Politics

Jokes that "half of these letters call me an idiot!"

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama joked on Wednesday that half of the 40,000 letters that pour into the White House each day brand him an "idiot."

Tongue-in-cheek, the president remarked that his staff did not spare him the wrath of his correspondents -- selecting a representative portion of 10 letters for him to read when he returns to the White House residence at night.

"I will tell you, that my staff is very even-handed, because about half of these letters call me an idiot!" Obama said, chuckling at his own joke during a rally in Saint Louis, Missouri.

The president went on to make a serious point, saying that many senior citizens wrote to him to tell him to keep the government's hands off Medicare, a health plan for elderly people.

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He said he wrote back to these people to point out that Medicare is in fact a federally administered program.

You know, I get a lot of letters from constituents. I get about 40,000 every day, and I don’t read all 40,000 — somebody does — but what I’ve done is I’ve asked my staff to collect a sampling of 10 letters that I read every night. And I will tell you that my staff is very evenhanded, because about half of these letters call me an idiot. (Laughter.)

And at least half of them talk about health care. And when the health care reform debate was really heating up, one of the things that I heard from a lot of seniors was, “Keep your government hands out of my Medicare.” (Laughter.) I heard this from a bunch of seniors. They say, “I don’t want your government-run health care plan, and don’t touch my Medicare.”

And so I’d have to write back and I’d say, “Ma’am,” or “Sir, Medicare is a government program.” (Laughter.) “But we’re not going go weaken it. We’re going to make it stronger.”

But I think those letters tell you something about what sometimes happened in this health care debate, because people have been hit with a lot of bad information. And health care is really important. And so people get worried and they get nervous. But when you get past the divisive and the deceptive rhetoric, it turns out that most Americans are happy that two generations ago we made the decision that seniors and the poor should not be saddled with unaffordable health care costs or forced to go without needed care. That was a decision that we made decades ago. And it was the right decision to make. (Applause.)

And by the way, when we made those decisions, folks were saying the exact same thing about Medicare: “That’s socialized medicine, this is government-run care,” and blah, blah, blah.

Obama frequently mentions the flood of letters that make it to the White House every day, and has said those selected for him to read help him to puncture the presidential "bubble" and connect with regular Americans.

Full speech follows, as posted at Main Justice:

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THE PRESIDENT: Hello, Missouri! (Applause.) It is good to see you. I know you guys have been a little bit here; it’s a little bit warm in here — you’re all fanning yourself off, whoo! It is good to see everybody here today. How’s everybody doing? (Applause.)

I’ve got a couple of acknowledgments I want to make. First of all, Mayor of St. Charles, Patti York — where’s Patti? (Applause.) Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thanks for the great weather.

We also have the St. Charles School District Superintendent, Randy Charles, is here. Where’s Randy? I just saw him — there he is back there. (Applause.)

It is great to be here, great to be back in the Show Me State, great to be back in St. Charles. Some of you may remember that it was from this town that Lewis and Clark began their journey into a harsh and unforgiving landscape. I can relate — (laughter) — because the first time I came here, I was trying to get to Washington, D.C., a harsh and unforgiving landscape. (Laughter.)

A big part of our campaign was about changing the way Washington works. It was about transforming a politics that’s driven by cynicism and a 24-hour news cycle, and the cable chatter, and always focused on the next election instead of the next generation. Our campaign was about meeting the looming challenges — in education and in energy, in our health care system, in our financial system — that helped bring about the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. And it still threatens our prosperity. It was about making our government actually work for you, the people: a government that lives up to its responsibilities, including the responsibility to live within its means.

Now, there’s been a lot of discussion about government over the last several months — and let’s face it, people have lost faith in government. They had lost faith in government before I ran and it’s been getting worse. You know, President Lincoln said that “the legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not … do at all, or do so well, by themselves.” That pretty much sums up my attitude. You let people do for themselves what they can do for themselves; and then if there are some things that we do better together, we should do them together. And I believe that in everything government does, we’ve got a special responsibility to be wise stewards about how Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars are spent. And I know you agree with that, too. Doesn’t matter whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, you don’t like seeing your money wasted — or an independent, don’t like seeing your money wasted.

That’s a responsibility my administration is seeking to fulfill every single day. Over the last year, we’ve gone through the budget line by line looking for places to trim the fat out of government. And we’ve found a lot of fat to trim. I got to admit. Last year, we pushed Congress to cut nearly $20 billion by streamlining or eliminating more than 120 government programs. This year, we put another $20 billion in cuts on the table, targeting dozens of additional programs that were wasteful or duplicative or in some cases just plain ridiculous.

For example, we decided not to fund an office maintained by the Department of Education — in Paris, France. (Laughter.) Now, I’m sure that was nice work if you could get it. (Laughter.) But I didn’t think that was a real good use of our money. We eliminated a decades-old radio navigation system which cost $35 million a year. And some people might say, well, why did you do that? We need that navigation system. Well, the thing is, we got this thing call GPS now, and satellites. (Laughter.) So the whole radio navigation thing wasn’t working so well.

So we’ve been pushing for cuts on things that we don’t need, that government doesn’t do so well. And we’re also reforming the way government contracts are awarded. Think about this, between 2002 and 2008, the amount spent annually on government contracts more than doubled to half a trillion dollars. Those are contracts with private contractors. And the amount spent on no-bid contracts jumped by 129 percent — no-bid contracts. That’s an inexcusable waste of your money. So last March, I ordered federal departments to come up with plans to save as much as $40 billion a year in contracting.

Now, this brings me to the person standing right over here, the lady in pink. (Applause.) You know before Claire was your senator, she was your state auditor. She just pinches pennies. I mean, she’s just — (laughter) — you think I’m — I don’t like waste, but Claire, she just — every dime, she’s — (laughter.)

So thanks to Claire, we’re going to have a new tool to help us meet this goal of eliminating some of these wasteful contracts and no-bid contracts. In the coming weeks we’re going to be rolling out a new online database, which Claire McCaskill proposed and helped pass into law. (Applause.) And we’ll be able to see, before any new contract is awarded, whether a company plays by the rules, how well they’ve performed in the past: Did they finish the job on time? Did the company provide good value? Did the company blow their budget? It’s your money, so you deserve to know how it’s spent and who these contracts are going to.

And that’s an example of the kind of service that Claire McCaskill is providing, not just to the people of Missouri, but people all across the country. And in every way but one, Claire McCaskill is the new Harry Truman — (laughter) — in the United States Senate. (Applause.) The one difference is she’s a she. (Laughter.)

But just as the Truman Commission prevented billions of dollars of wasteful spending during the war and saved lives in the process, through tough and fair-minded oversight of contracting during World War II, Claire has been a relentless force for rooting out scams and making government more efficient. Harry Truman also said in the commission’s final report that in completing the mission, “[w]here necessary, heads must be knocked together.” And let me tell you, Claire loves knocking some heads together. (Laughter.) She’s never been afraid to do that. (Applause.)

As we were driving in, I was saying, boy, it’s just good to be back in the Midwest, this is about as close as I’ve been to home in a while. And part of the reason it’s just good to be back is because Washington is a place where tax dollars are often treated like Monopoly money — they’re bartered and traded, and they’re divvied up among lobbyists and special interests, and where waste — even billions of dollars of waste — is accepted as the price of doing business. When we proposed, by the way, those $20 billion in cuts last year, we were ridiculed by the press, said, “Ah, that’s just a spit in the bucket.” Now, I don’t know about here in St. Charles, $20 billion, that’s real money, isn’t it?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: That’s real money. But Claire doesn’t accept business as usual. I don’t accept business as usual. You don’t accept business as usual. The American people don’t accept business as usual, especially when we’re facing these enormous long-term deficits that threaten to leave our children a mountain of debt.

Now, this brings me to the primary topic I want to talk about today. Nowhere is reform more needed than when it comes to our health care system — nowhere. (Applause.) Nowhere. (Applause.) The health care system has billions of dollars that should go to patient care and they’re lost each and every year to fraud, to abuse, to massive subsidies that line the pockets of the insurance industry.

Let me just give you one example — this is a long recognized but long tolerated problem called “improper payments.” That’s what they call them. Washington always has a name for these things. “Improper payments.” And as is often the case in Washington, the more innocuous the name, the more worried you should be. So these are payments mostly made through Medicare and Medicaid that are sent to the wrong person, sent for the wrong reason, sent in the wrong amount. Sometimes they’re innocent errors. Sometimes they’re because nobody is bothering to check to see where the money is going and they’re abused by scam artists and fly-by-night operations.

