video Yesterday saw the unveiling of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's hinting at a new strategy to get the health care reform bill railroaded in Congress: A "Deem and Pass" rule that would allow lawmakers to vote on a more popular package of the Senate bill, and if that's approved in the House, it signifies that the health care bill to be passed. But MSNBC's Chris Matthews takes issue with this plan: If the Democrats avoid a direct up or down vote on the bill, they would expose themselves to criticism of "pulling a fast one," by allowing members of Congress to claim they didn't support the reform bill in its entirety, and thereby avoid having to answer for their votes. (more...)

Some have called it the "slaughterhouse rule." Others say "self-executing rule." One Democratic Congressmen on FNC called it a "self-implementing rule." But here's what you need to know about the new possible strategy by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to pass health care reform, known as "deem and pass." (more...)

video This is the reason why Jon Stewart and The Daily Show deserve all the accolades they receive: they take a topic that would be so very banal in the hands of any one else, and make it far more entertaining and informative with their own treatment. In this instance the topic is political sex scandals and the associative and hypocritical rhetoric that follows. (more...)

video Nancy Pelosi appeared on CNN's State of the Union this weekend, and was asked about the current political climate by host Candy Crowley, specifically how the Democrats would do at the mid-term elections next Fall. Pelosi confidently averred that she would maintain her role as Speaker of House, saying "the Democrats will retain majority in the House of Representatives." Is this confidence come from solid research and polling data? Or is it an example of hubris on the part of the Speaker. Either way, its likely something for the cablers to debate. (more...)

video Nancy Pelosi on This Week, clarifying some earlier statements she made about the conservative Tea Party movement being "astroturf" as opposed to a "grassroots movement." As it turns out, the Speaker of the House and those Glenn Beck fans aren't so different after all! (more...)

video Humorous hyperbole or serious threats? That's the crux of the most recent dust-up between prime time opinion-makers Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly. During a Saturday night appearance during his "Bold & Fresh" tour, O'Reilly suggested that, if he were President Obama, he would have the CIA kidnap Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Olbermann claimed the comment a "violence fantasy" and calling O'Reilly a danger to elected officials. Second verse, same as the first. (more...)

video Sarah Palin made her Fox News debut "The O'Reilly Factor," taking questions on today's top political news and issues. Host Bill O'Reilly was friendly and supportive, but did push Palin on the rumors of her poor intellect presented in the context of her media coverage. Nancy Pelosi, Iran, Harry Reid and of course, Barack Obama were all discussed, and as expected, Palin eloquently hit all talking points consistent with the conservative agenda. (more...)

video Glenn Beck snapped back to the present for a moment last night to jump on the CSPAN debacle over whether the health care debates will be televised as promised by President Obama during the campaign. Watching Nancy Pelosi's remarks ("hallucinations," "lies") regarding the whole situation made Beck feel like a Soviet citizen for the first time in his life! (The red phone notwithstanding). Video below. (more...)

video Through a letter addressed to Henry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb is requesting that all "important negotiations" in reconciling the differences between the House and be opened up to C-SPAN's cameras. This request is sure to be a hot political topic, as it directly confronts President Obama's campaign promise for transparency, specifically his pledge to open up the health care talks for C-SPAN's cameras. (more...)

video Time's Person of the Year can "Sometimes be surprising, sometimes be controversial, but always interesting," as Meredith Vieira put it on this morning's Today Show, where Time managing editor Richard Stengel announced the nominees. The same can be said of the list of finalists. A few were no-brainers (Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke), at least one was puzzling (The Chinese Worker?). And some omissions (i.e. Twitter) may have been the biggest surprises of all: (more...)

The latest Glenn Beck outburst to garner big media attention is a bizarre segment of his radio show in which he compares Tiger Woods to OJ Simpson. Beck's comments have people accusing Beck of bigotry (buttressed by the fact that he went on to reference another black athlete, Kobe Bryant, whose offense was also not comparable to Woods'), but at least equally disturbing was his return to the "poisoning women" well. Check it out. It may be an overreach to label Beck a racist for this clip, but it's tough to argue that his only real basis for comparison isn't that Woods and Simpson are both prominent black athletes, with white women in common as well. When someone on the show points out that "the thing with OJ was the murders," Beck replies that a woman was ambulanced away from Woods' home. Strikeout, Glenn. There was no ambulance involved in Simpson's crime. He then goes on to reference Kobe Bryant, who was accused of rape, rather than a more sensible comparison like Eliot Spitzer. Does all of this make Beck a racist, or simply the product of a culture that has long viewed accomplished black people through the prism of race first, and everything else second? Was Beck deliberately baiting a trap in a landscape where accusing someone of being a racist is more radioactive than actually being one? What I found especially bizarre was Beck's reference, later in the clip, to poisoning women. When rattling off things that Woods could leak and then deny, he says "(Woods) just needs to say 'My gosh! I tried to poison a woman in my house last night.' And when it turns out she was...she just slipped and broke her hip, or whatever it was, you can say 'My gosh, thank goodness he's not an attempted murderer." It's a little odd to conjure poisoning a woman as a hypothetical, it's not the first thing that leaps to mind, but it's downright creepy when you put that next to this: Maybe he's just a big Bell Biv Devoe fan.

With the House's passage of a health care reform bill that includes the now-infamous Stupak Amendment, abortion has become a hot topic this week. As a result, the RNC was embarrassed to find out that it's health insurance plan has covered elective abortions since 1991. Pro-life Democrats, then, might be interested to know that Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mi) has received large campaign contributions for years from 2 group that make money selling insurance that covers elective abortions. (more...)

video Yesterday on Office Hours we discussed with WaPo's Howie Kurtz whether the Stupak amendment was getting as much coverage in the press as it deserved, and whether, because it didn't have polarizing figures opposing it (a la Beck, Bachmann, Armey) the amendment hadn't generated the kind of controversy cable news loves to cover. Howie's take was, if this is actually the case the media is falling down on the job. Yes, well. (more...)

video Looks like women unhappy with the Dems last-minute decision to add the Stupak amendment to the health care bill, which forbids public funding of abortion except in cases of rape or incest, may have found a rather loud voice in Rachel Maddow. She was definitely on fire last night. (more...)

video You'd be forgiven for concluding, after a weekend of celebratory headlines, that Congress's passing of the health care bill on Saturday night was the final step in the long slog that saw many ups and downs this summer. Of course, you'd be wrong. Saturday's results, which saw Congress pass the bill 220 to 215 (one Republican yea and 30 Dem nays) thanks in large part to Nancy Pelosi's willingness to throw away coverage for "elective" abortions in what is now being referred to as "the biggest turning point in the battle over the procedure since the ban on so-called partial birth abortions six years ago" still has to make it through the Senate. Judging from some reactions on the Sunday shows, it's going to be a battle, to say the least. (more...)

"We feel that we're about to do today something that's been attempted now for almost 100 years," House Majority Whip James Clyburn told reporters after what he called an "uplifting" meeting between Congressional Democrats and the president. Though CNN referred to the contents of the meeting as "secret," one thing's for sure: Democrats can practically taste health care reform -- in whatever form it takes today. (more...)

video A relatively unknown Democratic Congressman from Florida made his celebrity debut on the House floor and in front of CSPAN cameras this week, and since then it's become the sound bite everyone's discussing (video after the jump). Representative Alan Grayson of the ninth district has now reached political celebrity because of his sarcastic rant describing the Republican health care plan, which went a little like this:  (more...)