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Rachel Maddow calls out Judd Gregg for his 180 on the filibuster rule and his threat to stall healthcare bill in the Senate. As Rachel noted, the one point of consistency... I.O.K.W.A.R.D.I.

Sen. Judd Gregg has hundreds of procedural objections ready for a healthcare plan Democrats want to speed through the Senate.

Gregg (N.H.), the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, told The Hill in a recent interview that Republicans will wage a vicious fight if Democrats try to circumvent Senate rules and use a budget maneuver to pass a trillion-dollar healthcare plan with a simple majority.

The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) leaves Democrats with 59 Senate seats — one shy of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster. That, combined with the pushback from Republican negotiators, has prompted Democratic leaders to look more closely at using budget reconciliation to push a healthcare overhaul through.

The maneuver was originally intended to help reduce the federal deficit by allowing spending cuts and tax increases to pass by majority vote, but it has since been used to fast-track wider-scope legislation, such as former President George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts.

Republicans, however, warn that if Democrats attempt the maneuver, their healthcare bill will end up looking like Swiss cheese.

Gregg said that Republicans could file “hundreds” of points-of-order objections to the bill, each one requiring 60 votes to waive.

“We are very much engaged in taking a hard look at our rights under reconciliation,” Gregg said. “It would be very contentious.”

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The most moving part of the services for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy for me was when his son, Ted Kennedy, Jr., spoke. With so much mythology swirling around about the Kennedy family and their legacy, it's easy to forget that at his core, Kennedy was a family man, who in addition to his public service, had to serve as the head of a rather extraordinary family:

There is also much to say and much will be said about my father the man. The storyteller, the lover of costume parties, a practical joker, the accomplished painter. He was a lover of everything French: cheese, wine, and women. He was a mountain climber, navigator, skipper, tactician, airplane pilot, rodeo rider, ski jumper, dog lover, and all around adventurer. Our family vacations left us all injured and exhausted.

He was a dinner table debater and devil's advocate. He was an Irishman and a proud member of the Democratic Party.

Here's one you may not know: Out of Harvard he was a Green Bay Packers recruit but decided to go to law school instead.

He was a devout Catholic whose faith helped him survive unbearable losses and whose teachings taught him that he had a moral obligation to help others in need.

He was not perfect, far from it. But my father believed in redemption and he never surrendered. Never stopped trying to right wrongs, be they the results of his own failings or of ours.

But today I'm simply compelled to remember Ted Kennedy as my father and my best friend. When I was 12 years old I was diagnosed with bone cancer and a few months after I lost my leg, there was a heavy snowfall over my childhood home outside of Washington D.C. My father went to the garage to get the old Flexible Flyer and asked me if I wanted to go sledding down the steep driveway. And I was trying to get used to my new artificial leg and the hill was covered with ice and snow and it wasn't easy for me to walk. And the hill was very slick and as I struggled to walk, I slipped and I fell on the ice and I started to cry and I said "I can't do this." I said, "I'll never be able to climb that hill." And he lifted me in his strong, gentle arms and said something I'll never forget. He said "I know you'll do it, there is nothing you can't do. We're going to climb that hill together, even if it takes us all day."

Sure enough, he held me around my waist and we slowly made it to the top, and, you know, at age 12 losing a leg pretty much seems like the end of the world, but as I climbed onto his back and we flew down the hill that day I knew he was right. I knew I was going to be OK. You see, my father taught me that even our most profound losses are survivable and it is what we do with that loss, our ability to transform it into a positive event, that is one of my father's greatest lessons. He taught me that nothing is impossible.

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Sen. John McCain believes that President Barack Obama must drop his support for a public insurance option before Republicans will consider supporting reform. "I believe that one of the fundamentals for any agreement would be that the president abandon the government option," McCain told ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

McCain defended Sarah Palin for claiming that Obama's health care goals include "death panels." McCain argued that "the way that [that clause] was written made it a little ambiguous."

"There was a provision in the bill that talks about a board that would decide what are the most effective measures to provide health care for people, okay?" McCain explained. "So what does that lead to? Doesn't that lead to a possibility of rationing?"

