There you go. Orrin Hatch has sent the signal: If we want a jobs plan, we'll have to give up any right to access our current health care system.

Of course, he buries the threat inside a rant about the individual mandate, because that's unpopular with many, not just those on the right. So now we have Republicans saying "Want a job? Die."

These people make me sick. Oops. Guess that's their goal.

Update: Eric Cantor has taken up the hostage-taking on behalf of the House. Washington Post:

But by putting the disaster aid funding on a separate piece of legislation that’s required to keep the government running, House leaders seem to be calculating that the Senate will have no choice but to go along or risk a partial government shutdown.

Oh, and this:

Besides being about half the overall size of the Senate’s disaster aid measure, the House bill ties cuts to an Obama-backed loan program to encourage the production of fuel efficient vehicles to pay for the $1 billion in immediate aid for 2011. Typically disaster aid is added to the budget as an emergency expense, and the insistence by Republicans on so-called offsets has Democrats fuming.

I'm very happy that the hostages were freed in Colombia, but it's kind of interesting that it happens as soon as John McCain pays them a little visit. Richard Blair agrees...

I’ve gotta tell you, ever since the itinerary of the tour was announced, I’ve been scratching my head a bit. It didn’t make any sense. Why would a U.S. presidential candidate feel the need to hobnob with the political elite in Mexico City and Bogota?

Hullabaloo has more...

UPDATE (Nicole): Did McCain violate the Logan Act?

What a wild story. The guy looks like a pretty sick individual:

A mentally unstable man wearing what appeared to be a bomb strapped to his chest was arrested hours after he walked into a Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign office Friday, took hostages and demanded to speak to the candidate in a standoff that dragged into the night, authorities said.

Eisenberg made local headlines in March when he held a news conference on the steps of Rochester City Hall to complain about a police policy of placing fliers in unlocked cars warning motorists to lock their doors. "This is nothing more than a gimmick to get around the Constitution and go around in the middle of the night upon unsuspecting citizens in their own yard and search their vehicles," Eisenberg said.

I'll have more later...

WaPo:

After their release, Centanni and Wiig told reporters that they hoped that their experience would not scare other journalists from reporting on the Palestinians. After a brief news conference, they headed by van for the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, Fox News said.

The NY Times has a detailed account of what happened.

Two journalists kidnapped in Gaza were released unharmed today after being forced at gunpoint to say on a videotape that they had converted to Islam. The two journalists from Fox News — Steve Centanni, 60, an American reporter based in Washington, and Olaf Wiig, 36, a freelance cameraman from New Zealand — were held for 13 days in an abandoned garage in the Gaza Strip as hostages of a previously unknown group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades.

FOX News promotes Torture Video!

Hannity talks to narrator Mark Taylor from "Buried in the Sand"

Hannity: Think to yourself how this compares to photographs of American soldiers last spring, you know, pictures of underwear on peoples heads etc.. that shocked the American country...

Mark: It's gratifying to me that on Amazon.com, we just displaced Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 as the number one documentary...

Hannity: I want everybody to please buy this video !

Video there are scenes of tortue in this segment

It is clear that Hannity is down playing our role in Abu Ghraib to, as Limbaugh stated "a sorority prank!", while justifying the war in Iraq because of an evil, tortuous dictator, rather than what was originally given to the American people: a war against terrorism!

Why do certain right wingers have this affinity for violence and torture, yet anything even remotely sexual is taboo?

You show a whipping, a good beating and that won't scar our children?

Ann Coulter (MNF skit): Violence has been around since Punch and Judy, since Cowboys and Indian movies. There is an enormous difference between violence and smut. They (kids) are not watching real blood, they're not real bullets. When you see for example nudity, it's a real woman. This is specifically corrupting and degrading...

Did Ann watch Saving Private Ryan or The Passion of the Christ? How could a child tell if those were fake bullets, phony arms and heads exploding? Would a child be able to discern the agony Christ faced at the hands of the Romans as make believe?

