He didn’t really mean that, of course, because were a vote taken now, his plan to have the government usurp a sixth of the U.S. economy and institute top-down socialized medicine in the Unite States would fail.

As a result, Team Obama has been exerting the old cerebellum to discover some way of passing the Democrats’ health care bill without, you know, precisely passing it. Even if you question their ethics, you have to admire their ingenuity. Last month it was “reconciliation”: that administrative tool was all the rage. A technique used to patch over budgetary anomalies was going to be hauled in to revolutionize a major social program that had no bipartisan support whatsoever.

That wasn’t going down with the public too well. So although reconciliation is still on the table (or, rather, up the Reid-Pelosi sleeve)  the latest wheeze is “The Slaughter Solution,” named for  Rep. Louise Slaughter (NY, “D,”  of course). Would you like to enact some legislation without the inconvenience (to say noting of the accountability) of actually voting for it?  The Washington Examiner explains how you can do it:

In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House “deems” the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but they would then be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.

George Orwell, wouldst that you were here to witness this!

“Would that rationale fly with the public?” asks the Examiner. “Is it logical? Of course not. But remember, these folks have persuaded themselves that a majority of the American people really want Obamacare.”

Except, of course, that they don’t: as of last week 53 percent oppose the plan.

What did they find out? Whatever it was, the pooh-bahs in the Senate are worried. The Senate’s “official gatekeeper,” a Foxnews report disclosed yesterday, has warned Senate staffers to avoid the site because they might learn something that upsets the ideological apple cart they’ve been pushing, er, because The Drudge Report is “responsible for the many viruses popping up throughout the Senate.”

Oh really?  As the folks at Powerline observed, what we have here is a case of “obsession.” The problem with The Drudge Report is not that it is a source of malignant computer code. The problem is that it has been phenomenally successful at challenging the official Washington narrative.

The Official Washington Narrative—let’s call it OWN for short—isn’t the only game in town anymore. More and more, people are disowning OWN, in no small part because of Drudge and kindred initiatives.

That Senate Censor is right: Drudge is dangerous. Not because it spreads computer viruses but because it through it freedom has gone viral.

How rattled are the leaky powers that be? Here’s Nancy Pelosi explaining that “we have to pass the health care bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Give it up, Nancy.

I wondered how his case would be treated: would he be tried in a civilian court or before a military tribunal?  One knowledgeable correspondent wrote privately to say that, since Gadahn had already been indicted for treason, it was likely that he would be tired in a civilian court.  A more interesting question, he asked, was whether Gadahn would first be vigorously interrogated for the intelligence he, a senior al-Qaeda operative, would surely have. Probably not, he suggested, unless it was by the Pakistanis.

Well, all that may be moot.  Although Gadahn’s capture was confirmed by more than one news source, CBS is now reporting that it was not Gadahn but a senior Taliban operative who was captured. HotAir has the story:

Whenever it comes to Adam Gadahn, appearances are always deceiving, it seems.  First he’s dead, then he’s alive; then he’s out of the Taliban leadership, then back in.  Now it seems that despite earlier reports, the Taliban commander captured by the ISI is not Gadahn, at least according to CBS.

CBS News’ Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad writes that earlier reports the detained individual was Gadahn proved false. According to a Pakistan security official who spoke with CBS News on condition of anonymity, the arrested individual is in fact “a Taliban militant leader who is known as Abu Yahya.”

CBS, CBS, CBS . . .  Didn’t Dan Rather  work at CBS?  Well, the story must be true, right?   Let’s see. Just a few minutes ago HotAir posted an update from CNN insisting that a “senior Pakistani government official” insisted that it was Gadahn. Stay tuned.

Over the last several years, Gadahn has appeared in several al-Qaeda sponsored videos. Just today, a new video appeared on several radical Muslim web sites. In it, Gadahn calls on every “honest and vigilant Muslim” to emulate Maj.  Nidal Hasan, he of Ft. Hood infamy, to kill the infidel (that would be you and me) and do whatever possible to harm “the Zionist-Crusader alliance.”

“Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role-model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers. . . .  As the blessed operations of September 11th showed, a little imagination and planning and a limited budget can turn almost anything into a deadly, effective and convenient weapon.”

