How the hell do you rationalize this? In a reelection campaign vacuum, that's how. Yes, of course, some young girls may not know how to read the directions -- but there are already plenty of dangerous over the counter drugs to which they have easy access. More importantly, young girls who are pregnant and delay abortion decisions often end up as mothers - which calls for a whole other set of mature decisions for which they may not be prepared:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the FDA today on making the morning-after contraception pill available to teens under 17-years-old without a prescription. Of course, the pill itself has been controversial in the years since its introduction, so it's unsurprising that debate over whether to let minors use it would spur conflict. Still, The Associated Press calls it "a surprise move" that Sebelius would overrule her own experts.

The emergency pill, which prevents pregnancies after intercourse, is already available over-the-counter to those 17 and over, and the FDA had decided women younger than 17 were also able to make a decision whether to use it without a doctor's guidance. The statements from the two camps pretty much stick dryly to issues of whether minors are mature enough to decide such matters.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said today "there is adequate and reasonable, well-supported, and science-based evidence that Plan B One-Step is safe and effective and should be approved for nonprescription use for all females of child-bearing potential," but noted that Sebelius had disagreed.

Charles Pierce puts it this way:

This is all on Sebelius — and on the president for whom she works — because she overruled her own panel of experts, which those of us who know a little of the history of Holy Mother Church in this area know is never a good idea.

In 1968, Pope Paul VI was handed a report from his Pontifical Commission on Birth Control that explained, in detail, why HMC should change its position on artificial birth control. The pope threw out his commission's recommendations and issued Humanae Vitae, an encyclical that banned all artificial birth control and, as an added bonus, pretty much guaranteed that millions of American Catholics would never listen seriously to what any pope said about anything, but especially about what they did during sexy time. The subsequent revelation that HMC had been functioning as an international conspiracy to obstruct justice in regards to what its clergy were doing during sexy-time also did not help.

Stupid, Kathleen. And pointless. They're going to hate you anyway.

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Information always has a soothing effect on me, and I'm feeling much calmer after tonight's White House conference call. Obama advisor David Axelrod and White House Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle took the time to answer our questions.

I started by asking about the recent maneuver to block imported drugs. I said it was "shameless," not only because Candidate Obama ran on the issue of allowing Americans to buy cheaper drugs from Canada, but because the FDA already does site inspections in those same plants they were calling unsafe. (Basically, in order to sell any drugs in America, your manufacturing facility must meet the same standards as an American plant.)

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that they would be submitting an HHS bill in the near future - they'd "just this week" gotten funding to address any safety concerns, but more importantly, to start putting an infrastructure in place to import drugs.

My other question (as a former reporter who frequently covered insurance corruption) was about using state insurance commissioners to enforce new insurance regulations.

I said that in many states, insurance commissioners were pretty much owned by the local insurance companies, and I was skeptical as to whether making them the enforcers would actually work.

DeParle said HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius, a former state insurance commissioner, was not one of "those" commissioners, and she would be overseeing state departments. Sebelius already met with state insurance commissioners, she said, and having found a wide discrepancy in authority from state to state, got language inserted in the bill that would give them additional powers. (DeParle noted that the West Virginia commissioner didn't even have the authority to see if insurance companies were solvent.)

DeParle said this was the widest expansion of insurance regulation in 20 years.

David Axelrod also chimed in, noting these changes were part of the reason why the insurance industry has opposed the bills so stringently. If this was a giveaway, he said, they wouldn’t be lobbying so hard to defeat the bill.

I have to give it to Axelrod on this: Without even a little exaggeration, I'd say that standardizing state oversight is probably the insurance industry's worst nightmare. They've always taken advantage of a hodgepodge of weak state regulations, sprinkling generous political contributions along the way to buy off state legislators. So this bill is really what you want from federal regulation: Overriding weak state laws that trample consumers.

