A group of "leading conservative lawyers" -- a phrase never confused with "U.S. Marines" -- has produced an embarrassingly pompous letter denouncing Liz Cheney for demanding the names of attorneys at the Justice Department who formerly represented Guantanamo detainees.

The letter calls Cheney's demand "shameful," before unleashing this steaming pile of idiocy:

"The American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams' representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre."

Yes, but even John Adams didn't take a job with the government for another 19 years after defending the British guards -- who, in 1770, were "the police." He also didn't take a position with the U.S. government that involved processing British murder suspects.

I'd be more interested in hearing about the sacred duty of lawyers to defend "unpopular clients" if we were talking about clients who are unpopular with anyone lawyers know.

Every white shoe law firm in the country has been clamoring to take the cases of Guantanamo detainees, while young associates line up to be put on the case. This is even more fun than defending Ted Bundy!

As The Wall Street Journal put it in a 2007 article, a list of the law firms representing Guantanamo detainees "reads like a who's who of America's most prestigious law firms" -- which conveniently doubles as Santa's "naughty" list.

At least 34 of the 50 largest firms in the United States have performed pro bono work on behalf of Guantanamo detainees.

Years ago, when I nearly died of boredom working for a law firm, I heard whispered rumors about a partner, Michael Tierney, whom none of the female associates wanted to work with because his pro bono work included defending -- gasp! -- pro-life groups. (There was at least one female associate who wanted to work with him!)

I didn't hear a peep about the august "American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients" back then.

Like Hollywood actresses, lawyers need to believe they're noble and courageous to help them forget that they are corporate drones doing soul-destroying work, which mostly consists of making photocopies.

Defending terrorists gives status-conscious attorneys a chance to get standing ovations at the annual ABA convention -- much like promoting "global warming" makes climatologists feel like they're saving the world, rather than studying water vapor.

It took me exactly one Nexis search for "ABA," "award" and "Guantanamo" to find that the 2006 "Outstanding Scholar Award" at the ABA annual banquet was given to New York University law professor Anthony G. Amsterdam for his "extensive pro bono practice, litigating cases that range from civil rights claims, to death penalty defense, to claims of access to the courts for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay."

A rule I have is: You're not defending an unpopular client if you're getting awards from the ABA, particularly if the award mentions "courage."

You'll never see a pompous letter like the one attacking Liz Cheney on behalf of any lawyer defending clients who are unpopular with lawyers, which terrorists are not.

Ken Starr, a signatory to the "Please God, Let This Get Me a Good Obituary in The New York Times" letter, once, totally by mistake, had a case unpopular with the establishment: Bill Clinton's impeachment.

He's shown his mettle by saying that if he met Clinton today, he'd say "I'm sorry." Because isn't that what Jesus said? Be very concerned with the opinion of the world!

Speaking of which, I also never heard any testimonials to the sacred duty of lawyers to defend unpopular causes when every lawyer working on the Clinton impeachment was being smeared as a "tobacco lawyer."

Tobacco companies, being wildly unpopular, are in need of a lot of legal services. Scratch any litigator from a big law firm and you'll find someone who, if necessary, could be slimed as a "tobacco lawyer."

You will notice a pattern developing: We only hear paeans to the "American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients" when it's being used to defend causes popular with liberals -- serial killers, terrorists and a horny hick who promised to save partial-birth abortion.

Lawyers want to be congratulated for their courage in defending "unpopular" clients, while taking cases that are utterly noncontroversial in their social circles.

They'd be scared to death to take the case of an anti-abortion activist. Defending the guy who killed George Tiller the Baby Killer won't make them a superstar at the next ABA convention.

Not only do Americans have a right to know the legal backgrounds of lawyers setting detainee policy at the Department of Justice, but I personally demand the right not to have to listen to Eddie Haskell lawyers constantly claiming to be Atticus Finch.

President Barack Obama obviously has no qualms about slandering people or industries that interfere with his agenda. In the same creepy manner he defamed the Cambridge Police Department without benefit of the facts, he is scapegoating the insurance companies based on his distorted version of facts.