McCain went on to say that Sen. Edward Kennedy's absence from the Senate is damaging prospects for health care reform. McCain said that the Senate would be a "very different place today" if Kennedy were participating.

(h/t Mugsy)

I guess the UK is sick of hearing we namby-pamby Yanks brag on our health care system and trash theirs, disregarding the fact that the UK pays significantly less per capita for health care and achieves far better outcomes. And they've decided to push back:

Britons love to mock their National Health Service — just don't let anyone else poke fun at it.

They particularly resent the British universal health care system being used as a punching bag in the battle against President Barack Obama's proposed reforms.

Conservatives in the United States have relied on horror stories from Britain's system to warn Americans that Obama is trying to impose a socialized health care system that would give the government too much power.

In an interview widely interpreted here as an attack on the U.K., Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa told a local radio station last week that "countries that have government-run health care" would not have given Sen. Edward Kennedy, who suffers from a brain tumor, the same standard of care as in the U.S. because he is too old.

The superheated debate broadened this week to include renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, a British icon who suffers from motor neurone disease. A U.S. newspaper wrote that under the British system Hawking would be allowed to die — an assertion that Hawking said was absurd.

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," Hawking said, joining the ranks of those praising Britain's system.

Britons say the country's universal health care system, which provides free medical care, is far fairer than the current American system.

Behind the criticism is a popular British view that American society represents unbridled capitalism run amok, with catastrophic results for people left behind in the boom times like those of the last two decades.

Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who is usually pro-American, blasted U.S. health care Friday, suggesting the delivery system is fine for the wealthy but not for the poor.

"If you can't pay, you have a very, very second-rate service or you can't get health service at all," he said.

Britain's left-leaning government has responded to criticism offering selected statistics that show England out performing the U.S. in health spending per capita, life expectancy and more.

Newspapers have jumped in, with the Daily Mirror calling the United States "the land of the fee" because of the way patients are forced to pay for medical services.

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There was a little bit of history made yesterday, though hardly anyone noticed: the Senate passed a hate-crimes bill.

This is historic because it marks the first time both houses have agreed to a federal law dealing with these kinds of crimes. Dating back to the failures of Congress to ever enact anti-lynching legislation, the Senate made history by forwarding the bill to the president, where he is expected to sign ... or is he?

WASHINGTON — People attacked because of their sexual orientation or gender would receive federal protections under a Senate-approved measure that significantly expands the reach of hate crimes law.

The Senate bill also would make it easier for federal prosecutors to step in when state or local authorities are unable or unwilling to pursue hate crimes.

"The Senate made a strong statement this evening that hate crimes have no place in America," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said after the chamber voted Thursday to attach the legislation as an amendment to a $680 billion defense spending bill expected to be completed next week.

The House in April approved a similar bill and President Barack Obama has urged Congress to send him hate crimes legislation, presenting the best scenario for the measure to become law since Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., first introduced it more than a decade ago.

Republicans will have the opportunity to propose several more changes to the hate crimes bill on Monday, but that will not change its status as part of the must-pass defense bill.

However, Obama is threatening to veto the bill if it comes attached with funding for F-22s that John McCain and Co. have stuck onto it. Eventually it's expected to return to his desk if that happens, but there's always the chance for Republican mischief in the interim.

In any event, perhaps the best thing about its passage is that it makes the wingnuts very, very unhappy. Even John McCain was spouting off about its inclusion as David Doody at HuffPo noted:

"While we have young Americans fighting and dying in two wars we're going to take up the hate-crimes bill," McCain said, "because the majority leader thinks that's more important, more important than legislation concerning the defense of this nation." And later: "The Senate will pass a highly controversial, highly explosive piece of legislation to be attached to the authorization for the defense and the security of this nation. That's wrong."

Better yet, it makes people like Glenn Beck even more insane than they already are.

Yesterday on his Fox News show, Beck tried to make the case that there's a logical reason to include veterans in hate-crime statistics, and cited the example of the military recruiters shot in Arkansas by an angry Muslim man was proof of this problem. His guest had a couple more incidents.

Well, it's been our position all along that recruiters aren't included in the legislation for a number of reasons (including the fact that veteran status is a problem in terms of equal-protection issues), the main one being that there isn't an identifiable problem that needs addressing under this legislation.

