Obama made what was considered by many to be the safest (and most “obvious”) choice in selecting Cairo for his “high-profile speech that would seek to mend rifts between the United States and the broader Muslim world.” Unfortunately, by deciding to play it safe, a president whose life to this point has revolved around an obsession with being “historic” missed out on a truly historic opportunity.

Cairo “Feels Bold”

Last December, when the incoming administration first floated the idea of Obama making a major speech from an Islamic capital, pundits, and bloggers alike immediately zeroed in on Cairo as the “perfect” choice - one that is safe, but “feels bold,” in the words of New York Times reporter Helene Cooper.

“Egypt is perfect,” wrote Cooper. “It’s certainly Muslim enough, populous enough and relevant enough. It’s an American ally, but there are enough tensions in the relationship that the choice will feel bold. The country has plenty of democracy problems, so Mr. Obama can speak directly to the need for a better democratic model there.”

The “democracy problems” Cooper and her allies in the media paid lip service to in their pronouncements of Cairo’s perfection are far more than just a passing concern. Just over three years ago, Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak promised nationwide parliamentary elections, a positive development coming on the heels of the first contested presidential election since the 1952 overthrow of Egypt’s ruling monarchy. Unfortunately, “the election was marred by widespread violations, fraud and the arrest and detention of hundreds of opposition supporters,” Saad Edin Abrahim wrote in the Los Angeles Times shortly after the election. That campaign of intimidation, which included the arrest and imprisonment of Mubarak’s chief challenger, resulted in a voter turnout of barely 20 percent and in Mubarak’s allies maintaining their dominance of Egypt’s government.

Baghdad the Clear Choice

If President Obama was as committed to actually being historic as he is to talking about being so, he would have taken advantage of the opportunity left him by former president George W. Bush and made his appeal to the pan-Muslim world from Baghdad, Iraq. A Muslim state by any reasonable definition of the word, Iraq has become, outside the tiny state of Israel, the only functioning democracy in an incredibly volatile region of the world where the U.S. has myriad interests.

Further, the move to normalize relations with Iraq has seen significant progress in recent months, with as evidenced by the Iraqi parliament’s approval of two landmark agreements cementing the American-Iraqi relationship as an alliance of “independent, equal states of sovereignty.”

The Status of Forces and Strategic Framework Agreements, which were passed by a parliament made up of sectarian officially “normalized the U.S.-Iraqi relationship with strong economic, diplomatic, cultural, and security ties” and will serve “as the foundation for a long-term bilateral relationship based on mutual goals,” said President Bush in an address shortly after the agreements were approved.

These agreements were passed by an Iraqi parliament made up of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds - groups which had been fighting a bloody sectarian war against their fellow countrymen speaks volumes about how far Iraq has come in such a brief time.

The recognition and establishment successful, democratic Iraq which is a stalwart U.S. ally would truly be a transformational event in the Middle East - and, by choosing Baghdad as a location for his first major Presidential address on foreign soil, Barack Obama could make it clear to the U.S. and the world - particularly the Islamic world - that he understands the importance of the new Iraq, and that America stands ready to join in an equal partnership with any nation, Muslim or no, which is willing to embrace freedom and peace with its neighbors, and to join the fight against terrorism.

Leave Grudges at the Door

Cooper summed up the “problem” posed by Baghdad as a potential speech site for President Obama in December, writing in the Times that speaking from that particular Islamic capital “could appear to validate the Iraq war, which Mr. Obama opposed.”

Rather than falling prey to such a petty, small-minded concern, Obama and his advisers should have recognized that this was one of several reasons why Baghdad was the perfect location for his pan-Islamic address.

Speaking from Baghdad would have publicly demonstrated the self-proclaimed “non-ideological,” “post-partisan” Obama’s ability to put aside his pre-presidential view on the invasion of Iraq aside and, in true statesmanlike fashion, embrace the Iraqi democracy as the ally it now is. Embracing and honoring the new Iraq in such a public way would have sent an even more powerful message to the Islamic world because of Obama’s opposition to the invasion itself, and because of his opposition to the shift in military strategy that pulled Iraq from the depths of sectarian war and made it what it is today.

Further, such a decision would have demonstrated that the inexperienced American president understands the value of the democratic state that resulted from an effort he opposed, and would have sent the message that Obama truly was what he constantly makes himself out to be: a high-minded statesman who is willing to put partisan ship and petty squabbles aside and to work for the purpose of building and maintaining alliances with members of the international community (in this case, with Iraq).

Tabula Rasa on Israel-Palestine

Iraq is unique in another significant way: it presents the lone location in the Muslim world from which the problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be addressed free of clouding by the current regime’s statements actions. With the great emphasis Obama has put on “solving” the squabble he sees as the root of all Middle Eastern conflict to this point in his presidency, Baghdad offers an unmatched opportunity to address the Muslim world in general, and the Israel-Palestine conflict in particular, from the capital of a nation whose fledgling government has no history of supporting one side or the other in that millennial struggle.

Egypt can make no such claim. Though it has been party to peace talks and treaties with the Jewish state in the past, it was also an aggressor in the Six Days’ War against Israel, and its northern territory currently houses tunnels through which arms are sent into the blockaded Gaza Strip, where Hamas terrorists employ them against Israeli civilians in the southern cities of Sderot and Ashkelon. Further, senior Egyptian officials have gone on the record accusing the “Jews of Palestine” (modern Israel) of “killing children, old people, and women and ignoring taboos,” and of injecting civil Judaism with “their poisons, which are against all humanity.”

Egypt, in other words, has clearly staked out its position on the Palestinian side of the conflict between the Israeli population and those who virulently - and often violently - oppose them.

From providing cash payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers who died to kill Israeli civilians, to sending surface-to-surface missiles over Jordan and into Tel Aviv during the first Gulf War, the Iraq of Saddam Hussein was a similarly avowed enemy of Israel and supporter of Palestinian terrorism. However, with the overthrow of Saddam and the accession of a democratic government that has few if any ties to the late tyrant, Iraq is now the one nation in the entirety of the Middle East whose slate is virtually blank when it comes to Israel-Palestine policy and interference. In a region as polarized around a single issue as the Middle East is on Israel-Palestine, this virtue provides Baghdad with a value too great to be expressed in mere words.

Standing as Equals

Finally, a decision by President Obama to visit Baghdad as an equal of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would have sent the crystal-clear message to an Islamic world suspicious of American motives that Iraq is not a U.S. puppet state, but that is stands in sovereign equality to an America that is ready and willing to stand on equal footing with any Muslim nation that respects the rights of its people and those of other nations, and that actively repudiates terror both within its borders and without.

Obama’s choice of location for this address could have sent a powerful message to the Islamic world that the face of the Middle East was changing. Further, he could have used this opportunity to signal America’s willingness to deal openly, honestly, and as equal allies with Muslim nations who comport themselves in a manner consistent with America’s interests and values.

Unfortunately, in ultimately deciding to pass up Iraq with all its attributes in favor of a member of the Middle East’s “old guard” that has as few relevant attributes and as poor a record on human rights and honest democracy as Egypt, a president who is desperate to be “historic” and “transformational” missed a golden opportunity to be just that.

I have a few comments and concerns about the Senator’s actions, and about the ideas expressed in his post here today.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist (R) may be a shoo-in for Mel Martinez’s Senate seat in terms of sheer electability. However, it strikes me as being very vaild to ask whether we (i.e., the GOP) want to elect someone to represent our party and our brand in most exclusive club in the nation who is a proven tax-hiker and runaway spending supporter.

Further, if, as Senator Cornyn has said, blowback over tax increases and failed Stimulus spending promises to be a major factor in bringing out Republican voters (and in pulling independent voters away from the Democratic party) in 2010, do we really — and think about this, please — do we really want our nominee for the U.S. Senate to be someone who was on the wrong side of both of those issues?

As the Senator said in his post, the GOP isn’t a monolith; no successful party is. The Republican parties of Texas and Georgia don’t equal the Republican parties of New York and Minnesota, because values and people are different in those different places, and so a Republican won’t necessarily be the same thing in both. Unfortunately, in trying to make his case about this reality, Senator Cornyn decided to adopt the Obama-esque tactic of hastily constructing a strawman and swatting it down for the purpose of looking both smart and reasonable.

This morning, the Senator wrote, “Some believe that we should be a monolithic Party…comprised only of people who agree with us 100 percent of the time. Excuse me, Senator, but with all due respect that’s utter tripe, and you know it.

The argument against the NRSC’s endorsement of Crist isn’t being made by people who want to Assimilate Florida Into The Monolith. In fact, many of the Republicans who are standing up to the NRSC and Senator Cornyn on this aren’t even doing so out of opposition to Charlie Crist becoming the prospective GOP nominee for the Sunshine State’s open Senate seat. Rather, the argument is being made by those who oppose the head of the official Senatorial campaign committee — a man who has been assimilated into the inside-the-beltway Washington world — bringing his Beltway-based organization into an open primary and throwing its weight (and deep pockets) around for a particular non-incumbent candidate.

