Update: Several Republican Members of Congress are beginning to call the Democrats out over this. Congressman Dave Camp wants to know why the White House is censoring companies - especially while leaving supporters of the president’s plan alone. And Mitch McConnell is calling out Democratic colleague Max Baucus.

I’ve not had the chance to comment on this yet (except on Twitter), but the thuggish tactics of the Democrats in Washington are getting harder and harder to ignore. I’m prompted to the comment by the audacity of Senator Max Baucus and the HHS to start censoring political speech that they disagree with:

The Obama administration warned insurance companies Monday that they could face legal action for allegedly trying to scare seniors with misleading information about the potential for lost benefits under healthcare legislation in Congress.

“As we continue our research into this issue, we are instructing you to immediately discontinue all such mailings to beneficiaries and to remove any related materials directed to Medicare enrollees from your websites,” said a notice from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid…

In one case, the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the agency, launched an investigation of Humana Inc. after getting a complaint from Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), a lawmaker usually viewed as a reliable ally of the insurance industry. Baucus also put together the Senate Finance Committee’s version of the healthcare bill.

So Baucus (and other Democrats) are pushing for a health care overhaul that depends on dramatic Medicare cuts to bring down the cost. The Medicare providers (the insurance companies) believe that taking hundreds of billions out of the system just might impact care for seniors - so they warn them of the fact. And rather than respect respect the right of companies to speak to their customers, or respect free speech generally, Democrats are turning to blackmail to shut these companies up.

But this isn’t the first time this has happened this year - not by a long shot:

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Promoted by Jeff

You knew someone was going to find it.  The folks over at Mere Rhetoric have:

Now, I was no fan of President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security (mostly because there was no “opt-out entirely” provision). However, while liberals claim that Joe Wilson’s shout during Tuesday’s speech was “unprecedented” and “racist,” we can see the Democrats were just as capable of such behavior.

And they didn’t apologize for their outbursts afterward.

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Congressman Henry Waxman is in charge of developing health care overhaul legislation that can pass the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He’s not having much success, as a few moderate Democrats have insisted on cost-cutting measures. Today Waxman made clear that he’s willing to make en end-run around the moderates, and bring his radical legislation straight to the House floor.

In doing so, he made an interesting promise:

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) told reporters Friday he is prepared to bypass his committee and go straight to the House floor with a health care reform bill if he can’t get an agreement with Blue Dog Democrats.

Waxman said his preference is to reach a deal with the Blue Dogs, whom he is meeting with this afternoon, and “go forward with the markup and stand together as Democrats.”

But he added, “If we can’t, then it’s my view that we are going to have to look at perhaps bypassing the committee — I hope we don’t come to that conclusion…”

“I think this would deal with their issues,” Waxman said. “I hope they will agree to let our committee go forward with a markup and not [allow] Republicans to eviscerate the legislation.

“In fact I won’t allow that — to turn over the control of the committee to the Republicans — which is what they have threatened to do.”

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It’s obvious why he’s lying, of course: if Carnahan admitted how costly the House Democrat health bill will be, he would get a far worse reception.

Congressman Carnahan tells his constituents that the CBO has scored the House Democrat health bill and concluded that it produces a $6 billion surplus. That’s an out-and-out lie. You can find the CBO score here. If you look at the top of page 2, you see that according to CBO’s calculations, the health care bill will increase the deficit by $239 billion between 2010 and 2019.

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I suppose there are few of us who hadn’t guessed this, but it would have been nice to have it reported before the administration committed to a bailout:

It’s sure to be a stretch. For the United States to fully recover its investment, the value of General Motors stock will have to reach levels it has never before attained.

“I’m not going to predict it — that’s not my job today,” GM chief executive Fritz Henderson said in a recent interview.

“I don’t know how much we’re going to recover,” a senior Obama administration official said as the company headed into bankruptcy last month.

This uncertainty stems from the difficulty in valuing the 60 percent GM stake that the United States will receive in exchange for the public investment. The government also gets preferred shares and other compensation.

The stake will be worth enough to fully cover the government’s direct investment only if GM’s stock rises above $68 billion. Even at its recent 2000 peak, GM’s stock was worth only $56 billion.

