O’Brien did a good job of challenging that false premise, but allowed guest Rep. Marcia Blackburn (R-TN) to slip in the lie that the mandate covers the “abortion pill.”

RELATED: Contraceptive Mandate Is Not About Religious Liberty, It’s About Female Liberty

Ms. O’Brien repeatedly pressed Rep. Blackburn to explain how the administration’s decision had anything to do with religious liberty. In responding, Rep. Blackburn inserted a popular lie about the mandate, one which the media has been slow to correct.

“It is about forcing employers to provide things that go against their religious beliefs,” Rep. Blackburn said. “And when you have individuals that go to church on Sunday and put money in the offering plate, they need to be assured that that money is not going to go and pay for contraception items, for abortion pills. And this mandate covers all FDA-approved medications.”

RELATED: This Week Host Lets George Will Lie About Contraceptive Mandate And ‘Abortion-Inducing Drugs’

The “abortion pill,” RU-486, is not covered by the mandate, of course, but Rep. Blackburn was likely trying to conflate emergency contraception with the abortion pill. They are not the same thing, so while some religions may promote that idea as an article of faith, it is a medical fact that they are not the same. Emergency contraception prevents pregnancy from occurring, and is for use long before a pregnancy is even possible.

O’Brien’s other guest, the ACLU’s Louise Melling, explained why the mandate does not infringe on religious liberty. “This respects religious liberty,” Melling said. “Churches don’t have to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their package. What this rule says is institutions like hospitals and charities and schools that open their doors to the public, serve primarily the public, don’t have a primary purpose of religion, have to offer the same insurance everybody else does. 98% of American women use contraception, including Catholics. This say it is you serve the public, you play by public rules.”

RELATED: Fox News Analyst Falsely States New Regs Require Religious Employers To Provide Abortions

The “religious liberty” argument has even gained traction among Democrats, partially because the Obama administration, and even people like Ms. Melling, have failed to make the simple, essential argument that this decision is about equal protection under the law for women. The Preventive Services Mandate itself is about achieving parity for women’s preventive health services with everyone else’s, and the decision about the “conscience exemption” is about extending that protection to women who work in institutions that serve the general public, religious or not.

While I disagree strongly with most of what he says about this, Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough deserves a bit of credit for pointing out, this morning, that the Preventive Services Mandate doesn’t cover abortion services of any kind, and I’d even tend to agree that the administration did a poor job of rolling this out. By letting it just sort of pop out and lie there, shivering, the administration has allowed the measure’s critics to control the discussion, so that even when they do a good job of defending the decision, the best they can do is convince people they’re not infringing on religious liberty. There’s a bumper sticker.

RELATED: Dear Media: There’s No Such Thing As A ‘Morning-After Abortion Pill’

They should have announced this decision with a strong statement about equal protection, and about protecting women from having their employer’s religious beliefs imposed on them. Instead of answering questions like “Why should Catholic hospitals provide contraceptive coverage?” the media could, and should, be asking “Why should a woman be denied the same rights as others, just because she works at a Catholic hospital?”

Here’s the clip, from CNN’s Starting Point:

RELATED: Dear Media: There’s No Such Thing As A ‘Morning-After Abortion Pill’

Women’s health has been a hot topic in the news this week, with heated interest in the Obama administration’s announcement that certain religious employers would have one year to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s Preventive Services Mandate, and the intense backlash toward, and reversal of, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity’s decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood. There are strong opinions on every side of these issues, but on issues of medical fact, there is only one set of facts, and it is the news media’s duty to ensure that.

Conservative opponents of contraception have been trying to inject their articles of faith into the medical nomenclature around emergency contraception for a long time. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich mentioned the medically paradoxical “Morning After Abortion Pill” in an opposition memo a few months ago, and Rep. Michele Bachmann had also been dropping references to the mythical meds into her stump speeches.

In early January, Bachmann made the unchallenged claim on Fox News’ Fox and Friends, and a few weeks later, Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. falsely claimed that the new Preventive Services regs require religious employers who employ people of multiple faiths to “provide drugs that induce abortions.”

RELATED: Fox News Analyst Falsely States New Regs Require Religious Employers To Provide Abortions

Hardball host Chris Matthews made the qualified statement that Catholics believe that certain types of contraception are “abortive,” but failed to provide the correct medical information, in a recent segment on the mandate.

On Sunday morning’s This Week, columnist George Will tried to change the subject from the Komen decision, telling host George Stephanopoulos “A much more important decision politically that was taken this week was the Obama administration saying that Catholic institutions have no choice, and this was applauded by pro-choice people, have no choice but to provide contraception, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization.”

Stephanopoulos blankly replied, “I want to get to that, as well,” meaning the subject of the contraceptive mandate, but he never corrected Will’s assertion.

