Liz Cheney says "Waterboarding isn't torture," but John McCain called it "a very exquisite torture"

Liz Cheney says "Waterboarding isn't torture," but John McCain called it "a very exquisite torture"

McCain on waterboarding: "I believe that it is torture, very exquisite torture"

Shep Smith: "Pol Pot was a big fan of this waterboarding action. Now we get some lawyers around the table and want to pretend like it's not torture."

Hannity misrepresented bipartisan Washington Monthly essay collection, which included these statements:

* Former Rep.Bob Barr (R-GA): "Waterboarding is, in essence, a torturer's best friend-easy, quick, and nonevidentiary. It had always been considered torture by civilized governments such as ours-until, of course, this administration."
* Former Dep. Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Reagan White House chief of staff Ken Duberstein: "Let there be no mistake: waterboarding is torture-and it should never be used by the United States. No less a hero than John McCain will attest to this."
* Then-Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE): During World War II, U.S. interrogators "acquired" valuable "information without resorting to abusive techniques, such as waterboarding, that are considered to be torture."

video at link.

ABC Helps Orin Hatch Put Words in Kennedy's mouth "wouldn't want health care bill passed if it wasn't good" -- but Kennedy did think it was good

ABC Helps Orin Hatch Put Words in Kennedy's mouth "wouldn't want health care bill passed if it wasn't good" -- but Kennedy did think it was good
On ABC's World News, senior congressional correspondent Jonathan Karl stated that "Republicans, even those close to Senator [Ted] Kennedy, are not buying" the argument that health care reform should be passed to honor Kennedy's memory, then aired a clip of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) claiming Kennedy "wouldn't want it passed if it wasn't good." But ABC did not note that Kennedy voted by proxy to pass the Senate HELP committee's health care legislation -- a bill Hatch criticized -- and advocated for progressive policies included in the bill, such as universal health care coverage and a public plan.

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From the August 27 broadcast of ABC's World News with Charles Gibson:

KARL: The most senior senator, Robert Byrd, said yesterday, "My heart and soul weeps" at the loss of Senator Kennedy and called for naming the health care bill after him, a view widely held among Democrats.

REP. EDWARD MARKEY (D-MA): Senator Kennedy's spirit will infuse the Congress towards the goal of providing coverage for all those people who he cared for.

KARL: The tactic has worked before. After the assassination of John Kennedy, President Johnson invoked his memory to revive the long-stalled civil rights bill.

TAD DEVINE (Democratic strategist): What President Johnson did then, by telling the Congress and the people of America that it was time to finish an unfinished agenda, was exactly the right thing to do. And I think it's the right thing to do again.

KARL: But Republicans, even those close to Senator Kennedy, are not buying it.

SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R-UT): Frankly, I'm getting a little bit upset at some of these people trying to take advantage of this and saying we now have to pass health care reform because of Ted. Well, Ted wouldn't want it passed if it wasn't good.

Kennedy voted for HELP bill, saying he "could not be prouder of our Committee"

Kennedy: "We have done the hard work that the American people sent us here to do." A Senate HELP committee press release announcing its July 15 passage of The Affordable Health Choices Act stated:

"I could not be prouder of our Committee. We have done the hard work that the American people sent us here to do. We have considered hundreds of proposals. Where we have been able to reach principled compromise, we have done so. Where we have not been able to resolve our differences, we have treated those with whom we disagree with respect and patience," Chairman Kennedy said. "As we move from our committee room to the Senate floor, we must continue the search for solutions that unite us, so that the great promise of quality affordable health care for all can be fulfilled."

HELP bill includes public option, requirement that all Americans have health insurance. The bill includes a public option and a mandate that each American is covered by a health insurance plan. According to the press release's summary of the bill:

Shared responsibility requires that everyone -- government, insurance companies, medical providers, individuals and employers -- has a part in solving America's health care crisis. The Affordable Health Choices Act requires those businesses which do not provide coverage for their workers to contribute to the cost of providing publicly sponsored coverage for those workers. It includes an exception for small businesses.

The bill also includes a strong public option that responds to the wishes of the American people to have a clear alternative to for-profit insurance companies. Like private insurance plans The Community Health Insurance Option will be available through the American Health Benefit Gateway, a new way for individuals and small employers to find and purchase quality and affordable health insurance in every state.

Kennedy advocated for passage of HELP bill, called health care for all Americans "the cause of my life"

Republicans Try to Create Myth That Health-care Reform Not Possible Without Kennedy

Republicans Try to Create Myth That Health-care Reform Not Possible Without Kennedy
Three GOP senators suggested in their remembrances of Kennedy that Democrats will need more than respectful conversation to gain bipartisan support for a health-care bill. Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Orrin Hatch (Utah) and Judd Gregg (N.H.) lamented Kennedy's absence in the negotiations.

"I think we may have made progress on this health-care issue if he had been there," McCain told CNN. "He had this unique capability to sit people down at a table together -- and I've been there on numerous occasions -- and really negotiate, which means concessions. And so, he not only will be missed, but he has been missed."

"I believe if he had been active the last few months, we would have some sort of consensus agreement," said Gregg, a passionate advocate of Medicare reform who has sat out Senate deliberations on perhaps the most extensive revisions ever to that program.

"We would have worked it out. We would have worked it out on a bipartisan basis," Hatch, who co-authored numerous health-care bills with Kennedy over the years, said on CNN. "I'll be happy to work in a bipartisan basis any day, any time . . . but it's got to be on something that's good and not just some partisan hack job."

This is complete and utter bullshit, and a blatant attempt to rewrite the history of the last eight weeks. To see why follow me under the fold.


Kennedy did his part on health care, his Committee, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions or HELP, passed its bill out of Committee on July 1st. My blog post on this was here: Kennedy-Dodd HELP Bill w/CBO Scoring For convenience lets throw the CBO tables in here:



The response to the HELP bill was almost immediate. Max Baucus declared it DOA and announced that Senate Finance would re-write the ENTIRE bill including the parts not normally under the jurisdiction of his Committee. Moreover in doing so he formed what was originally a Gang of Seven that included four Republicans but froze out Kennedy ally Rockefeller who was actually was and is the Chairman of the Finance Sub-Committee on Health. The whole process was a big ol' F-U to Kennedy and everybody knew it.

Now Republicans are trying to claim that if only Kennedy had been around he would have been able to work out a compromise, apparently in the form of throwing away ever principle it had ever held by making "concessions" which in the context of how Senate Finance has been handling things means complete and total surrender to the Republicans and the Insurance Companies.

It is Bullshit. Full Stop. Kennedy already made tremendous concessions in the course of issuing the HELP Bill. It cost were scored out at a third less than the preliminary version sent for scoring to CBO, a severe trimming that was accomplished by covering a much smaller proportion of the population than that of the House Tri-Committee Bill. Whereas the latter bill is projected to cover 97% of the total LEGAL NON-ELDERLY population, Kennedy's HELP Bill only scored as covering 90% of that same population and leaving 34 million uninsured. If anything Kennedy-Dodd bent over backwards to accomodate the fiscal concerns of the Blue Dogs and Republicans and STILL got spat in the face by Baucus for their trouble.

Republicans are already, and predictably trying to re-write history to suggest that Kennedy 'obviously' would of given up even more than he did. Well too bad, that was never going to happen, and certainly shouldn't happen now. The answer for Democrats is to take the HELP Bill off the table, replace it with the much stronger Tri-Committee Bill and tell these hypocritical, crocodile tear crying Republicans to piss up a rope while Dems pass a real Kennedy-Dingel Bill.

by Bruce Webb. Reprinted for educational purposes.

Angry Conservatives are Important, Angry Moderates are Not

Media Claims Angry Conservatives are Important, Angry Moderates are Not
guess Howard Dean was just ahead of his time.

When the liberal anti-war candidate ran for the White House in 2003 and 2004, the Beltway press was uniformly clear that Dean had an "anger" issue. When Dean launched his campaign and gave voice to the hundreds of thousands of activists who had marched and protested against the Iraq war, the media elites did not approve.

As early as June 2003, The New York Times was fretting over whether Dean's "angry message" would be his downfall. "All the Rage," read a Newsweek headline on a Dean profile.

And in two features in the summer of 2003, The Washington Post described Dean as "abrasive," "flinty," "cranky," "arrogant," "disrespectful," "fiery," "red-faced," a "hothead," "testy," "short-fused," "angry," "worked up," and "fired up." And trust me, none of those adjectives was used in a complimentary way. In fact, the Post took pains to distinguish Dean's anger from that of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom the paper termed "brilliantly cranky."

