There's no questioning the historic nature of the vote. What the Democrats did to get there is pretty ugly (I can't believe we cut a deal with anti-woman C-Street true believer Bart Stupak), but we did get there, and most people will see some real improvements in their lives as a result. Now it's on to the Senate, where hopefully women's rights won't be treated as peripheral to the political process.

And in the meantime, John Boehner warns us that the bill "will dim the light of freedom." Uh huh.

Hours after President Obama exhorted Democratic lawmakers to "answer the call of history," the House hit an unprecedented milestone on the path to health-care reform, approving a trillion-dollar package late Saturday that seeks to overhaul private insurance practices and guarantee comprehensive and affordable coverage to almost every American.

After months of acrimonious partisanship, Democrats closed ranks on a 220-215 vote that included 39 defections, mostly from the party's conservative ranks. But the bill attracted a surprise Republican convert: Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao of Louisiana, who represents the Democratic-leaning district of New Orleans and had been the target of a last-minute White House lobbying campaign. GOP House leaders had predicted their members would unanimously oppose the bill.

Democrats have sought for decades to provide universal health care, but not since the 1965 passage of Medicare and Medicaid has a chamber of Congress approved such a vast expansion of coverage. Action now shifts to the Senate, which could spend the rest of the year debating its version of the health-care overhaul. Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to bring a measure to the floor before Thanksgiving, but legislation may not reach Obama's desk before the new year.

At the Capitol, Obama urged the few Democrats who were still wavering on Saturday afternoon to put aside their political fears and embrace the bill's ambitious objectives. "Opportunities like this come around maybe once in a generation," he said afterward. "This is our moment to live up to the trust that the American people have placed in us. Even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard. This is our moment to deliver."

The House legislation would for the first time require every individual to obtain insurance, and would require all but the smallest employers to provide coverage to their workers. It would vastly expand Medicaid and create a new marketplace where people could obtain federal subsidies to buy insurance from private companies or from a new government-run insurance plan.

Though some people would receive no benefits -- including about 6 million illegal immigrants, according to congressional estimates -- the bill would virtually close the coverage gap for people who do not have access to health-care coverage through their jobs.

The way I feel about this is probably akin to how Thomas Jefferson felt when the anti-slavery clause was stricken from the Declaration of Independence in order to get enough votes to pass.

Stupak probably doesn't have the votes will be joined by the Republicans and will probably get his amendment passed. Again, I ask: Why does someone's personal religious beliefs get to infringe on mine or anyone else's rights? Abortion is legal, in case anyone forgot.

WASHINGTON — The House opened debate on its health-care bill Saturday after Democratic leaders agreed to allow a vote on an amendment from antiabortion Democrats.

The agreement early Saturday could break a stalemate over abortion that was threatening the bill's prospects.

If the House approves the bill, it would be the first time a chamber of Congress has passed legislation aimed at guaranteeing near-universal access to health care.

A final vote on the health measure could come late Saturday or early Sunday morning. House Democratic leaders were still scrambling to come up with the 218 votes needed to pass the bill, and aides predicted the vote would be a cliffhanger.

[...] Abortion has divided Democrats, with antiabortion lawmakers saying they couldn't allow any federal funding of abortion under the new health-insurance exchanges the bill would establish.

Rep. Bart Stupak, an antiabortion Democrat from Michigan, explained his amendment before the House Rules Committee just after midnight Saturday. He said it provides that federal subsidies cannot be used to purchase a health plan including coverage for abortions other than in cases of rape or incest.

The amendment from Mr. Stupak and Rep. Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.) is set to come before the full House for a vote later Saturday.

The concession to allow a vote is significant because House Democrats aren't allowing votes on any other substantive amendments, save one Republican amendment that is an alternative to the Democrats' plan.

Here's what the amendment does, as USAToday noted:

Nearly 90% of private health insurance policies now offer abortion coverage, and almost half of women with private insurance have it. But women covered under the new system would have to find supplemental insurance or pay out of pocket for an unanticipated procedure that can cost from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on complexity. For anyone unable to afford it, this would amount to a de facto ban.

But here's the catch: The bill makes it so financially unattractive for insurance companies to offer abortion coverage - even if you pay for the insurance yourself - that they're likely to stop offering it except to the largest groups. Got it? This is not a minor amendment.