In the past week, he has ratcheted up his war on insurance companies, who, he apparently figures, must be destroyed if he is to accomplish his Utopian dream of socialized health care. He made them the focus of his wrath again, in his umpteenth health care speech, Monday in Philadelphia. Even the White House blog, in a post titled "Moving Forward to Put the American People Ahead of Insurance Companies," frames this debate as between insurance companies and the people.

Who is Obama to be smearing health insurance companies for allegedly bankrupting people to increase their profits when his policy agenda is already bankrupting America to increase government power? As the late Milton Friedman asked the clueless leftist Phil Donahue, "Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?"

It's not the insurance industry versus the American people; it is Obama's socialist leviathan versus the American people, with the insurance companies as necessary collateral damage.

Is it fair to accuse the insurance companies of arbitrariness when they refuse to cover what their contracts don't require them to cover? And isn't Obama implying that if the government were to take full control over health care, there would be no denial of coverage? We don't have to wait for his plan to take effect to know that's false. Everyone, including Obama, is aware of Medicare's denying or reducing reimbursements so drastically that an increasing number of doctors are refusing Medicare patients. Does he call that arbitrary?

In addition, whether or not you bristle at those suggesting Obamacare would usher in death panels, you are in fantasyland if you think Obamacare doesn't contemplate increased rationing -- by the government.

What's the difference between that and an insurance company's denying coverage? Well, it's worse for the government to do it, actually. The government's coverage decisions would be dictated not by a private and at least somewhat consensual contract, but by the fiat of a largely unaccountable bureaucrat whose authority would be derived from powers delegated to him by whatever administrative bodies Congress might outsource to do its dirty work. The bureaucrat's charge would not be to infuse compassion in his decision, but to coldly cut costs. Read the Democratic bills!

Though I don't belong to the "Obama is a genius" school, I know he's smart enough to realize that insurance company profits are but a fraction of rising health care costs and that it's grossly misleading to make insurers the primary villains. This is simply Chicago politics writ large in a last-gasp effort to enslave us with government health care.

Obama is also dishonest in portraying his still-unwritten plan as middle-of-the-road between the extreme position of those who want socialized medicine and the extreme position of those who want to relax all regulations on the health insurance industry and just pass reforms in "baby steps."

First, he is intentionally mischaracterizing the Republicans' position. They don't advocate baby steps, but a series of market reforms that would not entail restructuring the entire system under government control.

Nor do they want to relax all regulations on insurance companies. They do want to remove some of the coverage mandates, not for the purpose of helping insurers, but to benefit consumers, who ultimately would have to bear the costs of elective procedures for others. Republicans also want to relax arbitrary laws preventing consumers from buying across state lines.

Further, Obama is misrepresenting his own plan as centrist and a composite of Democratic and Republican ideas. It is the last thing from centrist. His plan contemplates -- and would eventuate in -- full-blown government control, which is also deliberate and which he's on record advocating.

He has rejected outright all Republican ideas except for tort reform and "fraud and abuse." But he is just pretending to support tort reform with some meaningless smoke and mirrors. As for fraud and abuse, it's revealing that he would credit Republicans with a franchise on the concept, but his lip service promise to curb it is just more cynical sophistry. He already has a track record on this with his stimulus plan. Enough said.

Everything about this unprecedented federal power grab stinks, not least of which are the highhanded, unconstitutional and otherwise illegal methods Obama is explicitly advocating to pass this monstrosity over the informed will of the American people. We must pray he fails.

President Barack Obama's obsessive, opportunistic demonization of insurance companies in his quest to pass his not-yet-written health care proposal is growing tiresome. Aren't you getting sick of a president attacking American citizens and businesses as if they -- not Obama's beloved government -- were the enemy?

His repeated implication that insurance companies are the primary reason for rising health care costs is politically expedient, but it's still untrue. Government is the main culprit.