Bad luck for Dean, because back during the Bush years, there was really no worse crime, at least in the eyes of the Beltway press, than being "angry." (Especially being an angry Democrat.) It was practically a deal breaker. Serious people simply didn't conduct themselves that way in American politics. They didn't let their runaway partisan emotions get the best of them.

But oh my, how times have changed! Suddenly this summer, as right-wing mini-mobs turn health care forums into free-for-alls, as unhinged political rage flows in the streets, and as the Nazi and Hitler rhetoric flies, anger is in. Suddenly anger is good. It's authentic. It's newsworthy. Reading and watching the mini-mob news coverage, the media message seems clear: Angry speaks to the masses.

Instead of being turned off by the displays of passion the way they had been when liberal protesters took to the streets prior to the Iraq war, media elites have been touting the mini-mob trend as a "phenomenon" (USA Today) staffed by a "citizen army" (Bloomberg News).

And make no mistake, the health care mini-mobs have been showered with a massive amount of media coverage. During the week of August 10-16, the topic of health care, and specifically the politics and the protests of health care, accounted for a staggering 62 percent of all cable news coverage, according to the Pew Research Center's weekly survey. My guess is that you would be hard-pressed to find a single week during the run-up to the Iraq war when liberal anti-war protests accounted for just 6 percent of the cable news coverage.

Why the gaping disparity? And how come Dean's anti-war anger was out of bounds, but mini-mob anger is perfectly acceptable? How come liberal anti-war protesters were shunned by the press, but the mini-mobs are showered with incessant coverage? It's because apparently when angry -- and overwhelmingly white -- conservatives protest, they come attached with a direct line to the American psyche. Liberals, though, most certainly do not.

Bottom line: Liberal protesters don't tell us anything about the mood of America. But angry right-wingers do, according to the press.

That glaring double standard is part of a long-running Beltway press trend in which media elites lash out at angry liberals, regardless of whether they're right or wrong. The trend was highlighted again just last week when news broke that former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge admitted that very senior players in the Bush White House urged him to raise the nation's terror alert system for purely political reasons. Writing at The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder defended journalists who scorned liberal Bush critics years ago when they made that exact same claim about the nation's terror warning system. Journalists were right to dismiss the allegation, wrote Ambinder, "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence."

Salon's Glenn Greenwald quickly noted, "As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they're still Shrill, unSerious Losers who every decent person and 'journalist' scorns."

Please note Ambinder's emphasis on "gut hatred" of Bush (even if the writer did later retract the phrase). For elite journalists during the Bush administration, liberal hatred of Bush represented the most conspicuous red flag that signaled certain political players were not serious. Why? Because they were fueled by hatred. Serious people did not have hatred. They weren't driven by out-of-control passion.

Now, please compare that defining media elite principle from the Bush era to the mini-mobs and the ugly free-for-alls they unleashed this summer. Judging based on the insight into the Beltway media's mentality that Ambinder provided, the press dismissed Bush's liberal critics because they were too emotional, too full of "hatred," and not paying attention to the facts. You mean sort of like the anti-Obama mini-mob members who hang politicians in effigy, turn town hall forums into fact-free shriek-fests, arrive with loaded guns, wave swastika posters, and yell out "Heil Hitler"?

If ever there's ever been a political movement fueled by, and carefully constructed around, irrational "gut hatred," it's today's right-wing mini-mobs. But you don't hear much from Village pundits like Ambinder about the "gut hatred" of Obama, do you? That doesn't seem to turn off pundits, reporters, or producers.

In truth, right-wing "gut hatred" has become the news story of the summer. It's being celebrated and rebroadcast all season long. That deranged "gut hatred" of a new president barely halfway through his first year doesn't delegitimize the protesters in the eyes of the Beltway press in the way the same press corps seemed to write off anti-war protesters as being fringe radicals. (Too angry!) The "gut hatred" of Obama is what makes the mini-mob news.

As Media Matters senior fellow Duncan Black wrote last week at his blog, Eschaton, in relation to the Tom Ridge story:

Sometimes it's a bit hard to remember just how nutty the world was in those post-9/11 days. Suggesting that Bush was using the terror alert for political purposes would have made you a crazy person, the mere suggestion of it would've put you outside the bounds of acceptable discourse.

Sort of like suggesting today that the federal government might soon be in the business of selectively killing the elderly, right? Think again. High-profile conservatives who pushed the "death panel" nonsense, which fired up the mini-mobs, have not been shoved to the sidelines. Instead, they've been politely fact-checked on occasion.

Media to liberal war protesters: Go away!

And just so there's no doubt in people's mind, the blanket coverage the mini-mobs are lapping up (i.e. the mobs are hugely important!) stands in stark contrast to the way the press often did its best to ignore liberal protesters who spoke out against the war in Iraq.

For instance, in October 2002, when more than 100,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to oppose the war, The Washington Post put the story not on the front page, but in the Metro section with, as the paper's ombudsman later lamented, "a couple of ho-hum photographs that captured the protest's fringe elements."

For that same 2002 anti-war rally, The New York Times also bungled its reporting. The day after the event, the newspaper published a small article on Page 8, which was accompanied by a photo that was larger than the article itself. And in the article, the Times falsely reported that "fewer people attended than organizers had said they hoped for."

Let's watch and see how the Post deals with the mini-mob protest slated for September 12 in Washington, D.C., sponsored by Dick Armey's FreedomWorks. If 100,000-200,000 people turn out, let's see whether the Post keeps that story off the front page. (Yeah, right.) And let's see if the Times runs a brief article on Page 8 and reports that "fewer people attended" than organizers had hoped.

And remember how some in the mainstream press in 2005 treated anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey had been killed while serving in Iraq? An op-ed writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution claimed that "Cindy Sheehan evidently thinks little of her deceased son." The piece also attacked her as being "disgraceful" and her actions as "near-treasonous."

On MSNBC, Norah O'Donnell asked a guest if Sheehan had become "a tool of the left," while pressing another guest on whether it was wise to be associated with the "anti-war extremists" camped out in Crawford, Texas, near President Bush's ranch. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank wondered if Sheehan would be remembered as a modern-day Lyndon LaRouche, the fringe political figure who's been accused of being a cult leader and fascist. Later that month, Milbank gave prominent display in the Post to a right-wing activist who accused Sheehan of being a communist.

On September 24, 2005, Sheehan helped lead a massive anti-war rally in Washington, D.C., which drew between 100,000 and 200,000 participants, making it the largest U.S. demonstration since the war began. As part of the protest weekend, Sheehan, along with about 370 anti-war protesters, got herself arrested outside the White House. That night, NBC's Nightly News completely ignored the arrests. (The Post gave the story 600 words on B1.) The evening newscasts on ABC and CBS mentioned the arrests only briefly, and CBS downplayed the numbers involved. It reported that Sheehan was arrested along with "dozens" of others. (What? As in 31 dozen?) And the next morning, ignoring the fact that nearly 400 people chose to be arrested in order to protest the war, CNN reported that "Sheehan and several others were arrested" [emphasis added].

If, come September 12, nearly 400 angry anti-Obama demonstrators decide to get arrested outside the White House, let's see if Nightly News boycotts the story. And let's see if CNN reports it was "several" protesters who got hauled away.

Let's see if the press continues to treat angry (unhinged) conservative protesters as inherently important and newsworthy after having spent years dismissing angry liberals as insignificant and out of the mainstream.

by Eric Boehlert.

Copyright © 2009 Media Matters for America.

Conservative Jim Towey Lied About Vets and Living Wills

How Conservatives Got The Facts Wrong On Their Latest Obsession: The "Death Book" For Veterans
Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs Tammy Duckworth appeared on Fox News Sunday this morning to combat the false allegations that the VA is using a "death book" to encourage veterans to end their lives.


The latest conservative obsession - dutifully spread via Sarah Palin's Facebook page - is marked by the same alarmism and factual inaccuracy as the hysteria over "death panels."

According to this tale, America's veterans are being steered into ending their lives via a "death book" distributed by the government.

It all started with Jim Towey, the former president of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives under George W. Bush, who penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal describing how the Department of Veterans Affairs was using an end-of-life planning document that was aimed at steering veterans toward choosing death.