That goes double for a candidate like Crist in a race like Florida’s. Simple common sense, which I understand time inside the Beltway deprives all once sound-minded men of, would tell anybody that in a race featuring a person who represents the core principles of a party and a person who has recently and repeatedly flaunted those core principles by signing massive tax hikes, expanding the nanny state, and campaigning with the leader of the opposition party for the passage of a bill that violates everything his party stands for fiscally, the only smart thing for a national party organization to do would be to stay out of it and let the Republican voters in that state have their say.

The GOP isn’t a monolith by any means, and we don’t want it to be. However, one thing that is necessary when attempting to come back from a shellacking like the GOP took the last two election cycles is a set of core principles we don’t violate — period. At a time when the biggest domestic grievances people are going to have against those currently sitting in office are higher taxes and runaway spending, going out of your way to back a major tax-hiker and an endorser of that runaway Washington spending — without even making him defend those issues in a primary against a willing challenger with a sterling record on them — is, quite frankly, a loser of a decision.

Senator Cornyn’s decision to bring the full power of his Republican campaign machine to bear on behalf of a tax-hiking Obama supporter against a lifelong conservative in an open GOP primary is even more foolish than his decision to use donors’ money to go after Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter with television ads less than a week after he enthusiastically endorsed the Senator in his Republican primary contest.

The question which must be answered when deciding on, and defending, moves like the Florida endorsement is this: What is the goal the NRSC is attempting to accomplish?

Senator Cornyn points to Crist’s name ID as proof of his electability. That’s fine; he may well be more electable than Marco Rubio in the 2010 Senate race. However, how much does the GOP gain if we pick up one more seat, but the person who fills it neither adheres to, nor particularly believes in, our core principles as a party?

If we lack that in those who are elected to represent both us and our brand, then what have we in fact gained by putting another warm body in the legislature whose only break with the other party is his choice of the letter after his name?

After knocking down his last strawman of the morning, Senator Cornyn wrapped up his case for endorsing Florida’s tax-hiking, Obama-supporting, Stimulus-promoting Governor for the Republican Senate nomination by saying,

“Winning back the majority requires not only that we hold the Democrats accountable, but also that we embrace the vast number of issues upon which Republicans agree. …

If we succeed in electing Republican Senators in 2010, issues like relocating Gitmo detainees to the United States, socializing healthcare, and eliminating workers’ secret ballots may never reach the floor of the United States Senate.”

With all due respect to Senator Cornyn, that final paragraph is an incomplete statement which should have begun with the phrase, “If we succeed in electing Republican Senators who represent the core principles of the GOP in 2010,” etc., etc., etc.

If our Senators and Representatives do not represent the values their constituents and their party as a whole stand for, and with which its brand is meant to be synonymous, then those Senators and Representatives do the people whom they purport to represent no good whatsoever.

The GOP isn’t a monolith, and every state’s Republican party has the right and the ability to select candidates and nominees that represent them. At very least, voters in a state like Florida should be allowed to do so without a Washington-bound, visionless organization like the NRSC breathing down their necks telling them what’s really good for them, and who would really “fit their state.”

The Republican party has been brought down far enough in recent years by its Washington-dwelling contingent. Though he has been sound on many issues in the past, Senator Cornyn’s words about the 2006 and 2008 elections bear out the fact that he is one of those Washington dwellers. “As a Party, we were stunned,” Cornyn wrote this morning, by the electoral shellackings the Democrats handed us in 2006 and 2008.

Senator Cornyn, the insulated creatures of the Beltway were the only Republicans who were really stunned by those outcomes. The rest of us very clearly saw that the party’s leaders had lost their way and failed to live up to the core principles of the GOP.

To this I only have one thing to add: If you think using your inside-the-Beltway organization to bigfoot a real conservative out of an open primary in favor of a tax-hiking, Obama-supporting, Porkulus-endorsing Democrat-lite is the way to, as you put it, “regain the ground we lost,” then the level of stunning you’re going to get in 2010 will make ‘06 and ‘08 look like cakewalks.

Nice try, Senator Cornyn, but no dice on this one.

Go join Reddit.

When you see posts you like, you can submit them to either service — but that’s not as critical as simply being a member of those networking sites, so that you can, with just 1 click (Digg) or 2 clicks (Reddit), help exponentially more people across the interwebs see the posts here at RS than would otherwise. (Yes, we have good traffic levels, but we’re not under any kind of illusion that we’re currently being read by the entire global population that’s on the Internet — which is why this is important!)

So, to sum up, do the following: (1) Join Digg! and Reddit.  (2) Vote up posts you see here that you like. They don’t have to be on the front page; they just have to be on the site and submitted to those services.

Think of them as a “Recommend This!” button that’s not limited to RedState, but that recommends posts here to the online community as a whole.

Got it? Good. Now go do those things, then come right back here, because you never know what ridiculous thing Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, or Barack Obama will say or do while you’re away!

This is a whole bunch of nothing to most liberals, who accept as the natural order of things that empathy and common ethnic experience are more important in Constitutional law than dispassionate review and application of an objective standard. To conservatives, on the other hand, Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” statement is a something — if not necessarily a “big deal” — because it injects subjectivity into an objective process, and because it reflects an adoption of the race-and-gender-obsessed liberal worldview that denies any objective good outside of “diversity” for its own sake.

Given that Sotomayor’s speech from which the “wise Latina” quote was pulled was part of a symposium entitled “Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation,” it’s not surprising or offensive in the least that she discussed race as a topic. However, rather than using that pulpit to acknowledge that neither minority status nor an impoverished upbringing was the sine qua non of effectively interpreting legal texts and applying them to cases (her job as an appellate judge), Sotomayor chose to declare that, in her estimation, a white male simply isn’t as fit to render legal judgment as a “wise Latina woman.”

There’s a very clear reason why this statement has half of the nation up in arms. Ironically, the other half, which is brushing this aside and saying it’s no big deal, would be calling for the head of any white male who said his race and gender made him more qualified to judge than any “Latina woman.” The difference in that situation is that, had a white male said such a thing, conservatives would be condemning it as well — something race-and-gender-obsessed liberals simply can’t bring themselves to do with regard to Sotomayor’s statement, despite the obviousness of the double standard.

Do bear in mind that Tom Daschle, who has returned to lobbying for a living, is still guiding “anti-lobbyist” President Barack Obama on health care “reform” even though his tax evasion lost him the spot of HHS chief and White House health care czar. Do also bear in mind that Daschle wrote in his book that Britain’s national health service is a system America should aspire to.

Then do the math.

One of the world’s greatest minds comes up with one of the world’s greatest ideas:

Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by US President Barack Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white.

A global initiative to change the colour of roofs, roads and pavements so that they reflect more of the Sun’s light and heat could play a big part in containing global warming, he said yesterday.

It would be interesting to get Chu’s estimate on the percentage of the earth’s surface that is covered by roofs, roads and pavements.

As Erick posted on Twitter, “When all it takes to solve global warming is painting my roof white, global warming isn’t a serious problem.”

I have to echo that statement, with the simple addition that, if Chu is serious in his suggestion, then the people who promote AGW as an issue are, quite simply, fundamentally unserious.

To Blair’s last sentence, I can only add this: Guess what already reflects sunlight better than white paint?

Water, snow, and ice.

I wonder what the ratio is of the water-covered portions of planet Earth to the pavement-and-roof-covered portions of planet Earth. Certainly Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu has a formula to figure that little problem out, doesn’t he?

The announcement comes on the heels of a long-range missile test, a nuclear detonation, and multiple short-range missile launches, none of which represented physical attacks on neighboring states but all of which were very much intended to be seen as threats by those who would dare out pressure on the hermit kingdom to walk back its aggressive policies and live within the bounds of international consensus and agreements.

Though the Republic of Korea is used to such rhetoric and posturing from its northern neighbor, Pyongyang’s latest ratcheting up of tension on the peninsula comes as a direct result of the ROK announcing its decision to become a member of a program known as the Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI.

The PSI is a Bush-era program established for the purpose of coordinating a worldwide effort to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The 90-nation organization is the brainchild of John R. Bolton, the former U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

The highest-profile tool used by PSI-supporting nations to prevent proliferation is shipment interdiction, often conducted by boarding ships suspected of carrying WMD materials or forcing them into friendly port for inspection – a tactic that has been used against North Korean ships in the past, and which in 2003 directly led to the unraveling of the largest nuclear black market ever discovered: that of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan.

