From Beijing:

Mar 19, 2010 / 01:06 am (CNA).- Chinese Catholics are preparing for the Feast of St. Joseph with “great celebration.” Looking to Joseph’s example as a holy man and father, religious communities are preparing for final vows and immigrant workers have been invited to church. “Humility, generosity, unconditional devotion, enlivened by a genuine spirit of service, living in poverty, absolute obedience and chastity, all these virtues that distinguish St. Joseph, which the Church celebrates on March 19, are so relevant for men today,” a Beijing priest told his flock during a Lenten retreat, according to Fides.

Parishes dedicated to St. Joseph are especially preparing for the feast. The Parish of St. Joseph in downtown Beijing dates back to a church built by two Jesuit missionaries, Fr. Louis Buglio and Fr. Gabriel de Magallanes. The two were successors of pioneering missionary Fr. Matteo Ricci.

Marking the 400th anniversary of Fr. Ricci’s death, the parish has tried to unite the event with the figure of St. Joseph.

The diocesan religious congregation in Beijing dedicated to St. Joseph is preparing for the final vows of some sisters to be held on the feast day, Fides reports.

Priests have invited immigrant workers to help celebrate the patron saint of workers.

“Dear brothers and sisters, workers, the Church is your home, where you are received and where you breathe spiritual oxygen not only in the days of the Feast of St. Joseph, but all year,” they commented. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Michelle Malkin has the list of Dems who voted “no,” and Driehaus’s name isn’t on it. Nor is Zack Space’s, Charlie Wilson’s, or John Boccieri’s, or Mollohan’s from West Virginia.

Here’s the official roll call.

Nothing Driehaus or his office says about any other related upcoming vote can be believed. For what it’s worth (i.e., nothing), a person at Driehaus’s Cincinnati office told me today that the congressman is a “no” vote on ObamaCare (whatever the heck that is at this point).

The gentlemen noted above and all others who voted “yes” gave us a twofer: They substantively supported ObamaCare, regardless of their final vote (if there ever is to be one), and they showed their utter lack of respect for the oath of office they declared when they were sworn in to protect and defend the Constitution.

Consider this the “See that wasn’t so bad, you can do it again” vote.

_________________________________________________________

UPDATE: I would suggest that the prospects for stopping the madness are not at all good.

All 222 who voted as they did today have already told voters they don’t care about the consequences to the country of short-circuiting the constitutional process. At least three dozen of them would appear to be in line to pay dearly for having done so, no matter how they vote on whatever health care legislation (if any) comes up for a vote in the next several days.

I would not rule out the idea that a few of those whose constituents are intractably mad may even go so far as to resign and say “Nyah, nyah” shortly after their damning vote.

Is it a coincidence that Obama is way behind in filling Homeland Security posts (and likely many others)?

UPDATE 2, March 19, 1:00 a.m.: At Ace’s place, an explanation of the true nature of the vote —

Technically Speaking: Drew notes that this wasn’t a vote on the Slaughter House Rule itself, but on a GOP motion to compel the House to not employ the Slaughter House Rule.

The Slaughter Rule is not yet actually implemented. But the motion to halt it was rejected.

Technically, they could still reject the rule itself.

That’s some (but not much) comfort.

Andrew Breitbart and/or his peeps must be in an oddly generous mood:

Here’s the vid:

Gateway Pundit, who has been all over the Fox News Baier-Obama interview and breaking developments in general, had this reax:

What earthquake in Hawaii? In 1868 there was a major earthquake in Hawaii that killed 77 people. In 1975 an earthquake in Hawaii killed 2 people.

Rush helpfully pointed out today that the Senate health care plan’s “Louisiana Purchase” language was written in such a way as to ensure that Mississippi, which had many areas that were hit almost as economically hard by Katrina as New Orleans was, got no extra money.

From Fred Barnes:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi believes ObamaCare would have a more congenial fate—that it will become as popular as Social Security and Medicare with voters. She’s kidding herself. Social Security and Medicare were popular from the start and passed with bipartisan support. ObamaCare is unpopular and partisan. It’s extremely controversial. Its passage is far more likely to spark a political explosion than a wave of acceptance.