As I’ve written in this space several times now, the “morning after pill” is not an “abortion pill,” it can never be an “abortion pill,” because pregnancy cannot occur within the drug’s effectiveness window. Furthermore, the actual “abortion pill,” RU-486, is not covered by the Preventive Services Mandate (nor is it approved for over-the-counter sale, like Plan B is). The information that Will, et al, are disseminating is medically inaccurate, and people like Stephanopoulos have a duty to correct it, the way news organizations eventually corrected Michele Bachmann’s ludicrous claims about the HPV vaccine.

Broadcasting false medical information is a potentially dangerous act that is, at the very least, grossly irresponsible. In this case, it has the potential of discouraging women from using a medication that they have no reason to fear, or to encourage misuse of that same medication.

If Geogre Will said that large doses of aspirin cause four-hour erections, or that Lipitor makes you go blind, Stephanopoulos would surely have corrected him, but when it comes to women’s health, the media doesn’t seem to be taking science seriously. It falls to news consumers like you (and me) to demand that they do.

Here’s the clip, from ABC News’ This Week:

Much of Santorum’s rhetoric in this clip is comprised of familiar talking points, but they’re delivered so ineptly that they expose the cold, dead heart at the center of Republican positions on health care.

Santorum opens up with the familiar, false idea that the insurance company-friendly Affordable Care Act amounts to government-run health care, and says “they’re trying to get rid of Health Savings Accounts” because “they don’t trust you, that you can provide for yourself.”

Health Savings Accounts are simply a vehicle to allow insurance companies to sell junk policies that don’t cover anything, and that force people to ration their own care by cost. When they were introduced, I was a health insurance consultant, and my company pushed HSA plans hard, because they were easier to sell. While the premiums were about half that of traditional plans, the HSA plans were extremely profitable because the company paid out far less in claims. That advantage is compounded by the fact that sick or at-risk patients aren’t likely to enroll in those plans, further reducing the cost to insurance companies.

Santorum followed this by saying, exasperatedly, “No, we have to have something for everybody! We can’t have people having access to better health care…”

He stopped then, realizing that he’d given away the game, before editing himself to say “health insurance than other people. No! It all has to be the same! Is that American? Equality of result? Is that what built the greatest country in the history of the world? No. That’s what’s destroying most of the countries in the world.”

That slip is all-important, because in matters of life and death, equality of result is supremely American. When someone’s house catches fire, anyone’s house, we expect that fire to be put out. When a person is being assaulted, we expect the police to come to their aid. That’s the American way.

There’s nothing to prevent the more well-off to hire extra security at their own expense, or elaborate sprinkler systems, but everyone expects that they won’t be left to die. Unequal health insurance is fine; unequal health care is not. Unfortunately, one contributes to the other, and the Affordable Care Act, while better than the status quo, is still a half-measure. It’s true that the law requires emergency treatment at the Emergency Room, but waiting for acute symptoms isn’t health care, it’s sick care, and it’s sick.

The Republicans have made repealing Obamacare a focal point of their campaigns this year, and that could be a huge miscalculation. It is far from a sure thing that Americans will become nostalgic for the days when insurance companies could deny them care over a preexisting condition, or that they want to live in a country that makes people pay for losing a job with their health, or even their lives. People don’t die because somebody else had access to health care, they die because they don’t.

Here’s the clip, from CNN:

(h/t ThinkProgress)

Baier began by referencing Romney’s book, which had a line about the health care mandate (“We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country.”) removed in its paperback version, and Romney’s insistence that his Romneycare law is not the same as Obamacare.

“Do you still support the idea of a mandate? Do you believe that that was the right thing for Massachusetts? Do you think a mandate, mandating people to buy insurance is the right tool?” Baier asked.

A clearly frustrated Romney replied, with a strained laugh, “Bret, I don’t know how many hundred times I’ve said this, too — this is an unusual interview. All right, let’s do it again.”

Romney reminded Baier of all the times he has said that his plan was only a good idea at the state level, at which point Baier, to his credit, reminded the candidate of what that other Romney guy has been saying. “Governor, you did say, on camera and other places, that at times you thought it would be a model for the nation.”

“You’re wrong, Bret,” Romney shot back.

“No, there’s tape,” Baier replied.

Perhaps a bit rattled, Romney urged Baier to continue to “read the tape,” insisting that his position on the individual mandate has always been “for each state to be able to look at it.”

Unfortunately, Baier didn’t produce any tape for Romney to “read,” but we’ve got some that might have come in handy last night. In a 2009 Meet The Press appearance, Romney endorsed the Healthy Americans Act, also known as the Wyden-Bennett bill, which would have “establish(ed) Healthy Americans Private Insurance Plans (HAPIs) and require those who do not already have health insurance coverage, and who do not oppose health insurance on religious grounds, to enroll themselves and their children in a HAPI.”

Here’s what Romney said then: (emphasis mine, h/t Ezra Klein)

…the right way to proceed is to reform health care. That we can do, as we did it in Massachusetts, as Wyden-Bennett is proposing doing it at the national level. We can do it for the nation, we can get everybody insured, we can get the cost of health care down, but we don’t have to have government insurance and government running health care to get that done.