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We have a national health emergency, and Senate Republicans are stalling the surgeon general's confirmation. But then, they don't live in the same country as the rest of us:

A GOP stall on all Health and Human Services nominees has left the department without a surgeon general during a period of a global flu pandemic, prompting the HHS secretary to call for Senate action.

Regina Benjamin, the surgeon general nominee, “is ready to be voted on in the Senate, and we would just strongly urge the United States Senate” to act, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during an MSNBC interview Friday in which she discused the department's response to the spread of the H1N1 virus.

President Barack Obama on Saturday declared the H1N1 outbreak a national emergency.

“We are facing a major pandemic, we have a well-qualified candidate for surgeon general, she’s been through the committee process. We just need a vote in the Senate,” Sebeilus said. “Please give us a surgeon general.”

Benjamin was unanimously approved by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Oct. 7, but Senate Republicans are holding up all HHS nominees over a so-called gag order on insurance companies that have been critical of Democratic efforts to reform health care.

“We’ve not received any recent calls from the administration about their nominee,” a senior Republican aide said. “There won’t be any time agreements for confirmation of HHS nominees until their actions have been fully reviewed.”

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(h/t David)

From This Week with George Stephanopolous, some good news for those of us who want to be vaccinated. Remember, you minimize your risk of side effects by getting it a few weeks apart from your regular flu shot. I got my flu shot this week, I'm getting the pneumonia vaccine in two weeks and the swine flu shot two weeks after that:

Amid concerns that H1N1 swine flu vaccine will come too late this flu season, Health and Human Services Secretary told me this morning on ‘This Week’ that the vaccine will be available by the first week of October, 2 weeks earlier than previously expected.

“We are on track to have an ample supply rolling out by mid October, but we may have some early vaccine as early as the first full week in October. And we plan to get the vaccine rolling out the door as fast as it hits the production line.”

This week, DHHS released new research showing that one dose of the H1N1 vaccine will be enough to protect people from the virus rather than multiple doses.

“The earlier doses are probably going to be targeted to health care workers and other high priority groups, but the one dose means that people will be able to have a robust response in about 10 days of getting that first shot and that’s incredibly helpful,” Sebelius said.

While I have many problems with Obama's leadership on certain issues, there is one area where I won't fault him a bit: He's doing a wonderful job as a role model to kids everywhere.

The President of the United States has a lot in common with Philadelphia schoolchildren, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a classroom full of them.

"He didn't know his dad," Sebelius, former governor of Kansas, said of President Obama. "He moved a lot. But he knew how important school was."

Sebelius, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Phila.) and Mayor Nutter watched the president's address to schoolchildren this afternoon at Thurgood Marshall Elementary, a K-8 school in Olney.

Sitting in a classroom with all the dignitaries was Teasia Squire, 12, a 7th grader. She sat up straight and never took her eyes off the big screen that projected the president's image into the room.

She was wowed by the speech, Teasia said.

"It was a wake up call," she said. "It was really good."

Her take away?

"We need to be in school, and we need to be our best," Teasia said.

Her social studies teacher, Crystal Gary-Nelson, was inspired by the message.

"I wrote down key quotes, and I'm going to post them throughout the year," Gary-Nelson said. "We're going to discuss this, and they'll have to take a pledge - 'This is what I pledge to do to help my nation.'"

"When I say jump, you say, 'How high?'"

That would be Chuck "Don't Let Them Pull the Plug on Grandma" Grassley. Why does Obama want Republican approval so badly? Protective cover for the watered-down version he promised Big Pharma and the insurance companies?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The lead Republican senator in bipartisan health care negotiations said Tuesday that he urged President Obama this month to make clear he would accept a bill without a government-funded public insurance option.

"I told the president then that he needed to make public whether or not he could sign a bill that didn't have a public option in it," Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said on Radio Iowa. "He didn't have to take a position against a public option, but would he sign a bill that wouldn't have a public option in it, and I thought a statement from him would be very helpful."