Pyongyang has long warned South Korea that a decision by the latter to join the PSI would be tantamount to an act of war. Not coincidentally, the DPRK responded to Seoul’s announcement by firing short-range rockets – one surface-to-ship, one surface-to-air – into the Sea of Japan (or the “Eastern Sea,” as the Koreans refer to it), a wordless warning that its past threats should not be forgotten. That action has, of course, been accompanied by heightened rhetoric aimed at reminding Seoul of the danger that exists mere miles to its north, and of convincing leaders of the free Korea to walk back their steps to put pressure on the rogue regime.

An increase in counter-proliferation activities in its immediate region is a very real cause of concern for Pyongyang, given its reliance on black market weapons and technology sales for income and its recent history of exporting nuclear technology (as recently seen in the nuclear reactor complex in Syria, which was built with North Korean assistance and destroyed by Israeli aircraft in 2007).

Further action to prevent North Korea from aiding other states and nonstate actors in their pursuit of nuclear weapons is necessary to maintain some semblance of international stability and domestic security. However, as (or if) steps are taken to that effect, Pyongyang will continue ratchet up its threatening rhetoric and activities – something that will make U.S. President Barack Obama’s position incredibly uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, if Obama’s response to Pyongyang’s recent missile and nuclear tests are any indication, the administration’s answer to such aggression will be to dial back the pressure on the North Korean regime, rather than to keep the heat on the rogue state to comply with international will.

The U.S. currently has 30,000 soldiers and airmen stationed in South Korea as a guarantor of American military intervention should Pyongyang decide to withdraw from the 1953 armistice and resume open war with the South. If the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea continues ratcheting up its level of belligerence — especially if that includes taking up arms in an effort to take back what it views as the other half of its personal territory — the foreign policy neophyte currently serving as Commander in Chief of the U.S. military will have some very difficult decisions to make.

Based on his actions to date, Obama appears to have little idea how to deal with such a difficult situation beyond making speeches and appealing to the United Nations, which is incapable of taking any action other than issuing sternly-worded statements in response to flagrant violations of international law and sovereignty. North Korea’s persistence in openly flaunting its defiance of Obama’s reasonable words and the UN’s toothless resolutions have stumped the American executive, whose entire worldview is based in a belief that kind words, conciliatory outreach, and appeals to Turtle Bay are the only tools necessary for dealing with international crises.

As President Obama is hopefully beginning to learn, neither stern words, nor helpless pleas, nor concessions are particularly effective problem-solving tactics in the real world. Whether this dovish, rigidly-ideological president will absorb (and act on) that lesson in time to make a difference is an open question. It is one on which Obama’s legacy will depend, but far more than that, whether or not such a lesson is learned in time may be the question on which the safety of civilians around the world, both on the Korean peninsula and elsewhere, comes to depend.

Whether this is the result of changing values among the American people, the general population’s perpetually dwindling attention span, or because there are so many things closer to home our nation is choosing to focus on instead of our service men and women’s gallant deeds and efforts (whether that be a rocky national economy or the latest season of American Idol), the fact is this generation has failed to identify and treasure its incarnations of historic military heroes like Audie Murphy, Jimmy Doolittle, Pappy Boyington, Bill Pitsenbarger, Bud Day, and countless others.

This disappointing reality is not unique to the current decade. Who, for example, can name the most recent pre-global war on terror (GWOT) recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor? The names of Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon — two Army special operations sergeants who received the nation’s highest award for their heroic actions in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993 — are utterly foreign to the vast majority of the same American population that can name the latest movie star to file for divorce, the latest starlet to have borne a child out of wedlock, or the latest teen sensation to enter alcohol rehab.

Part of the problem is a lack of reporting on stories of true heroism among the men and women serving this country in war zones around the world. After all, how can people know of the deeds being done by our best and brightest if the news media — whose sole raison d’être is to report on deeds and events — doesn’t the job it exists to do?

This lack of reporting on American military heroism isn’t due to a lack of media access to the military in any form. On the contrary, Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom have begun a new era of access for journalists who desire to observe firsthand coalition military operations abroad, on the front lines, or in the rear, as part of the Department of Defense’s media embed program.

The ability to embed with coalition troops and report from the battlefront has spawned a new generation of independent combat journalists. Intrepid individuals — often veterans — like Michael Yon, J.D. Johannes, Michael Totten, Bill Roggio, Pat Dollard, and Bill Ardolino have followed in the footsteps of legendary World War II reporter Ernie Pyle, giving generously of their time and resources to travel to and within the combat zones that make up the many fronts of the global war on terror, for the dual purpose of accurately reporting on events (something so many media outlets have demonstrated time and again that they are incapable of doing) and of telling stories that simply would not make it back to the American people any other way.

However, a mere handful of individuals cannot, by themselves, provide a nation with enough of that which it so desperately needs in this age of ephemeral pleasures and doom-and-gloom news reports: true stories of courage and sacrifice, bravery, and gallantry shown by our fighting men and women around the world on a daily basis.

In reality, there have been countless cases of exceptional courage under fire to this point in the war on terror, and there will doubtless be many more before this generational conflict has drawn to a close.

It is cliché (but entirely accurate) to say that every man and woman fighting for America deserves respect and acknowledgment. It is also accurate, though, that there are some who go above and beyond even the bravery and valor shown by the “average” soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine who puts his or her life on the line, day in and day out, in defense of America and in pursuit of our nation’s goals, safety, and interests.

Names like Eric Moser and Chris Corriveau, two paratroopers who stood shoulder-to-shoulder against dozens of al-Qaeda fighters on a rooftop in Iraq, fighting for their lives and for their country’s honor; Zach Rhyner, an Air Force combat controller who saved the lives of dozens of American special forces soldiers through his quick, effective actions in the middle of an overwhelming Taliban ambush; and Michael Monsoor, a Navy SEAL who leapt onto an enemy grenade, sacrificing himself to save the lives of his teammates despite the fact he was the only person who could have escaped the blast with his life, are far more deserving of remembrance than are the pop idols with which our nation has filled the place formerly reserved for such true heroes as these.

This is far too brief a space to recount even a fraction of the total number of heroic stories that deserve remembrance and celebration on this Memorial Day and every day hereafter. So I will today limit myself to presenting a selection of four exceptional warriors — one from each branch of service — whose names and deeds every American should know. These stories alone do not even begin to break the surface of the reservoir of deeds those fighting for our nation have carried out. However, each of these men is a true hero in every sense of the word, having fought in defense of America and having made the ultimate sacrifice for his mission and for his fellow men.

Michael P. Murphy, United States Navy

Michael P. Murphy, a native of Smithtown, New York, had a passion for history and a desire to do great things. While attending Penn State University, Murphy — or “Murph,” as he was known — became interested in joining the Navy SEALs, the U.S. Navy’s elite sea-air-land commando group.

Upon graduating from college, Murphy declined to attend the several law schools to which he was accepted, opting instead for Officer Candidate School and Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training in Coronado, California.

In April, 2005 his SEAL Delivery Vehicle team was deployed to Afghanistan — a trip from which the young lieutenant would never return.

On June 28 of that year, Murphy was leading a four-man SEAL squad in Kunar Province, in remote eastern Afghanistan, when his team came into contact with three goat herders. After weighing their options, Murphy and his men decided to release the three civilians unharmed. This humane move would end up being costly, as the Afghans immediately went to the local Taliban leadership and reported the SEALs’ presence.

As Murphy’s small team moved onto a sheer mountainside, forty Taliban fighters ambushed them, pinning them down under withering fire. All four SEALs were immediately wounded, with the squad’s radio operator taking a bullet to the hand as he tried to make a radio call to the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) at Bagram Air Base.

Recognizing the necessity of making contact with a supporting force, and that it would be impossible to do so in the ravine the four SEALs were being forced into by the overwhelming enemy force, Murphy dashed into the open, exposing himself to greater enemy fire in exchange for a clearer transmission signal.

Murphy managed to reach the QRF and provided his team’s position and status while taking and returning fire, despite being hit in the back by an enemy round. A special operations helicopter arrived on the scene shortly, only to be downed by a Taliban-fired rocket propelled grenade. The aircraft crashed, killing all 16 SEALs and Army special operations aviators aboard.

Nearly out of ammunition and with their rescuers having been killed, Murphy and his fellow SEALs continued to fight until they had repelled the Taliban ambush — an action that cost three of the four their lives. By the end of that two-hour battle, Murphy and two of his SEALs were dead. However, their actions allowed the fourth member of their team, a SEAL named Marcus Luttrell, to survive the battle and to evade enemy capture until being rescued by U.S. forces four days later.

“By his undaunted courage, intrepid fighting spirit and inspirational devotion to his men in the face of certain death,” says the official Navy report of the incident, “Lt. Murphy was able to relay the position of his unit, an act that ultimately led to the rescue of Luttrell and the recovery of the remains of the three who were killed in the battle.

On October 22, 2007, Murphy was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for military valor, by President Bush, who presented the award to Murphy’s parents and brother in a White House ceremony.