Throughout his yearlong push for Obamacare, he has called insurance companies every name in the book. He has blamed them for soaring costs, bludgeoned them for taking profits, condemned their executives' salaries and savaged them for denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

He even says insurers are the final arbiters of who gets care and who doesn't: "And insurance companies freely ration health care based on who's sick and who's healthy, who can pay and who can't."

Obama has framed the entire debate as if it were an insurance problem. In his theatrical speech Wednesday -- while flanked from all sides by white-coated props -- he said, "We began our push to reform health insurance last March," as if the thrust of his health care efforts has been to rein in insurers and little else.

Though Obama surely hates insurance companies, we all know he is up to much more than just punishing them. This is about a government takeover, even if it takes several incremental steps. Vilifying insurers sells better than glorifying government to a center-right nation generally suspicious of government.

To blame insurers for increasing costs is to imply they are guilty of some kind of collusion or price fixing. Does Obama really believe we have an evil insurance cartel in America?

Could it be that their rates are symptomatic of higher health care costs rather than the main driver of those costs? That said, aren't we likelier to see more competitive rates if we relax onerous regulations, such as laws preventing the purchase of health insurance across state lines (one of the many Republican proposals)?

It's very clever -- and reminiscent of his street-agitating mentor Saul Alinsky -- for Obama to adopt the anti-government language of conservatives to use against insurance companies. They are "rationing" care, he says. No, they enter into contracts with individuals and groups to provide insurance coverage as defined in the contract. They don't arbitrarily deny coverage if they have contractually agreed to provide it. But if they do, legal remedies are available.

I realize Obama has no qualms about violating the contracts clause of the Constitution and interfering with private contracts, but that's not the way it's supposed to work in America. For him to suggest that insurers must be forced to cover pre-existing conditions is tantamount to saying the government is going to convert them from insurance companies to unconditional guarantors. How can you call it insurance if you remove their ability to calculate their own risk assessments?

If, in his dictatorial omniscience, Obama tells insurance companies what they must cover, how many of them will remain in business while forced to take losing deals -- absent government subsidies?

Even if you believe insurers are culpable, you will still be hard-pressed to demonstrate that any insurance pricing abuses are responsible for more than a fractional percentage of our rising health care costs. Republicans made that point quite cogently during Obama's bogus summit, and he didn't even pretend to have an answer for it.

I believe our rising costs are attributable mostly to government interference with free market forces. The price mechanism is not allowed to work because, due to tax laws, most people get their insurance through their employers and don't have to pay out of pocket for their own insurance and so the costs are invisible to them. They don't base their consumption on what they can reasonably afford.

In addition, the government has mucked things up with Medicare and Medicaid, mandates insurance coverage for unnecessary procedures, prevents interstate insurance purchases, as noted, and obstructs health savings account reforms and tort reform.

By demonizing insurers, Obama is diverting attention from the real villain here -- an intrusive federal government -- so he can give it even more control.

The people know better, which is why he's endorsing legislative shenanigans to get it done, despite condemning that approach in the recent past.

Oh, yes, and if you believe he's going to rein in government costs and "fraud and abuse," there's some real estate I'd like to sell you at a fictitious address with a phantom ZIP code.

It looks like Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes is on track to win another endorsement from ACORN!

This week, Hynes announced that "no criminality has been found" after his investigation of the videotapes made by investigative journalists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, which show ACORN employees counseling the pair on getting a mortgage for a house of prostitution.

(They got a choice of government loans: Phat Fannie Mae, Prince Freddie Mac or Barney Fresh Daddy Frank ... aka "Sir Fix-A-Lot.")

I'm just glad to know that Hynes conducted a thorough "investigation" first. Who did he have screen the videotapes, Gov. Paterson?

If his investigators had actually watched the videotapes, they would have found ACORN employees apparently advising a pimp and prostitute on how to defraud mortgage lenders, deposit prostitution money in a bank, hide money from the government and avoid detection while running a whorehouse with teenage girls from El Salvador.

I'm not a lawyer -- oh, wait, yes, I am -- but I count approximately a half-dozen state law crimes being discussed on those tapes, from money laundering to advancing prostitution.