That’s because the American people won’t take kindly to micromanaged de facto tyranny over their daily lives.

Daniel Henninger, in his weekly “Wonderland” column (“Liz Cheney’s Big Question — Is the Obama administration on the right side of national security?”), has a strong analogy of the current War on Terror to the decades-earlier war on crime:

Whether the wolf at the door is a common criminal or a foreign-trained terrorist, the legal issue at the level of the voting booth is simple: Where along the spectrum of personal safety do I and my family feel comfortable? On this score, the incoherence of the Obama administration’s policies on domestic terrorism, detainees and military tribunals unsettles people. When they felt this way about personal safety in the 1970s and ’80s, their votes for “law and order” candidates were an attempt to restore balance. It worked. The Supreme Court narrowed the 1960s’ most expansive interpretations of defendants’ rights.

Barack Obama’s handling of terror is a voting issue. Republican candidates should put it before voters this November and in 2012. Looking at the failed Christmas airliner bombing, the aggressive recruitment of home-grown jihadis and the aborted Najibullah Zazi bombings in New York City, I’d say establishing a policy of coherence and constancy in meeting this threat is more urgent than the health-care odyssey Mr. Obama has forced on us for a year.

I’d say “as important.”

And, as is so often the case, here’s the opening of a “Review and Outlook” editorial that reports news carried almost nowhere else:

Most asbestos trials feature tort lawyers mauling defendant companies. But last week a federal jury in Mississippi turned the tables on a pair of plaintiffs attorneys accused of filing corrupt cases. Let’s hope it’s a trend.

The jury found that William Guy and Thomas Brock committed fraud as part of an asbestos lawsuit they filed in 2001 against Illinois Central Railroad Co. The jurors concluded that the lawyers knew their clients had lied about taking part in an earlier asbestos suit. And they ordered the lawyers to pay $210,000 in actual damages and—turnabout is fair play—a further $210,000 in punitive damages to Illinois Central.

This is the first time to our knowledge that lawyers have been punished for filing fraudulent asbestos lawsuits. The lack of any such penalty is one reason that U.S. courts are still clogged with frivolous suits decades after the asbestos legal explosion began. Illinois Central deserves credit for persevering in this risky suit and providing other defendants with a roadmap for fighting back.

The bolded paragraph makes the event news. Look at how thin the coverage has been.

From Vancouver:

MARCH 6, 2010

Kasey Girdlestone removed Lego piece that was choking nine-month-old baby

A Duncan mother is counting her blessings and a babysitter is being hailed as a hero after the latter saved her infant charge from choking last Saturday night.

Brandee Peart said she would be forever grateful for the quick reaction of 16-year-old babysitter Kasey Girdlestone.

“She saved my daughter’s life,” said Peart.

Words can’t express how grateful the mother of five is to know she’s got a caregiver she can trust.

“I felt like any other babysitter could have been sitting on the computer or ignoring the kids and my baby would have been gone.

“But Kasey was right there on top of it and saved her life.”

Saturday was a joyous day around the Peart household: the day Brandee graduated from nursing school.

To celebrate, she and her husband Philip went for dinner.

As was often the case, Girdlestone was called to mind the kids.

“I babysit regularly for this family,” said the Cowichan Secondary student. “I love their five kids. I have lots of fun when I babysit them.”

Saturday night began like any other, but ended much differently.

While Girdlestone was preparing to give the children dinner, nine-month-old Emily popped a small grey piece of Lego into her mouth.

“I had already found a piece [and picked it up] but she’d found another in the dining room,” Girdlestone explained. “I noticed she was choking when I turned around to give the kids their dinner.”

Girdlestone said she’s taken a babysitting course but never really thought she would have to use the life-saving skills she’d learned.

“It was a very scary situation as it was happening,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to freak out because the other kids were in the same room, so I didn’t want to freak them out.”

Girdlestone leaped into action and attempted the baby version of the Heimlich manoeuvre to no avail.