And unless it's rejected by the Senate or in conference, women have once again been stripped of the ability to get abortions.

Time to hit the phones. Got this today from a Hill source:

Leans pro-choice but needs shoring up

Arcuri (D, NY-24)
Bean (D, IL-08)
Bishop, S. (D, GA-02)
Boswell (D, IA-03)
Butterfield (D, NC-01)
Cardoza (D, CA-18)
Chandler (D, KY-06)
Cooper (D, TN-05)
Costa (D, CA-20)
Doyle (D, PA-14)
Edwards, C. (D, TX-17)
Etheridge (D, NC-02)
Gordon (D, TN-06)
Kratovil (D, MD-01)
Langevin (D, RI-02)
McMahon (D, NY-13)
Michaud (D, ME-02)
Minnick (D, ID-01)
Neal (D, MA-02)
Nye (D, VA-02)
Obey (D, WI-07)
Owens (D, NY-23)
Ruppersberger (D, MD-02)
Ryan, T. (D, OH-17)
Salazar (D, CO-03)
Space (D, OH-18)

Unknown

Biggert (R, IL-13)
Carney (D, PA-10)
Castle (R, DE-AL)
Cuellar (D, TX-28)
Davis, A. (D, AL-07)
Dent (R, PA-15)
Ellsworth (D, IN-08)
Frelinghuysen (R, NJ-11)
Kirk (R, IL-10)
Lynch (D, MA-09)
Pomeroy (D, ND-AL)
Snyder (D, AR-02)
Tanner (D, TN-08)
Visclosky (D, IN-01)

Leaning anti-choice

Altmire (D, PA-04)
Barrow (D, GA-12)
Berry (D, AR-01)
Boccieri (D, OH-16)
Bright (D, AL-02)
Capito (R, WV-02)
Donnelly (D, IN-02)
Hill (D, IN-09)
Jenkins (R, KS-02)
Kildee (D, MI-05)
Lance (R, NJ-07)
Lee, C. (R, NY-26)
Matheson (D, UT-02)
Mollohan (D, WV-01)
Ortiz (D, TX-27)
Paulsen (R, MN-03)
Perriello (D, VA-05)
Rahall (D, WV-03)
Ross (D, AR-04)
Spratt (D, SC-05)
Wilson, C. (D, OH-06)

I was writing something pretty close to this and decided to link to the Great Orange Satan.

KOS:

There will be much number-crunching tomorrow, but preliminary numbers (at least in Virginia) show that GOP turnout remained the same as last year, but Democratic turnout collapsed. This is a base problem, and this is what Democrats better take from tonight:

1. If you abandon Democratic principles in a bid for unnecessary "bipartisanship", you will lose votes.

2. If you water down reform in favor of Blue Dogs and their corporate benefactors, you will lose votes.

3. If you forget why you were elected -- health care, financial services, energy policy and immigration reform -- you will lose votes.

Tonight proved conclusively that we're not going to turn out just because you have a (D) next to your name, or because Obama tells us to. We'll turn out if we feel it's worth our time and effort to vote, and we'll work hard to make sure others turn out if you inspire us with bold and decisive action.

The choice is yours. Give us a reason to vote for you, or we sit home. And you aren't going to make up the margins with conservative voters. They already know exactly who they're voting for, and it ain't you.

Health care should have been passed by the August recess, but to have it go on and on has been a huge mistake. And waiting until next year only makes it worse.

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Bill O'Reilly is "fascinated" with Sarah Palin, and has been featuring segments on her a lot of late. He had Glenn Beck on The O'Reilly Factor on Thursday night to talk about her prospects.

They agreed that her upcoming book tour is a "make or break" situation regarding her political future -- but that if she fares well with the media, she'll be well positioned for 2012. They also agree that resigning as governor before had even completed her first term was a "smart move."

Which gave Beck a launching pad for his prophesying mode:

Beck: Smart move. And I think she's also positioning herself for a third party. By the time this election runs around for the president, I'm sorry, but unless the Republicans and the Democrats wake up, a third party will win.

Presumably, by "wake up" Beck means "embrace the tea party philosophy of small government and big wingnuttery". The Democrats won't, but most likely the Republicans will. But I don't think it's going to be the recipe for victory Glenn Beck thinks it will be.

