on this is either going to stop it or slow it down, and we just can’t let it happen"?

No one has to argue against something 'impossible', so by definition it must be a real option.

Of course, it presupposes that the legislation can actually be put through the reconciliation process, which is by no means certain.

Frankly, a column like this works against the House passage of the bill because it creates even more suspicion that reconciliation isn't only a long-shot, but that Senate leadership doesn't even want it.

Reports that Rep Bart Stupak was open to voting for Obamacare have been greatly exaggerated. In this frank interview with NRO, Stupak provides some interesting insights into the kind of weapons being brought to bear on reluctant House members.

Dee Dee Myers (former Clinton Press Secretary) has some advice for Barack Obama.

Part of Obama’s persona is self-reliance. He’s calm; he’s cool; he’s self-possessed. In many ways, he has tried to define himself in opposition to Clinton’s sometimes needy, often undisciplined, emotionalism.

But while eschewing emotion — and its companion, vulnerability — Obama should be careful not to sacrifice empathy, the “I feel your pain” connection that sustained Clinton. This connection is the shorthand people use to measure their leaders’ intentions. If people believe you’re on their side, they will trust your decisions.

Too often, Obama leaves the impression that he stands alone — and likes it that way. Clinton was fond of saying, “We’re all going up or down together.” Obama must make sure that people know that he needs their help as much as they need his.

The first thing I could appreciate is how Democrats celebrate their president's personal qualities regardless of what they are. When Clinton was President, empathy was a great thing. When Obama was elected--an almost polar opposite to Clinton, they all just loved his Spock-like demeanor. If the next Democrat President turns out to be a foul-mouthed, obnoxious boob, they'll find those to be positive aspects as well.

Myers is somewhat more sophisticated, understanding the political value of empathy, while remaining clearly ignorant of its nature.

Empathy creates trust, and confidence in the leader can be the difference between success and failure. Unfortunately for Obama, empathy just can't be faked. The picture above is a case in point. Bush was in an uncontrolled environment, his every move being recorded for posterity, including this one. The look on his face says everything.

Its also unfair to Barack Obama. There are race and gender issues at work here that can't be ignored. Whether fair or not, white man running for office is going is presumed to have the intellectual capacity and emotional control to do the job. Empathy is a bonus, a quality that 'balances the force'.

A woman, on the other hand, is going to be presumed to be empathic, while her intellectual capacity and emotional control will be naturally suspect. Its quite an irony that few people had any doubt of Hillary Clinton's 'manly' qualities, but wondered if she was still a woman underneath her hard-bitten exterior. A few tears went a long way to reestablish her gender bona fides. Its notable that Sarah Palin's biggest obstacle is to sell her own 'Spock-like' qualities.

A black man is probably in the toughest spot of all. Society doesn't automatically allocate the black man an empathic nature, intellectual capacity or self-control. Obama is doing well to have convinced the American electorate that he has two out of the three.

In spite of this, I have no illusions that health-care might have passed had Obama been more charming. Something about pigs and lipstick...

Gallup consistently rates Obama's approval ratings somewhat higher than Rasmussen Reports, but the trend is identical.

Losing about 2 points a month. Currently at 46%.

U.S. defence contractor Northrop Grumman and its European partner EADS withdrew on Monday from a renewed competition to supply tankers to the U.S. Air Force, saying the rules favoured rival bidder Boeing, the top U.S. exporter.

Boeing is now the sole known bidder for the contract.

Asked what he thought of the issue during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Sarkozy delivered a scathing attack on how the United States had handled the tender.

"I did not appreciate this decision ... This is not the right way to behave," Sarkozy said.

"Such methods by the United States are not good for its European allies, and such methods are not good for the United States, a great, leading nation with which we are on close and friendly terms," he said.

"If they want to be heard in the fight against protectionism, they should not set the example of protectionism."

I wonder what this says about the European understanding of American politics?