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Today the Wall Street Journal covers the innovative private-sector health care program which Safeway offers to its employees. It sounds like a model for how market incentives can encourage workers to live healthier and more active lifestyles:

Safeway’s plan capitalizes on two key insights gained in 2005. The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior. The second insight, which is well understood by the providers of health care, is that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable.

As much as we would like to take credit for being a health-care innovator, Safeway has done nothing more than borrow from the well-tested automobile insurance model. For decades, driving behavior has been correlated with accident risk and has therefore translated into premium differences among drivers. Stated somewhat differently, the auto-insurance industry has long recognized the role of personal responsibility. As a result, bad behaviors (like speeding, tickets for failure to follow the rules of the road, and frequency of accidents) are considered when establishing insurance premiums. Bad driver premiums are not subsidized by the good driver premiums.

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Unbelievable.

Can you imagine the reaction if a Republican had tried this?

Top aides to Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) called a last-minute, pre-emptive strike on Wednesday with a group of prominent Democratic lobbyists, warning them to advise their clients not to attend a meeting with Senate Republicans set for Thursday.

Russell Sullivan, the top staffer on Finance, and Jon Selib, Baucus’ chief of staff, met with a bloc of more than 20 contract lobbyists, including several former Baucus aides.

“They said, ‘Republicans are having this meeting and you need to let all of your clients know if they have someone there, that will be viewed as a hostile act,’” said a Democratic lobbyist who attended the meeting.

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Today is a big day for the Blue Dog Democrats. They’ve spent the first 6 months of this administration supine, voting for whatever spending Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi told them to. As a result, the federal deficit is approaching $2 trillion - with nothing to show for it. All along, Barack Obama has paid lip service to the Congressional budget rule known as PayGo. Today, with much fanfare, Obama called for PayGo to be enshrined into law. You might cynically point out that it has been a rule in the House since the Democrats retook Congress in 2006, and ask why you should expect it to lead to smaller deficits once it is a law.

You would be right to ask the question. But beyond that, you ought to note that PayGo doesn’t even apply to one major category of spending: discretionary spending. It applies only to direct spending (ie, entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare). And Obama has also specifically asked for 4 exceptions to the rule. As a result, the new ‘PayGo’ has more holes in it than swiss cheese.

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According to the Hill, Congressional Democrats are planning to run up a trial balloon on comprehensive immigration reform in June, and then take a crack at passing a bill late this year or next:

Senate Democrats may be close to 60 votes on a measure that would represent the first step towards immigration reform under President Obama.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act is a concept dear to Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) heart, and while health care reform may get this summer’s headlines in Washington, the DREAM Act may be a sleeper…

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Speaker Pelosi claims that the CIA lied to her about its handling of terrorist detainees held by the United States. She claims not to have been informed about the methods being used to get information from prisoners. Obviously, this is almost certainly false. Why would the CIA have informed other lawmakers about interrogation methods, but not Pelosi?

But even if we take her at her word, another problem arises. Pelosi does not dispute that she learned about waterboarding no later than early 2003, when her intelligence staff attended a CIA briefing where it was discussed. Since she learned about waterboarding no less than 6 years ago, she had ample opportunity to register objections without disclosing any secrets to the public. That’s because the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence - on which Pelosi served as the senior Democrat in 2002 - conducts closed hearings on sensitive topics, to hear testimony from intelligence community officials. Further, House rules specify a procedure by which Representatives can force a debate on sensitive intelligence matters in a closed session. The most recent such session was in 2008; if Pelosi was so concerned about ‘torture,’ why did she not attempt to force a closed session to discuss it? And why did she not raise it during closed hearings of the Intelligence Committee with CIA officials? (Check out the House rules governing the Intelligence Committee here, starting on page 14.)

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Secretary Janet Napolitano has gotten a heap of well-deserved criticism for the report that her office rushed out, naming veterans, believers in gun rights, low-tax advocates, and other conservatives as possible terrorists. So far she has failed adequately to explain how her Department issued a report that slanders our military, our law enforcement agencies, and millions of average Americans.

Roll Call reports today that Napolitano has now apologized for this obvious screwup - but she has done so secretly, in a letter to a House Committee Chairman. The letter has not been shared with Republicans:

Rep. Peter King (N.Y.), the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, said Thompson did not share the letter with him, and it doesn’t change anything.