However, if children get a glimpse at Nicollette Sheridan's naked back, they are unable to draw the same conclusion that violence holds.

PopMatters review excerpt: The film falls laughingly short of the "documentary journalism" status conferred by the producers in terms of both form and content. Like so much hard-line rhetoric, Buried dresses its "truth" in bogeyman foreboding.

The film fails even on this level of propaganda, for it is neither cohesive nor compelling. Screams and grainy footage of severed hands, executions, and beatings are bookended by carefully decontextualized and ellipsis-laden quotations from Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry proclaiming Saddam Hussein's tyranny. See? Even liberals once recognized the threat. The film drags these quotations into "justification for the war" territory by cutting to explicit footage of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad. Rather than making a cohesive argument about the case for war, Buried targets the "liberal media," "Hollywood," and the "radical left," naming Fahrenheit 9/11, Ted Kennedy, the press coverage of conditions in Iraq pre- and post-Saddam Hussein, and Abu Ghraib as examples of the "deception of America."

EfilmCritic: Finally! A film that combats the liberal view that we should not be in Iraq! A film that argues how Iraq is better off today thanks to the removal of Saddam Hussein! Oh, wait, this is not that film.

Then the video makers finally cross the line, sealing this reviewer's negative review. The recent beheadings of American hostages in Iraq are shown without edits. I was washed over with a wave of nausea, not patriotism as these people screamed for their lives as cowardly terrorists slit their throats and removed their heads. This grimmest of footage is not here to educate, it is here to appeal to the lowest common denominator of humanity. The film makers want to sell discs and make money, and here is some shocking footage to move sales.

"Buried in the Sand- The Deception of America" is not worth your time or effort, and is certainly not even in the same league as other political documentaries out there. America is being deceived, but the people who are peddling this collection of snuff films under the banner of education and democracy are the ones doing the deceiving. Simply repulsive.

Ben Domenech's old home, RedState thinks saving captured hostages is a waste of time because they don't share their political views. Malkin leads the charge. Some right wing bloggers are completely unhinged over actual "good news" and that's quite sickening.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sunni insurgents have taken at least 60 people hostage in an Iraqi town near Baghdad and are threatening to kill them unless Shi'ites leave, said a Shi'ite official who said he was contacted by residents there. "People from the town called me begging the Iraqi government to save their relatives who are hostages. They told me there are at least 60 hostages," the Shi'ite official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

The official said insurgents with heavy weapons appear to have taken control of the town of Madaen, just south of Baghdad, and no police or government forces were in sight. "The residents told me the insurgents were wandering the streets in cars and warning people on loudspeakers that if Shi'ites want the hostages to be safe they must leave town," said the official.

Developing story...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The bodies of more than 50 people have been recovered from the Tigris River and have been identified, President Jalal Talabani said Wednesday. He said the bodies were believed to have been those of hostages seized in a region south of Baghdad earlier this month. In a separate discovery, another 19 Iraqis were shot to death and left lined up against a bloodstained wall in a soccer stadium in the town of Haditha, about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, an Iraqi reporter and residents said...read on

via Olliver Willis

New 9/11 Report Shows Warnings About Hijackings

The report discloses that the Federal Aviation Administration, despite being focused on risks of hijackings overseas, warned airports in the spring of 2001 that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners, but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable."
The report takes the F.A.A. to task for failing to pursue domestic security measures that could conceivably have altered the events of Sept. 11, 2001, like toughening airport screening procedures for weapons or expanding the use of on-flight air marshals. The report, completed last August, said officials appeared more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays, and easing airlines' financial woes than deterring a terrorist attack.

The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system. The administration provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago and, even with heavy redactions in some areas, the declassified version provides the firmest evidence to date about the warnings that aviation officials received concerning the threat of an attack on airliners and the failure to take steps to deter it.

What did Dear Leader say last May?

"Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people."

LIAR.