According to the Medal’s citation, Murphy’s willingness to “gallantly give his life for his country and for the cause of freedom” in a remote corner of Afghanistan exemplified “selfless leadership, courageous actions, and extraordinary devotion to duty.” It demonstrated all of this indeed — as well as a devotion to his brothers in arms, whom he died both saving and trying to save.

Jason Dunham, United States Marine Corps

Jason Dunham, of Scio, New York, was killed in Iraq in 2004, at the age of 23. Had Dunham not given his life for his comrades nearly five years ago, he would have turned 28 last fall on the very day the U.S. Marine Corps, which has been fortunate beyond measure to have contained men of Dunham’s quality for over two centuries, turned 233.

Dunham’s death in Iraq is not in itself what makes his a story of heroism, though. Rather, it is his final actions, stunning in their selflessness, which deserve to be known and remembered. According to the Marines’ official report:

On April 14, 2004, Corporal Dunham heroically saved the lives of two of his fellow Marines by jumping on a grenade during an ambush in the town of Karabilah.

When a nearby Marine convoy was ambushed, Corporal Dunham led his squad to the site of the attack, where he and his men stopped a convoy of cars trying to make an escape. As he moved to search one of the vehicles, an insurgent jumped out and grabbed the corporal by the throat.

The corporal engaged the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. At one point, he shouted to his fellow Marines, “No! No! No! Watch his hand!”

Moments later, an enemy grenade rolled out and Corporal Dunham jumped on the grenade to protect his fellow Marines, using his helmet and body to absorb the blast. Corporal Dunham succumbed to his wounds on April 22, 2004.

At the time of the battle in question, Lance Corporal Mark Edward Dean, a close friend of Dunham’s,

didn’t recognize the wounded Marine being loaded into the back of his Humvee. Blood from shrapnel wounds in the Marine’s head and neck had covered his face. Then Lance Cpl. Dean spotted the tattoo on his chest — an Ace of Spades and a skull — and realized he was looking at one of his closest friends, Cpl. Dunham. A volunteer firefighter back home in Owasso, Okla., Lance Cpl. Dean says he knew from his experience with car wrecks that his friend had a better chance of surviving if he stayed calm.

“You’re going to be all right,” Lance Cpl. Dean recalled saying to Dunham as the Humvee raced against the inevitability of time and mortal wounds on a doomed quest to save the life of a brave Marine whose selfless act had just saved the lives of his comrades.

“We’re going to get you home.”

The situation was eerily familiar to Dean, who recalled Dunham’s words to him and their comrades while on a trip to Las Vegas shortly before leaving the U.S. for Iraq. Dunham told them that he was planning to extend his enlistment and stay in Iraq for the battalion’s entire tour. “You’re crazy for extending,” Lance Cpl. Dean said. “Why?”

Cpl. Dunham responded: “I want to make sure everyone makes it home alive. I want to be sure you go home to your wife alive.”

And he did just that.

Dunham’s parents accepted his posthumously-awarded Medal of Honor from President Bush in a ceremony at the White House on January 11, 2007.

Ross McGinnis, United States Army

When most young men are turning 17, they are thinking about their upcoming senior year of high school, their sports career, or their choice of college. When Ross McGinnis of Knox, Pennsylvania, turned 17, he walked straight down to the recruiter’s office and joined the Army via the delayed enlistment program.

By the age of 18, the ambidextrous McGinnis was in training to be an infantryman, where he qualified as a sharpshooter with both his left and right hands. Shortly thereafter, he was assigned to Charlie Company, 1^st Battalion, 26^th Infantry Regiment, based in Schweinfurt, Germany, where he was the youngest soldier in the unit.

In August 2006, he found himself in Iraq, where he distinguished himself so greatly in his first three months that a waiver was requested — and granted — to promote him to Specialist (E-4) despite his lacking the requisite time in service.

On December 4 of that year, at the age of 19, Ross McGinnis traded his life for the lives of four members of his squad when he jumped on a grenade and shielded them from the blast.

On the last day of his life, Private McGinnis was manning the .50-caliber machine gun mounted in a turret atop his Humvee and serving as the rear guard in a mounted combat patrol against insurgents and sectarian fighters. As the convoy made a turn onto a narrow street, a fragmentation grenade was thrown from the rooftop of an adjacent building. According to the official report:

[McGinnis] immediately yelled “Grenade!” on the vehicle’s intercom system to alert the four other members of his crew…[he] made an attempt to personally deflect the grenade, but was unable to prevent it from falling through the gunner’s hatch.

According to platoon sergeant Cedric Thomas, who was commanding the vehicle, “McGinnis yelled ‘Grenade. … It’s in the truck!’… I looked out of the corner of my eye as I was crouching down and I saw him pin it down.”

“He had time to jump out of the truck. He chose not to.”

Instead, according to his award citation,

[R]ather than leaping from the gunner’s hatch to safety, Private McGinnis made the courageous decision to protect his crew. In a selfless act of bravery, in which he was mortally wounded, Private McGinnis covered the live grenade, pinning it between his body and the vehicle and absorbing most of the explosion.

Private McGinnis’ gallant action,…extraordinary heroism and selflessness at the cost of his own life … directly saved four men from certain serious injury or death.

For his actions, McGinnis was posthumously awarded the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest award for combat heroism. On June 2, 2008, that award was upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

According to a later report, “Thomas remembered McGinnis talking about how he would respond in such a situation. McGinnis said then he didn’t know how he would act, but when the time came, he delivered.”

“He gave his life to save his crew,” Thomas said. “He’s a hero. He’s a professional. He was just an awesome guy.”

Jason Cunningham, United States Air Force

Jason Cunningham of Carlsbad, New Mexico, joined the U.S. Navy at the age of 19, but he didn’t stay long. After just under four years in the fleet, Cunningham decided on a radical career change, setting his sights on joining an elite Air Force fraternity known as Pararescuemen (or PJs). The Air Force has fewer than 1,000 of these highly trained professionals whose job is to deploy by any means necessary — sea, air, or land — to rescue downed aircrew members and injured special operators.

After two years of selection and training, Cunningham succeeded in his goal of becoming a PJ and was assigned to the 38th Rescue Squadron at Moody AFB, Georgia. Only eight months later, he deployed to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. The PJs there were based in an air operations building that also housed a forward surgical team — a training opportunity he took advantage of almost immediately.

“Every time we had a casualty event [Cunningham] was always the first one here offering to help,” said Dr. (Maj.) Brian Burlingame, the surgical unit’s commander. “His enthusiasm was just genuine to the core, which was what endeared him to us. He was like a little brother.”

“He had more motivation than any one man should have,” said a Pararescue colleague. “He was all about saving people’s lives.”

Besides honing his personal medical skills, Cunningham’s involvement with the surgeons down the hall at Bagram directly resulted in a development that would save the lives of American soldiers in the very near future: the allowing of PJs to carry whole blood into combat as a part of their medical loadout. This was a controversial step, Dr. Burlingame told the Air Force Times:

“Blood is an FDA-controlled substance. It’s very, very regulated.” Special training, not to mention lots of paperwork, is required before medics are considered qualified to administer blood in the field. After Cunningham and Burlingame started talking, all the pararescuers here took the classes and filled out the paperwork.

“We then pushed blood forward with [Cunningham's] group,” Burlingame said.

Perhaps the most famous battle of the first years of Operation Enduring Freedom, the battle of “Roberts Ridge” (a subset of Operation Anaconda, which saw a loss of life unprecedented in the special operations community since Mogadishu in 1993, and surpassed since only by the operation Lt. Michael P. Murphy, noted above, was a part of), was Cunningham’s first — and last — taste of combat. At the scene, Navy SEAL Neil Roberts fell out of an MH-47 Chinook helicopter which was taking heavy fire while attempting to insert Roberts’ team onto a hilltop to watch over the Anaconda battlefield. A second helicopter had deposited the remainder of Roberts’ squad and an Air Force combat controller (Tech. Sgt. John Chapman, whose actions during the battle cost him his life, and earned him a posthumous Air Force Cross) on the hilltop in an attempt to rescue the fallen sailor, whom Predator UAV footage had shown being captured by Taliban fighters.

A quick reaction force (QRF) composed mainly of a squad of Army Rangers was launched to reinforce the outmanned and outgunned Americans who had quickly become pinned down in an exposed position. As it approached the landing zone, the QRF helicopter came under such significant ground fire that it was forced to make a crash landing in an exposed area of the hilltop, only 100 meters from a fortified enemy position. The soldiers on board immediately took fire, and casualties began to mount instantly.

Cunningham worked feverishly to treat the wounded Rangers and aviators, doing so in the back of the downed Chinook helicopter until it caught fire and became the target of increasingly accurate enemy mortar fire. Making the decision to move his patients, Cunningham crossed the line of fire seven separate times while successfully transporting them to higher ground. He then was forced to move them twice more to avoid the enemy fire raining down on their static, vulnerable casualty collection-points.