“I picked her up and held her over my hand and tried patting her back but she kept gagging.”

The piece didn’t budge. “I thought that it was going

to go farther down so I put my finger in her mouth and felt it, so I just grabbed it.”

The move paid off and Emily could again breathe. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Lightly-commented Lightning:

• Add this to the “Oh, he’s soooo brilliant (not)” file — “Obama: Premiums Will Decrease 3000%.” A gaffe like this would be comedy gold … if Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle, or any Republican or conservative had said it. The problem is, in the context of the President’s delivery as seen in the video, he may actually believe that you can decrease something by 3000%. As Instapundit has so often sardonically observed, “Our country is in the best of hands.”
• The Associated Press’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, of all people and of all places, says that ObamaCare will raise insurance premiums, not lower them by double-digits as Obama and Dems claim (at least when they’re not throwing around “3000%”).
• Serial presidential candidate and Cleveland-area congressman Dennis Kucinich is going to vote “yes” on ObamaCare. He was a “no” at crunch time last year, but he would surely have gone to “yes” if he thought the bill was in jeopardy. That’s the message to take away from his switch.
• Now that ACORN has agreed to exit Ohio and not come back, it’s a good time to remind readers by reference to Maggie Thurber’s October 2008 work that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s ties to ACORN run long and deep, and that Brunner ignored Buckeye State vote-related fraud that year.
• From last Friday, via Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh — “How Bad Is the Lehman Bankruptcy Report for Geithner?” Bad enough that a properly-written history will probably show that Geithner’s mishandling of Lehman was deliberately designed to create the artificial crisis- and blackmail-driven atmosphere that led to the creation of TARP.
• Related to the previous item, Third Base Politics notes how many time the name of former Lehman employee and now Ohio gubernatorial John Kasich came up in that 2,200-page bankruptcy report: Zero.
• Via the Financial Times carried at CNBC — “Google ’99.9%’ Sure It Will Shut Down China Search Engine.” That’s because “talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse.” I am now 99.9% sure that I’ll take a serious look at carrying Google ads on this site and removing the company from the BizzyBlog Internet Wall of Shame. I wonder what Microsoft’s, Yahoo!’s and Cisco’s plans are?
• In more management shuffling, Government/General Motors has a new CFO, who predicts the company will make a full-year profit in 2010. You can almost write it down that if it occurs, it will be despite, not because, of its North American operations.

Comment-Free Lightning:

• Ed Morrissey at Hot Air — “Study shows ObamaCare will destroy as many as 700,000 jobs by 2019″
• Warner Todd Huston at BigJournalism.com — “The Phony ‘Coffee Party’ Astroturfing Continues: MSM Looks the Other Way”
• Also at the BigJ — “But It Fit the Narrative! Media Falls for Phony Toyota Prius Story”
• From the “In Case You Missed It File” in last Thurday’s Washington Examiner — “It’s official now: ObamaCare will fund abortions if it passes”

Final thought: God bless Ingrid Martin — and keep her safe.

Given what is devolving out Washington, this is a particularly opportune time for a definitive call-out.

So gather ’round, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Hugh Hewitt, certain of Rush’s peeps (based on their ignorant e-mails), and other “center-right” talking/blogging Mitt Romney apologists.

Rush, you come in too, because I’m not sure about you either.

Are y’all here? Okay, good.

See that mirror over there? Stand up and make eye contact with yourself for the next few minutes.

All of you are currently and correctly railing against the out-of-control congressional majority, and especially their pathetic, orchestrated talking point that “The American people don’t care about the process, they just want health care reform passed.”

You are crucially correct that the American people care deeply about “the process,” because “the process” is really “the Constitution” and its stated procedures specifically detailing how bills are to become laws.

Fine.

WHERE WERE YOU in 2003-2004 when Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney shredded “the process” otherwise known as the Massachusetts Constitution to unilaterally and illegally impose same-sex “marriage” in the Bay State? (Hugh Hewitt initially got it right, but then fell $trangely $ilent on the topic.)