(The President coughs.) Look, health care. (Laughter.) This health care debate has been hard on my health, I got to tell you. (Laughter.)

It’s estimated that improper payments cost taxpayers almost $100 billion last year alone. Think about that. That, by the way, just that abuse in improper payments is more than we spend on the Department of Education and the Small Business Administration combined. If we created a “Department of Improper Payments” it would be one of the largest agencies in our government.

Now, for the past few years, there has actually been a pilot program that uses a system of tough audits to recover some of this lost money. And even though these audits, they were just operating mainly in three states, they already found a billion dollars in improper payments. So these results were both disturbing and encouraging. They’re disturbing because it shows you how much waste there is out there in the health care system. But it’s encouraging because we can do something about it.

So earlier today, with Claire looking over my shoulder — one of our auditors-in-chief — I signed an order calling on all federal agencies to launch these kinds of audits all across the country. All across the country. (Applause.) So agencies would hire auditors to scour the books, go through things line by line. Auditors are paid based on how many abuses or errors they uncover. So it’s a win-win. The auditor, if they do a good job they get a small percentage as a reward. And the taxpayer wins by getting huge sums of money that would otherwise be lost that we can then spend to provide care to people who really need it, or we can use to reduce the deficit.

Now, through this effort, we expect to more than double the amounts we would’ve otherwise recovered — a couple of billion dollars over the next few years. And I’m announcing my support for the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act — that’s a mouthful — but this is a bipartisan bill — (applause) — is a bipartisan bill to expand our ability to do these audits, so we can prevent even more fraud and abuse and waste.

Now, the reason I’m bringing all this stuff up is because there’s been a lot of talk about health care lately. And look, I’ll be honest, a lot of people, they’re confused, they’re saying, well, how can you help people get insurance who don’t have it without it adding to our deficit? It’s a legitimate question.

Well, the reason is, is because so much of the money currently in our health care system is being misspent. (Applause.) Look, if you’ve got — if you’ve got a house and the roof is leaking and the windows are all letting through a bunch of draft and you get that cold winter and all the heat seeping out, and if you decide to spend on some new windows and fix your roof, that’s going to spend a little money, but you’d save money in the long run because you don’t have heating expenses, and those leaks aren’t ruining your furniture.

The same thing is true with our health care system. We’ve got leaks everywhere — that you pay for, directly or indirectly. And if we can have a smarter health care system, then yes, we can provide help to middle-class folks who need it, and at the same time actually reduce the burden on taxpayers.

Now, I know that during the health care debate opponents have tried to scare people, especially our seniors, into thinking that we are going after seniors’ Medicare benefits; that’s how Obama is going to pay for his plan.

When you look at the facts, that’s just plain wrong. In fact, by saving billions of dollars of the sort we just talked about — waste and abuse — in Medicare, reining in waste and inefficiencies, we’re going to be able to help ensure Medicare’s solvency for an additional decade. (Applause.) This is just one example that speaks to how we’re going to stop wasting money through the health care system on things that don’t make people healthy — in fact, often take away from the care we receive, and take that money and make it work for the American people. So Medicare will work better, provide better care because of these reforms. Senior citizens who are dealing with the doughnut hole in the prescription drug plan — that plan will be filled in part because we’re not wasting money on stuff that doesn’t work. (Applause.) That’s common sense.

You know, I get a lot of letters from constituents. I get about 40,000 every day, and I don’t read all 40,000 — somebody does — but what I’ve done is I’ve asked my staff to collect a sampling of 10 letters that I read every night. And I will tell you that my staff is very evenhanded, because about half of these letters call me an idiot. (Laughter.)

And at least half of them talk about health care. And when the health care reform debate was really heating up, one of the things that I heard from a lot of seniors was, “Keep your government hands out of my Medicare.” (Laughter.) I heard this from a bunch of seniors. They say, “I don’t want your government-run health care plan, and don’t touch my Medicare.”

And so I’d have to write back and I’d say, “Ma’am,” or “Sir, Medicare is a government program.” (Laughter.) “But we’re not going go weaken it. We’re going to make it stronger.”

But I think those letters tell you something about what sometimes happened in this health care debate, because people have been hit with a lot of bad information. And health care is really important. And so people get worried and they get nervous. But when you get past the divisive and the deceptive rhetoric, it turns out that most Americans are happy that two generations ago we made the decision that seniors and the poor should not be saddled with unaffordable health care costs or forced to go without needed care. That was a decision that we made decades ago. And it was the right decision to make. (Applause.)

And by the way, when we made those decisions, folks were saying the exact same thing about Medicare: “That’s socialized medicine, this is government-run care,” and blah, blah, blah.

Now, today we face a different choice, but it’s a similar choice to the one that previous generations faced, and that is whether we should help middle-class families and business owners that are being pummeled by the rising costs of health care. See, back when the Medicare debate was taking place, seniors were having problems because they were no longer working, and people were getting their health care through their jobs. And so it made sense to help them. It made sense to help the poor who might not be employed. But back then, middle-class folks, they were pretty secure. If you were working, you had health care that was affordable.

But you know what’s happened over the last several decades. What’s happened is, is that more and more businesses are saying, we can’t afford to provide health care to our workers because the costs are skyrocketing. So they just drop health care altogether. A lot of small businesses, they don’t provide health care to their employees anymore. And large businesses, what are they doing? They’re saying to you, we’re going to jack up your premiums, we got to increase your deductibles. If you’re self-employed, you are completely out of luck. If you’ve got a preexisting condition, you are completely out of luck. And by the way, those of us who are lucky enough to have health care today, we don’t know if we’re the ones who are going to lose our job tomorrow, or suddenly it turns out that our child has a preexisting condition. And we’ll be stuck in the exact same situation, even if we’ve got good health insurance. (Applause.)

Now, everything I just said, if you talk to my opponents, they’ll agree. They’ll say, you’re right, the health care system is broken. For too many people it’s getting worse. They will acknowledge that the status quo is unsustainable. But you know what they tell me? We had that big health care summit. I know you guys watched all seven hours of it. (Laughter.) Yes, absolutely. It was scintillating. (Laughter.) But you heard what they said. They said, well, we agree with you that the current system is unsustainable, but this is just not the right time to do it. They said, let’s start over, that’s what they said. We just got to start from scratch.

AUDIENCE: No!

THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me tell you something. The insurance industry is not starting over. They just announced a 39 percent rate increase in California and a rate increase of up to 60 percent right across the border in my home state of Illinois — 60 percent in one year. That’s the future. That’s the future if we fail to act.

And by the way, I don’t recall any of these Republicans trying to do anything about insurance companies’ abuses during all the years they were in charge. (Applause.) Do you, Claire? I don’t remember. I don’t remember them doing anything about folks who needed some help when the government was running surpluses.

So I get a sense with some of these folks, it’s just never going to be the right time. But the truth is, we have debated health care in Washington not just this past year, we’ve been debating it for 70 years. You know who was pushing health care reform? Harry Truman. (Applause.) Harry Truman was pushing health care reform. And by the way, you know what they said? They said, he’s pushing socialized medicine. Harry Truman.

And over this past year we’ve been talking about it, every proposal has been put on the table. Every argument has been made and everybody has made it. And I know that people view this as a partisan issue, but the truth is, is that if you set aside the politics of it, and what was good for Election Day, it turns out that parties have plenty of areas where they agree. And the plan that I’ve put forward is a proposal that’s basically somewhere in the middle — one that incorporates the best ideas of Democrats and Republicans, even though the Republicans have a hard time acknowledging it.

Now, there are some folks who wanted to scrap the system of private insurance and replace it with a government-run health care program, like they have in some other countries. (Applause.) We’ve got a couple — some applause here. And look, it works well for those countries. But I’ll just be honest with you: It was not practical or realistic to do here, to completely uproot and change a system where the vast majority of people still get their health care from employer-based plans.

And on the other side of the spectrum there are those who believe that the answer is to simply unleash the insurance industry, and provide less oversight and fewer rules.

AUDIENCE: Boo!

THE PRESIDENT: And that somehow that’s going to drive down prices for everybody. This is called the “putting the foxes in charge of the hen house” approach to health care reform. (Applause.) So whatever state regulations were in place, we’d get rid of those and so insurance companies could basically find a state that had the worst regulations and then from there sell insurance everywhere. And that somehow that was going to be helpful to you. All this would do would give insurance companies more leeway to raise premiums and deny care.

So I don’t believe we should give either the government or the insurance companies more control over health care in America. I want to give you more control over health care in America. (Applause.)