An alleged 200,000 Germans heard Obama's Brandenberg Gate speech, designed to evoke symbolism of a renewed and repaired relationship between Europe and the U.S. Every U.S. election, Europeans cross their fingers and hope a Democrat wins the Presidency, and it always, always bites them in the ass.

Democrats have been beating the protections drums as soon as Al Gore's defeat made it safe to do so. How could any of this come as a surprise?

Idiots.

Yesterday the AP reported a CBO finding that the Senate health care bill would actually reduce the deficit:

In a bit of bookkeeping, the Congressional Budget Office on Thursday released its final cost estimates for the bill the Senate passed on Christmas Eve. That 10-year, $875 billion plan would reduce the federal deficit and cover 31 million people who'd otherwise be uninsured. The Senate bill is the foundation of the proposal that Obama wants Congress to pass in the next few weeks. But the numbers will change yet again with the new version.

The AP failed to mention the fantastical ground rules the CBO was operating with to arrive at such happy news. Somehow though the public opinion is being informed despite the perfidy of the AP:

Two-out-of-three voters (66%) also believe the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats is likely to increase the federal deficit. That's up six points from late November and comparable to findings just after the contentious August congressional recess. Ten percent (10%) say the plan is more likely to reduce the deficit and 14% say it will have no impact on the deficit.

Underlying this concern is a lack of trust in the government numbers. Eighty-one percent (81%) believe it is at least somewhat likely that the health care reform plan will cost more than official estimates. That number includes 66% who say it is very likely that the official projections understate the true cost of the plan.

AP - All Propaganda. Just another reason why the legacy media is being bypassed.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post detailing the role of the Senate parliamentarian in making a determination of whether the budget reconciliation process was an option for health-care.

Now the chickens have come to roost.

The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that President Barack Obama must sign Congress’ original health care reform bill< before the Senate can act on a companion reconciliation package, senior GOP sources said Thursday.

What this means is that as soon as the House votes on the Senate bill, it must in fact be signed into law by the President before any attempt at reconciliation can proceed. With the parliamentarian's ruling, Democrats will effectively be voting for federal funding on abortion. Period. Stop. That might go over in the most liberal districts in the country, but its certain political death of any blue dog Democrat.

The ruling serves to eliminate the ambiguity that Pelosi has been trying to leverage among House Democrats. Their current reality is that a vote for healthcare is a vote to make the legislation law, and that the reconciliation process being talked about would be at the mercy of the same parliamentary rulings that affirmed the requirement that the President sign the bill into law--in other words, reconciliation is and always has been a mirage.

On a related note, Pelosi is going backwards in the vote count. With current vacancies, she needs to keep the defections down below 37. There are 25 no and 'likely no' votes out there right now. Stupak and his gang of 12 are not in that total. The have indicated that they are persuadable, but its hard to see how at this point. With the Stupak gang, the defections kill the bill.

Indications are that House leadership knows this, as they have pushed back against the White House's demands that they pass it by the 18th. That arbitrary dead-line would have insured a vote before the two week recess, since no one on the Obama team wants Congress to go home to their districts and face the angry hordes.

Further complicating matters is the Hispanic Caucus, which could also vote no on the basis of the bill's immigration provisions.

I almost feel sorry for Nancy.

Almost.

I still find it completely maddening that possibly the biggest conspiracy in world history gets virtually no coverage here in the U.S. New revelations about the depth and breath of the fraud perpetrated against humanity involve institutions both national and international and had financial and politically backing from the highest levels of government.

People should hang for this.

James Hansen of NASA, should be among the first. It is inconceivable that this guy is still employed by NASA when he should be in jail.

Email messages obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute via a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that the climate dataset of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) was considered — by the top climate scientists within NASA itself — to be inferior to the data maintained by the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU).

The NASA scientists also felt that NASA GISS data was inferior to the National Climate Data Center Global Historical Climate Network (NCDC GHCN) database.