Towey stated that the message of the veterans' health-care system to its patients was "hurry-up-and-die" and he contrasted the "death book" with "Five Wishes," his own advance care planning document.
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In dramatic language, he wrote:

"One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender."

Soon enough, Palin linked to the piece, stating that "the Veterans Administration encourages veterans to forego care as they make end-of-life decisions." And Fox News' Sean Hannity and RNC chair Michael Steele were calling it the equivalent of "death panels" for military veterans.

They failed to mention that the so-called "death book" contains the same advance-care planning required of all health care organizations under federal law, has been in use since 1997 and was developed with the input of interfaith ministers.

In addition, Towey seems to have his own axe to grind. He has repeatedly tried to get the government to spend millions to purchase his "Five Wishes" book, which is published by Aging With Dignity, a non-profit group he founded, to distribute to veterans across the country, according to sources within the VA. Towey used his influence with the White House to get a meeting with VA officials, including then-Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson. At one meeting, Towey was informed that the VA could not act on such an unsolicited proposal without violating federal procurement regulations, according to VA sources.

The VA's policy is in accordance with the 1990 Patient Self Determination Act, which requires all institutions receiving Medicare funds to provide information to patients regarding end of life, living will and other advance directives. During the Bush administration, the VA changed its regulation to extend the act to cover all VA facilities.

In 2007, after Towey complained that the so-called "death book," "Your Life, Your Choices - Planning for Future Medical Decisions," was biased against the right-to-life viewpoint, the VA convened an outside panel of experts to assess and update the booklet.

In his op-ed, Towey stated that this panel did not include any representatives of faith groups or disability rights advocates. In fact, according to the VA, the panel included a priest, a rabbi, a renowned disability rights advocate, and the president of the organization that produces "Five Wishes," the alternative advance care planning document that Towey is promoting and selling.

The panel supported the use of the "Your Life, Your Choices" booklet but included some suggestions for revising its content. The plans to update and release the booklet were developed under the Bush administration and it is due for release in 2010.

Towey, along with Assistant Secretary Of Veterans Affairs Tammy Duckworth are scheduled to discuss the issue on "Fox News Sunday" tomorrow.

Dr. Ellen Fox, the Chief Officer for Ethics in Health Care at the Veterans Health Administration, defended the use of the booklet:

Your Life, Your Choices is an educational workbook that was designed specifically for Veterans. The authors went to great lengths to ensure it would be meaningful and helpful to all Veterans, regardless of their religious and cultural backgrounds. I am impressed by the development process they used, which included extensive input and testing by different Veterans groups, religious leaders from 10 different faiths, elderly and disabled individuals, and experienced doctors and nurses. They even made sure to incorporate everyday language that Veterans commonly use to describe medical conditions, while at the same time providing accurate information from the physician's perspective. Over the past 10 years it has been tested through scientific research, endorsed by many respected professional organizations, and widely used throughout the U.S. health care system. It is one of many educational resources we provide to help Veterans and their families. As a Federal agency we have an obligation to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars by maximizing the services we provide our Veterans. Providing an educational resource like Your Life, Your Choices at no cost to Veterans is one of the many ways we fulfill this mission. The whole purpose of this workbook is to encourage more conversations between patients, families, and health care teams. Anyone who is seriously interested in ensuring that Veterans receive the best care possible should recognize this.

Towey did not return calls placed to St. Vincent College, where he is the president.

Hypochristian Huckabee Lies About Healthcare Bill

The High Price of Cheap Food

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food
Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon — circa 2009. (See TIME's photo-essay "From Farm to Fork.")

Horror stories about the food industry have long been with us — ever since 1906, when Upton Sinclair's landmark novel The Jungle told some ugly truths about how America produces its meat. In the century that followed, things got much better, and in some ways much worse. The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. Those hidden prices are the creeping erosion of our fertile farmland, cages for egg-laying chickens so packed that the birds can't even raise their wings and the scary rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among farm animals. Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming — our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.

And perhaps worst of all, our food is increasingly bad for us, even dangerous. A series of recalls involving contaminated foods this year — including an outbreak of salmonella from tainted peanuts that killed at least eight people and sickened 600 — has consumers rightly worried about the safety of their meals. A food system — from seed to 7-Eleven — that generates cheap, filling food at the literal expense of healthier produce is also a principal cause of America's obesity epidemic. At a time when the nation is close to a civil war over health-care reform, obesity adds $147 billion a year to our doctor bills.

Obama Does Not Have Death Panels, But Insurance Companies Do

The "death panels" are already here
Sorry, Sarah Palin -- rationing of care? Private companies are already doing it, with sometimes fatal results

The future of healthcare in America, according to Sarah Palin, might look something like this: A sick 17-year-old girl needs a liver transplant. Doctors find an available organ, and they're ready to operate, but the bureaucracy -- or as Palin would put it, the "death panel" -- steps in and says it won't pay for the surgery. Despite protests from the girl's family and her doctors, the heartless hacks hold their ground for a critical 10 days. Eventually, under massive public pressure, they relent -- but the patient dies before the operation can proceed.

It certainly sounds scary enough to make you want to go show up at a town hall meeting and yell about how misguided President Obama's healthcare reform plans are. Except that's not the future of healthcare -- it's the present. Long before anyone started talking about government "death panels" or warning that Obama would have the government ration care, 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan, a leukemia patient from Glendale, Calif., died in December 2007, after her parents battled their insurance company, Cigna, over the surgery. Cigna initially refused to pay for it because the company's analysis showed Sarkisyan was already too sick from her leukemia; the liver transplant wouldn't have saved her life.

That kind of utilitarian rationing, of course, is exactly what Palin and other opponents of the healthcare reform proposals pending before Congress say they want to protect the country from. "Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote, in the same message posted on Facebook where she raised the "death panel" specter. "Health care by definition involves life and death decisions."

Coverage of Palin's remarks, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's defense of them, over the weekend did point out that the idea that the reform plans would encourage government-sponsored euthanasia is one of a handful of deliberate falsehoods being peddled by opponents of the legislation. But the idea that only if reform passes would the government start setting up rationing and interfering with care goes beyond just the bogus euthanasia claim.

Opponents of reform often seem to skip right past any problems with the current system -- but it's rife with them. A study by the American Medical Association found the biggest insurance companies in the country denied between 2 and 5 percent of claims put in by doctors last year (though the AMA noted that not all the denials were improper). There is no national database of insurance claim denials, though, because private insurance companies aren't required to disclose such stats. Meanwhile, a House Energy and Commerce Committee report in June found that just three insurance companies kicked at least 20,000 people off their rolls between 2003 and 2007 for such reasons as typos on their application paperwork, a preexisting condition or a family member's medical history. People who buy insurance under individual policies, about 6 percent of adults, may be especially vulnerable, but the 63 percent of adults covered by employer-provided insurance aren't immune to difficulty.

"You're asking us to decide that the government is to be trusted," Gingrich -- who may, like Palin, be running for the GOP's presidential nomination in 2012 -- told ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday. But as even a quick glance through news coverage of the last few years shows, private insurers are already doing what reform opponents say they want to save us from. (The insurance industry, pushing back against charges that they're part of the problem, said last month that "healthcare reform is far too important to be dragged down by divisive political rhetoric." The industry has long maintained that its decisions on what to cover are the result of careful investigations of each claim.) Here is a look at a handful of healthcare horror stories, brought to you by the current system. It took Salon staff less than an hour to round these up -- which might indicate how many other such stories are out there.

-- In June 2008, Robin Beaton, a retired nurse from Waxahachie, Texas, found out she had breast cancer and needed a double mastectomy. Two days before her surgery, her insurance company, Blue Cross, flagged her chart and told the hospital they wouldn't allow the procedure to go forward until they finished an examination of five years of her medical history -- which could take three months. It turned out that a month before the cancer diagnosis, Beaton had gone to a dermatologist for acne treatment, and Blue Cross incorrectly interpreted a word on her chart to mean that the acne was precancerous.

Not long into the investigation, the insurer canceled her policy. Beaton, they said, had listed her weight incorrectly when she bought it, and had also failed to disclose that she'd once taken medicine for a heart condition -- which she hadn't been taking at the time she filled out the application. By October, thanks to an intervention from her member of Congress, Blue Cross reinstated Beaton's insurance coverage. But the tumor she had removed had grown 2 centimeters in the meantime, and she had to have her lymph nodes removed as well as her breasts amputated because of the delay.