Albert: Um, is it legalized? Is prostitution legalized in New York state?

O'Keefe: It's not. It's not, unfortunately.

Albert: Well see, that's your problem.

As ACORN employee Milagros Rivera said, "You can't say what you do for a living because of the law." But displaying ACORN's can-do attitude, she explained: "Honest is not going to get you a house."

ACORN employees helped concoct a scheme to hide from the lender the source of O'Keefe and Giles' down payment money. Albert suggested that O'Keefe "pay a down payment -- or (Giles) can transfer to somebody else, who is not in that business ... a close friend, then (Giles) can transfer that, and then he can give you, like, a gift to purchase."

Under New York law, hiding the true source of down payment money from a lender constitutes mortgage fraud. Also, using the proceeds of criminal conduct in any banking transaction is money laundering.

Does anybody need a flow chart at this point, or should I continue?

To help Giles hide her income from turning tricks, ACORN employee Albert advised Giles to open two banking accounts, depositing no more than $500 per week in each one. (This would not only enable her to conceal her illegal earnings, it would also qualify her for free checking.)

But Albert's most inspired idea was that Giles get a "house with a backyard. You get a tin can ... and bury (your money) down in there, and you put the money right in, and you put grass over it, and you don't tell a single soul but yourself where it is."

Back when I was in Louisiana, we advised people to put their illegal money in the freezer, but that didn't work out so well. And I guess putting your money in a mattress isn't advisable if you live in a whorehouse.

Anyway, Albert was particularly detailed on the tin-can-in-the-backyard investment plan: "Keep thinking: 'I have a yard. I have a house.' You gotta start coming out with, like, plants and you start doing -- so it won't be suspicious. You start buying plants for the backyard in pots and what have you, and you mark a spot."

She later told Giles: "You are not paying Social Security, so you'll have society, all right? You are not getting a pension, so you need to save that money for in later years." ACORN: Helping Plan Your Financial Future.

If only shady lawyers advised clients to bury money in cans in their backyards, instead of putting it in tax shelters, we wouldn't have all those attorneys clogging up prison cells!

The ACORN employees also stressed that Giles should do nothing to attract attention to her prostitution money. Albert said: "You can buy a decent car for yourself, no big fancy thing to attract people, all right?"

In Albert's defense, this could have been common etiquette advice. No one likes a showy hooker.

Even after Giles explained her plan to house a "slew" of 13-, 14- and 15-year-old girls from El Salvador for her prostitution business, Rivera simply responded: "So you guys ready to schedule that (mortgage application) for the summer?"

Rivera clearly missed her calling -- she should be pushing vacation time shares in Boca Raton beach condos.

Under New York law, a person is guilty of advancing prostitution if he: "knowingly ... aids a person to commit or engage in prostitution (or) ... engages in any other conduct designed to institute, aid or facilitate an act or enterprise of prostitution."

It is a class D felony (up to seven years in prison) if the prostitute is under 19 years old -- as the ACORN employees knew Giles was -- and a class C felony (up to 15 years in prison) if the prostitute is under 16 years old -- as Giles stated the El Salvadoran girls were. (And if she's under 15 years old, Eliot Spitzer may be involved.)

If none of the advice given by ACORN on those videotapes constitutes conspiracy or aiding or abetting a crime, see this column next week for my opus: "10 Detailed Plans to Kill George Soros and Why This Might Be Right for You."

For a guy who touts himself as bipartisan and demands bipartisanship from Republicans, President Barack Obama had a funny way of showing his bipartisanship during last week's health care summit.

Obama has repeatedly promised an open, honest and bipartisan process on health care reform, but from the beginning, he has quarterbacked a highly partisan, closed-door and dishonest campaign.

In his opening remarks at the "summit," he said he wanted to make sure the participants didn't just trade "talking points" or engage in "political theater." He said, "If we've got an open mind, if we're listening to each other, if we're not engaging in sort of the tit for tat trying to score political points during the next several hours ... we might be able to make some progress."