These emails, obtained by Christopher Horner, also show that the NASA GISS dataset was not independent of CRU data.

Further, all of this information regarding the accuracy and independence of NASA GISS data was directly communicated to a reporter from USA Today in August 2007.

The reporter never published it.

Effectively, this means that three of the four data sets have been compromised. Why am I not surprised.

Frankly, my skepticism about global warming always stemmed from my incredulity about a computer model that simply could not have ever had the kind of large, consistent dataset required to make any meaningful predictions about climate. We can only predict weather with any reasonable accuracy, two or three days in advance for the same reason--there simply aren't enough data points available from the sparse system of weather buoys distributed throughout the Pacific ocean. Yet we were expected to accept arctic climate models that had no actual data points at all!

Our collective scientific ignorance will be the death of us all...

The New York Times has a pretty good overview of the machinations required to bypass the democratic process in order to ram through health-care and get a 'win' for Obama.

The White House and Democratic Congressional leaders said Tuesday that they were bracing for a key procedural ruling that could complicate their effort to approve major health care legislation, by requiring President Obama to sign the bill into law before Congress could revise it through an expedited budget process.

As the eponymous King Pyrrhus of Epirus is alleged to have said after winning the battle of Asculum, "One more such victory will undo me!"

This has been a key aspect of the discussion in the house, since frankly, the Senate doesn't need to do the reconciliation after the House passes the Senate version. Its a done deal at that point.

“We believe what the president is doing is asking House Democrats to hold hands, jump off a cliff and hope Harry Reid catches them,” Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the No. 3 Republican, said on Tuesday. “And Senator Reid is not going to have any incentive to catch them because by the time the reconciliation bill gets to the Senate, the president will have already signed the health care bill into law and he’ll be well on his way to Indonesia.”

This is a sucker's agreement from the word go. You'd have to be a first class fool to sign on.

For a guy who has been a fixture in Senate leadership for a good long while, its likely that you may not have heard of Bob Bennett--that is if you live outside of Utah.

A three term Senator and former business executive, Bennett is conservative by any objective standard. Unfortunately for him, his Senate career depends a lot of Utah's subjective standards for conservatism, which are somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. He is in big trouble for having voted for the TARP funds and against the flag-burning amendment ironically sponsored by fellow Utah Senator Orrin Hatch.

I kid you not.

In less than two weeks, Utahns will vote in the Republican primary, and if Bennett doesn't win 60%, he'll face a runoff election. The last time that happened was with Chris Cannon, for whom the bell tolled for the final time.

I'm of two minds on this. I think it would be healthy for Utah and Senator Bennett to face a runoff election in the primary. Incumbents should remember where they are from and how easily they can return to civilian life if they displease the folks.

I also hope that he wins.

I don't think we are getting anywhere in this country sending politically correct morons to Washington. A conservative gut is a fine thing to have, but the wisdom of Solomon to go with it is even better. In Washington these days, there are a lot more questions about who the baby's real mother is, than whether Americans should be able to burn a piece of cloth with some stars and stripes dyed onto it.

Anyone who reads this blog knows how I feel about Obamacare, but that doesn't change the fact that there are some serious problems in our health-care system, and a role for government somewhere in that process. We are going to need a lot of bright people of good will to make this country work again, and Utah is fortunate to have such a man in Bob Bennett.

Years back, I think in 2000, I attended a house party at a neighbors' where a Democrat candidate for Congress was working to persuade a street full of Republicans to take a chance on him. He was clearly prepared for all the standard objections, and made a point to tell us that he had a concealed carry permit, thus immunizing himself from criticism about the Democrats position on gun control. He talked a good game, and so will any Republican challenger. They have the advantage of not having their views memorialized in recorded votes.

Bennett's record is hardly an embarrassment, and if you objected to the TARP (and I did), then you have to ask yourself what the obvious alternative was. I didn't see one.

