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5.5 million — Number of jobs that could be lost as a result of taxes on businesses that cannot afford to provide health insurance coverage, according to a model developed by Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer

$729.5 billion — Total new taxes on small businesses, individuals who cannot afford health coverage, and employers who cannot afford to provide coverage that meet federal bureaucrats’ standards

$1.055 trillion — New federal spending on expanded health insurance coverage over the next ten years, according to a Congressional Budget Office preliminary score of the bill

0.7% — Percentage of all that new spending occurring in the bill’s first three years-representing a debt and tax “time bomb” in the program’s later years set to explode on future generations

$88,200 — Definition of “low-income” family of four for purposes of health insurance subsidies

114 million — Number of individuals who could lose their current coverage under the bill’s government-run health plan, according to non-partisan actuaries at the Lewin Group

43 — Entitlement programs the bill creates, expands, or extends-an increase from H.R. 3200

111 — Additional offices, bureaus, commissions, programs, and bureaucracies the bill creates over and above the entitlement expansions-more than double the number in H.R. 3200

3,425 — Uses of the word “shall,” representing new duties for bureaucrats and mandates on individuals, businesses, and States-also more than double the number in H.R. 3200

$60 billion — Loss sustained by taxpayers every year due to Medicare fraud, according to a recent 60 Minutes expose; the government-run health plan does not reform the ineffective anti-fraud statutes and procedures that have kept Medicare on the Government Accountability Office’s list of high-risk programs for two decades

Zero — Prohibitions on government programs like Medicare and Medicaid from using cost-effectiveness research to impose delays to or denials for access to life-saving treatments

$634 Billion — Amount that could be saved by denying individuals access to treatments that are not “cost-effective,” according to a report by the liberal Commonwealth Fund; Section 1160 of the bill gives bureaucrats in the Obama Administration virtual free rein to develop a new “high-value” reimbursement system for Medicare by May 2012

2017 — Year Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted-an entitlement crisis exacerbated by the bill, which according to the Congressional Budget Office will increase the federal budgetary commitment to health care by $598 billion in its first ten years alone

$2,500 — Promised savings for each American family from health reform, according to then-Senator Obama’s campaign pledge-savings which the Administration’s own actuaries have confirmed will not materialize, as the Pelosi health care bill would increase the growth of health care costs

Source: HRC

I've decided that there are enough significant reforms and safeguards in this bill to move forward, but much more work needs to be done.

There is much gnashing of teeth by abortion supporters over the inclusion of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment in the Speaker Nancy Pelosi health care bill – H.R. 3962.  Bart Stupak, Michigan Democrat, and Joe Pitts, Pennsylvania Republican, succeeded in amending H.R. 3962 so that no government funds can be used to pay for abortion.  Claims that Stupak-Pitts is out of line with current law or that it is unconstitutional are simply false.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment (“Stupak-Pitts”) combines two principles.  First, it contains the core principle of the Hyde Amendment that the government not encourage abortion through direct funding or subsidization of the cost of plans that cover elective abortion.  Second, Stupak-Pitts refuses to accept deceptive schemes in which funds deposited into a common pot are claimed to be separate.  Stupak-Pitts recognizes the obvious truth that money is fungible.  Hence, Stupak does not swallow the deception that government subsidized insurance policies covering abortion do not involve the government in the promotion or encouragement of abortion through subsidies.

Anyone with an ounce of foresight on the Left should have seen this coming.  The current principle in federal law – a la Hyde – is that the United States government does not pay for abortions (with exceptions of mother’s life, rape and incest) or pay for the cost of any plan that covers abortion.  This principle even carries over to the private plans purchased by government employees.  Now, if, as the Democrats want, the government is going to dominate, micro-regulate, and subsidize the nation’s health care system – both government run and privately insured – then the question of how the Hyde principle will apply to these new programs arises immediately.

The answer is that Hyde’s logic runs the gamut of all the new health care expenditures and programs.  Therefore, Stupak-Pitts carries Hyde forward and refuses to buy into the accounting gimmicks that would give the Democrats cover for funding abortions.  Speaker Pelosi had a choice.  She could either allow a vote on Stupak’s amendment, or she could accept the defeat of her health care bill.  She chose to allow a vote on Stupak-Pitts, and her side lost.  To strip Stupak-Pitts from the bill now would be highly dishonest, and, if Stupak-Pitts can count votes, it will lead to the defeat of Obama-Pelosi health care in the House.

As for the claims that Stupak-Pitts is unconstitutional, they are wrong as well.

The major constitutional point here is that the Congress is given wide discretion in deciding how to spend money and fund or not fund certain activities.  This is true even if the activity in question rests on the exercise of a constitutional right.  The old saw is that merely because there is freedom of the press, the government doesn’t have to buy a writer a printing press, paper, and ink.  The abortion-promoting members of Congress need to tell us why the government should buy them their equivalent of a printing press.

The argument that Stupak-Pitts violates Establishment Clause principles is absurd.  Stupak-Pitts establishes no church or a favored religious organization.  It apparently came as a shock to Lynn Woolsey and Diana DeGette that Catholics are allowed to vote and petition their government.  While considering whether to import Guy Fawkes Day to the American calendar, they and their acolytes have issued various threats and slanders against the Papists.  Such claims probably won’t sway Justice Kennedy.  Furthermore, you don’t have to be a Christian to be pro-life.  Even atheists can read ultra-sounds.  Ask Bernard Nathanson, a physician and founder of the modern abortion movement whose viewing of fetal ultrasounds led him to reject abortion.

A series of liberal activist constitutional claims are also made against Stupak-Pitts.  Equal Protection Clause.  Substantive Due Process.  Privacy.  All the usual suspects.  In other words, the gamut of the “We’re liberals and we don’t like this law, so it’s unconstitutional” arguments.  Unfortunately for the Stupak opponents, each of these claims could be made against the Hyde Amendment, and the 1980 decision upholding the Hyde Amendment, Harris v. McRae, has stood for 30 years.  Furthermore, the public has held constant in its disapproval of government endorsement and promotion of abortion since Hyde’s first enactment.

Of course, all these arguments are academic in some sense.  What matters these days is the amount of raw judicial power that can be exercised by the Supreme Court’s judicial activists and policy makers.  Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor will vote to overturn Hyde & Stupak.  It boils down to Justice Kennedy – - again.  Ain’t life grand in a judicial oligarchy?

A 62 megabyte zip file, containing around 160 megabytes of emails, pdfs and other documents, has been confirmed as genuine by the head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, Dr Phil Jones.

In an exclusive interview with Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition, Jones confirms his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to have come from his organisation.

“It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”

Keith Johnson has commented on the Wall Street Journal's blog:

Some of the old emails from scientists made public apparently make references to things like “hid[ing] the decline,” referring to global temperature series and different ways to slice and dice climate data.

In all, it seems there are more than 3,000 files in the hacked folders, which have been reposted in various places on the Internet.

The big Copenhagen summit had lost a lot of its appeal in recent days, as world leaders kept dialing down expectations for the climate talks. Maybe this will spice things up.

ClimateDepot has complete coverage of the story, including all the latest developments as this story spreads. 

To find comments like "I'll maybe cut the last few points off the filtered curve before I give the talk again as that's trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent cold-ish years" from these climate experts, go here for a full searchable database of the hacked emails.

We'll definitely be keeping an eye on this "smoking gun" story to see how it all unfolds...