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Sally Quinn went on The O'Reilly Factor to announce that she and all the other Villagers are just all a-flutter over the Obama White House's puzzling decision to stand up to its an organization that clearly declared war on his administration from its outset, i.e., Fox News.

But first she had to stop and sniff disdainfully in the direction of Alan Grayson for his gauche style of political rhetoric:

O'Reilly: Do you know this guy? He sounds like a loon.

Quinn: I don't know him. But guess what? Here we are talking about him. And I think that's what this is all about -- he's obviously getting the attention she desperately needs.

O'Reilly: OK, there could be something to be said for that. He represents the Orlando area. But he's certainly kind of unhinged. When you hear rhetoric like that -- you know, the Dick Cheney shooting the guy in the face, and this and that -- doesn't it sound a little immature?

Quinn: Well, I think that it's worse than immature. I mean, what he said was so completely over the top that it sounds like -- it reminded me a little bit of Blagojevich, you know. I mean --

O'Reilly: No, that's good. That's a good -- yeah. Kinda unhinged.

Quinn: Yeah, unhinged. It made no sense. So I don't think you can take it seriously. And I also think that if he -- I can't imagine the Democrats feeling good about this. Or the White House feeling good.

O'Reilly: Or his constituents.

Quinn: But you don't want this guy on your team.

Heavens no. We want people like Sally Quinn. The kind of Village maven who would go on 60 Minutes and slag the Clintons:

"If you consider the life of Bill Clinton," she said on "60 Minutes," "whenever he leaves the White House, he's going to get on a plane, and where is he going to go?"

"What do you mean?" a baffled Mike Wallace asked.

"Well, he -- he doesn't even have a home," she sniffed. "I mean, when you think about it, he's homeless. I mean, they've lived in sort of government properties all their lives."

The kind of "social adviser" who would pen long Washington Post op-eds bemoaning the way the Clintons "fouled the nest".

Yeah, we need advice from Sally Quinn, all right.

And that commentary we should take seriously? I guess you just had to tune in three hours beforehand for that.

Via Paul Rosenberg at Open Left:

According to leading "education researchers" (sub required), the draft guidelines that the Obama administration has published for federal economic-stimulus money and Title I aid for schools "have no credible basis in research."

The researchers point to two regulatory priorities in particular that are lacking in research evidence: evaluating teachers based on students' standardized test scores and promoting the growth of charter schools.

"One theory of action seems to be that holding teachers more accountable for the gain in their students' test scores will induce them to become better teachers," writes Duke University's Helen Ladd. "At this point, I am not aware of any credible evidence in support of that proposition."

And research on the performance of charter schools has shown that their track record is "highly variable."

The article points out that the Bush administration was famous for insisting that schools adhere to policies and programs that were based on "scientific research" while it promoted an agenda that had nothing "scientific" about it.

Now, the Obama administration is insisting that schools make decisions based on "data that shows what works," while it pursues mandates that have no data to support them.

What's the difference?

The difference is, the investors who run these new charter schools will be donating to Democrats! Next question?

Paul comments:

Due to the Great Recession, state and local governments are suffering massive cut-backs, and since education spending is generally their largest single budget item, schools are getting hit especially hard. This need not have been the case if Obama had either (a) asked for a $1.3 trillion stimulus, the size that many economists said was needed back in early 2009, or (b) altered the mix of tax cuts vs. spending through the states. And the blow could certainly have been softened if he had opposed the Snowe/Collins/Nelson/Scrouge "compromise" that cut something like $50 billion in school funding from the stimulus, rather than hailing those piggy-bank robbers for their "leadership." Whether or not it was all planned from the beginning, what's eventually shaped up out of this is that there's a small package of stimulus funds available for states and schools that jump through the federal education reform hoops--the exact nature of which is still being determined, although states that lift restrictions on charter schools will go to the head of the line.

It's really hard to see this as anything other than a Shock Doctrine-style deal, since it's a way to force cash-starved states and schools to change education policy and practice, regardless of what they might normally and democratically choose to do. And not only that--because the funds are limited, they could make the changes, and still not get a dime for doing so.

Yes, but we're much more inspired now and that will change everything.

It's true, you are dumb, Halloween book burners.