It was only a few hours after this latest incitement to murder and mayhem that Pakistani officials announced that they had captured Gadahn.  It was, as a news report in New York Daily News put it, “a huge victory” for the good guys, i.e. us, we Western infidels who promote that long list of things anathema to “honest and vigilant Muslims”—things like individual freedom, freedom of religion, representative democracy, equal rights for women, and a legal system that has bid farewell to barbaric practices like stoning, flogging, amputation, and beheading. If convicted, the News notes, Gadahn faces the death penalty. Good news.

But where, I wonder, will Eric Holder propose trying this disgusting person?

And as for the top-down, we’re-in-charge-here, you-little-people-who-pay-taxes, how much more transparent could they have been about their intentions? They were going to ram it through come hell or high water. Hence:

• The “Louisiana Purchase” in which Senator Mary Landrieu agreed to support Harry Reid’s bill in exchange for an increase of Medicaid subsidies for Louisiana to the tune of $100 million.  In plain English: you give me $100 million, I give you my vote. What could be more transparent?

• Then there was the “Cornhusker kickback,”  in which Senator Ben Nelson sold his vote in exchange for preferential treatment on federal Medicaid assistance and various exemptions for Nebraska. Can you honestly think of anything more blatant?

• Or consider Florida, where Senator Bill Nelson was happy to sell his vote in exchange for an exception that allowed Florida residents only to stay in the Medicare Advantage program if they are already signed up for it. Transparent, what?

• And now we have Congressman Jim Matheson of Utah. The price of his vote was a U.S. Court of Appeals judgeship for his brother,  Scott M. Matheson, Jr. Again I ask, what could be more transparent?

• nurturing individual liberty
• promoting fiscal responsibility
• curbing the drift rush toward statism
• putting the “service” back in “public service”
• getting the government off your back
• lowering taxes
• attending to America’s national security

will want to make part of their daily internet rounds.

Unveiled about 15 minutes ago, Repubclic “was founded by a group of forward-thinking conservatives in 2010, on the eve of what we expect is a tidal shift in American political sentiment in favor of personal liberty, smaller government, and less regulation.”

What is Repubclic all about?

“Repubclic is a gathering place. We’d invent an African proverb to describe it, but we don’t have one at the ready.

Sign up for an account, post the latest news along with your commentary, submit to to the community, and then click on Stories Coming Up and vote on what’s most important, what’s funniest, what’s best. Simple.

Click here to become a fan of Repubclic on Facebook

Help “save the republic, one click at a time.”

True, Al Gore has positively cleaned up by exploiting the business opportunities that have come his way from the Chruch of Gaia, I’m Greener-than-thou, Inc. The London Telegraph describes him as our “first carbon billionaire.” “There’s gold in them there faked studies, pardner!” Gore’s successful gaming of the system argues for a certain cunning and eye for the main chance. The guy has hauled in an impressive pile of pelf these last few years.

But that success says nothing about his sanity. Alas, the chap is clearly bonkers. I submit as exhibit A the interminable Op-Ed column that his PR-firm, a.k.a. the New York Times, issued today. Here’s the first paragraph:

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

“Unimaginable calamity,” eh? “Large-scale, preventive measures,” you say? “Human civilization as we know it”? Chicken Little time, what?

Yes, but the part to pay special attention to, of course, is the bit about “Large-scale, preventive measures,” i.e., the heavy, heavy hand of government bursting in to tax and regulate the U.S. economy to death. That’s the goal — or, rather, the goal is putting the government in charge against what Gore later calls “market triumphalism, i.e, the free, you know, market — while various energy enterprises in which Al Gore just happens to have a stake get the red carpet treatment.

A nice question: does Al Gore actually believe the rubbish he spouts? Or is it merely opportunism on the march? I don’t know, but if I were a betting man, I’d say that he has successfully melded credulity and opportunism in to one bloviating whole. Never mind the fact — that’s “fact,” Kemo Sabe, as in “what is actually the case, no foolin’” — never mind that the entire Climate Hysteria Industry is in full-scale retreat since the East Anglia University fraud was revealed last year. Phil Jones will not, repeat not, be attending any environmental rallies until further notice.

