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On the day of Traficant’s scheduled release, the Mahoning Valley Scrappers minor-league baseball team will observe Traficant Release Night at its 7:05 p.m. home game against the Jamestown Jammers at Eastwood Field in Niles.

Truth #1:  Abolishes the Private Market for Individual Health Insurance

What the bill does:  Section 102(c) of the bill states that after 2013, “individual health insurance coverage…may only be offered” through the government-run Exchanges established in the bill.

What this means for Americans:  Purchasing private individual coverage will be outlawed.  Individuals will likely have fewer, and more expensive, coverage options—a “Hobson’s choice” allowing Americans to choose any plan they like, so long as it’s the “bureaucrat-approved” one.

Truth #2:  Federal Grants to Care for Pets; Federal Debt for People

What the bill does:  Section 2231 of the bill creates a new Public Health Workforce Corps, complete with its own scholarship program.  Among those eligible for scholarships—which include “tuition, fees, books, equipment, and laboratory expenses,” as well as a stipend that could exceed $15,000 per year—are individuals studying at “an accredited graduate school or program of…veterinary medicine.”  Veterinary students are also eligible for loan forgiveness of up to $35,000 annually through the Public Health Workforce Corps.

What this means for Americans:  At a time when this year’s annual budget deficit could top $2 trillion, the federal government will spend additional money it does not have to train veterinarians to care for pets—even as the Democrat health “reform” legislation would still leave 17 million Americans uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Truth #3:  Federal Bureaucrats Will Teach Americans How to Write in “Plain Language”
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We are in danger of not achieving Rev. Neuhaus' kind of disagreement about health care. Nobody should mob Members of Congress or shout them down. By the same token, Americans with serious and well-thought out objections to the health care takeover proposed by our representative government should not be demonized by national leaders as Nazis or sneered at as being too well dressed.

It does not help to have President Obama dismiss legitimate concerns about taxpayers being forced to pay for abortion-on-demand through his health care plan. Asked by Katie Couric about federally-funded abortion in his health proposal, Mr. Obama indicated he didn't want to "get distracted by the abortion debate..."  The 3,000 unborn children aborted daily are a "distraction?" 

"If a true public option is enacted -- and Obama knows this -- it will eventually bring about a single payer system, because the profit-making insurance companies won't be able to compete with a government run plan and make the profits they want to make."

"I probably shouldn't be saying this, but I'm counting on the fact that Republicans won't be reading this ROLLING STONE." 

"The death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, and this should be reflected in our priorities."

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that's what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they'll tell you that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).

Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy.

So while Sarah Palin's comments probably struck the average person as having come out of nowhere, those who mock the notion that government could -- and would -- eventually ration health care are either being intellectually dishonest -- or are simply not paying attention.

Take Obama's initiative to overhaul health care , he says.

Obama "outsourced his health care policy, deferred to the congressional wing -- and now it's his. And he's now trying to sell something that wasn't his," says Lunde.

Lunde knows the insiders as well as anyone. As executive director at the DNC, he mentored a young Rahm Emanuel. As campaign manager to Paul Simon's presidential campaign, he hired David Axelrod as media adviser. He was also close with White House Communications Director Anita Dunn; the two worked together in 1981 to organize a breakfast club for new Democrats. Though he considers himself a Democratic Leadership Council "Blue Dog" Democrat, Lunde angered many Democrats when he supported George W. Bush for president.

Transcript -

I think the record should show that this is one of those spontaneous things that we always arrange whenever the President comes in to speak, and it will be so reported in the press, and we don't mind, because they have to call it as they see it.

But on our part, believe me, it is spontaneous.

You are here to say goodbye to us, and we don't have a good word for it in English -- the best is au revoir. We'll see you again.
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Legislation to permit law enforcement to jam prisoners' cell phone calls easily cleared a Senate committee on Wednesday, the latest example of how Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has used her seniority to push Texas-centric issues that translate directly to her run for governor.

Yet Hutchison has been absent from the committee's work on two top priorities of Congress: health care legislation and consumer protection. When she recently announced her departure from the Senate in the fall, she said she'd stay in Washington long enough to participate in the health legislation.

"It's very helpful and in the interest of consumers when the chairman and ranking member are able to be there, because it gives us a perspective on what both sides of the aisle are concerned about," said Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League, who testified at two of the consumer hearings.

“Hutchison missed all four Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearings that explored problems with health insurers, including one that showed insurers "purge" small-business beneficiaries if their claims exceed underwriters' expectations.”

"When she looks at the health care debate, she just doesn't see how you can really turn that to advantage in a governor's race in Texas," said Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University. "I think she's deciding she has better ways to spend her time."

The committees are integral forums for lawmakers, who use meetings to build legislation, conduct oversight and press a case for pet issues that sometimes never result in legislation.

In April, Hutchison used a Commerce hearing to promote one of the latter – her proposal to let Texas opt out of the federal system that funds highway construction. She called as a witness a Texas transportation commissioner, Ned Holmes, a Perry appointee who broke with the governor's strategy to finance most new highway construction through tolls.