-- In October 2008, Michael Napientak, a doorman from Clarendon Hills, Ill., went to the hospital for surgery to relieve agonizing back pain. His wife's employer's insurance provider, a subsidiary of UnitedHealthCare, had issued a pre-authorization for the operation. The operation went well. But in April, the insurer started sending notices that it wouldn't pay for the surgery, after all; the family, not the insurance provider, would be on the hook for the $148,000 the hospital charged for the procedure. Pre-authorization, the insurance company explained, didn't necessarily guarantee payment on a claim would be forthcoming. The company offered shifting explanations for why it wouldn't pay -- first, demanding proof that Napientak had tried less expensive measures to relieve his pain, and then, when he provided it, insisting that it lacked documentation for why the surgery was medically necessary. Napientak's wife, Sandie, asked her boss to help out, but with no luck. Fortunately for the Napientaks, they were able to attract the attention of a Chicago Tribune columnist before they had to figure out how to pay the six-figure bill -- once the newspaper started asking questions, the insurer suddenly decided, "based on additional information submitted," to cover the tab, after all.

-- David Denney was less than a year old when he was diagnosed in 1995 with glutaric acidemia Type 1, a rare blood disorder that left him severely brain damaged and unable to eat, walk or speak without assistance. For more than a decade, Blue Cross of California -- his parents' insurance company -- paid the $1,200 weekly cost to have a nurse care for him, giving him exercise and administering anti-seizure medication.

But in March 2006, Blue Cross told the Denney family their claims had exceeded the annual cost limit for his care. When they wrote back, objecting and pointing out that their annual limit was higher, the company changed its mind -- about the reason for the denial. The nurse's services weren't medically necessary, the insurers said. His family sued, and the case went to arbitration, as their policy allowed. California taxpayers, meanwhile, got stuck with the bill -- after years of paying their own premiums, the Denney family went on Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid system.

-- Patricia Reilling opened an art gallery in Louisville, Ky., in 1987, and three years later took out an insurance policy for herself and her employees. Her insurance provider, Anthem Health Plans of Kentucky, wrote to her this June, telling her it was canceling her coverage -- a few days after it sent her a different letter detailing the rates to renew for another year and billing her for July.

Reilling thinks she knows the reason for the cutoff, though -- she was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2008. That kicked off a year-long battle with Anthem. First the company refused to pay for an MRI to locate the tumors, saying her family medical history didn't indicate she was likely to have cancer. Eventually, it approved the MRI, but only after she'd undergone an additional, painful biopsy. Her doctor removed both of her breasts in April 2008. In December, she went in for reconstructive plastic surgery -- and contracted a case of MRSA, an invasive infection. In January of this year, Reilling underwent two more surgeries to deal with the MRSA infection, and she's likely to require another operation to help fix all the damage. The monthly bill for her prescription medicines -- which she says are mostly generics -- is $2,000; the doctors treating her for the MRSA infection want $280 for each appointment, now that she's lost her insurance coverage. When she appealed the decision to cancel her policy, asking if she could keep paying the premium and continue coverage until her current course of treatment ends, the insurers wrote back with yet another denial. But they did say they hoped her health improved.

-- Additional reporting by Tim Bella

Conservative media push 75-year-old "socialized medicine" smear against health care reform

Conservative media push 75-year-old "socialized medicine" smear against health care reform
SUMMARY: In discussing health care reform this year, conservative media figures have revived the "socialized medicine" smear to undermine the efforts of President Obama and congressional Democrats, most recently by promoting Ronald Reagan's 1961 attacks on a legislative precursor to Medicare. In light of this trend, Media Matters for America is updating and republishing its March 5 report documenting that health care reform opponents have baselessly smeared at least 16 previous progressive reform proposals as "socialized medicine" over the last 75 years.

"Socialized medicine" smear is false

Progressive reform is not socialized medicine. The Urban Institute wrote in an April 2008 analysis that "socialized medicine involves government financing and direct provision of health care services," and explained that recent progressive health care reform proposals do not "fit this description." The analysis also noted, "Similar rhetoric was used to defeat national health care reform proposals in the 1990s and, with less success, to argue against the creation of Medicare in the 1960s."

Obama has not proposed socialized medicine, single payer, or nationalized health care. As PolitiFact.com noted in a March 5 post, "Obama's plan leaves in place the private health care system, but seeks to expand it to the uninsured," and "the plan is very different from some European-style health systems where the government owns health clinics and employs doctors." And during a March 26 online town hall, Obama explicitly rejected the notion of implementing a health care system "the way European countries do or Canada does," explaining that what "we should do is to build on the [employer-based] system that we have."

Congressional Budget Office: More enrollees in employer-provided insurance under House, Senate legislation than under current law. In both its July 26 analysis of the House tri-committee draft bill and its July 2 preliminary score of the Senate health committee bill, CBO found that more people would be enrolled in employer-based insurance under the bills than under current law in every year CBO examined following the legislation's implementation.
Conservative media predictably cry "socialized medicine" about 2009 reform

Conservatives cite Reagan's anti-"socialized medicine" recording to fearmonger about health reform. On August 14, the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, and O'Reilly Factor guest host Laura Ingraham featured a recording of Ronald Reagan speaking in 1961 against "socialized medicine" for the American Medical Association's "Operation Coffeecup" campaign. Neither Drudge, nor Limbaugh, nor Ingraham, however, noted that Reagan was speaking out against a legislative precursor to Medicare, which has become very popular since it was enacted 44 years ago, or that Reagan's dire predictions of curtailments of freedom were never realized.

Conservative media figures repeatedly invoke socialism in stating their opposition to health reform. Numerous conservative media figures have revived the "socialized medicine" smear or raised the specter of socialism in their discussions of Democratic health care reform proposals. Examples include:

* In a May 8 Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined, "Republicans and ObamaCare," editorial board member Kimberley A. Strassel trotted out the falsehood that Obama is on a "drive to socialize health care." [The Wall Street Journal, 5/8/09]

* During the July 18 edition of Fox News' Bulls & Bears, host Brenda Buttner asked if health care proposals take us "one step closer to United Socialist States of America." [Bulls & Bears, 7/18/09]

* During the July 21 edition of Glenn Beck's Fox News program, Beck claimed that health care reform is "good old socialism ... raping the pocketbooks of the rich to give to the poor." [Glenn Beck, 7/21/09]

* The July 23 edition of Sean Hannity's Fox News show -- billed as a "Universal Nightmare" special edition -- relied on distortions and falsehoods to raise the specter of "socialized medicine." [Hannity, 7/23/09]

* During the August 17 edition of his Fox News program, Bill O'Reilly claimed that the public option debate is really "about socialism," for which he claimed Howard Dean and Paul Krugman are "poster boys." [The O'Reilly Factor, 8/17/09]

Numerous media figures baselessly link Obama's reform efforts to Canadian, British health care systems. Despite Obama's explicit rejection on March 26 of implementing health care systems like those of Canada or the United Kingdom, media figures have continued to link Democratic reform efforts to such systems. Examples include:

* During the March 26 edition of his Fox News program, Hannity claimed that Obama "wants to lay down $634 billion for nationalized health care. Well, we've had nationalized health care in Great Britain, and we've had it in France, and we've had it -- single-payer in Canada." Interviewing European Parliament member Daniel Hannan, Hannity later asserted, "So your advice to America is stay away from nationalized health care." [Hannity, 3/26/09]

* During the April 24 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, White House correspondent Wendell Goler cropped a comment by Obama and took it out of context -- effectively reversing the statement's meaning -- to falsely suggest that Obama supports creating a health care system "like the European countries." Goler claimed that Obama "doesn't want to do it halfway" on health care and then aired a clip from the March 26 online town hall event of Obama saying, "If you're going to fix it, why not do a universal health care system like the European countries?" Following the clip, Goler reported: "His critics worry universal health care would mean government-run health care." In fact, Obama was paraphrasing the question he had just been asked before explaining why he opposed such a system. [Special Report, 4/24/09]

* On the April 27 edition of Special Report, chief political correspondent Carl Cameron falsely suggested that Obama has proposed a nationalized health care system similar to those of the United Kingdom and Canada when he asserted: "The battle is already one of this year's most polarizing and partisan. Conservatives for Patients' Rights launched a new ad with British and Canadian doctors warning Americans about the perils of nationalized health care." [Special Report, 4/27/09]