So my proposal builds on the current system where most Americans get their health care from their employers. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. But my proposal would change three important things about the current health care system. Now I want everybody to pay attention — I know it’s a little warm in here, but I want you to pay attention, so that when you are talking to your friends and your neighbors and folks at work and they’re wondering what’s going on, I want you to be able to just say, here are the three things Obama is trying to do.

First, it would end the worst practices of insurance companies — and it would begin to do so this year. This year. (Applause.) Thousands of uninsured Americans with preexisting conditions will be able to purchase health insurance for the very first time in their lives or since they got sick. (Applause.) This year. Insurance companies would be banned from denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions this year. (Applause.) Insurance companies would be banned from dropping your coverage when you get sick. (Applause.) Insurance companies would no longer be able to arbitrarily and massively raise premiums. They would be subject to review.

Those practices will end as a consequence of health care reform. (Applause.)

All new insurance plans would be required to offer free preventive care to their customers. And if you buy a new plan, there will be no more lifetime limits on the amount of care you receive from your insurance company — (applause) — all that fine print that ends up getting folks into trouble. If you’re a uninsured young adult, you’ll be able to stay on your parents’ insurance policy until you’re 26 years old. (Applause.) So a lot of folks, as they’re transitioning into the workplace, will have insurance. (Applause.) All right, so that’s part one of the plan: insurance reform.

Part two. For the first time, uninsured individuals and small businesses will have the same kind of choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get. (Applause.) If it’s good enough for members of Congress, it’s good enough for the people who pay their salaries. (Applause.)

This should not be a controversial idea. The reason that federal employees usually have pretty good insurance is because they’re part of a pool of millions of people. So what happens is they can negotiate for really good rates because the insurance companies really want those millions of customers. So what we’re talking about is setting up a pool for people who don’t work for the federal government — you, individuals, small businesses; they can be part of this pool. And this is an idea that a lot of Republicans embraced in the past until I said it was a good idea. (Laughter.)

So all this would drive down rates for those individuals and small businesses who aren’t part of a big company that get good rates. And my proposal says if you still can’t afford it, even though now the premiums are lower than you can buy on your own, then we’ll offer you some tax credits to make it affordable. And those tax credits would add up to the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history. (Applause.)

So it’s estimated that this would drive down the costs for folks who don’t work for big companies — so they don’t get as good of a deal — by 14, 20 percent. This is before the subsidies, before the tax credits.

Now, it’s true that this will cost some money. It’s going to cost about a hundred billion dollars per year. That’s real money, that’s a lot of money. But most of that money comes from the nearly $2.5 trillion a year that America already spends on health care that we’re not spending well; that we’re spending badly right now.

So we pay for this proposal by getting at the abuse that we just talked about. We eliminate wasteful taxpayer subsidies that go to the insurance companies. Do you know that through the Medicare program, we are giving insurance companies close to $20 billion a year, about $18 billion every year of taxpayer money through the Medicare system. And we’re saying, well, why do we do that? They’re making a profit on their own. And while some of what we save goes to helping the uninsured, most of it goes back to small businesses and the middle class who right now just aren’t getting a good deal. It doesn’t make sense to me that people who are really poor are able to get Medicaid, but people who are working really hard and just not quite as poor, they don’t get a decent deal. That doesn’t make sense to me. (Applause.)

All right. That’s the second part. First part: insurance reform. Second part: creating this marketplace where small businesses and individuals can get a good deal.

Third part: bringing down the cost of health care for families and businesses and for the federal government. Cost control. Now, when you listen to the other side, they’ll tell you, we want to do more about cost, we want to do more about cost. Well, let me tell you, we’ve incorporated almost every serious idea from across the political spectrum about how to contain rising health care costs. There’s not an idea out there that we have not worked on, that we have not included in this proposal.

And according to the Congressional Budget Office — this is the office that is supposed to be the independent referee for how things cost, it’s not supposed to be Democrat or Republican — according to the Congressional Budget Office, people buying health plans in the individual market right now, they’d see their premiums go down 14 to 20 percent. (Applause.) I already mentioned that.

Now, here’s another thing. A recent study by the Business Roundtable — that’s made up of all these big companies out there, they don’t — they’re nonpartisan, but it’s not like they’re just dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrats, let’s put it that way; these are company CEOs — they commissioned a study and said the reforms could reduce premiums by as much as $3,000 per employee. That’s their study, not mine.

Then the Congressional Budget Office said that the government would save a trillion dollars, reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. So think about it: You’re saving money, employers are saving money, the federal government is saving money — not according to me, but according to these studies that were done by independent analysts.

So here’s the bottom line, St. Charles. There’s no government takeover, unless you consider reining in insurance companies a government takeover — and I think that’s the right thing to do. (Applause.) There’s no cutting of Medicare benefits. There’s just cutting out fraud and waste in Medicare to make it stronger. (Applause.)

What we’re proposing is a common-sense approach to protecting you from insurance company abuses and saving you money. That’s the proposal, and it is paid for. And I believe that Congress owes the American people a final up or down vote on health care reform. (Applause.) The time for talk is over; it’s time to vote. (Applause.) It’s time to vote. Tired of talking about it. (Applause.)

Now, of course, folks in Washington, they like to talk. And so Washington is doing right now what Washington does. They’re speculating breathlessly, day or night, every columnist, every pundit, every talking head: “Is this proposal going to help the Republicans or is this proposal going to help the Democrats?” “What’s going to happen to the President’s poll numbers if the vote doesn’t go forward?” “If it does go forward?” “What will it mean for November?” “What will it mean for 2012?” “How’s the politics going to play?”

I heard the Republican Leader of the Senate the other day — he’s warning Democrats, you better be careful about voting for this; it could hurt you. I don’t know how sincere the Republican Leader is about the best interests of Democrats. (Laughter.) He’s been very generous with advice. (Laughter.)

You know what, here’s the bottom line, St. Charles. I don’t know how the politics play. I don’t know. This is a hard issue. It’s a complicated issue. There is a lot of information floating around out there. A lot of it is inaccurate. The opponents have spent millions of dollars fighting it. And people during recessionary times, they’re anxious and sort of thinking, gosh, can we really afford to change things right now? Maybe we should just kind of stick with the status quo, even though we know it’s not working for us.

So I don’t know how the politics plays. But here’s what I do know: The American people will be more secure with this reform. Our country will be stronger because of this reform. (Applause.) I don’t know about the politics. But I know it is the right thing to do, and that’s why I’m fighting so hard to get it done. (Applause.)

We’ve seen years — decades — where Washington just puts off dealing with our toughest challenges because it’s too hard, because we don’t know how the politics works. And the will and the capacity to act, to do serious things in this country, starts just getting sucked away. Just gets sacked by partisanship and political gamesmanship and debates about who’s up and who’s down, and how does this play politically — instead of asking what’s right and what’s wrong. And we’ve seen terrible consequences — not just these last two years of turmoil, but a decade of struggle for middle class families. (Applause.)

We can’t accept the status quo. We can’t accept the same old/same old. I won’t accept it. Claire McCaskill won’t accept it. Not when it comes to how we manage taxpayer dollars. Not when it comes to how our health care system works. Not when it comes to meeting the difficult challenges that we face. And that’s why Claire and I are fighting to stop waste and abuse in our government. That’s why Claire and I are fighting to pass these health insurance reforms. (Applause.) Now is the time. Now is the moment. Now is the time for us to leave for the next generation and generations to come a stronger and more prosperous country. We are not backing down. We are not quitting, St. Charles. And we are going to get this done. (Applause.)

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

On health care, Democrats 'should have started with single payer,' he alleges

Comedian and political commentator Bill Maher said Wednesday that President Obama's insistence on courting Republican votes on his legislative priorities has weakened his presidency and the outcome of health care reform.

"I think the biggest mistake that he has made in his first year was to put bipartisanship ahead of fixing the country," Maher declared Wednesday on MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann.

He said Obama should have "com[e] in with all the energy from the election and saying, you know what, we're in a crisis mode, I won this election by a sizable mandate -- here's what we're going to do; if you don't like it, Republicans, you can suck on it."

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The host of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher has for months skewered Democrats on his show as too timid and lacking the courage to fight for their beliefs. Last summer he famously said, "We don't have a left and a right party anymore" because "Democrats have moved the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital."

"They should have started with single payer," he told guest host Lawrence O'Donnell. "It's the one program that makes sense, but okay, we live in a country that doesn't make sense... If they had started from that, then the fall-back compromise position would have at least been the public option," Maher said, assailing Democrats for their ostensibly poor negotiation skills.