Finally, just after midnight, after having so successfully defied enemy fire so as to move and treat his patients, Cunningham’s luck ran out, and he was shot in the abdomen just below his protective vest. According to the Air Force Times:

Cunningham must have known he was in serious trouble. But despite his worsening condition, he continued to treat patients and advise others on how to care for the critically wounded. One of the two blood packs he had brought [and which he was directly responsible for PJs being able to carry] saved a badly wounded Ranger. The medics gave the other packet to Cunningham himself, whose life was slowly flowing out in a red stream onto the white snow.

Nearly 20 hours after suffering serious internal injuries, and not long before the area became cold enough for rescue helicopters to arrive and evacuate the wounded fighters, Cunningham succumbed to his wounds. He treated patients to the end, and was credited afterward with having almost single-handedly made sure that only seven men died, rather than seventeen. Such dedication and seriousness of purpose ended up costing him his own life.

Every wounded man he treated survived the encounter, and for his extraordinary heroism and gallant action in living the Pararescue motto (”That Others May Live”), he was posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross, the second-highest award that the USAF offers. According to the citation, “As a result of [Cunningham's] extraordinary heroism, his team returned 10 seriously wounded personnel to life-saving medical care.”

“He was right in the thick of it, doing it right up to the end,” said a fellow PJ. “Jason was right where every PJ wants to be. He was where guys needed him, and he was saving lives.”

No Greater Love …

These four men exemplify a mindset that is both incomprehensible and unimaginable to all who have not been in such a situation. When faced with a life or death situation, with an escape route both simple and available, every one of them chose death, against every instinct of self-preservation. And, in doing so, they allowed the men with them, marked for death, to keep their lives.

There truly can be no greater love, no more heroic acts, than such as these. The men whose lives were saved by the direct intervention of Danny Dietz, Jason Dunham, Ross McGinnis, Jason Cunningham, and others will carry the burden of gratitude with them to the grave, and beyond.

The mindset that compels a man to put himself into harm’s way for the purpose of saving another is impossible to express; however, it is a defining characteristic of the true warrior who has faced combat and who has experienced the reality of having his life entirely in the hands of the men next to him and having each of theirs in his.

As put by Dr. Joseph Blake, a sociologist who has researched the act of soldiers throwing themselves on grenades and other acts of sacrifice in the line of fire, “A combat situation has not a whole lot to do with patriotism or the folks back home. … They are fighting for their buddies. They don’t want to let their buddies down.”

Yet these heroes, and all of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who have died in combat, have done so also, if indirectly, for the sake of all Americans. To these men and women, every American owes eternal gratitude and a commitment never to take for granted those things that we, due to their sacrifices, can continue to enjoy — things that they, due to those same sacrifices, will never again be able to.

On this Memorial Day, take a moment to thank a friend, family member, or even a total stranger who has served — or is serving — this country. For though they will never seek the praise and thanks of their fellow man, all will appreciate the expression of gratitude.

It is our solemn duty to honor those who have kept us safe and free for the past 232-plus years. America has stood strong all this time largely because of men like these. And it is because of men like them that it shall remain so.

The sacrifices of these true warriors, like those of the countless others whose stories have not yet been told to a public, did not make them heroes. It simply demonstrated what heroes they were all along.

Now it is up to us to remember them.

This post originally appeared at Pajamas Media.

h/t verum serum

If you’re curious, by the way, Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Walter Jones (R-NC) were the two Republicans who voted to keep the truth behind Pelosi’s and the CIA’s conflicting accounts under wraps. The rest of the vote was party-line.

A senior House GOP aide this morning confirmed that House Republicans will demand a bipartisan investigation of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) accusations that members of the Central Intelligence Agency “misled the Congress” in their briefings on terrorist detainees and interrogation techniques.

According to the source:

Lying to Congress of the United States is a serious crime. The Speaker has had a full week now to either put up the evidence to support the serious allegation she has leveled against the hardworking men and women of America’s intelligence community, or retract and apologize. She’s done neither. There is no choice now. A bipartisan investigation of the Speaker’s allegations is needed to get to the facts, and Republicans are done waiting.

Speaker Pelosi and her aides have been ducking the matter all week, and Democratic leaders are clearly trying to run out the clock and get to the Memorial Day recess in hopes the storm surrounding the Speaker will simply blow away once members leave town. That is unacceptable, given the serious nature of her allegations and the implications they have for our intelligence community, where her comments threaten to shred morale among the dedicated professionals serving our country.

The text of the resolution is below the fold.

111th CONGRESS
1st Session

H. RES. __

RESOLUTION

Raising a question of the privileges of the House.

Whereas the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, a Representative from California, served from 1997 to 2002 as Ranking Democratic Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence;

Whereas Representative Pelosi currently serves as Speaker of the House, a position of considerable power and influence within the Congress;

Whereas title 3 of the United States Code designates the Speaker of the House as third in line of succession to the Presidency;

Whereas Speaker Pelosi has publicly challenged the truthfulness of what she and other congressional leaders were told by Central Intelligence Agency officials about the agency’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists;

Whereas in an MSNBC interview on February 25, 2009, Speaker Pelosi stated, “I can say flat-out, they never told us that these enhanced interrogation techniques were being used”;

Whereas, Speaker Pelosi’s public statements allege a sustained pattern of deception by government intelligence officers charged by law with informing Congress about the agency’s activities;

Whereas when asked at a press conference on May 15, 2009 widely reported by the news media, “Madame Speaker, just to be clear, you’re accusing the CIA of lying to you in September?” Speaker Pelosi stated, “Yes”;

Whereas during the same press conference the Speaker subsequently stated, “So yes, I’m saying they are misleading, the CIA was misleading the Congress” and further, “they mislead us all the time” and “they misrepresented every step of the way”;

Whereas in a memorandum to CIA employees released publicly on May 15, 2009, Leon Panetta, the CIA Director, stated, “It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing the enhanced interrogation techniques that had been employed”;

Whereas national and international media reports on this controversy have damaged the reputation of the House by raising questions about whether the effectiveness of congressional oversight may have been undermined through false or misleading statements by intelligence officials;

Whereas in order to safeguard the reputation of the House it is imperative to reconcile as soon as possible the aforementioned contradictory statements by Speaker Pelosi and CIA Director Panetta: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That—

(1) a Select Subcommittee of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence shall be established to review and verify the accuracy of the Speaker’s aforementioned public statements;

(2) the Select Subcommittee shall be comprised of four members of the full committee, two appointed by the chairman of the committee and two by its ranking minority member;

(3) The subcommittee shall have the same powers to obtain testimony and documents pursuant to subpoena authorized under clause 2(m) of Rule XI of the Rules of the House; and,

(4) the Select Subcommittee report its findings and recommendations to the House not later than sixty calendar days after adoption of this resolution.

This morning, Senators Dr. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and and Richard Burr (R-NC) and Representatives Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Devin Nunes (R-CA) announced their “Patients’ Choice Act of 2009,” an attempt to “achieve universal access to quality, affordable health care without bankrupting our children with trillions more in debt or imposing draconian tax hikes on all Americans,” according to a release from the four Republicans, who added:

“The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009,” transforms health care in America by strengthening the relationship between the patient and the doctor; using choice and competition rather than rationing and restrictions to contain costs; and ensuring universal, affordable health care for all Americans.

“The Patients’ Choice Act” promotes innovative, State-based solutions, along with fundamental reforms in the tax code, to give every American, regardless of employment status, age, or health condition, the ability and the resources to purchase health insurance. The comprehensive legislation includes concrete prevention and transparency initiatives, long overdue reforms to Medicare and Medicaid, investments in wellness programs and health IT, and more.

Let’s take a closer look at the bill below the fold.

The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009, or PCA, lays out the same goals as Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), President Barack Obama (D-IL), and the rest of the Democratic leadership; however, as health care policy experts Grace-Marie Turner (Galen Institute) and Joseph Antos (American Enterprise Institute) wrote in today’s Wall Street Journal, the two parties’ “policy prescriptions are remarkably different.”

While Democrats are trying to find a way to force the population as a whole into Medicare/Medicaid-type bureaucrat-administered health plans, the Republican coalition behind the PCA is seeking to, as Turner and Antos put it, “provide a path to universal coverage by redirecting current subsidies for health insurance to individuals [and] provid[ing] a new safety net that guarantees access to insurance for those with pre-existing conditions.”

The Dreaded “Tax on Health Care Benefits”

Key features of the PCA include support for state-based health insurance exchanges, which I will get to in a moment, and the implementation of $5,700 annual tax credits to cover the share of “employer-sponsored” health plans — generally about 1/3 of an average $15,000 annual cost — that employees are currently footing the bill for out of pocket. The latter, which is the dreaded “income tax on health benefits” then-candidate Obama used to bludgeon his opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), to great effect during last year’s presidential campaign (due in large part to the latter’s inability to articulately and effectively defend his common-sense position), is not only a proposal employees will benefit from, but is a proposal now-President Obama and the Democrats’ Senate health care team have decided is not only workable, but desirable in the effort to “reform” health care policy.

