Obama campaigns that negotiation will be on C-Span
Reality sets in: Robert Gibbs evades any questions about why negotiations will not be on C-Span
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image another (Redskins Coach Joe) Gibbs in DC

It looks like we’ll get a health-care bill. A castrated, eviscerated, anemic,denatured, devolved shadow of what progressives have been seeking for the better part of a century—a pyrrhic victory for the Obama Administration.
There are many steps yet to be taken: a series of cloture votes in the senate to prevent filibustering before passage, followed by weeks if not months of wrangling between house and senate members to reconcile the vastly different versions passed by each.

The last rites will be performed over the public option in that conference committee. I predicted …

The old story of the little boy who cried wolf keeps coming to mind. You know the story. The little boy would try to scare people by yelling “wolf”; but he did it so often that no one listened to him and then, one day, a real wolf showed up and the boy yelled for help and no one believed him. The wolf got the little boy.

Lately I’ve begun to wonder: didn’t President Barack Obama have a parent or grandparent tell him that story of the wolf? …

One of the ostensible reasons for reforming our health insurance system is the need to halt the growth of spending on medical treatment. So it may be a surprise to learn that in its first major vote on the health care overhaul, the U.S. Senate took a clear and simple position: Cost is no object.
In November, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, a federally sponsored panel of medical experts, announced that it was recommending against routine mammography among women younger than 50. The proposal, coming amid the health care …

Barack Obama, the unapologetic pro-choice presidential candidate, needs to find his strong voice again on the issue now that he is president.
And he needs to stand up to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a tax-exempt religious organization, declaring that reproductive rights of women will not be sacrificed in the fight over a universal health-care bill.
Time is running out.
The acrimonious debate that surrounded this legislation on the floor of the House, coupled with shortsighted acceptance of the Stupak-Pitts amendment, set the stage for the further erosion of a woman’s access …

The big news this past weekend was that the queasy filibuster-proof Democratic majority of 60 senators (including two “Independents”) held itself together long enough to permit debate on the health-care bill to come to the floor.
Should this have been a question in the first place?
Not, in comparable circumstances, if there had been 60 Republicans. They are smart enough to stick together despite their differences, hang on to power and exercise it. Power exerts a centrifugal force on the GOP—it pulls them all tightly together.
But Democrats are dumb. Too dumb to …

Dobbs Has Fire.

There is a very good chance that resigned CNN anchor Lou Dobbs may run for president in 2012, says at least one major source I have talked to at CNN. Anyone who has read Dobbs’ book “Independents Day” has had vague forewarning that what is in the back of the mind of this 64-year-old is a race that doesn’t fit either party…and would resemble that of Pat Buchanan’s with some twinges of Ross Perot’s. In issues it would come very closely to Buchanan’s pitchfork crusades with some adaptations. …

There are many reasons to abolish the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) which is the legatee of the man who strove to one day become America’s Pope, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. But news accounts that the organization which represents all the Catholic bishops in the U.S. has been lobbying strenuously for passage of ObamaCare justifies a rephrase of this question.
Understand we all agreed when the USCCB fought the pro-abortion provision in the original bill pushed by Mme. Pelosi. But now news comes out…as if we hadn’t suspected it all …

NPR quoted liberal Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). Schakowsky said: “Comprehensive health care does include reproductive health care, prenatal and maternity care, screening for breast, cervical and other cancers or [sexually transmitted infections] abortion, contraceptive services. That these are basic health care for women [emphasis added] that we have a right to by virtue of our reproductive organs and our right to control our own bodies.”
Thank you, Rep. Schakowsky. You have dispelled most admirably the fog of confusion emanating from the White House fog machine. For liberals, life or death for …