"I think [Democrats] wussied out on standing up [for] the things that were actually going to be cost-cutting," said the controversial but popular comedian.

But he added that "a quarter-loaf is better than none" and the current package, while flawed and unlikely to save much money, will save lives and is worth passing.

The comedian said he was baffled that it's acceptable for up to forty thousand people to die every year due to an inadequate medical system. "Can you imagine if that many people were dying in Iraq or Afghanistan -- or a terrorist attack?" he asked.

Arguing that Democrats should have framed the debate to warn people who are satisfied with their health insurance that their premiums would surge, Maher alleged that "Democrats need to use fear the way the Republicans use fear."

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday also critiqued the White House for not being forceful enough on health care and wasting months trying fruitlessly to recruit Republican support. Acknowledging Obama's more aggressive posture in recent weeks, Sanders said the president has "finally got that message."

This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast March 10, 2010.

Download video via RawReplay.com

Representative Patrick Kennedy denounced the "despicable" US media on Wednesday, charging it was snubbing a House debate on Afghanistan while lavishing attention on a congressional sex-scandal.

In an unusually angry outburst on the floor of the House of Representatives, Kennedy, the son of late Democratic icon Ted Kennedy, blamed reporters for the US public's cynicism and disengagement from public affairs.

"It's despicable, the national press corps right now," he thundered, taking aim at coverage of fellow Democrat Eric Massa, who resigned his House seat under an ethics cloud and allegations he sexually harassed male staffers.

"Cynicism is that there's one, two press people in this gallery. We're talking about Eric Massa 24/7 on the TV! We're talking about war and peace, three billion dollars, 1,000 lives and no press! No press!" said Kennedy, pointing to media seats that overlook the House floor.

The US public is angry at Congress "because of the press. The press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national importance, and that's the laying of lives down" in the Afghan war, he said.

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Kennedy's comments came as the House debated a resolution calling on President Barack Obama to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan within 30 days or, if he deems that too dangerous, by the end of the year.

Witnesses to Kennedy's speech said there were perhaps a dozen lawmakers on the House floor at the time.

Reporters often track congressional debates via the specialized C-SPAN television network, including on televisions in workspaces just feet from the seats overlooking the floor.

They also use specialized Internet sites, emailed statements, and other means that do not require sitting in the chamber.

This video is from C-SPAN, broadcast March 10, 2010.

Download video via RawReplay.com

With Wire Service

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When Juanita Goggins became the first black woman elected to the South Carolina Legislature in 1974, she was hailed as a trailblazer and twice visited the president at the White House.

Three decades later, she froze to death at age 75, a solitary figure living in a rented house four miles from the gleaming Statehouse dome.

Goggins, whose achievements included key legislation on school funding, kindergarten and class size, had become increasingly reclusive. She spent her final years turning down help from neighbors who knew little of her history-making past. Her body was not discovered for more than a week.

Those neighbors, as well as former colleagues and relatives, are now left wondering whether they could have done more to help.

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"I'm very saddened. People like her you want to see live forever. She had quite a gift for helping others," said state Sen. John Land, a fellow Democrat who was first elected to the House the same year as Goggins.

Goggins, the youngest of 10 children, grew up the daughter of a sharecropper in rural Anderson County, about 130 miles northwest of the capital. She was the only sibling to earn a four-year college degree. Her bachelor's in home economics from then-all-black South Carolina State College was followed by a master's degree.

She taught in the state's segregated schools, married a dentist and got into politics. In 1972, she became the first black woman to represent South Carolina as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Two years later, she became the first black woman appointed to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

"I am going to Columbia to be a legislator, not just a black spot in the House chambers," she told The Associated Press in 1974 following her victory over an incumbent white man from a district just south of Charlotte, N.C.

Voters "were weary of poor representation. They were ready to accept a person who was sincere and concerned about things. Those feelings go beyond color," Goggins said.

She sat on the powerful House budget-writing committee and was responsible for funding sickle-cell anemia testing in county health departments.

The former teacher also helped pass the 1977 law that is still the basis for education funding in the state. Her proposals to expand kindergarten and to reduce student-teacher ratios in the primary grades were adopted after she left politics in 1980, citing health issues.

"She was not bashful or anything. She liked to talk. I used to say she could sell an Eskimo ice," recalled Ilese Dixon, 88, of Pendleton, Goggins' last surviving sibling. "She was just lively and smart. She thought she could fix the world."

Her colleagues say they never learned the specifics of her illness and, since she didn't talk about it, they didn't press.

Several years after leaving the Legislature, Goggins divorced and then moved to Columbia in the early 1990s, renting the brick ranch house in a quiet neighborhood off North Main Street where she lived for 16 years.

Her son said she worked several years as a case manager for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, although a spokesman said the agency had no records of her employment. At one point, she also started a nonprofit tutoring service called the Juanita W. Goggins School of Excellence.

Neighbors said she was always a private person. One neighbor said she would return her waves, but refused to let visitors in the door.

Last year, about the same time the Legislature voted to name part of a state highway after her, Goggins was mugged near her home. She changed the locks on her door and stopped taking walks, according her neighbors and landlord.

Police found Goggins' body March 3 — two weeks after she was last seen. Her landlord contacted police after a next-door neighbor realized he had not seen her lights on in some time.

Coroner Gary Watts said she died of hypothermia, probably about Feb. 20, and said he found indications of dementia. When she died, during a cold snap, Goggins was wearing several layers of clothing, yet her heat was working at the time.

She had money to pay her bills, but the utility company said it shut off the electricity for nonpayment Feb. 23. Watts said it appeared Goggins was using Sterno to cook, but her stove was still functioning when police climbed through a window and found her.

"I miss her," said Erskine Hunter, an 83-year-old neighbor who ensured Goggins' lawn was mowed and hedges were trimmed. "I don't know why I didn't go over there and hammer on the door."

Hunter said Goggins occasionally came to his home and visited with his granddaughter. She refused to let anyone drive her anywhere, and refused rides to and from the bus stop, so he often went to the grocery store for her. But he had not done that in several months.

State Sen. John Scott, whose realty company owns Goggins' home, said he and his sister tried to take care of Goggins as best as they could without prying.

"We lost a great trailblazer," said Scott, a Democrat from Columbia. "Our family's very saddened this happened to a person who's given so much."

His sister who manages the property, Linda Marshall, said Goggins declined help from the county.

"She needed someone to assist her, but anyone who tried to get close, she'd block them off," she said. "She was very fragile. This was something I always dreaded."

Why she withdrew remains a mystery even to her son. He attributes it to her illness, which was never fully diagnosed.

"That's something I've been trying to get my head around for the last 15 years," said Horace Goggins Jr., 42, of Powder Springs, Ga.

He last saw her about six months ago. She would not let him help her either, he said.

He wants to focus on her accomplishments and the good times at his mother's funeral Friday in Rock Hill.

"I would like for her to be remembered as a woman who cared about her community," he said. "I want her to be remembered as a positive role model, not only for African-American girls, but also any young girl who has a want and a desire to make a change and do something positive."

Source: AP Features

While preparing a chapter for my next book, Is This America? (Cato Institute), on the effect of so many Americans in and out of school being unaware of their roots in the Constitution, I was startled by a replay of a March 2 video ad by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol.

In "Keep America Safe: Who Are the Al Qaeda Seven?" Cheney and Kristol, directors of keepamericasafe.com, find Attorney General Eric Holder guilty of hiring lawyers "who advocate for, or represented" detainees at Guantanamo. Is the Department of Justice, they charge, the Department of Jihad? "Who are these government officials? Call Eric Holder and tell him advocates for terrorist detainees do not Keep America Safe."

Calling these lawyers "The Al Qaeda Seven," the patriotic accusers ask: "What values do they share?"

The next day, the Justice Department's Information Service Center had a higher volume of calls than usual, many of which complained about the Al Qaeda Seven being on the government payroll. On the same day, Fox News reported that since the inflammatory video ad had condemned the Justice Department "for refusing to identify (the) seven lawyers," helpfully, "Fox News has uncovered (their) identities and ... the names were confirmed by a Justice Department spokesman."

I very much doubt that any of the defense lawyers who went, and still go, to Guantanamo have any thought of hiding. If I had a law degree, I would have joined them. As Air Force Col. Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo for two years, said of the Cheney-Kristol ad: "If you zealously represent a client, there's nothing shameful about that. That's the American way" (alan.com, March 2).

Resigned out of conscience

Col. Davis had resigned as chief prosecutor in an act of conscience. The colonel, later a defense witness in a case at Guantanamo, as I reported at the time, partially explained why he resigned by quoting directions he had received as chief prosecutor from Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II: "We can't have acquittals. We've been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions" (Washington Post, April 29, 2008).