As a PCA fact sheet released today explained:

Before taking over the Office of Management and Budget in the Obama Administration, Peter Orszag testified before the Senate Finance Committee, “[I]magine what the world would be like if workers [understood] that today it was costing them $10,000 a year in take?home?pay for their employer sponsored insurance and that could be $7,000 and they could have $3,000 more in their pockets today if we could relieve these inefficiencies out of the health system.”32 The Patient’s Choice Act would effectively increase workers’ wages. Higher take?home pay combined with the new tax subsidies would enable individuals to obtain more affordable and efficient health coverage.

Improved Health Care for Poor Americans

Unlike the federal and state method of dealing with low-income Americans by forcing them into Medicaid and SCHIP programs that underdeliver on health care services to such a degree that nearly half of prior-enrolled individuals and families simply decline to sign up for more than one year of the government-run programs, the PCA would provide those within a certain proximity to the federal poverty line with $5,000 debit cards that can be used to purchase effective, desirable private insurance or to pay for health care out-of-pocket. Not only can this provide poor Americans with resources necessary to aquire effective health care (unlike that provided by the government-run programs most of the poor are consigned to), but, with up to a quarter of unspent dollars on that debit card each year being rolled over and added to the next year’s available balance, there is (at least theoretically) a great incentive for those benefit recipients to exercise both wisdom and restraint in their use of that provided money.

However, there is the question of enforcement when it comes to cash giveaways like this — a lesson that should have been learned in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when government-issued debit cards were used by refugees to purchase “luxury and entertainment items” all over the southeastern United States.

According to the PCA’s sponsors, the bill would also help poor individuals and families by “integrating low-income families with dependent children into higher quality private plans through direct assistance, realigning responsibility between federal and state governments in order to better coordinate benefits, rebalancing long-term care services to ensure choice between institutionalized and home-based care, and reserving Medicaid Acute Care for Individuals with Disabilities.”

“The Patients’ Choice Act,” according to the GOP, “would maintain current law for benefit security and stable funding for individuals with disabilities under the Medicaid program. The Act would enhance care for the disabled by allowing for better care management.”

State-Based Insurance Exchanges

The State Insurance Exchange portion of the PCA is where things get a bit trickier. Turner and Antos were correct when they wrote the following:

States could provide one-stop insurance shopping through new Health Care Exchanges rather than giving the federal government control, as most Democratic plans would do. And it frees up Medicaid money and provides added resources to the states to target additional help to those with disabilities and low incomes. It also calls for auto-enrollment to expand insurance coverage: People will have many options and opportunities to select insurance, but if they don’t make an active choice they can be automatically enrolled in private policies financed by the tax credit.

Ryan, Coburn, Burr, and Nunes simplified that explanation, saying:

What we need—and what this Act provides—is a consistent and fair market, so that everyone can afford coverage. Patients could choose which health care provider they trust. The freedom to choose creates better competition, fosters higher quality care, and lowers costs to levels that are fair for every American in every state.

However, the bill’s methods for doing this raise some questions, including why it is that state governments are seen as the laboratories of health care “reform” rather than the free market and why, given its obviously positive impact on the national health care market as a whole, a national private health insurance exchange (in other words, a federally-supported right of consumers to purchase health insurance policies across state lines, free of the onerous mandates that drive health costs up in some states to a far greater degree than in others) such as that proposed in Rep. John Shadegg’s perenially-submitted Health Care Choice Act.

Further, the authors’ hailing of Massachusetts as and example of a state-level health reform “success” should sound alarm bells in the mind of anybody who has been paying attention to the current health care debate, as well as to the utter disaster the Bay State’s attempt at universal-coverage-via-mandate, engineered by former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA), has been.

As I wrote recently on Massachusetts’ “RomneyCare” disaster:

In 2006, Governor Mitt Romney (R), working with a Democratic state legislature, passed and signed the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act, a groundbreaking piece of legislation aimed at ensuring that every citizen of the Bay State possessed health insurance, while simultaneously lowering the cost of health coverage and improving access to quality care.

Unfortunately, the program in practice has been a colossal failure, expanding state bureaucracy and government control over the health care market and provider-patient dealings, while simultaneously driving up health insurance premia, increasing health care costs, and creating a chronic shortage of providers – all at an annual price tag of over twice the originally-estimated $600 million.In 2006, Governor Mitt Romney (R), working with a Democratic state legislature, passed and signed the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act, a groundbreaking piece of legislation aimed at ensuring that every citizen of the Bay State possessed health insurance, while simultaneously lowering the cost of health coverage and improving access to quality care.

Unfortunately, the program in practice has been a colossal failure, expanding state bureaucracy and government control over the health care market and provider-patient dealings, while simultaneously driving up health insurance premia, increasing health care costs, and creating a chronic shortage of providers – all at an annual price tag of over twice the originally-estimated $600 million.

…

Rather than try to foster competition between insurers and providers, to break away from the third-party-payer model that necessarily drives up costs due to a lack of communication and pricing transparency, or to promote effective health coverage solutions like consumer-driven health care and retail clinics, the architects of Massachusetts’s program put their faith in bureaucracy, regulation, and government control.

The result could not be more clear: with billions having been spent on a program that has failed to improve access to care, that has failed to prevent insurance costs from rising at twice the national average, and that has failed to extend coverage to more than two-thirds of those who previously lacked it, the Bay State’s grand foray into “universal health care” via individual mandate has been a colossal failure, and should serve as an example of what not to do, rather than what to do, for all who seek real health care reform.

This is the program about which Ryan, Coburn, et al say:

Many states have led the nation in finding comprehensive health care solutions for their citizens, including the well-known, bi-partisan achievement of universal health care through a private system in Massachusetts. The federal government should not impede progress, but rather partner with states to make further progress.

Conclusion

The Patients’ Choice Act of 2009 is an effective alternative to the rationing-based, bureaucrat-run, federal-government-centric proposals being kicked around Washington, DC from the White House to Capitol Hill to K Street. The bill is not perfect, a fact exemplified by its citation of the disastrous MittCare “reform” program in Massachusetts and by its reliance on government to step in and fix the combined problem of decreased access to care and rising health care costs despite the fact government at the federal and state levels played a key role in causing these issues by prohibiting interstate competition, imposing mandates, and pushing our health care marketplace further toward a third-party-payer only system.

Despite these drawbacks, though, the PCA is light years ahead of the government-run alternatives being championed by President Obama and his Democrats in the U.S. Senate. The willingness to attack the currently problematic tax treatment of health care and to help poor Americans divorce their medical fates from the whims of state and federal bureaucrats are giant leaps in the right direction, and deserve more attention and support.

Unfortunately, the fact that the PCA takes less than a fully government-centric approach to solving the health care crisis virtually guarantees it will not make it out of committee in the current Congress. However, by putting forth this proposal, Republicans in the House and Senate are effectively showing that they are, in fact, paying attention to policy and paying more than lip service to offering alternatives to the Obama-led Democrats’ statist proposals. That in and of itself should be considered a victory for the GOP, even though this legislation won’t see the light of day any time soon in either federal legislative body.

Speaker of the House (for now) Nancy Pelosi (Democrat-CA) stepped to the microphone this morning set the record straight once and for all on these pesky interrogation briefings.

Apparently, it’s all the CIA’s fault. They’re too good at hiding the truth from our naive Democratic leaders in Congress.

You see, according to Pelosi, back during the Dark Days of the Bush Administration (may their names be wiped from the record of history forever), the lies were flying so fast and furious at the residents of Capitol Hill that the poor Democratic caucus didn’t know what to do with itself — and the CIA, according to the Speaker, was in on the act.

“The CIA was misleading the Congress and at the same the administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction!” Pelosi declared to the press this morning, implementing the Democrats’ Iraq strategy (”poor little us –we were being lied to and didn’t know it!”) in an attempt to shift blame from the person with whom the buck stops when it comes to House affairs — herself — and onto the first third party she could find.

Given this declaration of Pelosi’s, it appears we can, at long last, call off the search for the most gullible people in America. If they are to be believed, Ms. Pelosi and her fellow Congressional Democrats — professional politicians all — were being lied to by the entire establishment (apart, supposedly, from themselves), from the President to the foot soldiers in the intelligence community, for the last eight-plus years, and they were simply too earnest and gullible to realize it.

The fact that the supposed realization of that “deceit” came just at a time when holding their previous positions became politically unfavorable (when no WMDs were immediately found in Iraq, for example, or when information came out six years later about Pelosi’s complicity in our use of proven interrogation methods) is all, of course, a case of mere coincidence.

