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But there is another issue that we have raised and will keep raising as the debate goes forward: The constitutionality of the Democratic plans.

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked recently at the introduction of her mammoth health care “reform” bill if the measure was constitutional, the usually glib Californian was caught off-guard.  “Are you serious?” she asked.  And, a second time, “Are you serious?”  She then turned to another reporter without answering further.

At least House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer gives the Constitution a guilty nod.  He says that the “general welfare” clause gives Congress the right to pass a massive health care bill full of mandates on businesses and individuals and higher taxes for all.
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In a Nov. 9 entry on The Huffington Post...  they suggest a separate category altogether, not for political non-fiction, but conservative non-fiction.

"Should The New York Times create a separate bestseller list for conservative blockbusters?" the post said. "Think of the history: we have a children's bestseller list because of "Harry Potter" -- Harry was knocking adult books off the top spots on the hardcover fiction list so publishers complained. The same thing must be true for Beck, Palin, Cheney, Bush (George W. and Laura), Malkin and others. What do you think?"

HuffPo isn't the only liberal source bothered by right-wing literary success. Pundits like MSNBC's Chris Matthews have openly expressed aggravation over conservatives dominating the list. However, the Huffington Post novel solution of "if you can't beat them, put them on their own list," seems to be a sign the left has given up on its own ability to sell hardcover non-fiction.

What's more, conservatives are selling books without the usual push best selling authors get from other media. A recent study by the Media Research Center's Culture & Media Institute found that most of the conservative books that appeared on the list often went unnoticed or unmentioned by the networks, while liberal authors and books enjoyed plenty of coverage.

Yesterday, [Rahm] Emanuel was quoted in the NY Times pushing back against liberal critics who think Democrats have watered down healthcare reform too much.

"The goal isn’t to see whether I can pass this through the executive board of the Brookings Institution," Emanuel quippd. "I’m passing it through the United States Congress with people who represent constituents.”

Today, William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings (the Ezra K. Zihka Chair in Governance Studies, to be exact) penned a testy response to the White House Chief of Staff...

"Dear Rahm," Galston began. "It may surprise you to learn that many of us here at Brookings like politics as much as you do, and some of us even know something about it."

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The office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says that the Stupak amendment does not prohibit by law private insurance companies from offering plans that include abortion coverage to women not receiving government subsidies.

But many in the abortion-rights community say the amendment will likely have that effect because so many Americans would be receiving a subsidy, insurance companies would drop abortion coverage so as to appeal to the largest number of consumers possible.

Let's all think about what that means.  By that logic, the plans open to those receiving government subsidies would effectively determine what health care benefits are available to us all -- if they don't cover it, this argument goes, no one will, for competitiveness reasons.

So just take abortion out of the equation for a minute.  In effect, what the liberals and abortion rights activists are telling us is an ugly truth about the House "reform": It will effectively impose one-size-fits-all health care on Americans.  The plan(s) open to those receiving government subsidies (and therefore essentially under government control) will indirectly determine what you and I will be able to get from our own private health care plan.

And on the off-chance that there remains a plan that offers more benefits but at higher cost, we'll be taxed for choosing it.

Nice.

Conservatives have long been pointing to the two states that the Left has held up as models for health care reform - Massachussetts and Maine - as a cautionary tale for the rest of the nation. To many people's surprise, even the New York Times today picked up on this.

Maine’s history is a cautionary tale for national health reform. The state could never figure out how to slow the spiraling increase in medical costs, hobbling its efforts to offer more people insurance coverage.

A state-sponsored insurance plan has been capped at fewer than 9,000 [enrollees] because of financing problems.

The story quotes Tarren Bragdon, CEO of the Maine Heritage Policy Center. Tarren wrote about Maine's public option insurance system, Dirigo, in Townhall back in July.

Dirigo passed in 2003 with bipartisan support, based on promises made by the governor and other supporters of this big government overhaul. At that time, legislators and the public were assured the taxpayer-funded government-run plan would cover all 128,000 uninsured Mainers by 2009. Taxpayers were also promised that Dirigo would pay for itself by through savings government would create within Maine’s health care system and that funding for the program would never require new taxes or tax increases. Sound familiar?
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