* In an April 30 Wall Street Journal column, Fox News contributor Karl Rove took Obama's March 26 quote out of context and reversed it's meaning, writing that, in 2008, the Obama campaign "ran ads attacking 'government-run health care' as 'extreme.' Now Mr. Obama is asking, as he did at a townhall meeting last month, 'Why not do a universal health care system like the European countries?' " [Wall Street Journal, 4/30/09]

* On the June 29 edition of Special Report, host Bret Baier falsely suggested that Obama has cited Canada's medical system as a "possible model" for his health care reform plan. [Special Report, 6/29/09]

* A July 18 Associated Press article by Charles Babington uncritically repeated the baseless charge that "Obama would push" the United States "into a Canada-like [health care] system." [AP, 7/18/09]

Opponents have used "socialized medicine" smear for 75 years

Smear dates back to 1930s. A Media Matters analysis found that dating as far back as the 1930s -- with respect to at least 16 different reform initiatives -- conservatives have attempted to smear those proposals by calling them "socialized medicine" or a step toward that inevitable result. These reform efforts include President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's consideration of government health insurance when crafting the 1935 Social Security bill; President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 amendment to the Social Security Act establishing Medicare; President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton's health-care initiative in 1993 and 1994; the creation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in 1997, as well as its 2007 reauthorization and 2009 expansion; Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's health-care proposals during the 2008 presidential campaign; health information technology provisions included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009; and health-care provisions included in President Obama's fiscal year 2010 budget blueprint.

Roosevelt's consideration of government health insurance when crafting the 1935 Social Security bill

* A January 3, 1935, New York Times article (purchase required), "Doctors in Debate on Social Medicine," reported that during a "discussion on the socialization of medicine," the editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Morris Fishbein, "attacked the general proposal of socialization" and "ridicul[ed] the Roosevelt administration's attempts to evolve a plan of socialized medicine." Fishbein also reportedly said that the "American Medical Association [AMA] was strongly opposed to any scheme for group practice and to health insurance ... because they are un-American."

* The New York Times reported in a February 16, 1935, article (purchase required), "Doctors Meet on 'Peril' in Security Plans; Illness Insurance Moves Stir Profession," that the AMA called a "special meeting" of its house of delegates due to "what some medical men have pronounced the most critical situation in the history of American medicine, brought about by President Roosevelt's social security program, and particularly by proposals of his advisers for compulsory insurance against the costs of sickness." The Times reported that the AMA asserted that "sickness-insurance plans ... are a step toward socialized medicine."

Truman's health-care reform proposal (the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill)

* The Harry S. Truman Library website states that "Truman's health proposals finally came to Congress in the form of a Social Security expansion bill, co-sponsored in Congress by Democratic senators Robert Wagner (N.Y.) and James Murray (Mont.), along with Representative John Dingell (D.-Mich). For this reason, the bill was known popularly as the W-M-D bill. The American Medical Association (AMA) launched a spirited attack against the bill, capitalizing on fears of Communism in the public mind. The AMA characterized the bill as 'socalized [sic] medicine', and in a forerunner to the rhetoric of the McCarthy era, called Truman White House staffers 'followers of the Moscow party line.' "

* In The Social Transformation of American Medicine, discussing Truman's health-care proposal in Senate hearings, Paul Starr writes: "Senator Murray, the committee chairman, asked that the health bill not be described as socialistic or communistic. Interrupting, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, the senior Republican, declared, 'I considered it socialism. It is to my mind the most socialistic measure this Congress has ever had before it.' Taft suggested that compulsory health insurance, like the full employment act, came right out of the Soviet constitution." [Page 283]

* Starr further writes: "In May 1947 Senator Homer Ferguson accused the [Truman] administration of illicitly spending millions 'in behalf of a nationwide program of socialized medicine.' A House subcommittee investigating government propaganda for health insurance concluded that 'known Communists and fellow travelers within Federal agencies are at work diligently with Federal funds in furtherance of the Moscow party line.' " [Page 284]

* Starr also writes that after Truman won re-election in 1948, "the AMA thought armageddon had come. It assessed each of its members an additional $25 just to resist health insurance and hired [public relations firm] Whitaker and Baxter to mount a public relations campaign that cost $1.5 million in 1949, at that time the most expensive lobbying effort in American history. ... 'Would socialized medicine lead to socialization of other phases of American life?' asked one pamphlet, and it answered, 'Lenin thought so. He declared: "Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the Socialist state." ' (The Library of Congress could not locate this quotation in Lenin's writings.) So successful was the campaign in linking health insurance with socialism that even people who supported Truman's plan identified it as 'socialized medicine,' despite the administration's insistence it was not." [Page 284-285]

* An April 14, 1950, Washington Post article (purchase required), "Dewey Views Truman Plans As Dangerous," reported that New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, a two-time Republican presidential nominee, said that the Truman administration's "compulsory health insurance plan" was " 'socialized medicine.' "

Kennedy's health-care reform proposal (the Anderson-King bill)

* In Social Security and Its Enemies: The Case for America's Most Efficient Insurance Program, Max J. Skidmore wrote that an AMA recording by Ronald Reagan, "Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine," was part of the organization's "brilliant effort to encourage opponents of the Anderson-King Bill to write to senators and representatives urging that they vote against the proposal." [Page 61] At the end of the recording, Reagan urged listeners to write to their congressional representative because otherwise, "we will awake to find that we have socialism." [Page 165]

* In a February 12, 1961, article (purchase required), "Fight Looms Over Medical Plan," about President John F. Kennedy's call for Congress "to set up a system of health insurance for the aged tied to Social Security," The New York Times reported, "One of the principal opposition arguments is that a Governmental system of health insurance opens the way for a form of socialized medicine."

* A May 13, 1962, New York Times article (purchase required), "Fight Over New Aged Plan Grows Hotter," reported that in opposing the Anderson-King bill, the AMA "had been fighting back with cries of 'socialized medicine.' " The report also stated: "Stepping up its own campaign, the A.M.A. has issued a twelve-page booklet entitled 'The Case Against Socialized Medicine.' "

Johnson's 1965 amendment to the Social Security Act establishing Medicare

* In a January 17, 1966 article (purchase required), "Insurers Ask What's Next in Medicare," The New York Times reported: "This discontent in the wake of the enactment of the Federal medicare program is not over the loss of at least part of the health-insurance business involving people over the age of 64. Rather, the insurance sellers are distressed at the thought that medicare has brought the nation a giant step closer to socialized medicine."

* Reagan delivered an October 27, 1964, speech, "A Time for Choosing," supporting Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater against Johnson, the incumbent. In the speech, Reagan said, "Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business." (The Greatest Speeches of Ronald Reagan; Page 3)

* An August 17, 1992, analysis in the St. Petersburg Times by Ellen Debenport, "Bush resists action, distrusts change," noted that George H.W. Bush "opposed Medicare in 1964 as 'socialized medicine.' "

* In a July 11, 1965, article on the passage of Medicare, "Now Medicare" (purchase required), The New York Times reported that "Medicare bills have been bouncing around Capitol Hill for years, but have run into strong opposition. The American Medical Association has lobbied against a Federal medical program on the ground it would be a step toward socialized medicine."

Winston Churchill Helped Create Socialized Medicine

Winston Churchill Helped Create Socialized Medicine
Long before many of today’s frothing right-wing demagogues were born, American conservatives came to idolize Winston Churchill, the late Tory prime minister whose wartime leadership of the British people transformed into the living symbol of democracy armed. That reputation was cemented by his legendary Missouri speech in 1946 warning of the “Iron Curtain” drawn by the Soviet Communists across Eastern Europe. Indeed, journalists and bloggers on the right admire the old warhorse so much that he has even outpolled Ronald Reagan as their “Man of the Century.”

Yet by the standards of the present moment, as these same conservatives mobilize against health care reform to “stop socialism,” that same great man was actually a raving Bolshevik. For among his most enduring legacies was the founding and sustenance of the system that became the National Health Service. Arguably as much as any other British politician, it was Churchill who established “socialized medicine.”

Perhaps it is a forlorn hope that facts and history can make any impression on the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Chuck Grassley, or Bill Kristol, but let’s try anyway -- because it is worth understanding that despite the low quality of our own so-called conservatives, there was once another kind.

Churchill was renowned as a politician who put country and civilization above party. The government he led during World War II was a broad coalition of the British parties, from his own Conservatives to the democratic socialists of Labor. Midway through the war, Churchill’s government asked Sir William Beveridge, a Liberal Party social reformer and economist to study systems of social insurance that could reduce poverty, disease, unemployment and illiteracy in Britain.