He then proceeded to a) open the curtains for his own political theater, with one anecdotal Democratic sob story after another about the horrors of American health care; b) deliver his own talking points throughout the day, including his obligatory "tit for tat" following almost every Republican speaker; and c) demonstrate his own partisanship through (i) patronizing dismissals of the Republicans' substantive contributions as "talking points"; (ii) volleying partisan barbs at Republicans; (iii) mischaracterizing his positions and those of the Republicans; and (iv) accusing Republicans of not showing a good-faith willingness to make any movement in his direction when he made no effort to compromise with them.

This summit was an orchestrated setup for Obama to showcase himself as bipartisan, reasonable and, above all, motivated by compassion to improve health care for all Americans and demonize the Republicans as partisan, obstructionist and heartless. With this predicate, he would appear justified in imposing, unilaterally, his Obamacare monstrosity.

But what struck me even more than Obama's unfairness, pettiness and partisanship was his acutely self-absorbed performance throughout the day. His well-known narcissism was on full display, the most telling evidence of which was that he was so hopelessly immersed in satisfying his own hierarchy of ideological needs that he obviously had no idea he was coming off that way.

He advertized the conference as a balanced exchange between the two sides, setting himself up as the referee in chief who would enforce impartiality and fairness. Instead, he injected himself at every interval, using almost as much time as all the Republicans combined, saying his time didn't count because he is president, and never offering Republicans any opportunity to rebut his endless soliloquies.

When Republicans were scoring heavily, Obama revealed his displeasure with his facial expressions and body language. When he couldn't refute their arguments, he degenerated to "the election is over," exposing his real attitude about working toward a joint solution.

If there was any doubt about Obama's blinding egotism and dripping arrogance, he removed it with his snarky remark that if he were to adopt John Boehner's bill, "we'd get a whole bunch of Republican votes" -- as if that proved that Republicans were the problem and as if he was willing to move an inch from his position.

If there was any doubt Obama was not in good faith, he removed it when he characterized Republicans as being unconcerned about the alleged 30 million uninsured and philosophically unwilling to embrace reform addressing this issue. Well, he's already been forced off his bogus 47 million figure, presumably because it included illegal aliens and other illegitimate groups, but his 30 million is no less misleading. He intentionally fails to mention that his figure includes millions who are already entitled to government benefits but don't avail themselves of it and tens of millions who can afford insurance but choose not to buy it.

But the worst thing about his false accusation is that it implies that unless Republicans are willing to agree to socialized medicine, they oppose care for those who actually do fall through the cracks. First, all Americans are already entitled to emergency room care. Plus, Republicans believe that if their ideas were implemented, medical costs would decrease and fewer people would fall through the cracks. But they don't oppose benefits for those who do fall through, provided it doesn't entail a complete restructuring of the best health care system in the world.

The real philosophical difference between the parties is not about whether to help the truly needy, but whether government is the solution or the culprit.

Just in case any doubt remained about Obama's partisan mindset, he removed that, too, when he made clear that "procedure" (and the U.S. Constitution) be damned, he is going to cram this down our throats.

Former Education Secretary William Bennett is chiding those who are advancing the notion of forming a “third party.” And he is absolutely right for doing so. Such a rift within the conservative movement at this critical moment would do more to propel the liberal Democrat agenda to uncontested political dominance than any ploy envisioned by the left. Yet it appears that, despite such a risk, the movement is continuing to effervesce among the grassroots.

At last week’s CPAC convention, some prominent speakers, including Glenn Beck, adamantly insisted that both major parties had become indistinguishable, and that a third party would be the only means of extricating national politics from the mire of Beltway thinking. To counter Beck’s claim, Bennett held up Senators Jim DeMint (R.-SC) and Tom Coburn (R.-OK), along with Congressmen Mike Pence (R.-IN) and Paul Ryan (R.-WI) as bastions of true conservatism.