WHERE WERE YOU in 2007-2008 when so many of us on the center-right were making these self-evident points, while you were virtually and in some cases actually ENDORSING him?

WHEN HAVE YOU EVER denounced Mitt Romney’s authoritarian usurpation of powers he did not constitutionally have? (To this day, same-sex “marriage” has not been constitutionally enacted in Massachusetts.)

WHEN HAVE YOU EVER cited Romney’s actions as the precedent that made it easier for other governors (e.g., Schwarzenegger in California) to defy their own constitutions?

You’ll have to excuse me for believing that your righteous bleats about “the process,” though absolutely correct, ring more than a little hollow.

Hmm. I just noticed that most of you have stopped looking at yourselves.

____________________________________________________

NOTE: Though I oppose same-sex “marriage,” even its advocates must admit that the “process” by which it has “legally” come about has serially violated state constitutions and the will of the voters.

Rather than attempt to persuade the American people of the righteousness of their cause, they have chosen authoritarian and sometimes thuggish tactics to get their way. Mitt Romney has served as their chief enabler. Those called out above should be ashamed.

____________________________________________________

UPDATE: This post has been reproduced with yours truly’s permission at AIPNews.com.

On Monday, the Washington Post’s Robert J. Samuelson ripped ObamaCare’s economic claims to shreds (bolds are mine; links were in original):

Almost everything you think you know about health care is probably wrong or, at least, half wrong. Great simplicities and distortions have been peddled in the name of achieving “universal health coverage.” The miseducation has worsened as the debate approaches its climax.

… How often, for example, have you heard the emergency-room argument? The uninsured, it’s said, use emergency rooms for primary care. That’s expensive and ineffective. Once they’re insured, they’ll have regular doctors. Care will improve; costs will decline. Everyone wins. Great argument. Unfortunately, it’s untrue.

A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (PDF here) found that the insured accounted for 83 percent of emergency-room visits, reflecting their share of the population. After Massachusetts adopted universal insurance, emergency-room use remained higher than the national average, an Urban Institute study found (PDF here).

… Studies of insurance’s effects on health are hard to perform. Some find benefits; others don’t. Medicare’s introduction in 1966 produced no reduction in mortality; some studies of extensions of Medicaid for children didn’t find gains. In the Atlantic recently, economics writer Megan McArdle examined the literature and emerged skeptical. Claims that the uninsured suffer tens of thousands of premature deaths are “open to question.” Conceivably, the “lack of health insurance has no more impact on your health than lack of flood insurance,” she writes.

Though it seems compelling, covering the uninsured is not the health-care system’s major problem. The big problem is uncontrolled spending, which prices people out of the market and burdens government budgets. Obama claims his proposal checks spending. Just the opposite. When people get insurance, they use more health services. Spending rises. By the government’s latest forecast, health spending goes from 17 percent of the economy in 2009 to 19 percent in 2019. Health “reform” would probably increase that.

… “If not now, when? If not us, who?” Obama asks. The answer is: It’s not now, and it’s not “us.” Pass or not, Obama’s proposal is the illusion of “reform,” not the real thing.

Obama, Pelosi, Reid et al don’t care about reform. They care about centralizing power over our lives. It could not be more obvious.

____________________________________________________

Since the previous item touched on Massachusetts, it’s worth asking what Mitt Romney, the godfather of CommonwealthCare, aka RomneyCare, thinks of how things are going with so-called “universal coverage” in the Bay State.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed by Grace-Marie Turner today informs us that Romney believes things are going well.

Turner calls BS, and in the process adds yet another crucial reason why Objectively Unfit Mitt must be stopped if he runs (heavily excerpted because of the Journal’s subscription wall; bolds are mine):

Former Massachusetts governor and likely 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney has been on the wrong side of the defining political battle of our time.

Mr. Romney claimed earlier this month on “Fox News Sunday” that the Massachusetts health reform plan he signed into law in 2006 is “the ultimate conservative plan.” But there are many similarities between it and the ObamaCare loathed by conservative voters.

Both have an individual mandate requiring most residents to have health insurance or pay a penalty. Most businesses are required to participate or pay a fine.