CJSD: Top Ten Reasons We Should Reject Our Nobel Peace Prize

Skippy: Self-Described Troublemaker Whines because People think he's a Troublemaker

PourMeCoffee: Michael Steele Accuses Democrats of Treason, in Writing, and No One Even Blinks Anymore

Ben Varkentine: Looking for something serious to read this weekend?

Guest posted by Blue Gal.

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When news came that Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I looked at my husband and said, "just watch, the wingnuts will lose it over this." And sure enough, I was right. But what threw me for a loop was how nakedly partisan CBS's Chip Reid was in attacking Obama for having the audacity to win the Nobel Prize, something even the great St. Ronnie didn't do:

REID: I mean, most Democrats have praised it, and most Republicans have said, you have got to be kidding me -- Ronald Reagan didn't get one, but Barack Obama, nominated 12 days after he was sworn in, gets a Nobel Peace Prize. And the fear among some, even some Democrats, is that this is going to widen the partisan divide and make things even more difficult to accomplish on every front.

Really? Even more difficult than reflexively fighting *every* *single* Obama agenda item now? How is that possible?

It's touching, isn't it, to hear Chip Reid's concern that this will widen the partisan divide? After all, past winners have included Al Gore and Jimmy Carter...obviously the Nobel committee loves them some Democrats.

But here's the thing that all these insulated Beltway Villagers continually forget: Outside of DC, life is more than Republican vs. Democrat, something that Gibbs gently tries to suggest to Reid:

GIBBS: I'll leave the pundicizing to the pundits. The notion that somehow this is going to more greatly divide America, you know, I think it should be mandatory that pundits spend a certain amount of their days each year outside of the friendly confines of the viewership of the Washington, D.C., media market.

Of course, that goes right over Reid's head. For Reid, this is all about dismissing the Nobel committee -- in Norway, mind you, and not subject to the mind-numbing partisan reduction that Reid seems to breathe as oxygen -- as some liberal organization. He just can't get his head wrapped around the fact the Ronald Reagan -- the man who ended the Cold War! -- was never awarded the Peace Prize. As my friend, Steve Benen says:

A few thoughts here. First, when White House correspondents from major news outlets start sounding like members of Grover Norquist's "We Love Reagan" fan club, it's not a positive development.

Second, the notion that Reagan "helped bring the Cold War to an end" is, at best, a dubious proposition.

Actually, I think Chip Reid is unintentionally letting us into his psyche more than he realizes. He's continually been a go-to guy for Republican talking points for years. He routinely criticizes Democrats for things he lets pass by Republicans and uncritically passes on Republican attacks without context or fact-checking. And here again, he mouths the GOP mentality.

But think about it: if the Nobel Peace Prize only supports liberal causes, isn't Chip Reid admitting that peace is liberal? Then we need never look to conservatives again, because they will never bring peace. Right, Chip?

Transcript below the fold

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To the Villagers, the left have to be the ones to always, always compromise. If a president dares to govern to the left, it's mutiny in the Beltway. I don't remember the media getting all too upset when Bush's wingnut base freaked out over immigration reform and killed it. Tom Tancredo was invited to go on every talk show there was and even ran for president on it.

Tweety goes on and on saying the Democrats never even had fifty votes so if they wanted to use reconciliation they never had the votes to do it anyway, so they are just total failures. Really, Tweety? I wonder where he got his information from. A 900 number maybe...the Psychic Network...

Matthews: Yeah, so a lot of this has been talk, so Vick you pick up on this. Given the fact that the Senate's not going to approve a public option because they can't get any where near sixty...

Right...

...and by the way I'm wondering were they ever going to get fifty.

Yeah. And all these guys are going through reconciliation-- we're going to ram it through-- they never had fifty! Okay, that's just my hunch and my belief.

Matthews: And I would argue that if you're going to be the party that believes in government, which the Democrats do believe more than Republicans do, they believe in positive government-- you have to be able to govern and prove that you're affective at governing. If you blow it, you can't say you believe in government because you've failed at government. Thank you very much. That's a little redundant.

WTF does this mean? If you believe in government, but you fail to pass a bill---does that mean you don't believe in government? Isn't that what governing is all about? Republicans just say they hate the government so they can get elected to work FOR the government. Conservatives make a lot of money being IN the government, you freaking buffoon.