Unfortunately, certain other “Republicans” are working overtime to undermine Bennett’s argument. Chief among them is former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson. In a predictable move last week, Barack Obama impaneled a “Debt Commission” ostensibly to identify the means of reining in the spending outrages of the federal government. Of course Obama knew that the presence of a “Republican” would lend the needed pretense of “bipartisanship” to his ruse. And Simpson was only too willing to cooperate.

Long held as an icon of the GOP, Simpson is no conservative, and in truth has never been one. More significantly, he has devoted a large part of his political career to denigrating true conservatism, and attempting to expunge it from the Republican Party. Simpson was keynote speaker at the 1994 Wyoming State Republican Convention, using the occasion to castigate real conservatives as “a blight on the Republican Party.”

Throughout his public life, Alan Simpson has stridently endorsed such ideas as “gay rights” and same-sex “marriage,” while insisting that the presence of Christian conservatives in the GOP constituted an effort to “rule or ruin” the party. Demonstrating a willingness to completely disengage himself from the people of the Cowboy State, Alan Simpson has at times even supported gun control measures promoted by the “moderate” administration of George H.W. Bush.

Ultimately, Alan Simpson ascribes to the mindset that he and the other elitists in Washington know what is best for the nation, and that the peasantry in the hinterlands should simply recognize this fact and be grateful for their public “service.” In this his similarities far outweigh any differences he might have with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, or Barack Obama. And unfortunately, he was not alone.

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, who only recently admitted that his real allegiance lies with the Democrats (a fact that real America never doubted) was able to rise to prominence within Republican ranks while regularly engaging in complete betrayals of his fellow Republicans. More telling still was the pernicious effect that Specter had on America’s perception of the Republican Party, insofar as he often completely blurred any lines between Republican and Democrat, an effect that only helped the efforts of those on the left seeking cover for their abhorrent political agenda.

It is infuriating and demoralizing to consider that the Republican Party is yet so willing to embrace and exalt the likes of Specter (who eventually made his inclinations official and became a Democrat), and Simpson (who remains inside the “Big Tent” to this day, believing that he can do far more to stifle conservatism from that vantage point). In so doing, it reveals an element in the GOP which real conservatives cannot be expected to trust. Nor can they have solid confidence in the rest of the party, since its true character will ultimately be defined by the lowest standards it is willing to accept.

For far too long, Specter, Simpson, and their kind were not merely accepted within Republican ranks, but were able to guide its course. As a result, America recognized the pitfalls of empowering a “ruling class” that held no regard for the ideals on which the nation was founded, and thus would never truly seek to advance such principles in today’s poisoned political climate.

Barack Obama may indeed be shrewd enough to recognize the value of a kindred spirit who calls himself “Republican.” And he may believe he will benefit from the collaboration of Alan Simpson in his effort to advance liberalism. But what neither individual seems to grasp is that, since Obama’s inauguration last year, the social and political landscape in this country has fundamentally changed.

The abysmal elections of 2006 were neither a statement on the Iraq War, nor an expression of mass infatuation for Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. And despite Obama’s ongoing delusions, his 2008 electoral victory was absolutely not an embrace of either his far-left ideology or his personal “charisma.” Rather, both events reflected public disillusionment with a Republican Party that, on too many fronts, had ceased to be Republican.

The resurrection of real conservatism in the past year, widely known as the “Tea Party” movement, is itself a manifestation of those same sentiments. The Republican Party can only hope to ride this wave, and thereby preclude the disastrous consequences to itself and the nation of an ill-conceived “third party,” if it rejects the political cronyism of Simpson and his kind, and vigorously recommits itself to the Constitution, real conservatism, and the morality that undergirded both.

Inasmuch as Obamacare has a snowball's chance in hell of passing (but did you see how much snow they got in hell last week?), everyone is wondering what President Obama is up to by calling Republicans to a televised Reykjavik summit this week to discuss socializing health care.

At least they served beer at the last White House summit this stupid and pointless.

If the president is serious about passing nationalized health care, he ought to be meeting with the Democrats, not the Republicans.