If the Democrats’ claims of innocence, as they were in the post-invasion Iraq debate, are to be based on their inability to tell when they are being “lied” to (and their inability to avoid acting on those supposed lies before actually doing a little homework on the subjects in question), I wonder what possible reason these Democrats can possible provide their constituents and the American people for why they should continue to be trusted with the leadership of this country.

At some point, the claims of gullibility have to ring just a bit hollow — or, on the other extreme, have to show the Democrats leading this Congress are simply unable to deal with the decision-making responsibilities that accompany being national leaders.

Our favorite California Yankee, Dan Spencer, is all over this one:

Nancy Pelosi continues parsing her denial of never being told about waterboarding and now claims the CIA lied.

Mike Soraghan and Jared Allen report Pelosi now claims that in a September 2002 briefing she was specifically told waterboarding was not being used on detainees:

Those briefings gave me inaccurate and incomplete information.

The question for Pelosi remains: What did she know about the enhanced interrogation techniques, and when did she know it?

The Speaker has precious little credibility left concerning waterboarding. For weeks, Pelosi insisted she wasn’t briefed about waterboarding. Then after a declassified report last week suggested otherwise, Pelosi claimed she pulled a John Kerry-like nuance and claimed she wasn’t told that waterboarding was actually used. Now, after her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, confirmed that Pelosi was told in February 2003 that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah, she claim[ed in a press conference this morning that] the CIA lied.

Surprise! A politician — a person whose number one goal is to save his or her own skin at any cost, followed closely by the number two goal of simply being reelected ad infinitum — is accusing a de jure (if not de facto) apolitical organization of lying about what they told her in order to salvage her political image nationally and with her radically leftist base.

This isn’t the least bit surprising, especially given Speaker Pelosi’s serpentine maneuvering on this issue ever since word came out that she had been briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques back at the beginning of the American offensive in the War on Terror.

In fact, the challenge here isn’t deciding whom to believe, as the intelligence community has built up an institutional gravitas and record of integrity the erstwhile speaker cannot come close to matching. Rather, the challenge here is deciding which part of Pelosi’s ridiculously transparent and contradictory act is most laughable. Personally, my vote on that front lies with her claim she fought to prevent enhanced interrogation techniques in 2003 by…campaigning for reelection and running for Speaker of the House in 2006!

This naturally begs the question of just what Ms. Pelosi has done since her ascent to that position in January 2007 to prevent the enhanced interrogation techniques she knew were being employed (or didn’t know, depending what time of day you listen to her claims) since 2003 at latest. The answer is, of course, nothing whatsoever — a fact that isn’t likely to save her in the all-out war with the CIA establishment she is, intentionally or not, so recklessly gunning for.

The next thing to watch for will be whether or not the self-righteous hordes that called for Vice President Cheney to be “frog-marched” out of the White House, and who called for the impeachment and removal from office of former President Bush, for what they saw as even the slightest of insults against the CIA, begin piling on Speaker Pelosi and her allies in Congress and the administration.

Alas, such a development is unlikely, as the same intellectual honesty that would compel the media and other leftists to react similarly to Pelosi’s transgressionas as they did to the perceived transgressions of Bush and Cheney would have prevented their reacting in such a way to the latter two in the first place.

Despite all the self-congratulations and arrogant talk about the historicity of this (as there is with every move the administration makes), Monday’s announcement of several chief health care players rushing to take seats at the table so as not to be eaten for dinner by the out of control leviathan our Democrat-dominated federal government has become was only a “watershed” event insofar as, to our neophyte president, every event that involves him or happens during his presidency is “unprecedented” or “watershed” (except, of course, for the negatives — all of those were “inherited”).

What this supposedly “game-changing” move consists of is an Obama administration doing what Democrats accused George W. Bush of doing for eight years: jumping into bed with the insurance companies and so-called “Big Health Care.” In exchange for future considerations (read: more lenient treatment in pending legislation), the five major health care trade associations are colluding to squeeze up to $2T out of patients and providers over the course of the next several years.

This is part of a natural progression that began in December, when AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) embraced President Obama’s election by calling on the incoming administration to make it the law of the land that every American had to purchase their product or face legal consequences. Despite the administration’s penchant for spending trillions of dollars it simply doesn’t have, the cost of subsidizing the portion of the population that would need assistance to comply with such a mandate (up to $2,000,000,000,000.00 a year) is too high for the federal government to afford right now.

In an effort to help (and, in doing so, to remain on the notoriously vindictive administration’s good side), this new cartel of health care organizations is, in essence, offering to cut your access to health care (not to mention its quality) in order to satisfy the feds’ budgeting desires.

Like the ridiculous “created or saved” language used to describe the failed stimulus package’s projected effects on the American job market, this health care proposal is devoid both of an enforcement apparatus and of real metrics by which its success can be judged. Further, with the cost of health care in America climbing to $2,400,000,000,000.00 in 2008 expenditures alone, a total savings of $2 trillion over the course of several years is a mere drop in the financial bucket — one which is not worth the human cost the necessary cuts in services and health care quality to make up that savings will impose.

Multiple House and Senate sources are telling RedState that Specter has concluded there is “no way he can win” a contested Republican primary in Pennsylvania, and that an announcement of his intent to switch from Republican to Democrat could come as early as today.

A “moderate” Republican, Specter has long been at odds with mainstream Republicans on spending and life issues, as well as several other positions. This February, Specter was one of only three Republicans in the U.S. Senate to vote in favor of President Obama’s (D) $787,000,000,000.00 “stimulus” spending bill. No House Republicans, and not all House Democrats, supported the “stimulus” legislation, and Specter, along with Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, provided the GOP votes that enabled the measure to pass the Senate and be signed into law by Obama.

Specter is being challenged for his Senate seat by former Club for Growth president Pat Toomey. Sources say the decision to switch from Republican to Democrat was fueled in large part by a realization that he could not defeat Toomey in the 2010 Republican primary election.

Update: hogan has Specter’s statement.

Update 2: Just over a month ago, Specter told The Hill “I am staying a Republican because I think I have an important role — a more important role — to play there. I think the United States desparately needs a two party system. It is the basis of politics in America. I think each of the 41 Republican Senators, in a sense, and I don’t want to overstate this, is a national asset, because if one was gone you would only have 40. The Democrats would have 60 and they would control all of the mechanisms of government.”

Update by Jeff: Perhaps this comment will shine a bit more light on the import of this issue.

WHO SHOULD HAVE CONTROL over your medical care: your family doctor, or a bureaucrat you’ve never met whose sole job is to look out for the government’s financial bottom-line?

That question, which is the subject of today’s AOL Hot Seat poll, is being debated in court right now, as three states are currently seeking a ruling from a federal judge that the final say in an individual’s medical treatment lies with the government, not with that patient’s doctor.

In March, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama joined in an appeal of a 2008 U.S. District Court ruling that a patient’s physician was better positioned – and better qualified – to make decisions about that patient’s medical treatment than state bureaucrats.

The case centers on Callie Moore, a disabled teenage girl living in Georgia. A stroke Callie suffered in utero left her suffering from multiple conditions, including cerebral palsy and mental retardation. For the last decade, she has received around-the-clock in-home nursing care for her medical conditions.

IN 2007, THOUGH, the state of Georgia cut coverage of Callie’s in-home care by 15%, from 94 hours a week to 84 over the objections of her attending physician, who was intimately familiar with her case and her needs. State officials (who were not medical professionals) cited disagreement with the attending physician about just how much care Callie needed as the primary reason for this reduction in care.

Callie’s mother filed suit in 2007, arguing that the state had no right to contradict the orders of her personal physician and limit her treatment. However, because Callie receives her medical treatment under Medicaid, the joint federal-state administered health coverage program for low-income individuals and families, Georgia officials argued that Callie’s care was subject to rationing, as state bureaucrats’ need to ensure Medicaid resources were allocated “fairly” superseded her doctor’s care prescription or her personal medical needs.

On June 4, 2008, U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash ruled that Callie’s doctor, not state bureaucrats, had the right to prescribe just what medical treatment and care his patient required. Georgia was ordered to raise Callie’s skilled home nursing care back up to 94 hours a week, as prescribed by her doctor.

Rhonda Meadows, commissioner of Georgia’s Department of Community Health, immediately appealed the ruling to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the Peach State. Her argument was that state officials, not doctors, should have final say in what treatments and care patients within their purview require. Florida and Alabama, which fall under the 11th Circuit’s jurisdiction and will have to abide by its ruling, filed an amicus brief with the Atlanta-based court.

THIS CASE HAS THRUST into the spotlight debate about an issue that has long been confined to dark, smoky rooms in state capitals and Washington, DC, and to the back pages of legislation Members of Congress aren’t bothering – or being allowed – to read before their passage.