This type of health-care reform has never been done before. Ever. And with idiots on my dial only talking bullshit it really makes it hard for working families to ever get a fair shake. The Villagers like Tweety, with their million-dollar houses, actually think they represent average working-class families, but his rant just shows a lack of understanding about the basic workings of how political parties operate in America.

What does it mean to Chris when Bush (at one time Chris Matthews got very warm and fuzzy looking at the codpiece) failed to privatize Social Security? Lucky for us he didn't get a chance to destroy that also. OK...NEXT!

(h/t Heather at Video Cafe for the video)

There are varying views on gun rights and gun control in America, and since Barack Obama was elected president, the right has been whipping up their fringe base, warning that the Democrats are coming for their guns. We've seen unprecedented displays of weapons outside Obama events in recent months and right wing violence is on the rise.

In this very ironic and tragic story, a woman from Pennsylvania who carried an open, loaded pistol to her child's soccer game was shot and killed in an apparent murder-suicide:

Meleanie Hain, the pistol-carrying Lebanon mom who received national attention for taking a loaded gun to her daughter’s soccer game, was shot to death Wednesday night with her husband in an apparent murder-suicide, police said.

Meleanie Hain was thrust into the national spotlight when she took a gun, in plain view and holstered on her hip, to a soccer game Sept. 11, 2008, at Optimist Park in Lebanon.

In a case that was sure to get a lot of traction from the right, Hain was in the process of suing the sheriff who revoked her gun permit after the incident -- even though her license was reinstated shortly after.

Hain then filed a lawsuit against DeLeo for $1 million in U.S. Middle District Court seeking reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and costs, emotional distress and lost wages.

"Just the fact that he was wrong is evidenced by the fact that my license was restored to me. ... I am a victim of Sheriff Michael DeLeo’s. I am a victim of those in society as a direct result of his actions as well. The way people look at me sometimes when I am out running errands, I feel as if I am wearing a scarlet letter, and really it’s a Glock 26." Read on...

I'm not trying to put Hain on trial here, but I disagree with her irresponsible actions in taking a loaded weapon and openly displaying it at a children's sporting event. I feel for their three children who were at home at the time of the shootings and are now faced with growing up without their parents.

The Obama administration has been sticking to many of the tactics Bush used in his efforts in dealing with terrorism. The FISA fiasco was telling and now we have The Patriot Act. It's not surprising that any president would like to keep the status quo when they take office if they've been handed an office that has more power over our civil liberties than ever before. Sure, Obama is not Bush or Cheney, and I doubt he'd ever act like them, but that is no justification for not reining in the Patriot Act.

Glenn Greenwald

Reining in the excesses of the Patriot Act (and, relatedly, of ever-expanding eavesdropping powers) has long been a top agenda item for civil liberties groups -- and, at least so they claimed, for Democrats generally. In fact, when Obama voted for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 last year in the middle of the campaign, he emphatically vowed that he would "fix" the problems with the FISA framework. But right as these reforms are finally being considered, the administration seizes on the Zazi case to insist that no such changes should be made:

At the same time, the Obama administration is pressing Congress to move swiftly to reauthorize three provisions of the USA Patriot Act set to expire in late December. They include the use of "roving wiretaps" to track movement, e-mail and phone communications, a tool that federal officials used in the weeks leading up to Zazi's arrest. . . .

"The Zazi case was the first test of this administration being able to successfully uncover and deal with this type of threat in the United States," a senior administration official said. "It demonstrated that we were able to successfully neutralize this threat, and to have insight into it, with existing statutory authorities, with the system as it currently operates."

So the Obama administration has its first allegedly big Terrorism case, and they can hardly contain themselves as they exploit it to justify a continuation of the very Patriot Act and FISA powers which Democrats (and, in the case of FISA, Obama himself) long claimed to oppose. Indeed, key Obama ally Dianne Feinstein has worked diligently in the Senate not just to block Patriot Act reforms, but to make the law even worse, and has repeatedly cited the Zazi case to justify that.

Glenn posted the above video from Julian Sanchez, who destroys the FOX Noise fearmongering arguments of why we just have to have FISA and TPA.

Cato's Julian Sanchez examines -- and absolutely destroys -- the fear-mongering claims from Fox News about efforts to reform the Patriot Act and FISA, with a particular focus on Fox's efforts to use the Zazi plot to justify the need for these powers

.