Republicans can't stop the Democrats from socializing health care: They are a tiny minority party in both the House and the Senate. (Note to America: You might want to keep this in mind next time you go to the polls.)

As the Democratic base has been hysterically pointing out, both the House and the Senate have already passed national health care bills. Either body could vote for the other's bill, and -- presto! -- Obama would have a national health care bill, replete with death panels, abortion coverage and lots and lots of new government commissions!

Sadly, as the president's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has noted, the Democratic base is "@#$%^ retarded."

The reason massive Democratic majorities in Congress aren't enough to pass socialist health care is AMERICANS DON'T WANT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!

Obama isn't stupid -- he's not seriously trying to get a health care bill passed. The whole purpose of this public "summit" with the minority party is to muddy up the Republicans before the November elections. You know, the elections Democrats are going to lose because of this whole health care thing.

Right now, Americans are hopping mad, swinging a stick and hoping to hit anyone who so much as thinks about nationalizing health care.

If they could, Americans would cut the power to the Capitol, throw everyone out and try to deport them. (Whereas I say: Anyone in Washington, D.C., who can produce an original copy of a valid U.S. birth certificate should be allowed to stay.)

But the Democrats think it's a good strategy to call the Republicans "The Party of No." When it comes to Obamacare, Americans don't want a party of "No," they want a party of "Hell, No!" or, as Rahm Emanuel might say, "*&^%$#@ No!"

It's as if the patient has a minor fever and the Democrats (as doctor in this example) want to cut off his arms and legs. The Republicans want to give the patient two aspirin. "Compromise" means the Republicans agree to amputate only one arm and one leg.

Complaining that Republicans are "obstructionists" is not a damaging charge when most Americans are dying to obstruct the Democrats with a 2-by-4. While you're at it, Democrats, why not call the GOP the "Party of Brave Patriots"?

So Obama's sole objective at the "summit" is to hoodwink Republicans into agreeing with some of his wildly unpopular ideas on national TV. If this were a reality show on NBC, it would be called, "Dateline: To Catch a R.I.N.O."

This shouldn't be hard, inasmuch as he will be talking to elected Republicans. About a third of them were enthusiastically engaging in "bipartisanship" on Obamacare last year -- Chuck Grassley, you know who you are! (That's better than Lindsey Graham, who still wants to compromise.)

And then the American people spoke up.

In town halls and tea parties across the nation, Obama lost the argument with Americans. So now he wants a debating partner who will be less challenging: elected Republicans.

If Republicans were smart, they'd shock the world by sending in one of their most appealing members of Congress, who can speak clearly on health care -- Sen. Jon Kyl, Rep. Steve King or Rep. Ron Paul.
Actually, if the Republicans were really smart, they'd send in 14-year-old Jonathan Krohn, who understands the free market better than most people in Washington. Of course, so does my houseplant.

There are other important points Republicans cannot raise often enough -- such as putting scuzzy medical malpractice lawyers like John Edwards out of business. OK, that wasn't fair: Even trial lawyers are almost never as scuzzy as John Edwards. We want to put them all out of business.

But there's really only one idea the Republicans must cling to -- like they're clinging to their guns and religion! -- in order to resist agreeing to something moronic and losing their advantage as Americans' only allies in Washington.

Please, Republicans, remember the free market -- the same free market that gave us cheap cell phones, computers, flat-screen TVs, and stylish, affordable eyeglasses in about an hour.

Congress needs to outlaw state and federal mandates on insurance companies and allow interstate competition in health insurance.

The end.

Love, the American People.

How long will it take for every last American to realize President Barack Obama is not about bipartisanship, reconciliation (other than as a process to cram his health care bill through Congress) and uniting Americans? As his latest gyrations on health care demonstrate, he will not be deterred in his quest to saddle Americans with socialized medicine, even if it greatly increases the likelihood he won't be re-elected.

Here we have Obama, frenetically busy with at least three of his hands, pushing different buttons and sending mixed signals. I guess being a self-perceived messiah means you don't have to worry about being flagrantly inconsistent, even on the same day or in the context of one speech.