Your witness, Mr. Baier.

As sorry as I feel for the Romney Dangerfield of the Republican field, I feel even worse for the voters he can’t seem to get no respect from. How is it that a group of people who hate Obamacare so much have now ended up having to choose between the Wright Brothers of the individual mandate? In case you missed it, Romney made it fly, but he credits Newt Gingrich for the blueprints.

Here’s the health care portion of Bret Baier’s interview with Mitt Romney, from Fox News:

“Not only have lower courts upheld (the law’s) constitutionality,” Carney began, “but the fact of the individual mandate being both constitutional and wise policy is an opinion shared across the ideological spectrum. A former governor of Massachusetts just said, the other day, ‘The idea for a health care plan in Massachusetts was not mine alone. The Heritage Foundation, a great conservative think tank, helped on that. I’m told Newt Gingrich, one of the very first people who came up with the idea of an individual mandate, did that years and years ago. It was seen as a conservative idea to say, you know what? People have a responsibility for caring for themselves if they can. We’ll help people who can’t care for themselves, but if you can care for yourself, you gotta take care of yourself and pay your own bills.’”

“That’s the former governor of Massachusetts describing the individual mandate, and why it’s smart policy, and we certainly agree.”

The fact that Romney has to defend the mandate at all (while dragging Newt Gingrich down with him) is a political problem in and of itself, but he needs Jay Carney amplifying, and agreeing with, his quote like he needs a hole in the head. Not for nothing, but you’re not likely to hear anyone in the Obama administration defending a policy by quoting Herman Cain anytime soon.

Here’s a clip of Romney’s remarks, from ThinkProgress:

The other panelists had less surprising offers: focusing on Afghanistan as a war of necessity and not closing down the prison at Guantanamo Bay were two of the ideas thrown out there. But Fineman and fellow panelist David Ignatius agreed that the president’s focus on health care reform was the biggest mistake of his presidency.

Fineman’s take:

His decision to spend all of his political capital and a year-and-a-half of his time on the health care reform law, I think, was his biggest political mistake.

Ignatius echoed Fineman’s sentiments, also pointing out that President Obama did not have that much political capital on health care reform to begin with.

The idea of watching a major change in social legislation without having a consensus in the country and in Congress about what that should look like was a mistake. That’s not how the president makes good policy.

Watch the video below, courtesy of NBC News:

(h/t Breitbart TV)

After giving a rather standard speech about the recent gridlock within the Beltway (that sounded an awful lot like a stump speech), Obama took a few questions, one of which focused on medical marijuana. The President took a somewhat oblique angle in his answer by bringing up “obamacare,” saying
“I have no problem with folks saying ‘Obamacares.’…I do care.”

Astute readers will point out that the term in question is “Obamacare,” not “Obamacares,” and while some will view this like a kid answering playground bullies by saying, “Yes, I am a homo…a homo sapien,” the President seemed genuine in his dismissal of the term. After all, the notion that a president should care about his constituents shouldn’t be considered such a bad thing, right? Though the President’s detractors would quickly opine that it has nothing to do with “care,” and more to do with fiscal responsibility.

Either way, there is at least one thing that we can take from the following clip: he feels our pain.

Watch the clip below, courtesy of C-Span:

(H/T Jake Tapper)

Maddow and Steele predictably interpreted President Obama’s speech on health care reform in completely different ways, with Steele calling it a “45 minute campaign speech” and Maddow arguing that she was “surprised to see that much policy from the President.” “I thought that he was going to be campaign, campaign, campaign,” Maddow confessed. That said, while Maddow was unhappy with the current health care plan, she also viewed it as “the only federal effort we’ve had to lower health costs,” with Republicans instead offering “to make old people pay.”

Steele, of course, disagreed with that assessment, though he agreed that “insurance companies are something you’ve got to watch.” “But at the end of the day,” Steele warned, “the government can be just as bad as that bad old insurance company.” Steele argued that, rather than let the government take care of it, Republicans are talking “about looking at the market forces that can help drive those costs down.” He also added that he didn’t believe Democrats had to “upend the entire system to create an avenue for portability.” “I don’t think we need to rejigger the entire system,” he concluded.

Maddow was happy to hear the news: “I think that rejiggering the entire system enough to privatize health care is the type of rejiggering that I am delighted to hear you say reps are going to run on.”

The segment via MSNBC below:

The nut of Weiner’s argument is that many GOP House members have openly opposed President Obama‘s health care reform under grounds that the U.S. government should not be in the position of acting as a health care provider. As such, last night, the Republicans put forth an amendment aimed at defunding what is derisively referred to as “Obamacare.”