Maybe Liz Cheney's father, Dick Cheney, vice president during Morris Davis' tenure and resignation as chief prosecutor, never told her why the colonel, awarded four Air Force service medals, believed his values as an American made it impossible for him to continue in a pseudo-judicial system.

Having lived through the reign of Sen. Joe McCarthy, I can imagine how zestfully he would have praised their Keep America Safe organization. And I expect that the subversives-hunting senator would have included in his long lists of Reds festering in the government the lawyers organized and sent to Guantanamo by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights and various law firms committed to safeguarding constitutional protections for prisoners held by us.

Researchers at the Seton Hall Law School found — using Defense Department records — that the majority of the detainees had no connections at all to al-Qaida. They had been captured by Afghanistan warlords and sold to us for handsome fees. Nonetheless, for years at Guantanamo, many had "military representatives" instead of the lawyers Cheney-Kristol have pilloried. And the military commission accepted "evidence" against some of them even though it was obtained through torture.

Was John Adams a turncoat?

Eventually, the Supreme Court (Boumediene v. Bush) ruled that the fundamental American right of habeas corpus applies to all detainees at Guantanamo. Among the lawyers leading to that decision were "The Al Qaeda Seven."

In angry reaction to the Cheney-Kristol ad, Col. Davis said, "You don't hear anyone refer to John Adams as a turncoat for representing the Brits in the Boston Massacre trial" (alan.com, March 2).

On March 5, 1770, civilians in a crowd harassing and threatening British troops were fired on, and five were killed. Among the defendants in a subsequent trial was the commander of the troops, Capt. Thomas Preston. At first, no lawyer in Boston would represent Preston or the other defendants on trial in Paul Revere's widely circulated description of this "horrid massacre." An exception was a young lawyer, John Adams, determined that this emerging new nation would be known for its justice under law.

Adams interviewed and presented eyewitnesses, and convinced the jury that Preston did not give the order to fire. He was acquitted. As a result, Adams later wrote, he himself had incurred "clamour and prejudices, anxiety and obloquy" that nonetheless prevented a "foul stain upon this country."

Had Cheney and Kristol's Keep America Safe been operating at the time, would they have gone after this young lawyer as a disgracefully unpatriotic Tory? If I were teaching a middle-school civics class, I'd open a discussion of what Adams did, along with the Guantanamo lawyers accused in a tape I'd play the "Al Qaeda Seven" ad on YouTube.

I am grateful to Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol for contributing to my forthcoming book, Is This America?

Congress believes it has the solution to America's epidemic of joblessness: a so-called jobs bill whose centerpiece is a tax credit for companies that hire one of the 15 million unemployed.

Many legislators from the Congressional Black Caucus criticize the bill for not going far enough. And they are right. It doesn't remove one of the many factors that has caused higher unemployment: a government-imposed minimum wage.

Today, black unemployment is almost 16 percent and was at a 25-year high, even as the overall unemployment rate declined from 10 percent to 9.7 percent.

Teenaged black males, whose unemployment rate is currently 44.9 percent, up from 39.2 in July (when the minimum wage hike took effect), have been hurt the most by the recession. In fact, November — five months after the wage hike — saw unemployment for this demographic reach 57.1 percent — the second highest rate on record at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Three years ago, then-Sen. Obama and prominent African-American organizations thought a hike in the minimum wage would empower minorities.

So how much should workers be paid? $100 per hour? $25 per hour? $7.25 per hour (the current federal rate)? Or zero? For 95 percent of workers a wage of a $100 per hour would be a significant raise. But most people understand that very few people would have jobs at a minimum wage of $100 per hour — so there are few, if any, advocates for that rate.

After a nine-year battle, when July's increase in the minimum wage took effect, the Democratic Policy Council declared, "This was a long overdue raise for American workers." Maybe for some workers, but the 3 million blacks currently unemployed are now feeling the pain.

The minimum wage hike has cost employers more, an additional $2.10 per hour, and forced employers to lay off many minimum-wage workers — most of them young people who had their first real job — causing for an overall rise in black unemployment.

Think back to when you were a teenager, and needed, or wanted some extra cash. Would you have been better off not getting a job at the set minimum wage, or would you have been better off getting a job at 20 percent less than the minimum wage at the time? It's hard to argue that no job is better than a lesser paying job.

These alarming unemployment figures have now prompted the Congressional Black Caucus and others who advocated for higher wages to fix their first mistake by asking the President and Congress to develop a job creation plan that targets areas of chronic unemployment.

Congress' latest jobs proposal, however, completely undermines the argument for a higher minimum wage. The logic for the tax credit is that if labor becomes cheaper, by way of a credit subsidy, businesses will hire more people. The cognitive dissonance on display is astounding.

Employers will hire more workers of any given experience and skill level when the cost of doing so is lower. The fact is, few people stay at the minimum wage for very long. Once they learn basic job skills — showing up on time, working hard, and the mechanics of the job they are doing — their value to their employers increases, which is reflected in higher wages.

It is unconscionable that these young people with relatively few skills are prevented from being productive members of society because politicians choose to ignore basic economics. The fastest and most straightforward way to empower minorities and reduce unemployment is to end the imposition of mandatory minimum wages at levels well above what the market can afford.

But, as is the case all too often in Washington, politics trumps rational argument and true compassion.

In 1968, weeks before his death, Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "If a man doesn't have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists."

In this case, the ones merely existing are the most disadvantaged, in particular, black male teenagers who pay the price with their forcible exclusion from the work force.

A federal judge retained her position that it is unconstitutional for Congress to prevent funding for the activist group ACORN after a government request that she reconsider.

U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon cemented her earlier decision in December and made the injunction against government intervention permanent, asking all federal agencies to spread the word that money to ACORN be allowed without delay.

The judge wrote that it was "unmistakable that Congress determined ACORN's guilt before defunding it." Congress may investigate ACORN but cannot "rely on the negative results of a congressional or executive report as a rationale to impose a broad, punitive funding ban on a specific, named organization."

The Center for Constitutional Rights had charged Congress in last year's case of violating the group's constitutional protections.

"This is why the Constitution contains a prohibition against Congress enacting a bill of attainder – to prevent Congress from acting as judge jury and executioner," said Jules Lobel, a cooperating attorney with the center.

Bill Quigley, legal director for the center, was equally pleased by the outcome.

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"We are pleased with the ruling made by Judge Nina Gershon today," Quigley said . "That Congress passed a budget, signed by President Obama, days after federal judge ruled bills of attainder unconstitutional shows just how intent these lawmakers are to target this one organization while violating their right to due process and freedom of association by targeting affiliated and allied organizations, as well. This is a rebuke of the smear tactics of the far right."

ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, describes itself as an advocate for low-income and minority home buyers and residents.

Critics of the group say it has engaged in voter registration fraud and embezzlement and has violated the tax-exempt status of some of its affiliates by engaging in partisan political activities.

The criticism turned to public outrage after a young conservative operative named James O'Keefe filmed himself dressed as a pimp while accompanying a woman posing as a prostitute and visited a number of ACORN offices asking for advice on how to hide his "business" in prostitution.

Of course, it turns out the tape was edited to produce the intended outcry: a Brooklyn District Attorney's Office found no criminal acts were committed by the ACORN employees.

Although accused of poor leadership, ACORN never merited what The Nation called "a rightwing witch hunt" reminiscent of a New McCarthyism.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

There is no compromise in sight for health care reform as pro-life Republican and Democrats refuse to support any bill that includes taxpayer dollars for abortions, much like the last time Democrats tried to push health care reform through Congress.

The current language is a compromise, and one that pro-choice advocates decry.

But Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said the language still doesn't go far enough.

Stupak has become the unofficial spokesman for Democrats opposed to the measure for its language on federal funding for abortions. He said at least 12 fellow House Democrats feel the way he does.

"There are some principals worth fighting for, and this is one of them," Stupak said. "Everyone's going around saying there's a compromise--there's no such thing."

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the current form of the health care bill meets Stupak's requirements, but his supporters disagree.

They object to the bill's language as broad enough to allow taxpayer-funded abortions through the federal Office of Personnel Management. And there's another way the bill would allow it, as well, according to Chuck Donovan, a senior research fellow in domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

The Senate bill allocates $11 billion toward the creation of community health centers in low-income areas. It's possible, Donovan said, they might try to help those low-income areas with abortions.

The bill must also pass the Senate again, and it's clear that Republicans mean to kill it there.