“To me this makes it more essential to provide [Congress] with all of the records” related to the report, King said after Roll Call showed him a copy of the letter…

In her letter, Napolitano admitted to Thompson that the report was released despite concerns by the department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, a fact King emphasized.

“It seems like a department not under control,” King said. “Why was a report that was so off target released over the objections of the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties?”…

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It seems there aren’t really any convictions Arlen Specter won’t sell in order to help him win reelection. According to his new colleague Tom Harkin, Specter realizes that he’s toast in a Democratic primary if he doesn’t kiss labor’s ring that he was wrong about Card Check:

A spokesperson for Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the lead sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, confirmed today that an agreement is near that will allow Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) to return to his earlier position of support for the legislation.

Specter, originally a co-sponsor of the bill, announced on March 24 that he had switched to the opposition. At the time, as a Republican senator, he was under pressure from business lobbyists and right-wing Republicans lining up against him in that party’s coming primary election.

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The American people have good reason to question the leadership qualities of the sunshine patriots of the Democratic party - those whose views on national security are wholly dictated by the mood of the times. They clearly include people like Nancy Pelosi, who was repeatedly briefed on the methods for interrogating detainees, but never raised any concerns she may have had. She was content to keep her thoughts to herself, until the memories of 9/11 had largely faded away, and second-guessing come into vogue.

The Washington Times points out that Pelosi’s frequent nemesis Jane Harman raised questions and aired her concerns at a time when doing so might have been politically costly:

Rep. Jane Harman, facing a likely primary challenge from the left flank of the Democratic Party, was one of the only lawmakers in 2003 to challenge the CIA’s program of harsh interrogations, according to a little-noticed letter to the CIA that was declassified last year.

The California Democrat’s position contrasts with that of a longtime colleague and rival, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Mrs. Pelosi has in the past two weeks said she was powerless to stop the interrogation program, which critics say included torture, and that she was never told that the program was actually being implemented…

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I don’t like to encourage masochism, but if you were ever going to watch Keith Olbermann, tonight is probably the night. After all, given Olbermann’s tendency to quit his meds and start frothing at the mouth over corporate hypocrisy, he has a juicy target today. Who’s the latest fat-cat to get wealthy from taxpayer bailout money? Why, it’s the pride of Cownell - Keith Olbermann. If you feel inclined, go sign the petition.

While General Electric, the parent-company of your MSNBC network, was negotiating a $126 billion taxpayer-funded bailout, you signed a new contract raising your salary from $4 million to $7.5 million annually. You have used your show as a platform to call for the resignation of corporate executives accepting excessive bonuses on the backs of taxpayers who are picking up the tab for these atrocious bailouts, yet you yourself have no problem engaging in the same “class economic rape” that you accuse them of.

Please heed your own advice and stop accepting taxpayer money to subsidize your nightly diatribes. Resign or return the balance of your excessive raise to the U.S. Treasury.

To express this in terms even Olbermann might understand, how dare you sir!

Too bad for Olbermann - he can’t even use the defense that the AIG bonus recipients did. He can’t claim to have earned the money. Those bonuses were awarded pursuant to a prior contract; Olbermann’s was a new deal. And if you look at his track record, it’s hard to argue that Olbermann is doing anything right.

Olbermann has a lot of nerve taking taxpayer money while he rails against others for doing the same. If he has any integrity, he’ll follow the lesson set by the executives he has attacked. When the AIG bonuses approved by the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress caused public outrage, those execs by and large returned the money. Olbermann has to do the same. He’ll still be a joke, but at least he won’t be a conspicuously hypocritical joke.

The New York Times is squeezing its hard-pressed, low-and-middle income union workers for wage concessions it needs to keep the Boston Globe from shutting down. Its stock price is collapsing like a house of cards, and it’s hemorrhaging cash. And the papers’ editors have crusaded against excessive compensation - especially for firms faring poorly. But apparently none of that is enough to prevent the paper from awarding generous bonuses to its wealthy executives:

At a time when New York Times managers are forcing all employees to take a five percent pay cut, and demanding even larger sacrifices from the NYT-owned Boston Globe, top executives of the beleaguered newspaper received substantial bonus and fringe benefit payments over and above their salaries, according to a proxy statement released on March 11…

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Do you remember that $200 million earmarked by Congressional Democrats for re-sodding the national mall? Do you recall how Democrats and the White House were so embarrassed about the project that they at last deleted it from the legislation - and then complained loudly any time Republicans failed to note that they had eliminated it?