Enter Representative Weiner (D-NY), who notes the considerable irony that many of the elected congressional representatives enjoy terrific health care that is….government funded. The simple question he asks is this: if a GOP rep is so opposed to Government supported health care, should he or she not first decline said coverage on principle?

Watch the clip below, courtesy of CSPAN.

(H/T Crooks and Liars)

The repeal of the Health Care bill is largely recognized as a legislative non-starter as there is almost no chance that it will get through the Democratically controlled Senate, and the White House has made clear that President Obama would veto the bill regardless. So why proceed? As Speaker of the House John Boehner said earlier on the House floor, he feels its important to make good on the GOP pledge to their constituents who put them in office.

Watch the impassioned comments from Rep. Weiner below.

(H/T Reddit)

While King gave Walsh “a lot of credit” for his stance, he indicated he would be keeping his benefits. Blitzer let it slide, of course, but we’ve got the video.

Here’s the segment, from CNN’s The Situation Room:

While the knee-jerk reaction is to call King a hypocrite for not refusing the insurance, I have to side with King here. It’s not hypocrisy, it’s naked self-interest, and completely consistent with GOP ideology.

What is hypocritical is his “giv(ing) a lot of credit” to Walsh, who’s turning down health insurance despite having a wife with a pre-existing condition. Left to fend for themselves in an individual market that still has 3 years left to discriminate against adults with pre-existing conditions, Walsh says he turned the insurance down because he doesn’t “want to burden the American taxpayer with my health care bill.”

This is sheer idiocy, unless he’s also agreed to forgo his government paycheck, and to complacently die should a medical catastrophe befall him. Otherwise, the taxpayers will still be paying for his health care bill, one way or the other. If he can afford to pay, it’s with our money, and if he can’t, we all pay anyway.

Furthermore, in the system he supports, health benefits are part of the compensation that employers offer, so his refusal of benefits is actually an anti-capitalist statement, to boot.

Finally, Walsh’s gesture ignores the GOP’s crowning achievement in the health care reform debate, keeping uninsured Americans out of the Federal Employees Health Plan, or any other kind of public option. Eliminating health coverage for Congress was never part of that.

Even so, if Walsh’s foolhardy martyrdom is somehow admirable, King has no right to give the guy credit if he’s not willing to do the same.

I’ve got a better idea, though. If Walsh really doesn’t want to “burden” taxpayers, he won’t waste his time on a fruitless attempt to repeal health care reform, which would throw millions of Americans off their health insurance, just like him.

In case you were living under a rock from 2009 to 2010, the “government takeover” line was used by Republicans to describe the health care bill.  Unfortunately, rather than digging deeper into the connotative meaning and the widespread angst that Democratic proposals produced, PolitiFact fails the American people in its analysis.  According to PolitiFact,

By the time the health care bill was headed toward passage in early 2010, Obama and congressional Democrats had sanded down their program, dropping the “public option” concept that was derided as too much government intrusion. The law passed in March, with new regulations, but no government-run plan.

While this may be true, this is an oversimplification to say the least.  Obama and the Democrats were forced to “sand down” the legislation as a result of public outrage and Republican dissatisfaction with their attempt to overtake the healthcare system.  It’s not as though the liberal establishment willingly pared down the initial proposals; Democrats had no choice but to adapt to the public’s reaction.  It’s interesting that PolitiFact calls “government takeover of health care” the lie of the year when it’s impossible to deny that the entire premise of the Democratic plan was for the fed to become a direct service provider.

Looking back at Barack Obama’s own words, one can easily see big government philosophy at play.  When speaking to an SEIU audience in 2007, Obama said,

“My commitment is to make sure that we have universal healthcare for all Americans by the end of my first term as President…I would hope that we could set up a system that allows those who can go through their employer to access a federal system or a state pool of some sort. But I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be potentially some transition process.”

If this doesn’t constitute intent to take over the entire system, I’m not sure what does.  After all, the Democratic push for federally-run health care has been at the forefront of leftist agendas for the past two decades.  Unfortunately, PolitiFact contends that Republicans purposefully lied to the American people, stating that they “…didn’t let facts get in the way of a great punchline.”  Perhaps PolitiFact should consider the notion that the facts drove the discourse.

The editors and researchers over at PolitiFact contend that the “government takeover” line “…played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats’ shellacking in the November elections”.  This contention is lethargic at best, as it conveniently overlooks the overarching philosophy at play.

I’d argue that the Democrats’ own railing on about the need for government-run health care was enough to scare voters into rejecting leftist philosophy.  In its final form, the health care bill was certainly “sanded down”.  But one could argue that it’s the original provisions and the entire process that put a sour taste in the mouths of voters who, prior to Obama’s historic win, were craving change, not governmental co-opting of nearly every sector.

The November elections had little to do with the governmental takeover line and everything to do with a dislike for liberal policy.  Even though the Democrats dropped the public option in March 2010, Americans were well aware of their true intentions – and they carried this awareness to the polls.