Grassley and the five other bipartisan negotiators met with the president on August 6 to discuss their efforts toward a health care bill that can pass the Senate Finance Committee in September, when Congress returns from its August recess.

On Saturday, Obama said the "public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform."

Then on Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said a public option is "not an essential element" of overhauling the health care system.

Why is President Obama so much more concerned with what Republicans want? It's a mystery!

Newt advises Sarah (h/t Blue Gal. Click here for larger.)

Can you believe it? I'm actually looking forward to this morning's shows. No, not George Snufflupagus on This Week or William the Bloody on Fox News Sunday, but our very own Rachel Maddow is subbing for David Gregory is on the panel opposite Dick Armey on Meet the Press. Rachel has been relentless in the last couple of weeks on the astroturfing of FreedomWorks, so this promises to be a lot of fun. Around the dial, it's all about the health care reform bill, with HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius on This Week and State of the Union, Robert Gibbs on Face the Nation and executives from the AMA and AARP on Fox News Sunday. Arlen Specter will be on This Week, to share his take on the recent Town Hall shout fests. Fareed Zakaria will continue his interview Sec of State Hillary Clinton and you can bet her defensive responses in Africa will definitely be brought up.

ABC's "This Week" - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Sens. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.; former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - FreedomWorks chairman and former Rep. Dick Armey, R-Texas; Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D.; R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.; Gov. Bill Ritter, D-Colo.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Rick Stengel, Trish Regan, John Heilemann, Kathleen Parker. Topics: Has the domestic "change" President Obama promised stalled? How has Woodstock in 1969 impacted the politics of the past forty years? Meter Questions: Will outspoken fringe players dominate GOP for the rest of Obama's term? YES: 9 NO: 3; If unemployment is still high next year, will Obama revise his tax proposals? YES: 11 NO: 1.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Sebelius; Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; Reps. Mike Ross, D-Ark., Tom Price, R-Ga., and Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - The first television interview with Michael Oren as Israel's new Ambassador to the United States. Plus, the Prime Minister of Kenya and an unusual event in Nairobi featuring Hillary Clinton and Fareed.

"Fox News Sunday" - Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Richard Shelby, R-Ala.; J. James Rohack, president of the American Medical Association; John Rother, executive vice president for policy and strategy at AARP.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

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Oh, the Republicans have been having a field day with this mantra - that employers would shunt their employees into the public plan. But they're really upset for the same reason Sebelius mentioned as a positive: Job lock. Above all else, the Republican party stands for cheap, disposable labor with no rights or protections. God forbid you should have a public option - you could up and leave your job anytime you wanted!

In the meantime, a White House staffer sent this statement to health care activists late this afternoon:

Nothing has changed. POTUS has always said that what is essential is that health insurance reform must lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and increase choice and competition. He believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals.

From This Week, with Jake Tapper:

TAPPER: OK, I'll -- I'll take that as a "yes" and then we'll move on. The president often -- and he did last night in Colorado -- says to the American people that, if they like their doctor, they can keep their doctor. If they like their insurance plan, they can keep their insurance plan. But according to the Congressional Budget Office, if a public plan, if a public option is introduced, at least 2 million Americans will be switched by their employer from a private plan to the public plan.

Now, that doesn't get into the whole issue of employers dropping health care coverage in general and all the people that will be added to the rolls, and I understand that. But how can the administration make the promise that if you like your insurance plan you can keep it, when CBO and other analysts estimate that some people will be switched from private to public?

SEBELIUS: Well, I think, Jake, if you -- if you think about a marketplace option and new plans being created in Toledo, Ohio, or in California or in Florida, the network of doctors is likely to be pretty identical. A lot of plans exist in the same marketplace, and doctors are part of a variety of networks. So the idea that you would keep your own doctor is highly likely.

The other thing about the -- the new marketplace is, I think, the president is eager to stabilize the employer marketplace. Small- business owners right now are dropping coverage because they can't any longer afford it. They can't stay in the market.