In 1942, Beveridge issued an far-reaching report that proposed a national health service to provide medical care to every man, woman and child, regardless of means -- much as the coalition government had done during the medical emergency brought on by the German bombings of their cities, hospitals and clinics.

Although Churchill endorsed the idea of a national health system, his party lost the first post-war general election in 1945, partly because British voters didn’t trust the Tories to implement the Beveridge report. Instead a Labor government established universal care under the NHS in 1948.

Only three years later, the Tories returned to power with Churchill restored as prime minister. At that point, the NHS could still have been killed -- and many members of the Tory party, not to mention the British Medical Association, were eager to do so.

But Churchill asked Claude Guillebaud, a Cambridge economist, to head a committee to study the performance and efficiency of the NHS. The Gillebaud committee found that the NHS was highly effective – and needed additional funding to insure that effectiveness would continue. There was no more talk of dismantling the very popular service, and instead the Tories under Churchill and his immediate successors allocated more money to build additional clinics and hospitals. Even Margaret Thatcher, the most ideological Tory prime minister of modern times, promised voters that “the NHS is safe in our hands.”

As a lifelong conservative with a strong dedication to enterprise and merit (and a host of less admirable right-wing prejudices), Churchill would have bristled at anyone who dared to describe him as a socialist. Why then did he promote and protect the NHS? Partly out of political expediency, no doubt, but also because he felt an ethical obligation that seems not to trouble the contemporary conservatives who profess to admire him.

In March 1944, he eloquently explained his views on medicine and society to the members of Royal College of Physicians in London:

The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. That is clear. Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman simply on the ground that it is the enemy; and it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion. Our policy is to create a national health service in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available.

That is what he helped to do -- and for the rest of his life, he fought against the impression that his old adversaries in Labor had established the system alone.

Lately, the subject of the NHS erupted into the American debate over health care when Investors Business Daily, a hard-line right-wing financial publication based in New York, suggested in an editorial that a statist system like Britain’s would have left Stephen Hawking, the Nobel physicist and popular author, to die of Lou Gehrig’s disease, which has afflicted him since he was 21 years old. That ignorant screed prompted Hawking -- who has of course lived in Britain all his life -- to declare that the NHS had saved his life. Furious Britons of all political parties leaped forward to defend their medical system, mocking the dumb American right-wingers and overwhelming Twitter with messages hashmarked “I love the NHS.”

Whatever the marvels and defects of the NHS may be – and most experts agree that it does a superb job despite inadequate funding -- its importance for the debate over American health care reform may be moral rather than practical. Imagine what kind of country we would inhabit if those who claim to represent conservatism in America possessed even a small measure of the human compassion and political decency of Churchill at his best. It is a standard that they do not even attempt to achieve these days.

Republican Crazy Militia Types Making Come Back

Return of the Right-wing Militias

By Larry Keller

In Pensacola, Fla., retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson tells a gathering of antigovernment "Patriots" that the federal government has set up 1,000 internment camps across the country and is storing 30,000 guillotines and a half-million caskets in Atlanta. They're there for the day the government finally declares martial law and moves in to round up or kill American dissenters, he says. "They're going to keep track of all of us, folks," Gunderson warns.

Outside Atlanta, a so-called "American Grand Jury" issues an "indictment" of Barack Obama for fraud and treason because, the panel concludes, he wasn't born in the United States and is illegally occupying the office of president. Other sham "grand juries" around the country follow suit.

And on the site in Lexington, Mass., where the opening shots of the Revolutionary War were fired in 1775, members of Oath Keepers, a newly formed group of law enforcement officers, military men and veterans, "muster" on April 19 to reaffirm their pledge to defend the U.S. Constitution. "We're in perilous times … perhaps far more perilous than in 1775," says the man administering the oath. April 19 is the anniversary not only of the battle of Lexington Green, but also of the 1993 conflagration at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the lethal bombing two years later of the Oklahoma City federal building — seminal events in the lore of the extreme right, in particular the antigovernment Patriot movement.

Almost 10 years after it seemed to disappear from American life, there are unmistakable signs of a revival of what in the 1990s was commonly called the militia movement. From Idaho to New Jersey and Michigan to Florida, men in khaki and camouflage are back in the woods, gathering to practice the paramilitary skills they believe will be needed to fend off the socialistic troops of the "New World Order."

One big difference from the militia movement of the 1990s is that the face of the federal government — the enemy that almost all parts of the extreme right see as the primary threat to freedom — is now black. And the fact that the president is an African American has injected a strong racial element into even those parts of the radical right, like the militias, that in the past were not primarily motivated by race hate. Contributing to the racial animus have been fears on the far right about the consequences of Latino immigration.

Militia rhetoric is being heard widely once more, often from a second generation of ideologues, and conspiracy theories are being energetically revived or invented anew. "Paper terrorism" — the use of property liens, bogus legal documents and "citizens' grand juries" to attack enemies and, sometimes, reap illegal fortunes — is again proliferating, to the point where the government has set up special efforts to rein in so-called "tax defiers" and to track threats against judges. What's more, Patriot fears about the government are being amplified by a loud new group of ostensibly mainstream media commentators and politicians.

It's not 1996 all over again, or 1997 or 1998. Although there has been a remarkable rash of domestic terrorist incidents since Obama's election in November, it has not reached the level of criminal violence, attempted terrorist attacks and white-hot language that marked the militia movement at its peak. But militia training events, huge numbers of which are now viewable on YouTube videos, are spreading. One federal agency estimates that 50 new militia training groups have sprung up in less than two years. Sales of guns and ammunition have skyrocketed amid fears of new gun control laws, much as they did in the 1990s.

The situation has many authorities worried. Militiamen, white supremacists, anti-Semites, nativists, tax protesters and a range of other activists of the radical right are cross-pollinating and may even be coalescing. In the words of a February report from law enforcement officials in Missouri, a variety of factors have combined recently to create "a lush environment for militia activity."

"You're seeing the bubbling [of antigovernment sentiment] right now," says Bart McEntire, who has infiltrated racist hate groups and now is the supervisory special agent for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Roanoke, Va. "You see people buying into what they're saying. It's primed to grow. The only thing you don't have to set it on fire is a Waco or Ruby Ridge."

Another federal law enforcement official knowledgeable about militia groups agrees. He asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak publicly about them. "They're not at the level we saw in '94-'95," he says. "But this is the most significant growth we've seen in 10 to 12 years. All it's lacking is a spark. I think it's only a matter of time before you see threats and violence."
Shots, Plots and 'Sovereigns'
In fact, threats and violence from the radical right already are accelerating (see last section of this report, a list of 75 domestic terrorist plots and rampages since 1995). In recent months, men with antigovernment, racist, anti-Semitic or pro-militia views have allegedly committed a series of high-profile murders — including the killings of six law enforcement officers since April.

Most of these recent murders and plots seem to have been at least partially prompted by Obama's election. One man "very upset" with the election of America's first black president was building a radioactive "dirty bomb"; another, a Marine, was planning to assassinate Obama, as were two racist skinheads in Tennessee; still another angry at the election and said to be interested in joining a militia killed two sheriff's deputies in Florida. A man in Pittsburgh who feared Jews and gun confiscations murdered three police officers. Near Boston, a white man angered by the alleged "genocide" of his race shot to death two African immigrants and intended to murder as many Jews as possible. An 88-year-old neo-Nazi killed a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. And an abortion physician in Kansas was murdered by a man steeped in the ideology of the "sovereign citizens" movement.

So-called sovereign citizens are people who subscribe to an ideology, originated by the anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus of the 1980s, that claims that whites are a higher kind of citizen — subject only to "common law," not the dictates of the government — while blacks are mere "14th Amendment citizens" who must obey their government masters. Although not all sovereigns subscribe to or even know about the theory's racist basis, most contend that they do not have to pay taxes, are not subject to most laws, and are not citizens of the United States.

Authorities and anecdotal evidence suggest that sovereign citizens — who, along with tax protesters and militia members, form the larger Patriot movement — may make up the most dramatically reenergized sector of the radical right. In February, the FBI launched a national operation targeting white supremacists and "militia/sovereign citizen extremist groups" after noting an upsurge in such organizations, The Wall Street Journal reported. The aim is to gather intelligence about "this emerging threat," according to an FBI memo cited by the newspaper.