Even in the final bill, there are a plethora of elements that constitute unprecedented government involvement in the system.  Despite legitimate concern over these tenants, PolitiFact draws some less-than-adequate comparisons in an effort to drum up support for its lie of the year.  According to PolitiFact,

Consider some analogies about strict government regulation. The Federal Aviation Administration imposes detailed rules on airlines. State laws require drivers to have car insurance. Regulators tell electric utilities what they can charge. Yet that heavy regulation is not described as a government takeover.

Fair enough, but airlines and electric companies differ from individuals.  Where in the Constitution can one find support for requiring American citizens to purchase a product or service (let alone face a fine for not doing so)?  The answer: Nowhere.  The state car insurance example is weak, because states – not the federal government – make their own requirements (and the rules differ per state).

On a final note: If new rules or regulations, absent a “public option” are so constricting or change the landscape so much so that the system, itself, is greatly impacted, one could easily contend that the government has overtaken the system.  If a rowdy guest interrupts a birthday celebration by throwing expletives around and taking the focus away from the birthday boy or gal, one would say that he or she co-opted the party.  The health care legislation actually creates a scenario in which companies are discouraged from providing coverage, with individuals facing a fine should they choose not to opt in (and the bill barely does anything to address cost).  I’m pretty sure those disruptions, alone, constitute a control of sorts.

In the end, PolitiFact was likely well intentioned, but failed to think these elements through.  Their coverage showcases an inherent inclination toward Democratic ideals.  It’s fair to say that the GOP exaggerated slightly, but calling the party out for full-throttle political lies extends beyond insanity and into the realm of “liberal media bias”.

You may be wondering why that line is the PolitiFact Lie of the Year, especially since it’s not even a complete sentence. As they explain it:

PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen “government takeover of health care” as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats’ shellacking in the November elections.

They went on to note that their readers, too, selected “a government takeover of health care” as 2010′s top lie. They also made sure to say that their selection isn’t a statement or judgement. “The phrase is simply not true,” they wrote, before listing some of the claim’s inaccuracies:

• Employers will continue to provide health insurance to the majority of Americans through private insurance companies.

• Contrary to the claim, more people will get private health coverage. The law sets up “exchanges” where private insurers will compete to provide coverage to people who don’t have it.

• The government will not seize control of hospitals or nationalize doctors.

• The law does not include the public option, a government-run insurance plan that would have competed with private insurers.

• The law gives tax credits to people who have difficulty affording insurance, so they can buy their coverage from private providers on the exchange. But here too, the approach relies on a free market with regulations, not socialized medicine.

Yet, as proven by numerous Tea Party rallies (and even more Tea Party signs), those bulleted points made quite an impression on the electorate, whose midterm votes helped change the composition of Congress. You can read the rest of PolitiFact’s exhaustive dossier on the phrase over here.

O’Reilly’s beef centered around a pro-health-care-reform ad Griffith shot for the Obama administration; specifically, this claim:

“This year, like always, we’ll have our guaranteed benefits.”

The problem: the site FactCheck.org took issue with that claim, and a White House blog post that discussed the ad when it was released. That post said, “Under the Affordable Care Act…Seniors’ guaranteed Medicare benefits will remain the same.”

But, FactCheck said, not exactly: “As we wrote most recently last December, about 10 million Medicare Advantage recipients could see their extra benefits reduced by an average of $43 per month, according to the Congressional Budget Office.” O’Reilly took this and ran with it, discussing the matter with Fox News contributors Ellis Henican and Leslie Marshall.

Neither Henican nor Marshall seemed too outraged over the ad, but going against O’Reilly when he has a non-partisan fact-checker on his side – and is clearly relishing every moment – is a tough battle to fight. One thing we’ll say, though – this ad came out four months ago (Check the date on this post again.) Why no segment on it back then? In any case, video of last night’s segment below.

These results are drastically different from those the Institute found on September 9. In that poll, 49 percent of voters said they were in favor of the war, while just 41 percent were opposed to it.

In fact, throughout 2010, support for Afghanistan has decreased significantly—on January 14, 59 percent of voters said they believed the U.S. was doing the right thing in Afghanistan; just 35 percent told Quinippiac that our nation should not be involved there. What could be behind the shift? Perhaps voters are responding to Senator Lindsay Graham‘s recent admission that American soldiers will probably be in Afghanistan until 2014—not 2011, as the administration has said previously.

Here are some of the poll’s other interesting findings:

- 47 percent of respondents want Congress to repeal the new health care law, while 30 percent want it expanded. 18 percent want to leave it as is. 45 percent of those who answered “expand” are between 18 and 34 years old.

- A large majority of those polled are in favor of repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: 58 percent, to be exact. 34 percent don’t want it repealed.

- Most people also support a potential national ban on using cell phones while driving. 63 percent of respondents believe such a ban would be a good idea, while 34 percent say it would be a bad idea. 49 percent of respondents also said that prohibiting cell phone use while driving would make roads and highways “a great deal” safer.