What Bennett has demonstrated over his 18 year Senate career is an extraordinary ability to get things done without a lot of grandstanding. I suspect if he is reelected, his seniority will enable him to get a lot more things done for Utah and the nation.

Merrill Cook won the Utah 2nd district because he was 'conservative'. He was also totally unsuited to the role by temperament and judgment. We now have a five term Democrat incumbent in that seat and the prospect of another midnight raid on Utah lands to make sure he votes with his party and against the interests of his state. Elections have consequences, and buying a pig in a poke because of its oink is a pretty silly thing to do.

The latest Rasmussen polls are sustaining a point I made a while back--Obama is losing 2 points a month, which puts in below forty before the summertime.

An approval rating in the thirties effectively means that you're toast.

Overall, 43% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. That, too matches the lowest level yet recorded for this President. Fifty-six percent (56%) disapprove.

Nearly 60% believe that Obama's health-care legislation will hurt the economy. Only 22%--basically your hard-core socialists, strongly approve of the President's performance. 43% strongly disapprove, which is well beyond wing-nut territory on the right. Most telling are the independents, who strongly disapprove at the rate of 45%. Only 17% of independents strongly approve.

By August, I think you'll start seeing stories about various Democrats mulling over the possibility of challenging Obama in the primaries.

UPDATE: Mark's comment mentions an unequivocal reality about these polls--blacks overwhelming approve of Obama.

95 percent of black voters approved in April, with just 3 percentage points fewer — 92 percent — approving of his current performance.

Yet its not fair to dismiss this as a black racism. As Frank Luntz points out:

"I think it makes perfect sense. ... African-Americans are more likely to support government intervention, they are more likely to support an activist government policy, they are less likely to trust corporations," he says. "And it also makes sense that the white communities become much more polarized [by the president's policies]; what doesn't make sense is that it has happened so quickly and so deeply."

I'll just note that black support for Boston Brahmin John Kerry--just about the whitest man I ever saw, was just a few points shy of where Obama is today. What it really comes down to is that the Democrat's socialist base is roughly fifty percent African American.

I got a chuckle out of this. The Senate's Sergeant-At-Arms warns Senators and staff against reading the DrudgeReport.

The follow-up email sent out by the Sergeant at Arms’ office late Tuesday afternoon did not mention Drudge but said: “Our Information Security Operations Center has observed a significant increase in the number of Senate computers infected by fake security software that is malicious and does nothing to secure online information.”

Hmmm. I get calls all the time from friends and acquaintances asking if I can fix their computers. I usually ask one question: porn or gambling?

Yeah, I don't think Drudge is the problem here...

I didn't comment on Eric Massa and his allegations that he was being bounced from the Congress because he wouldn't vote 'the right way' on healthcare.

All that red meat, just dangling out there for the taking. It was all a little too contrived.

Massa represents a long-time Republican district out of upstate New York. He was part of the 2008 tide of allegedly blue-dog Democrats that captured Republicans seats.

Its hard to see how the Democrats benefit from forcing him out, since his district will almost certainly go back to the Republicans, but being rid of a problem like Massa may be its own reward.

Certainly it sends a message to the largely centrist freshman class of Congress persons that they are expendable if they don't create some value for the party.

Obama is useless, as in soup-to-nuts useless and then some. The "and then some" means wrecking America's alliances and emboldening America's enemies. Has he no friendships with foreign leaders? Britain? Fuhgeddaboudit, that romance is swimming with the fishes. France? Sarkozy looks down his distinguished nose at Obama's "virtual" foreign policy to Iran and says so at the UN. "Zut alors! 'oo eez ze surrender monkey?" (while refusing troops for Afghanistan). Where are the African leaders fêting Obama? Indonesia? Nope. India? China? Nope, nope. Venezuela? Iran? N. Korea? Brazil? Russia? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

People are starting to notice and this piece attracted this comment:

Obama’s problem is that most other world leaders are not empty suits but people of some accomplishments. As these leaders have met and assessed him as of no consequence, in effect agreeing with Bill Clinton that Obama is little more than a coffee boy elected via celebrity syndrome, they have little interest in him and he realizes that he is not of their caliber either. Consequently, once past the pleasantries and the weather, neither has much to say to the other.