When in doubt, I turn to Chris Bowers. He didn't disappoint me - he had ready a step-by-step explanation of what needs to happen to get the public option in the bill sent to the Senate floor:

The bad news is that we learned today that the Senate Finance Committee will not report a public option in its version of health care reform. The good news is that we also learned today that there are 51 votes in favor of Schumer's public option. Here is how we get to 51:

1. Take the 47 "yes" votes from the Washington Independent public option scorecard.
2. Add Bill Nelson and Tom Carper, who both voted for Schumer's public option today;
3. Add Claire McCaskill (who voted for Kennedy's HELP public option back in May);
4. Add Joe Biden

Arguably, proving that there are 51 votes in favor of Schumer's public option is the bigger news. This is because everyone knew the public option would be defeated in committee, but claims that there were 51 votes in favor of a trigger-less public option were pretty much all based on a post I wrote two weeks ago.

Because Democrats are not going to pursue reconciliation for the public option (see why here), the next step in the process does not actually involve Kent Conrad's Budget Committee, as I had previously reported. Instead, a source on the Hill confirms to me that the Senate HELP and Senate Finance committees will be merged by an informal, behind the scenes process involving the four major players in the Senate: Tom Harkin (Chair of HELP), Max Baucus (Chair of Finance), Harry Reid (Majority Leader), and the White House. Together, these four will meet and decide what sort of bill to send to the Senate floor.

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Rachel Maddow talks to former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias about the pressure put on him to go after ACORN for voter fraud allegations and how Karl Rove wanted to use the issue of voter fraud as a wedge issue to win elections. As Rachel notes sadly, that plan is still paying dividends with the Democrats being all too happy to cave into political pressure by the Republicans instead of standing up for ACORN.

MADDOW: We have previously reported on this show how corporate interests opposed to ACORN`s really successful efforts to raise the minimum wage targeted the group using Republican-allied P.R. firms that proudly specialized in demonizing their opposition.

But ACORN has not just been targeted by corporations who worry that ACORN`s advocacy for living-wage ordinances and an increased minimum wage will hurt their corporate bottom line. ACORN has also been the subject for years of a purely political smear campaign, a campaign engineered by Republicans who are threatened by ACORN`s work to register young and poor and minority voters.

The American voter is typically older and more wealthy than the typical American, and that tends to give the Republicans an electoral edge among voters as compared to the preferences of the populations at large. But ACORN`s registration drives have gone some distance to changing that. Over the past five years, ACORN registered close to 2 million voters. And, yes, the groups of people that ACORN typically registers tend to vote for Democrats.

Over the last few election cycles, fear of a younger, less wealthy, and, frankly, less white electorate led Republicans, especially in swing states, to go after ACORN aggressively, and, in fact, to try to gin up charges against them, to try to make their voter registration efforts in general seem suspect and perhaps to bring down the group entirely. And when I say "ginned up," I`m not exaggerating.

Do you remember the U.S. attorney scandal, the alleged fire ring of U.S. attorneys because of U.S. political considerations? Recall what that scandal was really about. In 2006, nine U.S. attorneys were fired, surprisingly and suddenly, by the Department of Justice under George W. Bush.

Former U.S. attorney David Iglesias -- one of those U.S. attorneys who lost his job despite positive job reviews -- maintains that his pink slip came after he resisted pressure from Republicans to pursue bogus voter registration cases involving ACORN. The pressure began as early as 2002 when Mr. Iglesias says in his book "In Justice," he received an e-mail from the Department of Justice in Washington, quote, "suggesting, in no uncertain terms" that U.S. attorneys "offer whatever assistance we could in investigating and prosecuting voter fraud cases."

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These are Democrats, mind you. And the thing is, I don't even believe most of these amoral jerks give a damn about abortion. They're just playing to their audience, and it provides protective cover for their real agenda: Stop the public option at any cost.

And of course this means that women on Medicaid who already have abortion coverage would lose it. Our women's-rights president's bold stand?

"‘Look, try to get this thing worked out among the Democrats. We want you to work it out within the party,’ ” Mr. Stupak said, adding that Mr. Obama did not say whether he supported the segregated-money provision or a more sweeping restriction. “We got his attention, which we never had before.”

Isn't that nice. In a country founded on religious freedom, apparently some religions are much more equal than others:

WASHINGTON — As if it were not complicated enough, the debate over health care in Congress is becoming a battlefield in the fight over abortion.