She was pretty excited. And she has a point. President Obama has actually done quite a lot in the two years in office. As of today, American children can no longer be refused health coverage for “pre-existing” conditions. That seems like something that would make a good basis for a campaign ad.

Says Maddow: “Democrats are finally taking their victory lap!” Or at least she’s finally taking it for them. Obama did get heckled by a whole lot of people last night, so perhaps they need to up the victory talk just a tad. Watch below.

But according to former President Jimmy Carter, Kennedy himself is to blame for Americans’ lack of coverage. In a new interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, Carter claims that Kennedy deliberately blocked health care legislation the then-President proposed in the late ’70s.

“The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed,” he says. “It was his fault. Ted Kennedy killed the bill.”

Carter and Kennedy were political rivals; Stahl even calls Kennedy Carter’s “nemesis.” In the diary he kept while in the White House—which Carter has adapted into a new book that’s being released on Monday—Carter made frequent, disparaging mentions of Kennedy, writing sentences like this one: “Kennedy, continuing his irresponsible and abusing attitude, immediately condemned our health plan. He couldn’t get five votes for his plan.”

Carter believes Kennedy shot down his health care bill simply out of spite: “He did not want to see me have a major success in that realm,” he tells Stahl.

The full interview will air on CBS this Sunday, September 19, at 7pm. In it, Carter also discusses his energy conservation program—”Unfortunately, now we’re probably importing 12 million barrels a day, since part of my energy policies were abandoned,” he says—and the mistakes he made as president.

Sen. Coburn was speaking at a Town Hall event, taking questions and explaining his disagreement with the law. Most of his explanation of why he doesn’t support Obamacare is typical Republican fare– adverse selection, high price and low quality of health care being the cornerstone of his dissent. He opens this explanation, however, with the implication that the people who passed the bill, or at least those who wrote it, were not acting in good faith. “I believe,” he told his audience, “the plan is for this plan to fail. In fact, I know this plan will fail.”

Video via C-SPAN [h/t The Blaze] below:

HealthCare.gov is the new media wing of health care reform, which helps individuals figure out how to get insured either from a private company or from the government. Newlywed Obama, for example, is given four options of insurance, though he only lists allowed the private work option or the independent private insurance options in the area. He chooses the independent private insurance option and explains how to evaluate each choice.

He also goes through the steps of finding personalized insurance options if already suffering a pre-existing condition, which has its own special category on the website. The video doubles as instructional and promotional, as it describes a number of independent stories of people who will now have health care under the new law.

The tutorial video below:



[h/t Wonkette]

Here’s some of what Ed says:

It comes as no shock to hear a liberal talk about the American public as “children” who need scolding. (It also doesn’t come as a shock to see that Bill Press doesn’t check the data on jobs before declaring that Obama has rescued them.) That’s the entire mindset of liberalism — that the masses can’t make their own decisions and need a cadre of elites to do it for them.

That same poll shows an even worse number, 72%, who have lost faith in Republicans in Congress (the other 28% probably never had any to begin with).

I think Press was expressing the sentiment best summed up by Winston Churchill‘s famous quote, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” The tendency of human beings to want simple, easy answers for everything cuts both ways. Rush Limbaugh could have delivered a similar rant to explain President Bush’s low poll numbers.

A certain amount of President Obama‘s poll numbers belong to him. The “Bikini graph” notwithstanding, Americans are still hurting. The Obama administration can rightly claim that things would have been much worse under Bush-era policies, but they also might have been much better had they pushed for the larger stimulus that most leading economists recommended. They couldn’t have gotten any less Republican votes.

Press notes the fact that President Obama got health care reform passed, but again, if he had been a little less obsessed with getting Republican votes that were never going to materialize anyway, he could have passed a stronger law, months sooner. The public, consequently, would have been more inclined to see the benefits of the law come November.

Still, if you look at historic job approval polls, there’s roughly a third of people who will always approve of a Republican, a third will approve of a Democrat, and the country is controlled by the squishy middle third, who decide our fate based on the view of the world five feet in front of them. Things suck? Must be the President’s fault. Lemme give the other guy a shot.

President Bush was absolutely right to reject the notion of governing based on polls (what he did govern on is a different debate). We elect Presidents and legislators to make decisions based on sound judgment, in the best interests of our country. Human beings will always vote to have their cake, while opposing measures to restrict the eating of it. It’s the government’s job to decide what we actually do with the cake.

At recent White House briefings, I’ve heard Robert Gibbs paraphrase this sentiment, as well. Sometimes, doing the right thing isn’t popular, nor is doing the wrong thing. The challenge, nowadays, is in explaining which it is you’re doing.

Why do people with money have good health care and people with lower salaries not have good health care? Health should be a right for everyone.