With the new tax incentives that are part of health reform, small-business owners would be encouraged to actually stabilize their insurance plans, to offer coverage to their employees. They'd have tax credits. They'd have some help for the low-income employees to be able to afford the coverage.

So I think, if anything, it wouldn't dismantle the present market. It would actually help to provide a more stable private marketplace, which right now serves 180 million Americans very well. People like those plans. They want to make sure that if they have employer-based coverage that they like, they can keep it. And this would actually encourage and help employers to stay in the market.

On the other hand, if you lose your job, right now you lose your coverage. And -- and the new reform plan would make sure that you had an affordable option even if you lost your job, if you wanted to go out on your own and start your new business, which lots of people want to do, you wouldn't lose your health coverage.

So it would have some choices for consumers to make so they wouldn't have the kind of job lock that we see now across America.

But she backs off on the public option on CNN's State of the Union today:

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's health secretary is suggesting the White House is ready to accept nonprofit insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run public option in a health overhaul plan. A Republican senator says that is worth looking at.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says Obama still believes there should be choice and competition" in the health insurance market - but that a public option is "not the essential element."

Obama has been pressing for the government to run a health insurance organization to help cover the nation's nearly 50 million uninsured. But he had not seen a not-for-profit co-op as sufficient to offer consumers choice and competition that would bring down the costs of private insurance.

Sebelius spoke on CNN's "State of the Union."

We don't really know. But the draft of a GAO risk assessment says the decision was based on "unrepresentative accident scenarios," "outdated modeling" and "inadequate" information about the sites. Gee, I'm not feeling real good about that:

The Department of Homeland Security relied on a rushed, flawed study to justify its decision to locate a $700 million research facility for highly infectious pathogens in a tornado-prone section of Kansas, according to a government report.

The department's analysis was not "scientifically defensible" in concluding that it could safely handle dangerous animal diseases in Kansas -- or any other location on the U.S. mainland, according to a Government Accountability Office draft report obtained by The Washington Post. The GAO said DHS greatly underestimated the chance of accidental release and major contamination from such research, which has been conducted only on a remote island off the United States.

DHS staff members tried quietly last week to fend off a public airing of the facility's risks, agency correspondence shows. Department officials met privately with staff members of a congressional oversight subcommittee to try to convince them that the GAO report was unfair, and to urge them to forgo or postpone a hearing. But the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), decided otherwise. It plans to hold a hearing Thursday on the risk analysis, according to two sources briefed on the plans.

The criticism of DHS's site selection comes as the proposed research lab, the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), was expected to win construction funding in the congressional appropriations process.

"Drawing conclusions about relocating research with highly infectious exotic animal pathogens from questionable methodology could result in regrettable consequences," the GAO warned in its draft report. DHS's review was too "limited" and "inadequate" to decide that any mainland labs were safe, the report found. GAO officials declined to comment on the findings.

The new developments started another round of accusations that politics steered DHS's decision in January to build the proposed lab in Manhattan, Kan. Critics of the choice argue that a Kansas contingent of Republican Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts and then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, aggressively lobbied DHS to pick their state. Records show that a DHS undersecretary and his site selection committee met frequently with the senators, one of whom is a member of an appropriations subcommittee that helps set DHS funding.

What's a Sunday without another Bobble Head session.

Meet the Press: "White House senior adviser David Axelrod will discuss President Barack Obama's agenda with host David Gregory. From the other side of the aisle will be former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

ABC's "This Week," David Axelrod along with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a major player in the health care debate from his perch as ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.

"Face the Nation" Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour gives his first Sunday interview since succeeding Sanford as chairman of the Republican Governors Association last week. Also, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, will sit down to provide her perspective on Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Afghanistan.

"Fox News Sunday." Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) debate health care reform. Army Gen. Ray Odierno, will give an assessment as American forces prepare to withdraw from major cities.

State of the Union" Gen. Ray Odierno along with Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) and BP Capital CEO T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman who's been pushing wind and natural gas as major power sources.

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