They are so intent on ending any chance of health care reform, they will side with pro-choice Democrats who say they will oppose the bill for lacking provisions for abortion funding.

“So you’d be voting with Barbara Boxer on an abortion measure?” a reporter asked Sen. Tom Coburn, the OB-GYN and Oklahoma Republican who vehemently opposes abortion rights, at a press conference this afternoon. Boxer, a California Democrat, is a vehement supporter of abortion rights.

“Yes I would. I certainly would,” Coburn said, clarifying that he would oppose a procedural motion in the Senate to allow the stricter ban on federal funding for abortion from being added to the Senate health reform bill.

Things are heating up in the Florida Republican primary race for the US Senate.

Charlie Crist told Fox News' Greta Susteren on Tuesday that his opponent Marco Rubio used a GOP credit card for a back wax, effectively charging it to the Republican Party of Florida.

Van Sustern: And sort of a punch back which occurred previously is that you have said about your opponent, Mr. Rubio, that he is the greatest fraud perpetrated. So it sounds like you have had a couple of punches back as well. Why do you say that?

Crist: Because he's trying to pawn himself off as a fiscal conservative. And yet just in reason weeks, two weeks ago it has come out in news accounts he had a Republican Party of Florida credit card that he charged $130 haircut, or maybe it was a back wax -- we are not sure what all he got at that place.

Of course, Rubio denied the accusation soon after. The campaign said Rubio never received a back wax at Churchill's Barber Shop, an upscale Miami salon. Though strangely, it also said Rubio reimbursed the Florida Republican Party for $134 charged to its credit card.

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"Charlie Crist's obsession with making up things about other people's grooming habits is bizarre for anyone, especially the sitting governor of Florida," campaign spokesman Alex Burgos told CNN.com.

Crist is "free-falling" in the polls, according to RedState.com, which suggested that Crist's statement was racist since his campaign has tried to make Rubio appear as Hispanic as possible.

The site asks readers to mail his campaign back wax to "help Charlie out."

Polls are split on the candidates' popularity among likely voters.

A March 5-8 poll released Tuesday by the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling firm showed former House Speaker Rubio leading Crist among likely Republican voters, 60 percent to 28 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent. It is an automated phone poll, often viewed as less reliable than surveys using live callers, but other recent polls have also shown Rubio leading by double digits.

Militants armed with guns and grenades stormed the offices of a US-based Christian charity in Pakistan on Wednesday, killing six aid workers in an attack blamed on Islamist rebels.

The gunmen stormed the World Vision building near the town of Oghi in the Mansehra district of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), where Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have waged a deadly campaign.

The aid group condemned the attack as "brutal and senseless", and indefinitely suspended all of World Vision?s operations in Pakistan, where it has about 300 staff.

World Vision said six Pakistani employees, including two women, were killed and seven others wounded when up to 15 gunmen arrived in pick-up vehicles and began firing on the aid workers.

"They gathered all of us in one room. The gunmen, some of whom had their faces covered, also snatched our mobile phones," said World Vision administration officer Mohammad Sajid, who was in the office at the time.

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"They dragged people one by one and shifted to an adjacent room and shot and killed them... After that one of them said: 'It is enough, we should leave now'. While leaving they lobbed grenades."

Rienk van Velzen, World Vision's regional communications director, told AFP by telephone from the Netherlands that all staff in the office were Pakistani.

"We have four male and two female staff members killed," he said.

The organisation has operated in the area since October 2005, when aid workers flooded into the northwest after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake killed more than 73,000 people and left about 3.5 million homeless.

But many charities have left the area, as Islamist violence has soared. In February 2008, four aid workers with British-based group Plan International were killed in a similar gun and grenade attack in Mansehra town.

Police officials said the militants on Wednesday opened fire and detonated hand grenades at the site near Oghi, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Islamabad, before disappearing into the mountains.

"Police rushed to the area after receiving information about the attack, but the attackers managed to flee," senior police officer Waqar Ahmed told AFP.

Ahmed blamed the attack on "the same people who are destroying our schools" -- a reference to Taliban militants opposed to co-education who have blown up hundreds of schools across the northwest in the past three years.

A wave of suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan has killed more than 3,000 people since 2007. Blame has fallen on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants bitterly opposed to the country's alliance with the United States.

But Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, said he was unaware of Wednesday's attack, telling AFP by telephone: "I have no knowledge about the incident and would not like to offer any comment."

World Vision's website describes the group as "a Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation" founded by a US reverend.

It says the aid group is "inspired by our Christian values", but stresses that the organisation does not proselytise or condition aid on faith.

The United Nations decided last year to relocate a limited number of its international staff from Pakistan because of security concerns.

The UN's World Food Programme office in Islamabad was attacked last October, with five workers killed in a suicide bombing.

On February 3, a bomb attack in NWFP killed three American soldiers and five other people at the opening of a school just rebuilt with Western funding after an Islamist attack.

In talks in Islamabad with Hamid Karzai, the president of neighbouring Afghanistan, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday called for a "Marshall Plan" to banish Taliban militancy from the two countries for good.

Afghanistan and Pakistan should "stand together and persuade the international community to devise a Marshall Plan for the region to banish the militancy and its effects for all time to come," Zardari said, referring to the US initiative launched in 1947 to rebuild western Europe after World War II.

The United States has tripled non-military aid to Pakistan to 7.5 billion dollars over the next five years as it tries to help stabilise the country. It also operates a covert drone war against militants in the northwest of Pakistan.

Two US missile strikes on Wednesday killed at least 12 militants in the tribal region of North Waziristan, officials said.

Talk show host Glenn Beck has made some enemies in a corner of American society where most Fox News pundits would prefer to have friends: The Christian community.

Beck has upset the socially-conscious, activist side of the Christian movement with comments last week that listeners should "run" from churches that talk about "social justice" because they are espousing ideas that came from communists and Nazis.

On his radio show last week, Beck told his audience that churches which use the expression "social justice" are following an extremist agenda.

"I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them ... are going to come under the ropes in the next year," Beck said. "I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

Download an audio clip of the segment here.

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Then, on his Fox News TV show, Beck explained why he felt so strongly about the issue.

"Both the communists, who are on the left -- they say -- you know, these are communists. And the Nazis are on the right," Beck said. "That's what people say. But they both subscribed to one philosophy, and they flew one banner. One had the hammer and sickle; the other was a swastika. But on each banner read the words, here in America, of this -- 'social justice.' They talked about economic justice, rights of the workers, redistribution of wealth, and surprisingly -- I love this -- democracy."

Beck's linking of socially conscious churches to communism and Nazism hasn't sat well with some Christian groups.

Bread for the World, a Christian group devoted to eradicating world hunger, has started a petition to demand that Beck stop spreading "misinformation and fear" through his radio and TV broadcasts.

"Economic and social justice are central to the gospel of Jesus Christ," the petition reads. "Quit using your bully pulpit to spread misinformation and fear by comparing faithful Christians who care 'for the least of these' to Nazis and communists."

The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, a group advocating -- among other things -- nuclear disarmament and responsible environmental policies, has started a campaign to raise money towards a video rebuking Beck's assertion.

"We are launching a campaign to reclaim love of neighbor, especially the least, last, and lost, as an Evangelical Christian value. We believe love is central to everything Jesus taught, and we think Glenn Beck needs to hear about it," the group stated on its Web site.

Beck has been railing against "progressive" churches for some time now. Last December, he said churches where preachers supported health care reform had been "infiltrated" by un-American ideas.

"If you see things that are now being preached about from the puplpit in many churches about health care, warning. Warning. Many churches have been infiltrated with this line of thinking that is absolutely against the freedoms that our founding fathers designed," Beck said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Wednesday assailed the White House for purportedly wasting a year vying for Republican votes on health care reform, alleging that the protracted debate weakened the bill and damaged the party’s standing among progressives.

“We have wasted month after month negotiating with people who do not support serious reform,” he said at a progressive media summit on Capitol Hill. "It's been a year now and I think the White House finally got that message."

President Obama advocated for a bipartisan bill last year and worked extensively to court Republican votes, offering major concessions in the process. But only one Republican – Rep. Joseph Cao (LA) – in Congress wound up voting for it, and even he has since backed out.

But Obama has struck a more aggressive tone in recent weeks, demanding an up-or-down vote on the health care bill and championing the use of reconciliation to amend it. Better late than never, said Sanders, who also claimed Democrats made a strategic blunder by ignoring the single-payer option.

"I think [Sen. Max] Baucus [(D-MT)] made a mistake and would admit it when he said single payer was not on the table," the senator said.