Tony Blair in Israel:

Of note is a story he related about Netanyahu when the two of them were at a dinner party hosted by Netanyahu. It seems the waiter accidentally ladled the soup, matzo ball I presume, onto Netanyahu’s lap. The waiter, rather than gushing over with apologies to his head of state, proceeded to berate him for being in the way while he was trying to do his job. Netanyahu apologized profusely... Blair asked rhetorically, in which other Middle Eastern nation might one witness such an episode with a similar outcome.

The BBC:

Ok, chaps, you didn't get us last time around, here's what you need to work on.

Since switching my satellite television provider last year, I don't get MSNBC news in my channel lineup--not that I ever watched them. In fact, I only know that because I was looking for it during the Olympics so I could catch some hockey.

Nevertheless, I still hear about MSNBC regularly for the most ironic reason--MSNBC has become the news.

The conservative interest probably revolves around the Conanic philosophy of what is best in life--to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of the women.

Not that Keith Olbermann is a woman, but he does exhibit a certain 'bitchiness' which gets worse as his world crumbles around him.

My interest in this slow-motion car crash revolves around the group dynamics. Here's an interesting development.

For those who might be interested – and you have every reason not to be – I am no longer with MSNBC. Three months short of my current contract I sent the following to the boss, Phil Griffin: “Phil, Just wanted to give you the heads up that my situation with MSNBC has become so unrewarding for me that I’ve decided to move on. — Craig”

Craig Crawford was a mainstay at MSNBC, and while decidedly left-wing in his perspectives, apparently not sufficiently orthodox to earn the trust and confidence of his paranoid, hard-left colleagues.

i simply could not any longer endure being a cartoon player for lefty games, just gotta move on to higher ground even if there’s no oxygen

My guess is that the only two things keeping MSNBC intact at this point--NBC's need for a foothold in the cablenews business and the absence of anyone in the cable news business willing to undertake the thankless task of cleaning up the mess and enduring the long climb back into some sort of competitive position.

..or just as likely--no one has a clue on how attract an audience.

So the ship is sinking, careers are going into the toilet, people's worldviews are being challenged in ways not seen since Jehovah's Witnesses saw the calendar tick over to 1915 without witnessing the Second Coming.

This my friends, is how evil--real, horrifying, how-is-this-even-possible evil, begins. It begins with fear of the unknown, develops into paranoia and becomes extreme to the point that everyone is under suspicion and the only way to avoid becoming a target is to demonstrate unflinching loyalty. In this dynamic, that loyalty inevitably gets tested by the demand to sacrifice members of the group. The paranoia spreads, the loyalty tests become more extreme and pretty soon you're calling out lists of people to be shot.

Craig Crawford, his views (whatever they are) notwithstanding, is a man who valued his freedom more than he feared the unknown. Ultimately it is people with this same quality that make it possible to sustain a free society.

Crawford himself will still have to face many challenges--financial, professional and personal, but in the end, the character that allowed him to escape the destructive spiral of MSNBC, will allow him to create a good place for himself.

Good luck man.

Rep Scott Matheson was in the news yesterday after it was revealed that his brother Scott had been offered a federal judgeship.

Lots of people, conversant with the facts of the now infamous Lousiana Purchase, or the Cornhusker kickback, or Chris Dodd's 100 million dollar earmark for an 'unnamed' healthcare facility in Connecticut, or the union exemption from the Cadillac heath plan tax, etc..., etc...

...were understandable suspicious that Jim Matheson (D-UT) was getting bought off after two 'no' votes on the health-care bill.