Bush is the founder and president of Global Health Corps, an organization which promotes global health equity in the U.S. and abroad and before you think she is on a Obama taking points mission she apparently got inspired to get in this line of work after traveling in Africa with her parents. However, when pressed by Chris Wallace on what she thinks of Obama’s health care she (very smoothly) conceded she was glad that it had passed. Alas, the Bush juniors have no plans to get into politics. Watch below.

The only thing I find offensive about the term “Obamacare” is that it’s unimaginative. Opponents of health care reform in 1993 pushed back by calling it “Hillarycare.” In 17 years, they couldn’t come up with something more creative than that? I mean, there’s a better formula for “porn star names.”

The name is also misleading, since the health care reform law bears little resemblance to the health care plan that President Obama campaigned on. It would be more accurate to call it “HillObamaPublicanCare,” but that’s a little unwieldy.

Even so, he did put the full force of his political capital behind the law, so Obamacare is not exactly an outlandish name for it. It’s also not a very effective one, from an opposition standpoint. Imagine protesters outside of a grocery store, derisively chanting “Kraft-a-roni and Cheese!”

Maybe liberals are right to bristle at the name simply because their opponents thought it up, but when you compare that with, say, “tea-baggers,” they seem to have done a shitty job. Did no one think to spitball “Husseinsurance Reform?”

“Karl,” a blogger at Hot Air’s Green Room, meanwhile, has a problem with Jake Tapper having the courtesy not to offend people if there’s no good reason to do so.

Tapper tweeted that the headline “Sebelius Defends Obamacare, Files First Response to State Challenge” would be changed to “Sebelius Defends Health Care Reform…”:

Some liberal tweeps objecting to use of term “Obamacare” by contributor to my blog. No offense was intended by her, but we will change.

This gets reported by Karl as “Jake Tapper Bans Obamacare From His Blog.” He even speculates about, then rejects, the possibility that the White House “leaned on” Tapper to change the headline. Hilarious.

Daily Caller’s Jim Treacher also blogged about this, adding to the impression that there are huge numbers of liberals who find the term offensive. I don’t blame him, it’s a winning play, and it makes the other side look stupid. The reality is, a small number of people have registered this objection.

This isn’t a new thing, apparently. As I said before, I’ve been skipping the meetings, but looking back, I’ve found some hysterics about “Obamacare” being analagous to the n-word, but only by the likes of small blogs and blog commenters. Even then, it’s in the context of the way the term gets sneered, or emblazoned on a photoshop of Obama as a witch doctor, not the term itself.

I also found a blog that defends the use of the term by pointing out that Obama “used it” himself a few months ago:

Here’s the Washington Post transcript of the history-making moment when Obama uttered Obamacare for the first time:

OBAMA: An interesting thing happened a couple of weeks ago, and that is a report came out that for the first time, it turns out that more Americans are now getting their health care coverage from government than those who are getting it from the private sector. And you know what? That’s without a bill from the Democrats or from President Obama. It has nothing to do with, quote-unquote, “Obamacare.”

Of course, the President’s use of “quote-unquote” hardly denotes an endorsement of the term, but it dispels the “new n-word” idea, something the Tea Party also tried to get going re: “tea-bagger.”

The bottom line is that the term is intended to tie President Obama to health care reform in a negative way, but I think as time goes by, this will be about as effective as saying he “pals around” with Santa Claus. As the law takes effect, more and more people will find that these reforms have helped someone they know and love, either by keeping them from being denied coverage for a preexisting condition, or preventing insurance companies from rescinding their coverage when they get sick, or in any number of other ways. Liberals would do well to treat Obamacare as a brand-name, not an insult. As for conservatives, the next time you guys need to think up a clever, derisive term for something, hire a liberal. We’ve got the track record.

Ivanka Trump

Talking to Carlson on her book, Trump discussed her interview pet peeves (hint: ask lots of questions!) and the secret to her success– namely fame, fortune, and an extraordinary amount of work. Then Carlson asked her to assess the job President Barack Obama is doing, and she suddenly grew concerned. “I am fearful for my children and their children,” she commented, regarding the state of the national debt. She did not agree with the passing of the Democrats’ health care reform bill, either, and while she admits that some things have not gone completely wrong, she points to the excessive spending and what she called “a dialogue of name-throwing” against Wall Street as significant problems.

Watch her interview below:

Matthews had former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell on Hardball this Friday to discuss the issue, with the latter listing off what her perceived to be successes of the Obama administration. It made Matthews question why he didn’t hear other Democrats list victories like that more often, noting that the President “just seems so alone” when he tries to convince Americans that he has done good things during his tenure.

Rendell agreed: “we have done a poor job as Democrats,” he argued, trying to explain “so many good things the President has done… too many people are running from what has been an enormously successful administration.”