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A self-described Democratic socialist, Sanders is an ardent proponent of a Medicare for all insurance system. He ripped Democrats in his speech for refusing to seriously consider the idea -- if even to use it as a bargaining chip for a stronger bill -- noting that it has support among millions of progressives.

The Vermont senator blamed the White House in part for the Democratic timidity, alleging Obama should have focused on the substance of the bill "from day one," rather than dwelling on the elusive goal of bipartisanship.

He said the senate has 50 votes to pass strong health care legislation and urged Democrats to move forward aggressively with the proposal, describing it as flawed but nonetheless an important step forward.

GENEVA — The UN's independent expert on torture on Wednesday criticised the Obama administration for not investigating allegations of torture made when president George W. Bush was in power.

"This is my criticism of the Obama administration: There is not enough done to remedy what has been done in the past," Manfred Nowak, UN special rapporteur on torture, told journalists.

"I think it's a legal question," he said.

"The US are a part of the UN Convention against Torture, but there are very clear legal obligations -- wherever you have indications, complaints about torture, then you have to investigate them independently and effectively."

Claims of torture and secret detention of suspects arose while the Bush administration was waging its "war on terror".

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These included extraordinary renditions, which involved abducting suspects without legal proceedings, and taking them to foreign countries or secret CIA prisons to be interrogated.

Human rights groups believe that these detainees were taken to countries where torture was practised, but the Bush administration claimed it never took a prisoner to a foreign country without first being assured that no torture would be used.

Shortly after the change in administration in the UNited States, Nowak had renewed his call for the prosecution of US officials and military staff who might have been involved in the ill-treatment of terror detainees.

Nowak stressed that President Barack Obama and his administration had a "domestic obligation" to investigate complaints thoroughly, and to bring perpetrators to justice as well as to offer compensation to victims.

Overall, Nowak said that he had "deep respect" for Obama's policy of change.

"I do think that much of it has been implemented," he said, noting that even though Guantanamo Bay prison has yet to be shut, the blame did not fall squarely on Obama's shoulders.

"We have major obstruction from the US Congress, and he didn't receive the support from European allies," he added.

Obama had vowed during the 2008 presidential campaign to close the notorious detention camp, and signed an executive order within two days of taking office.

However, the closure has been held up while the administration seeks host countries that are ready to provide refuge for some of the detainees.

Nowak said that Washington's fight against terrorism as well as its allies' reaction were "undermining the absolute prohibition of torture".

Even though Obama was changing the policy, the damage had been done and would take "many many years" to undo, he added.

Many law enforcement officers called up to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan are finding it difficult to readjust to their jobs once home, bringing back heightened survival instincts that may make them quicker to use force and showing less patience toward the people they serve.

In interviews with The Associated Press and in dozens of anecdotes compiled in a survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance, officers described feeling compelled to use tactics they employed in war zones after they returned to work in the U.S.

One officer said he felt compelled to fire his gun in the air to disperse an unruly crowd in California. Others said they felt wary about being flanked when working crowd control. And others said after seeing the hardships ordinary Afghans and Iraqis lived with, it's hard to care about complaints over pet droppings.

The report, which was issued late last year, warns that the blurring of the line between combat and confrontations with criminal suspects at home may result in "inappropriate decisions and actions — particularly in the use of ... force. This similarity ... could result in injury or death to an innocent civilian."

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Americans and their lawmakers are dramatically out of sync on health care, with large majorities of people looking for bipartisan cooperation that's nowhere in sight.

A new Associated Press-GfK Poll finds a widespread hunger for improvements to the health care system, which suggests President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies have a political opening to push their plan. Half of all Americans say health care should be changed a lot or "a great deal," and only 4 percent say it shouldn't be changed at all.

But they don't like the way the debate is playing out in Washington, where GOP lawmakers unanimously oppose the Obama-backed legislation and Democrats are struggling to pass it by themselves with narrow House and Senate majorities.

More than four in five Americans say it's important that any health care plan have support from both parties. And 68 percent say the president and congressional Democrats should keep trying to cut a deal with Republicans rather than pass a bill with no GOP support.

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Michael Mukasey, President George W. Bush's last attorney general, has added his voice to a growing conservative chorus of condemnation against Liz Cheney's attacks on Department of Justice lawyers who represented Guantanamo Bay detainees.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Mukasey argues that an ad from Keep America Safe, the pressure group headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter, is part of a "shoddy and dangerous" trend of politicizing the work of lawyers.

"It is plainly prudent for us to assure that no government lawyers are bringing to their public jobs any agenda driven by views other than those that would permit full-hearted enforcement of laws," Mukasey wrote.

"But that prudence is not properly exercised by arguing that lawyers who defended drug cases, or worked on defense teams in death-penalty cases, or helped bring legal proceedings in behalf of those detained as terrorists, are automatically to be identified with their former clients and regarded as a fifth column within the Justice Department."

Mukasey drew parallels between the attacks on what Keep America Safe calls the "Al Qaeda Seven" to the controversy swirling over torture memo authors Jay Bybee and John Yoo. The former attorney general argued that attracting good lawyers to the Justice Department means bringing in people who have worked on controversial cases.

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"If the Department of Justice comes to attract only lawyers who have spent their professional energy principally in avoiding matters of controversy, the quality of lawyers willing to serve at the department will decline, and the department will suffer, as will we all," Mukasey concluded.

Mukasey's voice is the latest among conservatives to criticize the Keep America Safe campaign, which has attracted plenty of coverage in the mainstream media.

The New York Times noted on Tuesday that even Yoo himself objected to the campaign, though for different reasons than Mukasey's.

“What’s the big whoop?” Yoo asked, as quoted at the Times. “The Constitution makes the president the chief law enforcement officer. We had an election. President Obama has softer policies on terror than his predecessor.”

Yoo added that the president "can and should put people into office who share his views,” and the public can then "decide whether they agree with him or not.”

Earlier this week, 19 former members of the Bush administration signed a letter condemning Liz Cheney's group for launching the attack. Among the signatories was Ken Starr, the lawyer known best for his turn as special prosecutor investigating the Clinton administration.

"This was very unwise, and really an out-of-bounds characterization and challenge to good, honorable lawyers," Starr said on MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann. He called the ads "unfortunate" and "ill-conceived."

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham also attacked the Keep America Safe ad.

"This system of justice that we're so proud of in America requires the unpopular to have an advocate and every time a defense lawyer fights to make the government do their job, that defense lawyer has made us all safer," he told The Cable.

The battle over health care reform is not only pitting liberals against conservatives but also stirring up old feuds on the left.

In an appearance Tuesday on MSNBC's Countdown, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas criticized Rep. Dennis Kucinich's threat to vote against health care reform legislation as "a very Ralph Nader-esque approach to politics" and indicated that he would consider such a vote to be legitimate grounds for a primary challenge.

"It's not perfect," Moulitsas said of the current health care legislation, "but it's a first step, and God knows it's taken us a long time to even get our toe in the door. ... If somebody like Kucinich wants to block that, I find that completely reprehensible."

In an appearance on Countdown the previous night, Kucinich had called the current bill "a giveaway to the insurance industry" and reaffirmed his position that he "couldn't support the bill if it didn't have a robust public option and at least if it didn't have something that was going to protect consumers from these rampant premium increases."

"If that sounded like a no [vote], you're correct," Kucinich told guest host Lawrence O'Donnell.

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"Ralph Nader paved the way for eight years of George Bush," Moulitsas explained to O'Donnell on Tuesday, referring to Nader's third-party campaign for president in 2000. "I'm going to hold people like Dennis Kucinich responsible for the 40,000 Americans that die each year from a lack of health care."

"Is it reprehensible enough to mount a primary challenge against him?" O'Donnell asked. "Is it possible to be too liberal?"

"Absolutely," Moulitsas responded. "I don't think he gets a pass. I don't care what his excuse is. ... He"s not elected to grandstand and to give us his ideal utopian society. ... He's not representing the uninsured constituents in his district by pretending to take the high ground here. ... I think that's the perfect excuse and rationale for a primary challenge."

Animosity from Moulitsas towards Kucinich goes back many years. In early 2007, when the possibility of a Kucinich presidential campaign was being raised, the blogger wrote, "When talking about Kucinich, I usually leave it at 'ugh'. I've found that much kinder than actually getting into Kucinich's record."

He then proceeded to sum up a decade's worth of attacks on Kucinich's more utopian positions, concluding, "He used his 2004 run for president to score dates. Luckily, he's married this time around so we'll be spared that pathetic display of desperation."