From state governments to the federal legislators and bureaucrats who had a hand in writing and passing President Barack Obama’s 2009 “stimulus” bill, more and more officials are beginning to make the public argument that it is not a trained doctor with years of experience and personal knowledge of a patient’s medical history and needs who should have final say when it comes to patient diagnoses and prescriptions, but some nameless, faceless bureaucrat inhabiting a cubicle in some nondescript government building, with nothing but an agency-developed cost-effectiveness spreadsheet to guide them in determining what is and is not medically appropriate or necessary for every patient seen within their jurisdiction.

The case currently being decided in Atlanta, Moore v. Medows, is evidence of this. In oral argument before a panel of the 11th Circuit on March 24, attorney Robert Highsmith contended that, while bureaucrats “will consider doctors’ determinations,” the “final arbiter” of medical decisions is “the state.”

The thrust of the states’ argument is summed up in a brief written by the attorneys representing the state of Florida in the case. “Left to their own devices,” they write, doctors “advocate for their patients” – something the apparently resented by state governments for its interference in the execution of their cost-effectiveness analyses.

IT IS DIFFICULT TO OVERSTATE the impact a decision in the states’ favor would have in this case. Medical professionals and health care advocates rightly fear doctors’ evaluations, diagnoses, and prescriptions would sink to the status of mere suggestions pending review and approval or disapproval by state bureaucrats.

Imagine, if you will, every decision made about your personal motor vehicle, from the gas you put in it to the recommendations the mechanic makes for fixing your worn-out brakes or broken transmission, was subject to final review by a state bureaucrat with no experience in the automotive industry. Now extrapolate that scenario to your health care. Are you concerned yet?

Even if the judges of the 11th Circuit disagree with the appellants’ argument, the fact that three states are currently in federal court seeking official validation of their “right” to overrule physicians and arbitrarily ration medical care is frightening enough.

When government is given free rein to overrule a medical professional’s judgment of care based on their analysis of cost, physicians and their patients no longer have a role in making decisions about those patients’ care.

The battle is not only being fought at the state level but at the federal, as well, where funding and authorization for “comparative effectiveness research” was included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (or “stimulus” bill). That benign-sounding term refers, quite simply, to the drawing up of those comparative-effectiveness spreadsheets bureaucrats will use to approve or overrule physician diagnoses and prescriptions once the federal government’s power to do so has been affirmed, be it by legislative action or judicial fiat.

Given the track record of the faceless bureaucrats who make the majority of the government’s day to day judgments, the idea that they, rather than the doctor you know and trust, could be responsible for your medical decisions should be a very frightening prospect indeed.

Co-opting the word “torture” to include methods far less offensive than the majority of interrogation techniques I underwent in military SERE training isn’t a victory for moralists and humanitarians in any form; rather, it’s an Orwellian perversion of a word that once had meaning by those who have spent the last eight years on constant lookout for some greviance to hold against a president whose mere existence they resented.

The sad fact is, by co-opting the word “torture” and using it to describe activities going on at Gitmo, Bagram, and elsewhere, these faux-humanitarians have left us with no word to use to describe those activities which used to be classified as torture, like beheading captives on video, hanging people from meat hooks, drilling out eyeballs, using electric current to cause severe pain and physical damage, and cutting off limbs.

Then again, the fact that there is no longer a word to decribe such barbaric activities as those listed above — every one of which has been used by our enemies in the current Standoff against Man-Caused Disasters — is likely a boon for those who are so outraged at the Bush administration’s actions, since, given all the outrage, wailing, and rending of garments they’ve been driven to over a captive terrorists being kept on their feet for a few hours or deprived of sleep, having any way of describing, speaking about, or comprehending real formerly-known-as-torture would likely cause their heads to simply explode.

Better just not to think about it at all, then, and focus all possible outrage on an administration that, when in office, prevented the homeland from suffering a single man-caused disaster for the final seven years of his presidency, despite an actively subversive opposition. That’ll make everything better.

From the 400 people squeezed onto a tiny grassy plot in Macon, Georgia, where I spoke at noon, to the 15,000 gathered in downtown Atlanta, grassroots activists and community leaders at every location joined together in the Peach State and across the country to spread a message of American values: individual responsibility, equality of opportunity, fiscal responsibility, and governmental accountability.

The reaction from liberal media and pundits to this widespread demonstration of and for traditional American values was predictable, to say the least. With that most ingrained and dependable of leftist traits — projection — on full display, liberals from California to Capitol Hill, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D), declared these hundreds of grassroots gatherings to be “astroturfed” –  events funded by “corporate front groups” –  and (according to one senior Democratic aide) attended by “neo-Nazis,” “secessionists,” and “racists.”

How far we’ve come from 2008, when “community organizers” were being compared to Jesus (and government executives to Pontius Pilate) and dissent and protest were being hailed as the highest possible forms of patriotism!

Perhaps the biggest misconception about the tea party movement was that it was focused solely on “anti-tax” protests. This perception was egged along by the mainstream media, which referred to these rallies in print exclusively as “anti-tax tea parties” and attempted to restrict the focus of television interviews with attendees to tax matters alone.

This attempt to cast the nationwide grassroots tea party phenomenon simply as an “anti-tax” movement demonstrates that the media are as clueless about the source of mainstream Americans’ displeasure as folks like Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill (D), who posted to Twitter that she was “confused” why people were unhappy with the state of the nation and its government.

“The tea party thing confuses me,” wrote McCaskill, whose Twitter username is ClaireMC. “We’ve just passed one of the biggest tax cuts in American history & we had a record turnout in Nov.”

What McCaskill and those like her clearly fail to understand, beyond the fact that a paltry few extra dollars a week in “savings” is a poor exchange for tens of thousands of dollars in government-imposed personal debt, is that these modern-day tea parties weren’t so narrowly focused as to simply be protests against taxes.

The protests were about prohibitively high tax rates, yes. But they were also about exponentially increasing debt; the punishment of hard work and success through confiscatory government policy; the replacement of age-old American equality of opportunity by government-mandated equality of outcome; and — perhaps most importantly — the current attempts by liberal politicians to inject government into the daily life decisions of ordinary American citizens.

McCaskill and her Democratic Party ilk can be as confused as they want. Those who participated in any of the thousand tea parties held around the country Wednesday get it. When this movement grows through 2009 and into 2010, and when its momentum is felt at the polls next year, those elected Democrats and media personalities who attempted to downplay the significance of what happened Wednesday will begin to understand just how large a sleeping giant they awoke with their profligate spending, their spreading of the wealth, and their encroachment into people’s personal lives and decisions.

April 15, 2009, was simply the beginning. If carried through and built upon into the 2010 elections, real change — not simply a rhetorical device used by another machine-politics-as-usual Democrat — may have an opportunity to come to Washington, D.C.

It will be long overdue when it arrives, but in this case the old axiom “better late than never” holds absolutely true.

These people simply don’t get the fact that these modern-day tea parties aren’t simply about taxes.

They’re about increased taxes and even more greatly increased debt, yes. But they’re also about the punishment of hard work and success through confiscatory government policy; about the replacement of age-old American equality of opportunity by government-mandated equality of outcome, and — perhaps most importantly — they are about current attempts by liberal politicians to interject government into the daily life decisions of ordinary American citizens.

CNN reporter Susan Roesgen can try to control the focus of these tea parties all she wants by shouting at participants to talk only about taxes, but that just shows she’s missing the boat as badly as folks like Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill (Democrat), who posted to Twitter this afternoon that she was “confused” why people were fed up with trillions in government waste.

It’s okay; these people can not get it all they want. Those who participated (and are participating in) any of the thousand modern-day tea parties being held around the country today get it — and when this movement grows through 2009 and into 2010, and when its momentum is felt at the polls next year, they’ll start to get a clue just what magnitude a sleeping dragon they awoke with their profligate spending, their spreading of the wealth, and their encroachment into people’s personal lives and decisions.

DEEP HISTORICAL THOUGHT.

Over the weekend, Navy Seals equipped with high-powered sniper rifles and night-vision scopes shot three pirates dead and rescued an American hostage. After dark. Using only three bullets. From 100 feet away. On a boat. Which raises the obvious question: Can we finally agree that whatever Barack Obama is, he’s not Jimmy Carter?

Here’s a story you might be interested in. Over the weekend, I ordered a pizza from my personal favorite place — Johnny’s NY Style Pizza and Subs — with half pepperoni and half cheese. The driver showed up on time with a piping hot pie, despite tornadoes and driving rain in the area, and the delicious New York-style dinner I consumed as a result, along with a glass of Blanton’s bourbon whiskey, was one of the best I’ve had in some time. Which raises the obvious question: Can we finally agree that, whatever their middle relievers may have done against the Phillies in last Wednesday’s meltdown, the Atlanta Braves are a heckuvalot better baseball team than they were last year?