… Mr. Romney’s promise that getting everyone covered would force costs down also is far from being realized. … A typical family of four today faces total annual health costs of nearly $13,788, the highest in the country. Per capita spending is 27% higher than the national average.

… The state’s stubbornly high health costs are partly the result of intrusive government regulations that stifle competition in the insurance market and strict mandates on what services insurance must cover.

… Further, insurance companies are required to sell “just-in-time” policies even if people wait until they are sick to buy coverage. That’s just like the Obama plan. There is growing evidence that many people are gaming the system by purchasing health insurance when they need surgery or other expensive medical care, then dropping it a few months later.

Some Massachusetts safety-net hospitals that treat a disproportionate number of lower-income and uninsured patients are threatening bankruptcy.

… As one would expect, expanded insurance has caused an increase in demand for medical services. But there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in the number of doctors. As a result, many patients are insured in name only: They have health coverage but can’t find a doctor.

… For new patients who do get an appointment with a primary-care doctor, the average waiting time is 44 days, the Medical Society found.

… Mr. Romney insists that in Massachusetts, “We didn’t do what President Obama’s doing, which is putting controls on our system of premiums for private insurance companies.”

But that is what’s happening now: Faced with soaring medical expenses, Gov. Deval Patrick, Mr. Romney’s successor, wants to cap insurance rate increases at 4.8%, not the 8% to 32% increases the companies have requested for April 1. Three of the four major health insurers in Massachusetts showed operating losses for 2009.

… health care is likely to be the defining issue of the 2010 and 2012 elections. Unless Mr. Romney is more honest about the system he set in motion in Massachusetts, he will have a hard time convincing Republican primary voters that he has learned his health-care lesson.

We cannot be sure of that Republican primary voters will dismiss Romney, both because of the size of his personal checkbook and because the primary process is so fundamentally flawed in so many states, leaving it vulnerable to leftist and other tampering. My understanding is that any chance to fix the broken mess was lost at the 2008 Republican Convention when these matters were left alone. (Thank you, John McCain and the RINO establishment.)

Defeating a presidential candidate Romney in the Republican primaries, if it comes to that, is every bit as important as defeating Barack Obama in the 2012 general election. If Romney is the party’s nominee, there will be no remotely acceptable “major party” choice. Principled sensible center-righters (i.e., the large majority of the electorate) will have no alternative but to unite behind a third-party candidate.

____________________________________________________

Last night, Mark Levin announced on his show that his Landmark Legal Foundation will challenge any health care legislation “passed” using the Slaughter gambit:

Mark announces that the Landmark Legal Foundation and he are prepared to fight this health care bill if it is passed via the Slaughter rule. They will challenge the constitutionality of the bill because you cannot have a law that is not voted on by Congress – as explicitly said in the Constitution. No previous Congress has ever said that it’s passed a bill when it hasn’t. The reason the politicians are lying and scheming as they try to get Obamacare passed, is because they realize the American people are against it on higher levels than ever before.

Don’t believe the talking points crap (direct YouTube) that it has been done a hundred times before. It hasn’t been; this is unprecedented, and frankly frightening to anyone who believes in what’s left of the Constitution and the rule of law.

From York County, South Carolina:

Published: Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2010
Updated: Wednesday, Mar. 17, 2010 06:46 AM

On Monday morning, 85-year-old John Williams was late for his 9 a.m. appointment at Southern States Physical Therapy.

The little old man with the bright eyes and the brighter smile had been coming since September.

“He is never late,” said office manager Janine Geada. “Like clockwork, he never misses. He’s a true gentleman. So I called his house a few times, but didn’t get him. I figured I would give him until 10.”

But Geada did not return to her work after the calls went unanswered. She knew Williams lived alone, had no wife or children.

Instead of going for a muffin, or to the bank or just plain back to work, Geada got in her car and drove the couple of miles to Williams’ Rock Hill home. She found his car in the back under the carport, but nobody came to the door.