Moulitsas himself, however, might be accused of empty grandstanding on this occasion, since -- in the words of an ascerbic post by blogger David Dayen at FireDogLake -- there is "one flaw in the brilliant plan."

"The Ohio primary takes place on May 4, and the filing deadline for candidates was February 18," Dayen notes. "Kucinich has no Democratic challenger. ... In addition, as Markos well knows (and I don’t blame him for being baited into an answer about a primary challenge which is physically impossible; Lawrence O’Donnell needs a researcher) it’s pretty difficult putting together a primary challenge. ... In fact, they often take multiple cycles."

But one diarist at Daily Kos reacted with far greater dismay to the attack on Kucinich, calling it, "the night the left in America died."

"It looks like the purge of the left and the final push for the corporate-care insurance bill is on," writes poplist2003. "Topping it all off was the astonishing attack on Dennis Kucinich tonight by Markos on the Countdown show, culminating in a call for a primary challenge (presumably by a nice centrist corporate 'Democrat' – how about Harold Ford?) to Kucinich. (Would Keith have tee’d up that assault the way that Lawrence O'Donnell did?) ... The bill itself is bad enough. But what is truly tragic is the way that nominally progressive entities are turning on the most progressive members of their own party."

This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast March 9, 2010.

Download video via RawReplay.com

They plan to become doctors, researchers and professors, but these students from Liberty University, an evangelical school, also believe God created the Earth in a week, some 6,000 years ago.

Each year, a group of biology students at the Christian university based in Lynchburg, Virginia, travels to the Natural History Museum in Washington to learn about a theory they dismiss as incorrect -- Darwin's theory of evolution.

The young "creationists" examined a model of the Morganucodon rat, believed to be the first and common ancestor of mammals that appeared some 210 million years ago.

Lauren Dunn, 19, a second-year biology student, was unimpressed.

"210 million years, that's arbitrary. They put that time to make up for what they don't know," she said.

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Nathan Hubbard, a 20-year-old from Michigan and a first-year biology major who plans to become a doctor, regarded the model with suspicion.

"There is no scientific, biological genetic way that this, this rat, could become you," he said, seemingly scandalized by the proposition.

Liberty University is the most prominent evangelical university in the United States, with some 12,000 students who adhere to strict rules and regulations regarding moral conduct.

Its biology curriculum includes a course on "Young Earth Creationism", which juxtaposes Charles Darwin's "Origin of the Species" with the Book of Genesis.

"In order to be the best creationist, you have to be the best evolutionist you can be," said Marcus Ross, who teaches paleontology and says of Adam and Eve: "I feel they were real people, they were the first people."

David DeWitt, a Liberty University biology professor, opens his classes with a prayer, asking God to help him teach his students.

"I pray that you help me to teach effectively and help the students to learn and defend their faith," he says.

Strongly-expressed faith is not unusual in the United States, a country where 80 percent of the population claim to believe in God and ascribe to established religions.

Polls taken in the last two years found that between 44 and 46 percent of Americans believe that the Earth was created in a week, somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.

Creationism, an increasingly popular theory in the United States and elsewhere in the world, rejects Darwin's theory that all living species evolved over the course of billions of years via the process of natural selection.

The school of thought has adherents among Jehovah's Witnesses and some fundamentalist Muslims, but in the United States it has won most converts in the evangelical Christian community.

Former president George W. Bush, a born-again Christian, is among those who say evolutionary theory does not fully explain the Earth's creation, though the ex-president also noted he is not a "literalist" when it comes to the Bible.

Creationist belief has implications for the way people understand a variety of fields, including biology, paleontology and astronomy, but also impacts questions about climate change and educational debates.

At the Smithsonian Institute, among crowds of weekend visitors, the Liberty University students visited the evolution exhibition,.

But Darwin's explanation for why giraffes have long necks -- that they evolved over time so they could reach higher foliage -- and displays of fossil evidence failed to sway them.

"Creationism and evolutionism have different ways of explaining the evidence. The creationist way recognizes the importance of Biblical records," said Ross.

He teaches his students that dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the Earth some 4,000 to 5,000 years ago during the Biblical flood that Noah survived by building an ark.

He says carbon-dating techniques that have been used to suggest the Earth is in fact billions of years old are simply not reliable.

He doesn't reject one prominent theory that dinosaurs were wiped out by a massive asteroid that collided into Earth, but suggests the collision coincided with the Biblical flood.

Though Ross acknowledges that the United States is among the most welcoming environments in the world for creationists, he said it can be difficult to convince people to take him and his beliefs seriously.

"The attitude is when you are a creationist you are ignorant of the facts," he said.

Transportation Security Administration no stranger to lobbying or political donations. Dave Levinthal http://www.opensecrets.org/news

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told the White House on Sunday that there is only one way to close Guantánamo Bay: by abandoning civilian 9/11 trials.

Graham said Sunday that if the White House agrees to try self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators in military tribunals, he will help the president get the votes needed to close the Guantánamo Bay prison facilities.

“We would be better off as a nation,” said Graham, “if we could close Gitmo safely and start a new prison that he could use—that the world would see as a better way to do business.” But even with Graham on board, Guantánamo is far from closed.

“I think if we could get Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the co-conspiracies of 9/11 back in the military commission,” Graham said. He added that “it would go down well with the public.”

“But I am going to need Gen. [David] l Petraeus, Admiral Mullen, people not in public office. I’m going to need people from the Bush administration to try to close Gitmo, to put aside partisanship, rally around this president, stand by his side and say, let’s close Gitmo safely.”

President Obama signed an executive order shortly after he was sworn into office to shut Guantánamo within one year. He failed to meet that deadline.

Graham is not in sync with Republicans on this issue.

“Those who want to waterboard on the right and believe that we should keep Gitmo open forever and use any technique to get information, I think they’re equally off base,” said Graham.

“I’m getting a lot of grief,” Graham told Bob Schieffer, host of CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” “because I do believe it’s best to close Gitmo safely.” Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell shot down the idea of closing Guantánamo and moving detainees to a near-vacant maximum-security prison in Thomson, Ill.

“When a foreign national terrorist is captured,” said McConnell, “in the United States like the Christmas bomber, or overseas—he should be sent to Guantánamo, detained there, interrogated there, and the case adjudicated there. They should be treated as military prisoners, not like U.S. citizens.”

Graham’s comments also contrasted fellow Republican Rep. Lamar Smith.  On Friday Smith said, “Guantánamo Bay is best equipped for the detention and prosecution of terrorists, not a prison inside the U.S.”

Since he was sworn in, President Obama was told by his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, that closing Guantánamo will be impossible without Graham’s support.

Emanuel has been talking to Graham for a while about this issue.  Emanuel favored a military trial for 9/11 detainees and persuaded Holder and Graham, opponents on the issue, to talk.

Emanuel saw Graham as the link to close the much debated prison. “You can’t close Guantánamo without Senator Graham,” he told the New York Times.

If the Obama Administration agrees to the compromise offered by Graham, it would be a complete reversal of the course Attorney General Eric Holder started in November when he announced that the 9/11 trials would be held in a lower Manhattan courthouse in New York City.

Graham told “Face the Nation’s” Schieffer that the ACLU theory was as “equally off base” as the right wing theory.

The ACLU channeled its frustration about the possibility of Obama reversing holding by taking out a full-page ad in Sunday’s of the New York Times that depicted President Obama morphing into former-President George W. Bush. The message was clear: Change or More of the Same?

“Three is the number of people,” said an ACLU statement released Friday, “who have been convicted in the military commissions system. Two of the men convicted in the military commission system are free today.”

A report released by the Justice Department confirmed more than 300 people were prosecuted and convicted for terrorism or terrorism related crimes in civilian courts, a fact the ACLU has been reminding lawmakers and the public about for some time.

“Military commissions are incredibly inept,” said Ben Wizner, an ACLU attorney. “The most basic aspects of trial process were contested down there.  The military commission system is not only unjust, but incapable of handling a complex federal trial like the 9/11 trial.”

“This narrative plays into the hands of terrorists,” said Wizner.

“The biggest supporter in the world of military commissions is KSM,” said Wizner. “If you read his combatant status review transcript from Guantánamo, he is very, very delighted to be treated as an enemy combatant, and to address US military officers as equals. They’re proud to declare that they’re enemy combatants.”

In an apparent policy reversal on Friday, White House officials anonymously suggested that military commissions are under more serious consideration the 9/11 terror trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-conspirators.  But the decision is reportedly still weeks away.

Joshua Durkin is a staff writer for The Public Record based in Connecticut. He can be reached at joshua.durkin@pubrecord.org