Increasingly, sovereign citizens are claiming they aren't subject to income taxes — so much so that the Department of Justice last year kicked off a National Tax Defier Initiative to deal with the volume of cases. At the same time, more and more seem to be engaging in "paper terrorism," even though more than 30 states passed or strengthened laws outlawing the filing of unjustified property liens and simulating legal process (by setting up pseudo-legal "common law courts" and "citizens' grand juries") in response to sovereign activity in the 1990s.

A Michigan man whose company allegedly doubled as the headquarters of a militia group, for example, was arrested in May on charges that he placed bogus liens on property owned by courthouse officials and police officers to harass them and ruin their credit. In March, authorities raided a Las Vegas printing firm where meetings of the "Sovereign People's Court for the United States" were conducted in a mock courtroom. Seminars allegedly were taught there on how to use phony documents and other illegal means to pay off creditors. Four people were arrested on money-laundering, tax and weapons charges.

Due to a spike in "inappropriate communications," including many from sovereign citizens, the U.S. Marshals Service has opened a clearinghouse in suburban Washington, D.C., for assessing risks to court personnel. The incidents include telephone and written threats against federal judges and prosecutors, as well as bomb threats and biochemical incidents. In fiscal 2008, there were 1,278 threats and harassing communications — more than double the number of six years earlier. The number of such incidents is on pace to increase again in fiscal 2009. Sovereign citizens account for a small percentage of the cases, but theirs are more complex and generally require more resources, says Michael Prout, assistant director of judicial security for the marshals. "They are resourceful groups," he adds.

Some sovereign citizen attempts to skirt the law have been farcical. An Arkansas jury needed only seven minutes in April to convict Richard Bauer, 70, of robbing a bank. Bauer had argued that the government took his money several times, leaving him with almost nothing. "I'm a constitutionalist," he insisted, adding that "every single act was justifiable." A month earlier, a Pennsylvania man charged with drunken driving told court officials that they lacked jurisdiction over him because he was a "sovereign man." Then he changed his mind and pleaded guilty. In Nevada, a sovereign citizen — perhaps a Dr. Seuss fan —used the peculiar punctuation of names that is favored by the movement; his name, he declared, was "I am: Sam."

But few of the cases are that amusing. In February, a New York man who once declared himself a "sovereign citizen" of the "Republic of New York" and said that he enjoyed studying "the organic Constitution and the Bill of Rights" allegedly shot and killed four people. His murder case was pending at press time.

In shocking news, water is still wet, the sky is still blue, and the National Association of Manufacturers is still predicting economic catastrophe if

In shocking news, water is still wet, the sky is still blue, and the National Association of Manufacturers is still predicting economic catastrophe if the United States acts against climate change

In shocking news, water is still wet, the sky is still blue, and the National Association of Manufacturers is still predicting economic catastrophe if the United States acts against climate change.

NAM, in partnership with the American Council for Capital Formation, released a new study on Wednesday of the climate and energy bill that the House passed in June, better known as Waxman-Markey. They predict that the “anti-energy, anti-growth, and anti-jobs bill” will “destroy growth.”

“Higher energy costs are bad for manufacturers and the 12 million Americans who work in the manufacturing sector,” said Jay Timmons, executive vice president of NAM, in a call with reporters. “After all, manufacturing uses a third of all the electricity generated in the United States.”

Their report predicts that, under the Waxman-Markey bill, the U.S. would lose between 1.8 million and 2.4 million jobs by 2030. The bill would increase costs for each household between $118 to $250 by 2020, and $730 to $1,248 by 2030. And it would cost the economy up to $3.1 trillion dollars over the period of 2012 to 2030, with annual gross domestic product dropping between $419 billion and $571 billion by 2030.

The study also includes state-specific data for 15 industrial and fossil-fuel-dependent states—many of which happen to be represented by senators who are considered swing votes on a climate bill this year, including Arkansas, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The state numbers were similarly grim, predicting the loss of up to 97,500 jobs in Pennsylvania and up to 59,260 in Indiana.

NAM plans to use the figures to “educate policy makers” over the next few months, said Timmons. “We want to make sure those members of the Senate that represent states that benefit from a strong manufacturing base have a full understanding of the impacts of this bill,” said Timmons.

Scary, eh? Problem is, the NAM/ACCF numbers don’t gibe with the analyses of Waxman-Markey done by government agencies. The Energy Information Administration says that the bill would increase household costs just $83 per year, or less than 23 cents per day. The Environmental Protection Agency put the cost slightly higher, at between $88 and $140 per household per year, and the Congressional Budget Office estimated about $175 a year by 2020—but both would make the bill cheaper than a postage stamp per day.

The NAM/ACCF report relies on some assumptions that skew the numbers. For instance, it claims to use data from the EIA, but cherry-picks its figures. The NAM study predicts that just 10 to 25 gigawatts of new nuclear power would be developed under the bill. But the EIA estimates that 11 additional gigawatts of nuclear power would come online by 2030 without a cap on carbon, and up to 135 gigawatts under the Waxman-Markey bill.

There are also some dubious assumptions about offsets. While the Waxman-Markey bill allows for up to 2 billion tons of offsets—half domestic, half international—the NAM study assumes that 95 percent of those offsets would be domestic. Domestic offsets are far more expensive than international offsets.

Margo Thorning, senior vice president and chief economist for ACCF, indicated on the groups’ press call today that they believed the nuclear projections were “quite generous,” and that they “tried to be very transparent about what the assumptions were that were underlying these results.”

Still, it’s hard to tell what assumptions were plugged into their study. In a footnote in the executive summary [PDF], Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the group commissioned to conduct the study, makes clear that the “input assumptions, opinions and recommendations in this report are those of ACCF and NAM, and do not necessarily represent the views of SAIC.”

NAM has been an outspoken opponent of climate change legislation, and has lobbied heavily against action for many years. The association sponsored a similar study last year of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act; it was also skewed by cherry-picked data.

Environmental groups are already pouncing on the NAM numbers. Even before the official release, Environmental Defense Fund issued a statement arguing that NAM’s study is largely based on “make-believe.”

“NAM’s numbers are about as trustworthy as the forged letters sent by their allies to members of Congress, which faked opposition to the ACES bill from local community groups,” said EDF national media director Tony Kreindler, referring to the scandal that erupted earlier this month over fake letters sent on behalf of coal interests.

Conservative anti-climate-action forces are already latching on to the report. And NAM is co-sponsoring anti-climate-bill rallies in 20 states over the next month, where you can be sure these new numbers will be a hot topic.

Republican Rage and Lies Drowning Out Truth at Townhalls

Conservative Idol: Health Care and the Fox News Incentive System
As a PR tactic, Fox's three-tiered formula is absolutely ingenious:

1. First, Fox has given a huge amount of airtime to covering the lobbyist-organized protests at the town hall meetings, without, of course, mentioning that many of the protests are organized by lobbyists. Mind you, we know this interest in protest and "democracy" is completely politically motivated because we know it is completely new -- it's not some ongoing Fox News principle. This is the same network that regularly pilloried anti-war protests during the Bush administration, and gave them almost no coverage, much less positive, whatsoever. So it's safe to assume that Fox is only now interested in protest and democracy because it might hurt President Obama, Democrats and the progressive agenda.

2. Whenever one member of the protesters in the Khaki Pants Offensive makes an especially circus-like scene, Fox then has that particular protester on for an interview -- all under the pretense that the protester has made him/herself "news." In the last two days alone, I've seen Fox aggressively promote "exclusive" interviews with screaming protesters from Rep. John Dingell's (D-MI) and Rep. David Scott's (D-GA) town meetings. Fox dutifully promotes these people as persecuted martyrs, and their actual claims about health care are barely -- if ever -- explored for their veracity (or lack thereof).

3. Finally, after helping create the media image of mass protests, Fox has manufactured a reason to continue covering the supposed mass protests. And the cycle starts over.

What this does is create a vicious cycle whereby the small group of conservative activists who are terrorizing these town halls have an incentive to be more and more aggressive. They know that if they can go further than the last supposed martyr, they might get their mug on Fox News. In that way, it's a little like American Idol - only it's Conservative Idol. And so from protesters trying to shut down town hall meetings with screaming we get protesters shoving matches and then protesters arming themselves and then protestors making death threats. This is the Fox News Incentive System at work.

Let's be clear: I have absolutely no problem with conservative protesters -- even those organized by corporate lobbyists -- expressing their strong opposition to health care reform. While I happen to think most of these people are motivated from raw selfishness, and while polls show these people represent a tiny minority of Americans, I sincerely believe they have every right to make their voice heard.