She rushed back to the office and told co-worker Chris Hudson, an assistant physical therapist, who called 911 at 11:20 a.m. Both Hudson and Geada then rushed to Williams’ house.

The ladies who work at Fewell Park across the street saw all the commotion, the police cars and fire truck. At Williams’ home, firefighters broke into the house.

“He was lying on the floor in the kitchen,” said Hudson. “He had a broken hip. He probably fell Sunday night.”

Hudson had just talked with Williams last week about getting some kind of medical alert system. Yet when Williams could not be found, Geada and Hudson did not go back to work.

They did not say they were too busy.

They checked on him – and might have saved Williams’ life.

It’s not uncommon for authorities to get called to check on someone’s welfare.

What is rare and certainly commendable, said Cotton Howell, York County emergency management director, was that Geada and Hudson drove to Williams’ home to check on him.

“These people took extra time and effort to help someone out,” Howell said. “That’s beyond what we normally see.”

Dr. Chad Gindi, director of physical therapy for Southern States, said the staff is taught that clients are not a number but a person to be cared for. He commended Hudson and Geada for their efforts – which went beyond physical therapy and running an office.

“We try to treat them like family,” Gindi said of patients.

Later that evening, Hudson and Geada did not go home from work. They were right there at Piedmont Medical Center, checking on Williams.

“He laughed and said, ‘So you are the gentleman who is responsible for the break-in at my house,’” Hudson said. “He was so thankful. I just told him I was happy to help.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Lightning Links point to stories and other items that are noteworthy but don’t require further comment or background beyond a sentence or two (or three).

Lightly-commented Lightning:

• The Daily Caller, March 9 — “5 Wisconsin residents face voter fraud charges, two of them worked for ACORN.” It’s time to send the folks from Ohio’s 1851 Center for Constitutional Law up to the Badger State.
• Fox News (HT JammieWearingFool) — “More Americans Can Call Themselves Millionaires, Study Finds.” JWF’s translation: “Obama’s America: The Rich are Getting Richer.” Related item from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — Real average hourly earnings decreased from $10.38 to 10.32 between January 2009 and January 2010.
• Substance-free pablum, via CBS News on March 9 — “How America Could Get Rich by Going Green.” America could legitimately get rich —  or at least be less broke — if it would only unlock its trillions of dollars worth of oil and natural gas reserves.
• Via the Associated Press — “(Supreme Court Chief Justice) Roberts: Scene at State of Union ‘very troubling.’” This is where President Obama criticized the court’s campaign-finance decision in his SOTU speech. Hey John, get used to it; that’s what punks who don’t get their way do.
• From the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Politics Extra blog — “Portman making the money rounds” …. in Florida, Florida, Florida, Florida, Florida, DC, DC, DC, Virginia, Oklahoma, and Texas. Minimum price of admission in all but one instance: $1,000. Remind me — What state does Portman say he’ll represent if he becomes a U.S. Senator? I still think that this idea, which I proposed back in 2006 (“The Case For No Out-of-Jurisdiction Campaign Contributions”) merits serious attention, and would pass constitutional muster.
• From Gallup — “Americans’ Global Warming Concerns Continue to Drop.” Zombie deliciously noticed the poll’s hockey stick-like appearance. This is occurring despite the U.S. media’s virtual blackout of the burgeoning ClimateGate scandals (via BigJournalism.com, “As ‘Global Warming’ Hoax Dies, MSM is AWOL: Is Anybody Home?”).
• At Pajamas Media, from J. Robert Smith — “What Do Detroit, the Postal Service, and Health Care Reform Have in Common?” Answers: Fewer and more expensive services, corruption, and inefficiency, all of which would appear on a scale previously unseen with statist health care.
• At the LA Times’s LA Now Blog — “Divided appeals court rules Pledge of Allegiance doesn’t violate Constitution.” Correction: That would be an appeals court panel of three, consisting of two people who can think plus Stephen Reinhardt.
• President Obama’s disapproval level per Rasmussen has been above 50% since February 5, and has stayed there ever since. It’s currently at 54%. It has been above 50% for all but five days thus far in 2010.

