As a person who is and will be directly affected by the decisions of the 'death panels' {I am 81 and my husband is 84] I am appalled at the entrenched and shameless demagoguery of our current congress. They feel we should die quickly and quietly so that they can use our Medicare funds to help those helpless folks who want Botox injections, acupuncture and facelifts for free to help them face up to a cruel world.

Not only that. Apparently the unspeakable Harry Reid has included a proviso that none of the corrupt provisions in this incredibly corrupt and self-serving law can be changed by future Congresses. This is patently un-Constitutional.

I think they're 'going to catch cold' with that. Liberty is not yet quite dead. And some members of the Supreme Court still have backbones.

Marianne Matthews

Critical mass is near. It doesn't take that many people who are angry enough to get a revolution going. We are very very close. I want a new constitution. No professional politicians allowed. No lifetime government employees. No lawyers allowed to make law. There. Fixed everything. So simnple.

The democrat chair ruled that this was a change in procedure, not in the rules. A republican chair can rule that it was a change in the rules of the Senate not a change in procedure and thus not valid.

It just proves Harry Reid is an idiot, a fascist idiot.

Heartily DISAGREE! The statists have been at this since FDR, without respite. Not a single major piece of New Deal or Great Society failde legislation has been repealed in that time. The current health care fiasco is just the most recent and blatant attempt to secure control over the liberty and prosperity of this country's citizens, the majority of whom want no part of Obama/Reid/Pelosi Care.

When the government wars on its own citizens through irrepealable legislation, ignoring Constutional protections; while openly threatening the outcome of fair elections with known thuggery and planned deceipt, its past time for the citizenry to stop with the hand-wringing and extemporizing and instead, plan for agressively taking back the government from the BGs!!!!

follow-up from American Power blog:

"America's Socialist Revolution
From Matt Patterson, "The Socialist Revolution Has Come to America"

Many will tell you that it was the financial crisis that led to the election of Obama in 2008. It is certainly true that John McCain’s erratic response to that meltdown did nothing to enhance his chances. But the Republican goose was cooked long before Lehman by years of war, seemingly endless reports of our soldiers struggling valiantly to hold back chaos in faraway lands for reasons that were growing less clear by the day, and a Republican president who seemed frighteningly inarticulate and uncomprehending throughout. The public had simply had enough.

Into this breech stepped a charming, charismatic, seemingly moderate Democrat (he even promised tax cuts!). Barack Obama made everyone feel good — about him, about themselves, about themselves for supporting him. And America wanted, needed to feel good again; they had spilled too much blood, had too much of their own blood spilled, in the preceding eight years.

A Republican Party in tatters, a nation exhausted and desperate. Are there any other conditions under which the American people could have turned to a man like Barack Obama? For just under the smooth, smiling facade lurked a man of deep allegiance to the radical left, counting among his associates both an avowed terrorist and a raving radical preacher.

But Americans didn’t want to hear it and the media obliged them. The ideologue was soon ensconced in the White House, where he acted swiftly to upend the entirety of American society through a comprehensive, two-pronged assault:

1. The government moved to take greater control of medical care and thus one-sixth of our entire economy. The excuse? Some people don’t have insurance, don’t you know? What are the details? Good question: specifics hatched in back rooms behind closed doors, utterly incomprehensible bills that may as well be carved in hieroglyphics. What will it mean for you? Why, whatever they want it to mean, of course.

2. Efforts to criminalize a particular naturally occurring compound, CO2, picked up pace. Why have they so singled out this substance? Because it is a byproduct of work and, indeed, life itself — every time you turn on your heater, every time you drive to work, every time you sit down to eat: don’t you know these sinful behaviors must be curbed, because you are “poisoning the planet” with your every move?

Success in this double strategy would amount to nothing less than a socialist revolution. A revolution of legislative opacity and bureaucratic fiat, to be sure, but a revolution just the same, for there is literally no part of your existence they couldn’t justify controlling under the cover of “health care” and “emissions” reform. Resistance would be met at first with peaceable punishments, fines and such. But the history of such revolutions shows that, sooner or later, they enforce their dictates with bars and boots.

Think it can’t happen here? History is littered with the wreckage of free states that gave way, sometimes with a scream, often with a whimper, to autocracy and absolutism. The city that gave birth to the world’s first and greatest republic was also home to Caesar and Mussolini.

America is not immune to these forces. The tides of history are inexorable and sooner or later pull every edifice into the sea."

At some future date: The EPA announced today that due to the threat not only to National Security, but to the worlds environmental crises that stringent new guide lines would be enacted to control carbon dioxide emission from humans. This will result in the need for all Americans to have at their next mandated health review, a heart pacer installed. When carbon levels surpass limits in any district, monitors will dial back the heart rate to control breathing and emissions in effected area's. Thankfully those that live in Chicago and Washington D.C. will not face these measures, as the carbon dioxide levels in these areas have never been a problem.

Who are these people that believe they can pass a bill or rule that never can be changed?

I think even the most dim-witted leftist/democrat/progressive would grasp that this cannot be done.

I strongly suggest they/we KEEP DIGGING. It's entirely possible that this fiasco was a well planned effort to hide something else! Reid and company KNOW this is un-Constitutional and they knew it would be discovered quickly. The discoverers would then make a major public stink that goes on for months and, all the while, another serious loss of liberty goes unnoticed. A major distraction to hide the really good stuff.

KEEP DIGGING!!

I'm compelled to disagree...

They are leaving us no choice. If we want the power to decide whether or not we should buy a good or service, we're going to have to revolt. The Supreme Court isn't going to call them out on it and there's no way it will get any better later.

I seriously just hope the military sees this for what it is and takes the side of freedom.

If you have buddies in the military, it might be time to talk to them and remind them of their oath.

Tyranny! If only there was some method that ordinary Americans could use to determine who is running the government. It could be done regularly, like 2006 and 2008 or something like that. Then the government would know the will of the American people.

Actually, it IS tyranny...

Even though a majority elected those who are in office, there are limits to what they can impose on others. Just because they were elected does not mean they can force (first through fines, then from the barrel of a gun) you or I to buy something we do not wish to buy.

And it this makes no difference to whether I agree that we should all have health insurance or not. Imagine what the next (likely Republican) president/congress could do with that power.

You could be required to buy stock in an oil company, for example. After this goes through, there will be a previous example of an administration doing the exact same thing with a different good or service, so there's no reason they couldn't do it with oil stock.

Can't you see the future problems of stuff like this?