Watch their exchange below:

Chris Rock

Host Bill Maher gave Rock the space to keep his typically radical agenda in check, only interrupting once to attempt to make a race issue out of health care reform, but Rock shrugged him off. Rock delivered a pep talk most Democrats would probably appreciate. For one, he couldn’t understand why the Democrats constantly acted as if they were under siege, noting that “we’re winning by 20 [members of Congress] and we go ‘Oh, they’ve got us now!’” The Democrats, he argued, “want to win a fight without taking a punch,” and panic when they have to take what they dish out.

Rock also assessed the fear of health care reform on the right, providing an amusing analogy to the First Class cabin on an airplane suddenly being flooded by people who received a free pass from the government. Of course, he argued, the people who paid would feel cheated.

The segment from last night’s Real Time below:

Douglass says the experience has been “exhilarating and grueling,” but it is Douglass’ past job, ABC News Congressional Correspondent, that raises questions about her future plans.

Douglass joined the Obama campaign as a senior adviser in May 2008. She has recently been tasked with being the spokesperson concerning health care – a job that has, in part, run it’s course. Here’s some of her statement:

“After nearly 2 years of work that has been exhilarating and grueling in equal measure, I am going to step off the treadmill for awhile and rediscover the experience of dining with my husband on a regular basis,” Douglass said in a statement. She said she will be “cheering with pride from the sidelines as this historic law takes effect.”

Howard Kurtz broke the news on Twitter today.

Here’s Megyn Kelly discussing the story on Fox News this afternoon:

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From the AP article:

“Several federal officials say the man made dozens of calls to Pelosi’s homes in California and Washington, as well as to her husband’s business office, reciting her home address and saying if she wanted to see it again, she would not support the health care overhaul bill that was recently enacted.”

Things had been going so well for Pelosi lately: the health care bill was passed and most people in the know gave her much of the credit. Hell, two days ago, Sen. Tom Coburn called her a “nice person”. That might not sound like much but remember, that’s a Republican talking about Nancy Pelosi.

We can be sure that details about the man arrested will be quickly analyzed to death by all of the news channels. You can also be sure that at least one of those news channels is licking their lips and praying that the man is connected to a certain political movement. Until we know anything else though, we can just be thankful that the FBI did their job and that Ms. Pelosi is ok.

Remnick, who has just published (the really large…where does this man find the time?!) ‘The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama‘ was part of an admittedly refreshing MTP roundtable along with Time editor Rick Stengel (who just published his own large tome on Nelson Mandela).

This particular compare and contrast between Obama and past politicians was the result of MTP host David Gregory wanting to know whether Obama had problems inspiring people outside his own life story. “Has he found a way to reach people’s hearts when it’s not about him, and his historic journey?” Here is Remnick’s utterly grounded, not at all “gooey” response:

I don’t want to get too gooey about this, he’s a president, he’s not…he’s a politician. He’s out to make policy advances, policy victories. He does not have the same talents as Ronald Reagan, as FDR, he is himself and there’s a certain coolness to his affect. I think a lot of foreign leaders wonder why’s he not in closer touch with him, where’s the love — some of the Israelis certainly think in the last couple of weeks — and they’ve been struck by his reticence. His personal reticence. But the question is, what can he achieve. What are the major victories he can bring. And he just had a really historic victory, we shouldn’t forget, on health care.”

Sort of a breath of fresh air, no? Sunday morning meets actual conversation and leaves the shout-fest at home. Also, nice to see Obama being humanized as opposed to deified and/or buried. Something Obama apparently also likes. Remnick noted later in the program that this was Obama’s favorite New Yorker cover. Video below.

Frum’s problem becomes evident when he begins to explain why health care reform was a bad idea:

See, he still wants to be a conservative. That really cuts down on his job prospects. If he was a true apostate, he’d be the toast of the liberal blogosphere, telling appreciative millions how he’s seen the light.

Instead, Frum finds himself part of a small, lonely crowd. Christopher Buckley, himself ostracized for his endorsement of Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, says that his late father (and modern conservatism’s father) William F. Buckley would agree that firing Frum was a mistake. That may be true, but this is not your father’s GOP. Buckley himself was forced out of The National Review, the magazine his father founded, just days after that endorsement of Obama. If his dad were still alive, a defense of Frum might even land him on the GOP’s blacklist.

Colbert hits the nail on the head when he compares the GOP to a cult. The 2008 election, and the health care debate after, saw the Republicans increasingly whipping up and harnessing the energy of that fringe that Frum spoke of. The big difference now, though, is that it is the cult’s followers who are offering the Kool Aid, and the cult’s leaders who must now drink.

Still, these are unique times. With the GOP pursuing its promise to run on repealing health care reform, and with today’s encouraging job numbers, Frum and I could look like geniuses come November. That’ll be good for me, but what it does for Frum is anyone’s guess. If November goes badly enough, maybe the Republicans wake up and start listening to voices like Frum’s. More likely, though, is that it will actually increase Frum’s radioactivity. Nobody likes to hear “I told you so!” He can always join Buckley and Meghan McCain at The Daily Beast.