All that Beck and his guest have to do is go visit the FBI's Website and look up, say, the 2007 hate crime statistics. You'll see that there are about 8,000 of them reported to the FBI in about any given year. The largest single motivation is anti-black bias crimes (2,658 of them in 2007). Even in the category that people like Beck like to pretend doesn't exist -- anti-white bias crimes -- there were 749 reported offenses.

Can Beck and his guest demonstrate anything even close to those kinds of numbers -- and thus a demonstrable need for inclusion? I would wager not.

Besides, they're not actually serious about this. They're just trying to add to the pile of BS they've been spreading about this bill from the get-go. Like anybody's paying attention to what they think anyway.

Never let it be said that lobbyists are too dumb to figure out a way around any rule we pass to keep them from paying off politicians:

WASHINGTON — On a mild evening last September, Citigroup lobbyists mingled with South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn at a rooftop reception — complete with miniature putting greens — as the company hosted a party to honor the third most powerful Democrat in the House and raise money for one of his favorite golf charities.

Health insurers and hospitals, meanwhile, are donating millions to help build an institute in Boston to celebrate the career of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who is attempting to overhaul the nation's health care system.

Despite a ban on gifts to lawmakers and limits on campaign contributions, lobbyists and groups that employ them can spend unlimited money to honor members of Congress or donate to non-profits connected to them or their relatives. The public — until now — had little insight into the scope of this largely hidden world of special-interest influence.

Under ethics rules passed in 2007, lobbyists for the first time last year had to report any payment made for an event or to a group connected to a lawmaker and other top federal officials.

USA TODAY undertook the first comprehensive analysis of the lobbying reports and found 2,759 payments, totaling $35.8 million, were made in 2008. The money went to honor 534 current and former lawmakers, almost 250 other federal officials and more than 100 groups, many of which count lawmakers among their members.

The total cost is roughly equivalent to what the U.S. government spends to operate Yellowstone National Park each year.

Most of the money — about $28 million — went to non-profit groups, some with direct ties to members of Congress. In two cases, USA TODAY found, the donations to non-profits associated with a member of Congress came in response to a personal appeal for funds from the lawmaker.

"It's another example of the many pockets of a politician's coat," says Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog group. The spending amounts to an "end-run" around campaign-finance laws "that are designed to limit the appearance of undue influence," she says.

The money came from companies, trade associations and labor groups that lobby Congress and the government on a range of issues, from seeking a share of last year's $700 billion financial bailout package to trying to shape the debate on climate change.

The donations cover various activities — from a golf tournament that raises money for a lawmaker's non-profit to gifts to the alma mater of a powerful House committee chairman.

"You can still have a gala or something or the other for a charity and earn some favor with members of Congress, which is what the gift ban was put in place to avoid," says Dan Danner, CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business and a veteran Washington lobbyist.

This is certainly great news. With Ted Kennedy finally behind the public plan option, he'll be able to bring a lot of people to our side of the table - and of course, he considers this his legacy:

Liberals pushing for the creation of a federally run health insurance plan won a major victory Thursday when Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) strongly indicated his commitment to the policy, one of the most controversial elements of healthcare reform.

Kennedy has co-sponsored a resolution introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and 26 other Democratic senators that declares the healthcare reform legislation the Senate will consider this summer must include a public plan option people can choose instead of private insurance. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also co-sponsored the resolution.

Though purely symbolic, this show of strength by 28 Democratic senators sends a clear signal to liberals that a public plan, one of the left’s top priorities and a component of President Obama’s healthcare platform, will be part of reform.

Kennedy’s unequivocal support for the public plan marks a return of sorts to the front lines of the battle for healthcare reform.

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Sen. Ted Kennedy returned to Senate today after spending the past few months recovering from surgery for a brain tumor. Kennedy suffered a seizure six months ago today.

In a statement, Kennedy thanked supporters. "I am grateful for the prayers and good wishes I've received over the past several months."

The Senator took several questions on healthcare reform. "I'm very hopeful that this will be a prime item on the agenda. Barack has indicated this will be prime issue and I believe that it will be," said Kennedy.