Comment-free Lightning:

• From PJM’s Bernard Chapin — “ESPN: The Worldwide Leader of Political Correctness”
• Charlie Rangel, still an “(R)” at Yahoo! — uncorrected for five days.
• Reason’s Andy Randazzo — “The Myth of the Recovery”
• Classical Values — “A Mainstream Meme That Cannot Speak Its Name.”
• Mary Katharine Ham at the Weekly Standard, March 12 — “Pelosi’s Republic — The House Speaker says health care reform will finally allow artists to focus on being unemployed, comfortably.”

From the Associated Press:

Even so, the legislation remained incomplete. House Democrats caucused Monday evening, and a number of rank-and-file lawmakers straggled out discouraged that they still didn’t have final legislative language or a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

Leaders hope to get both those things Tuesday. Until then there’s only so much they can do to pin down wavering lawmakers who will soon be asked to make one of the riskiest votes of their careers.

“There’s no decision yet on what the process is going to be, there’s nothing back from the CBO, there’s no commitment yet from the Senate that they can get 51 votes, and there’s no bill to show me what it’s in it,” said Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., a freshman who voted “yes” last year and has been targeted by Republicans. “So until those things get resolved I’m staying uncommitted.”

Pelosi is already on the record saying, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” In a sane world, that would be grounds for instant expulsion from office.

It would thus appear that the response from Pelosi and President Barack Obama behind closed doors to concerns such as those raised by Rep. Titus would be something along the lines of “Shut up and vote.”

This is what tyrants do.

The fact that the AP’s Erica Werner did NOT engage in any attempt at headcounting is probably the best indication that the assertions floating around that Democrats are short of the votes needed for passage — at least 16, if we’re to believe Michigan Congressman Stupak — are accurate. Related corroboration can be found here and here.

I hope that’s so. Those who prefer liberty to tyranny should take no chances.

_____________________________________________________

UPDATE: If Steve Driehaus is really a “no” and is really “unswayed,” why is Joe “Jobs is a three-letter word” Biden being so nice? And why did the oafs at Organizing For America (OFA) have him over for an agenda meeting a week ago?

The NRCC considers Driehaus a “no,” but on Sunday Jay Cost at RealClearPolitics wrote: “I’m going to add him to my list of Democrats who had supported the bill in November, but who have since suggested they might defect.”

Encouraging Driehaus to oppose ObamaCare remains paramount.

I fear an orchestrated “breakthrough” on abortion (which won’t really be there when we, ahem, “find out what’s in it”), which will in any event do nothing to change ObamaCare’s status as a moral clunker.

From Vancouver:

Mar 16, 2010 / 03:30 am

On March 12, leaders of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) in Canada sent a letter to the Holy Father formally requesting to become unified with the Catholic Church. This initiative, says a leading bishop, is what he believes to be part of a “worldwide movement.”

Bishop Peter Wilkinson of the TAC Diocese of British Columbia, who authored the March 12 letter, discussed Pope Benedict XVI’s publication of the Apostolic Constitution “Anglicanorum coetibus” with CNA in a phone interview on Monday. The document was released last year and addressed measures planned by the Vatican to allow Anglican communities to enter into communion with the Catholic Church.

When the Pope’s document first came out, said Bishop Wilkinson, “I had Lutherans calling me saying, ‘how do we get in on this?’ And Orthodox (Christians) saying, ‘how do we get in on this?’”

“It is a worldwide movement largely brought about by the vision of John Paul II” and “the wonderful, gentle firm, intellectual vision of Pope Benedict, who is such an inspiration to us,” noted the Anglican bishop.

Referencing a previous letter written to the Holy See which spoke of unifying with Rome, Bishop Wilkinson wrote to the Vatican on March 12. “Please allow the College of Bishops of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (Traditional Anglican Communion) to express our gratitude to you for your positive response of December 16th 2009 to our Letter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of October 5th 2007 in which we expressed our desire to ‘seek a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See, at once treasuring the full expression of catholic faith and treasuring our tradition within which we have come to this moment,’” the letter said. …

Go here for the rest of the story.