Abortion opponents in both the House and the Senate are seeking to block the millions of middle- and lower-income people who might receive federal insurance subsidies to help them buy health coverage from using the money on plans that cover abortion. And the abortion opponents are getting enough support from moderate Democrats that both sides say the outcome is too close to call. Opponents of abortion cite as precedent a 30-year-old ban on the use of taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions.

Yes, God forbid that an unemployed couple who are struggling to get on their financial feet have abortion as an option. It makes a lot more sense to send them (and their offspring) further down the financial hole, don't you think?

Abortion-rights supporters say such a restriction would all but eliminate from the marketplace private plans that cover the procedure, pushing women who have such coverage to give it up. Nearly half of those with employer-sponsored health plans now have policies that cover abortion, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The question looms as a test of President Obama’s campaign pledge to support abortion rights but seek middle ground with those who do not. Mr. Obama has promised for months that the health care overhaul would not provide federal money to pay for elective abortions, but White House officials have declined to spell out what he means.

Democratic Congressional leaders say the latest House and Senate health care bills preserve the spirit of the current ban on federal abortion financing by requiring insurers to segregate their public subsidies into separate accounts from individual premiums and co-payments. Insurers could use money only from private sources to pay for abortions.

But opponents say that is not good enough, because only a line on an insurers’ accounting ledger would divide the federal money from the payments for abortions. The subsidies would still help people afford health coverage that included abortion.

You know what I see as the real issue? When we give high-quality, subsidized insurance to allegedly "pro-life" politicians, why, that means they have that much more cash to spend on their girlfriends' abortions (not to mention hookers of either gender), and that can't be allowed to stand.

The solution is obvious. Just to make sure we're not subsidizing immoral behavior, we need to stop paying for their health insurance. In fact, maybe we should cut their salaries so they're not led into temptation.

Alan Grayson has been a big Blue America fave ever since we first met up with him in January, 2008. He was our first endorsement that year and one of our most celebrated victories, having beaten an entrenched, useless incumbent in a traditionally Republican district in central Florida. Since being elected, Alan has been a progressive leader, primarily in financial regulations through his committee position on House Financial Services. But he also was one of 32 Democrats in the House who stood up to demands from the Obama Administration that a supplemental war budget be approved last June.

It was a ballsy move, especially for Democrats in Republican-leaning districts, like Alan, Eric Massa and Carol Shea-Porter. I doubt Alan ever wavered from his commitment to the voters in his district to not approve any more supplemental budgets. But you can ask him yourself when he joins us for a live blogging session here at C&L, 3pm PT (6pm back East). Alan will be helping us launch a new Blue America Initiative to help draw attention to the situation in Afghanistan and figure out what progressives can do to effect change.

Alan is prepared to work even harder this year to head off an escalation of war in the 8th year of occupation of the country. "We are using a 19th century strategy to fight a 14th century opponent, " he told me yesterday. "Does anyone seriously believe that the best way to defend our borders is to send a quarter of a million Americans 10,000 miles beyond them?" He also told me he thinks we can change Obama's mind and turn this thing around. "He's too smart," said the congressman, "to let someone else's war ruin his presidency."

And with Republican Tim Johnson of Illinois promising to introduce legislation to withdraw American troops, an idea that some other Republicans, like Walter Jones (R-NC) and Ron Paul (R-TX) seem to be embracing, Alan is ready to work across the aisle -- as he has been doing with his crusade to force an audit on the Federal Reserve -- and help focus more Democrats and more Republicans on what he calls "the senselessness of war without end."

If you haven't visited it yet, today is launch-day for Blue America's new ActBlue page, No Means No!. We're asking anyone who can afford to, to contribute-- even if it's just a few dollars-- to the Democrats who have already shown their willingness to draw a line in the sand and not break their pledge. Today, everyone who donates-- regardless of how much-- will have their name put in a hat and 6 random winners will get the new book by New York Senate candidate Jonathan Tasini, The Audacity of Greed. Jonathan donated the books for this event and he autographed each one.

Meanwhile, please take a look at the first segment in the BraveNewFilms movie, Rethink Afghanistan, something that every member of Congress needs to see-- at least as much as the briefings from the Pentagon and spy agencies.