Five right-wing myths about healthcare reform, and the facts
Turning America socialist apparently wasn't enough for him -- now President Obama is trying to make old people kill themselves, callously deny important medical procedures, funnel tax dollars to abortion clinics and wiggle the government's way into every doctor's office in America.

At least, that's the sense you might have about the healthcare reform proposals Congress is considering from listening to opponents describe them. Already, conservative activists have erupted against the plan, with protesters hanging Democratic lawmakers in effigy and disrupting town hall meetings.

As both the House and the Senate clear out of the Capitol for the month, expect the viral buzz -- and the TV battle -- about what's in the bills to grow louder and louder. The White House finally seems to have realized that the administration can't win the policy debate without addressing some of the attacks from the right. Aides recently released a video rebutting some of the claims about what healthcare reform would and wouldn't do. An administration official told Salon Wednesday that the White House will soon launch a Web site modeled on the "Fight the Smears" site Obama's campaign ran last fall, where voters can find -- and debunk -- some of the rumors about the reform proposals, and the White House is already collecting chain e-mails at "flag@whitehouse.gov," an address Obama aides set up to receive them.

But the administration might already be behind the curve. Over the last few weeks, opponents have managed to get out their spin on the bill through talk radio, blogs, chain e-mails and other channels. And their talking points depend on a notably elastic approach to the truth. Here's a fact check of some of the more alarming claims that the right is making about healthcare reform, claims that are already hardening into myth.

Myth 1: Democrats want to kill your grandmother. This claim seems too outlandish on its face to get much traction, but Republicans actually made some headway on it recently. Two House GOP leaders put out a statement warning that the healthcare reform bill "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia." To hear opponents of reform talk about it, the legislation would force seniors to go in for sessions once every five years -- and more frequently if they're sick -- where doctors will encourage them to end their lives. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., summarized the scare tactic pretty well on the House floor last week, when she said the bill would "put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government," and therefore, wouldn't be pro-life. The GOP has pushed this line especially hard with some of the conservative groups behind the government's intervention in the Terri Schiavo case a few years ago, hoping to get antiabortion allies on board fighting reform. "Can you imagine the response of the American people when they find this out?" one-time GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson asked about the alleged euthanasia scheme on his radio show last month. "They're going to counsel you on preparing you to die," Rush Limbaugh pronounced a few weeks ago. Proof of how far this attack has spread came last week, when a caller to an AARP forum asked Obama about it directly. (Probably unwisely, the president tried to make light of the question, saying there weren't enough government employees to go meet with old people to talk about end-of-life care.)

There is a kernel of truth at the root of this attack: The legislation would order Medicare to pay for consultations between patients and doctors on end-of-life decisions, which it currently doesn't cover. But the consultations wouldn't be mandatory; if your grandmother doesn't want to go talk to her doctor about end-of-life care, she won't have to. Because Medicare doesn't pay for this kind of planning now, only 40 percent of seniors who depend on the government insurance say they have an advance directive that tells healthcare providers what measures they do and don't want used to prolong their life, even though 75 percent say they think it's important. The lack of planning actually costs a lot of money. Medicare spends billions and billions of dollars annually on expensive treatment during the last year of a dying patient's life. Without allowing Medicare to pay for end-of-life consultations, it's hard to know whether patients even want to go to such expensive lengths.

Myth 2: The government -- i.e., you -- will have to pay for abortions. This is another way the GOP is stirring up antiabortion activists against healthcare reform -- by warning that your tax dollars will be used to pay for someone else's abortion. An ad by the Family Research Council dramatizes the issue about as creepily as possible. "To think that Planned Parenthood is included in the government-run healthcare plan and spending tax dollars on abortions," a distraught older man tells his wife, sitting at their kitchen table after opening a letter from the government. "They won't pay for my surgery, but we're forced to pay abortions." The narrator lays out what's going on: "Our greatest generation denied care, our future generations denied life." A House Republican aide says the GOP thinks this could be the most potent type of viral attack against reform, since antiabortion Democrats will have trouble voting for the legislation if it includes taxpayer funding for the procedure.

But only the most extreme antiabortion reading of the legislation would say it does that. The words "Planned Parenthood" and "abortion" don't appear anywhere in the text, despite conservative buzz that it would funnel millions of dollars to killing babies. (A proposal in the Senate version of the reform legislation would require insurance plans to cover preventive care and screening visits to community health providers, which could include Planned Parenthood.) Even an AP story that Matt Drudge was hyping on Wednesday as proof that the government would be funding abortions didn't go quite that far -- instead, the story detailed a fight over whether women who buy government-subsidized private insurance through a proposed exchange system should be able to have abortions covered by their plans. Pro-choice lawmakers are trying to craft a compromise that would require insurance companies to pay for abortions out of premiums paid by patients, not out of tax dollars. Pro-choice Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., amended the House version of the legislation to state that abortion is not part of an "essential benefits package" that all insurance plans must provide -- meaning someone could offer a special "pro-life health insurance" plan that doesn't cover abortions, even under the reforms.

Myth 3: Obama will ban all private health insurance. Allegedly, the House proposal for healthcare reform bans private insurance. This rumor comes complete with a citation: "Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal," the unflaggingly pro-business paper Investors Business Daily wrote in an editorial last month. Other right-wing blogs and news outlets picked up on the idea, as well. It fits in with a broader message Republicans have been using: The reform will lead to a total government takeover of healthcare.

The IBD line is literally true -- Section 102 of the House bill says insurance companies can't independently issue any new individual policies after the legislation takes effect (though existing policies are grandfathered in). But it misses the point. Private plans aren't banned, but rather shifted into the new health insurance exchange the legislation would set up. You can still get a private policy, but the way in which you buy it changes. If you wanted to buy your own insurance, you have to do it through the government-run insurance exchange. Your policy becomes part of broader risk pools, which makes the premiums cheaper and keeps insurance companies from dumping them once they get sick. PolitiFact looked into the claim and rated the IBD editorial "pants on fire," its lowest rating -- as in, "Liar, liar, pants on fire."

Myth 4: The government can't possibly run a healthcare program. Opponents of reform trot out comparisons to government services frequently when they try to argue against a public, government-funded healthcare plan. Republicans drew up a chart that purports to show how convoluted the bureaucracy involved in any government plan would be. This message doesn't make Obama the enemy, it makes government inefficiency the enemy. "If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they're run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and healthcare done by the government," conservative economist Arthur Laffer told CNN this week.

If that doesn't quite make sense, there's a reason -- Medicare and Medicaid are, of course, government-run healthcare programs. Medicare in particular is quite popular; polling shows some seniors are anxious that the reform will affect the care they already get from the government. (In fact, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake says she frequently encounters voters who say they want to keep the government out of their Medicare.) The Department of Veterans Administration also runs a healthcare system that experts praise for its well-developed health information technology network, which lets doctors see results of tests and procedures any patient has had anywhere in the network -- eliminating the wasteful duplication that Obama says he wants to cut out of the larger healthcare world, as well.

Myth 5: Unlike private insurance, government bureaucrats will ration care. This line also makes government the enemy. "You may want healthcare that your doctor has prescribed for you," Peter Ferrara, of the anti-tax, anti-government Institute for Policy Innovation, wrote on the National Review last month. "But the rationing bureaucracy in Washington that doesn’t even know you, or your doctor, may decide that your doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or that you are too old for the government to pay for your hip replacement to stop the pain, or to get an expensive triple bypass or a pacemaker operation to save your life." Since the Obama administration keeps talking about encouraging doctors to shift to outcome-based pay scales and evidence-based guidelines for what treatments or procedures to use, opponents don't have much trouble painting a troubling picture of faceless government hacks denying the care you -- or your loved ones -- need.

Of course, there are already plenty of faceless hacks denying people care right now; they just work for private insurance companies, not the government, and they're denying care because that helps keep the insurers' profit margins up. At a recent House hearing, just three insurance companies testified that they had "rescinded" -- or dropped -- coverage for nearly 20,000 patients between 2003 and 2007, often after patients had submitted claims they thought would be covered. Even Republicans seem to know the insurance companies can be bad. "I would always rather the devil I know than the devil I don't know," House GOP boss John Boehner said last week, explaining why going after the government works even though private insurance companies would seem to be just as much of a villain.

-- By Mike Madden