The Left and is media lapdogs pooh-poohed it as if such a thing could never happen. Matheson himself called it absurd. Such denials are as ritualistic as saying you're resigning to spend more time with the family. Yet its clear to everyone that Matheson is under enormous pressure to vote with the Party and against the expressed wishes of his constituents.

As proof of the absurdity of such a egregious behavior by the Obama administration, the lamentable Orin Hatch offered this exculpatory evidence.

Hatch said he knew Scott Matheson was going to be the nominee more than a month ago and disputes any idea that Obama was trying to get a vote for the nomination.

Well I thought that was interesting because something else happened a month ago as well.

According to internal Department of Interior documents leaked to a Utah congressman and obtained exclusively by Fox News, the mostly public lands include Arizona deserts, California mountains, Montana prairies, New Mexico forests, Washington islands and the Great Basins of Nevada and Colorado -- totaling more than 13 million acres.

Sources say President Obama is likely to choose two or three sites from the list, depending on their size, conservation value and the development threat to each one's environment.

High on the list were two Utah sites, and one in particular stood out and alarmed Utahns--the San Rafael Swell near Moab, Utah.

Why is this important?

Well, you'd have to know some Utah political history--which Jim Matheson undoubtedly does.

Jim Matheson is a popular five term Democrat Congressman from arguably the most red state in the country. He votes against his party more often than he votes for it, which has made him a political fixture in Utah with a possible future as one if its Senators or as governor (he's only 50...). He's a virtual clone of another Utah Democrat--the late Bill Orton, who was a three term Congressman from Utah's 3rd district. He also voted against his party more often than he voted for it, and won landslide reelection victories for his trouble. The in 1996, he lost his seat, defeated by the unremarkable Chris Cannon. What was Bill Orton's unpardonable sin?

Bill Clinton made a national monument out of the Grand Staircase-Escalante with only 24 hours notice to Utah's governor and congressional delegation. Worried that he'd be skinned alive, Clinton held the dedication ceremony at the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

Orton never had a chance.

So there you have it--the Chicago way--silver or lead? Judgeship (and who knows what else...), or the end of your political career?

From the Wallstreet Journal

(Glora Borger, CNN Political Analyst) : Right. This isn't going to be subtle at all today. I think this is it. I was speaking with one senior White House adviser just before I came on the air, and he said, think of it this way. This is the last helicopter out of Saigon, OK?

(Al Velshi, CNN anchor) : Wow.

Borger: So, this means that, take it or leave it, this is your last chance to get on health care. . . .

Very strange quote, but somehow appropriate.

Its pretty clear that the Obama administration strategy is to characterize the Republicans as obdurate obstructionists and the administration as an exasperated but entirely reasonable negotiating partner.

Unfortunately, for Obama, the distortion field is pretty weak, and getting weaker all the time. While some conservatives are wringing their hands over the prospect of reconciliation, I'm finding it hard to get worked up about it. The last go around required a series of incredibly damaging compromises that weakened the administration and probably contributed to the election of Scott Brown. With Democrat leaders openly calling for political self-immolation, I find myself without the imagination to consider what they could possibly do to overcome much larger obstacles this time around.

Hence the appropriateness of metaphor, "last helicopter out of Saigon..."

Judging by Nancy Pelosi's current problem's with Bart Stupak and his gang of 12, the kamikaze option seems to be off the table.

Stupak -- namesake for the controversial Stupak Amendment to the House's original reform bill, which severely restricted funding for abortions -- isn't happy with the abortion language in the Senate version, which the House is being asked to pass. He's saying he'll vote against the legislation, and that 11 other House Democrats who were "yes" votes on that chamber's bill last fall will flip with him. Given the narrow margin of last year's vote, that could well prove a fatal blow to Democrats' efforts to get reform passed.

Abortion is the third rail of politics, and you vote for or against it based purely on which position gets you elected. Its appearance in the health-care debate suggests that House members are more concerned about getting reelected than Nancy would have us believe.