It is just lovely that the New York Times — the world’s most discredited newspaper — would give so thoroughly discredited a mountebank this lavish soapbox upon which to make a fool of himself. Next stop, Hyde Park Corner — or maybe a padded cell.

In 2008, about 20 Danish papers reproduced the cartoons. More wailing and gnashing of teeth by adherents of the religion of peace. And this time there was legal action, too. Last year, a Saudi lawyer called Faisal Ahmed Zaki Yamani demanded an apology. Yesterday, the editor of one Danish paper, Politiken, took his tail, placed it firmly between his legs, and caved in to the forces of darkness. His name, by the way, is Toeger Seindenfaden. Not the sort of chap you want in a fox hole with you. The decision has been roundly condemned. Joern Mikkelsen , the editor of Jyllands-Posten, correctly noted that “It’s a sad day for Danish media, it’s sad for freedom of expression and it’s sad for Politiken.”

Andrew Brietbart has the whole story here. And Diana West has her usual percipient commentary here.

The nation readies itself for the spectacle of Obama’s special exercise in showmanship and partisan bi-partisanship, offering Republicans and the American people once last chance to sign on to the Democratic plan to take health care out of the hands of us plebs and hand it over to a caring, sharing government.

Any moment now, we will be treated to the President of the United States lecturing us about how he is going to improve health care by making it worse, how he is going to save money by spending $1 trillion dollars, how he is going to make the delivery of health care more efficient by turning it over to a government bureaucracy.

Does anyone — anyone — really believe him? Does he believe himself?

I do not know.

What I do know is that we’ve been down this road before. And one person who saw what socialized medicine was all about was Ronald Reagan. I’ve quoted from this magnificent speech before. Let me quote from it again: “One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people,” Reagan observed, “has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project.”

Ask Americans whether they want socialized medicine: the invariable answer is no. As Reagan notes, Truman tried it. He failed. But just present socialism as a liberal project and you can get people to roll over, wave their arms and legs in the air, and empty their wallets.

And that’s what’s been happening by degrees in this country.

Listen to Reagan’s whole speech here.

Perhaps the Republicans should simply play this soundtrack when the President stops talking. Note the bit about how imposing just a little bit of government control of medicine can be a foot in the door, providing a “mechanism that is indefinitely expandable” until it embraces the entire population. Remember that in the days to come.

And remember what Reagan said about the appeal to emotion: “Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can’t afford it.” Quite right.

Of course, it is “ridiculous,” as Reagan says to suggest that anyone in this country wants to deny medical care to people who can’t afford — except, that is, the utilitarians in charge of Obama’s health care plan — folks like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel , who famously suggested doctors took the Hippocratic Oath — “first do no harm” — too seriously.

The odd thing, rhetorically, is that the people who are proposing to take our freedom away, load us with higher taxes, and give us much poorer health care have managed to wrap themselves, successfully, in the mantle of virtue. It has to do with that reluctance Reagan mentioned.

Not for the first time since January 20, 2009, I found myself thinking of Governor Mitch Daniels’s characterization of the Obama administration’s “shock-and-awe statism.” “Ramming speed,” indeed. The phrase is not only a play on the name of Obama’s singular chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel; it also accurately describes the heedless velocity with which the administration approaches the tasks of governing.  It turns out that the family Toyota is not the only thing with its accelerator stuck to the floor board.

The Journal editorial is well worth pondering, assuming your stomach — and your blood pressure — can take it. Good though “ObamaCare at Ramming Speed” is as a title, “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid” captures something else about the emotional wallop of the column. Even as the Obama administration shows itself racing to revolutionize one aspect of American society after the next, so it demonstrates once again that socialism is only another name for paternalism, which, with Tocqueville, we may file under the heading of “Democratic Despotism.” Remember Obama’s promise in October of 2008 that he was on the threshold of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America”? Here we go. You don’t “fundamentally transform” a capitalist country that puts a premium on entrepreneurship and individual liberty without undermining capitalism, innovation, and freedom.

Hence no one should be surprised at the aroma of coercion that is such a prominent feature of Obama’s various proposals to remake this country. At the heart of his “cap-and-trade” initiatives, for example,  were provisions that would impose ruinous regulation on American industry even as it would make energy more expensive for American citizens.