Well, it turns out they’re spending it anyway:

More than $55 million in economic stimulus money will be used to fix the National Mall, even though money for mall renovations was removed during congressional debate on the stimulus package this winter…

In January, majority Democrats removed $200 million in stimulus funding that had been targeted for the National Mall, after Republicans criticized it as an example of wasteful spending.

Salazar called the money being spent to renovate the Mall a “down payment” on a much larger challenge to fix a national symbol that has fallen into disrepair. He said the mall does not belong to the District of Columbia but to the nation, and called it an important symbol for all Americans.

This is just one more demonstration that ideas for more spending never really die in Washington; they always come back. Can stimulus funds for condoms be far behind?

Barack Obama today offered what might be the single most mealy-mouthed, non-committal, responsibility-dodging answer in presidential history, when asked his views on prosecution of those who oversaw terrorist interrogation under the Bush administration:

While the Bush-era memos providing legal justifications for enhanced interrogation methods “reflected us losing our moral bearings,” the president said, he also that he did not think it was “appropriate” to prosecute those CIA officers who “carried out some of these operations within the four corners of the legal opinions or guidance that had been provided by the White House.”

But in clear change from language he and members of his administration have used in the past, the president said that “with respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws and I don’t want to prejudge that. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there…”

Mr. Obama also today said that if there is any sort of commission or investigation into the approval and use of these interrogation methods, he would prefer that it be an independent bipartisan commission and not a congressional hearing, though he was clear to state that he was not expressing an opinion on whether should there be hearings.

“If and when there needs to be a further accounting of what took place during this period,” the president said, “I think for Congress to examine ways in which it can be done in a bipartisan fashion –outside of the typical hearing progress that can sometimes break down and break entirely along party lines, to accept that there are independent participants who are above reproach and have credibility — I think that would be a more sensible approach.”

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Which of these is more common: Democrats abusing their positions of power to waste money, or Democrats showing they no longer take seriously the threat of terrorist attack? This scandal has them both.

House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) is pushing earmarks worth millions of dollars for homeland security projects at the small Mississippi college that he attended, though the school could not explain what the earmarks are for and does not yet appear to have the capacity to provide the services that Thompson wants to fund.

In an earmark request for 2010 appropriations, Thompson’s Web site indicates that he is seeking $23 million for the “National Institute for Education and Training” at Tougaloo College for “an Operational Test and Evaluation Activity (OTEA) in Vicksburg, Mississippi…”

The money would be “an addition to existing programs” at the institutions, [Thompson's Chief of Staff Lanier] Avant said. Tougaloo “has one of the most renowned engineering programs of all the [historically black colleges and universities] in the country. … It’s not like Tougaloo is some kind of new kid on the block,” he said.

But Tougaloo does not offer an engineering major. The school’s course catalog indicates that there is not a single engineering class being taught at Tougaloo this semester. The school does have a joint program with the Georgia Institute of Technology that allows students to transfer there to get their engineering degree after finishing their liberal arts coursework at Tougaloo.

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They told me that if I voted for McCain, political appointees would ruthlessly strong-arm career government employees, and force them to stay silent when their views deviated from the company line. And they were right!

[Gates] said he tried to give the services the “maximum possible opportunity” to share their views during the internal budget negotiations.

“The thing that is important is to reinforce within the building, in terms of dealing with the Hill, that there is a chain of command,” he said. “Once the decision is made, and particularly once the president signs off on the budget, then there needs to be discipline about people not conducting guerilla warfare against decisions the president has made.”

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If you’ve been thinking of buying a quaint little retreat near Galway, Ireland, you might want to ask Chris Dodd for advice. He’s made off quite well on his (pictured).

Here’s the quick-and-dirty: find a convicted felon and get him to put up two-thirds of the purchase price, then 8 years later - when the value of comparable real estate has quadrupled - buy him out at around the same amount he bought in for.

Voila! Before you know it, you own an Irish ‘cottage’ worth about a million dollars, but whose value you claim on ethics forms is as little as $100,000! The Wall Street Journal reported on the specifics not that long ago:

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