He's invited Republicans to a bipartisan summit on health care, intending to create the illusion that he's interested in conservative ideas on the subject.

But at the same time -- he can't even pretend long enough to let this ruse play out -- he is threatening Republicans that if they filibuster current congressional health care proposals, he will urge Congress to pass Obamacare by bastardizing the reconciliation process.

But wait, just like a Ginsu knife infomercial, there's more. Obama has also unveiled the outlines of his own new health care proposal, but it is hardly a model of bipartisanship.

As for his "bipartisan" summit, why would anyone believe he is interested in the Republicans' ideas on health care? Has he given any indication he is through this nearly yearlong process? Has he not shut Republicans out of the entire process until tendering this counterfeit overture -- after wholesale repudiation of his plan by the American people?

How silly do we have to be to imagine he's even thinking about compromise? It's not just that the Republicans' ideas are incompatible with his own; it's that in his megalomaniacal mind, he's the boss. Indeed, let's not forget that this is the guy who scolded opponents of his nationally bankrupting agenda with: "I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking."

Is that the attitude of a uniter? Of one who has the slightest interest in working with the other side? His sole purpose for the summit is to entrap Republicans in a political trick bag, painting them as unreasonable and obstructionist. Thankfully, they finally appear to be onto him and preparing themselves accordingly.

Obama's cavalier attitude is also on display in his threat to invoke the reconciliation process to push his plan through Congress. His stated reason is that he "expects and believes the American people deserve an up-or-down vote on health reform." What? Surely he jests.

But sadly, he does not. This is the tone-deaf guy who has refused to hear the American people's repeated rejections of Obamacare for months running. They've already given him scores of down votes, but he thinks he can go back to the well, despite his evaporating charisma, and fool them one last time.

Folks, do you think that if anywhere close to the barest majority of American people slightly supported Obama's nationalized health care scheme, he and his supermajorities in Congress wouldn't have been able to pass it already? They couldn't even pass it after bribing -- with our money -- members of their own party in Congress. The American people have spoken, sir, and it is against socialism. Please quit insulting our intelligence with your smoke and mirrors to the contrary.

But no less insulting are some of the highlights of the president's new plan -- as set out on the White House's Web site. Obama actually claims he'll cover the 31 million uninsured while "reducing the deficit by $100 billion over the next ten years -- and about $1 trillion over the second decade -- by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse." Seriously, how gullible must he think we are?

Oh, yes, and he's going to impose controls on health insurance premiums, as if there exists an omniscient central government that can best determine prices -- and as if such command and control models have ever worked in the history of the world.

Now is not the time for Obama's opponents to get complacent. We face -- America's freedom faces -- a relentless adversary.

Barack Obama has initiated yet another response to his declining popularity. Only a year into what was once trumpeted as perhaps history’s greatest electoral promise of “hope and change,” the Obama Administration finds itself on the ropes. The American public is angry and energized as it has not been since 1994, and Democrats in the Senate and House are looking with ever greater apprehension towards the November elections.

Amazingly, every possible excuse is being offered, and new plans for the restoration Obama’s public image are floated almost daily. New villains are concocted, while old ones, such as former Vice-President Dick Cheney, are resurrected as the root cause of Obama’s problems. Yet the entire leftist political cabal, of which Obama is clearly the ideological head, steadfastly refuses to admit or even acknowledge the true underlying problem, which is the abhorrent nature of the liberalism that they seek to advance.

On February 16, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer announced plans to improve the quality of news being released from the Oval Office. He also spoke of his intention to respond more quickly to Republican criticism. The underlying message was, of course, that the Obama agenda has always been a marvelous scheme and would have been a resounding success, were it not for the eroding effects of those nasty right-wing partisans who simply refuse to give credit where it is due.

Thus the American people, a majority of whom strenuously opposed such ravaging of the national treasury, are not enamored with Obama’s glowing rhetoric of how much good has come from the “Stimulus” package. Nor are they willing to accept his incessant self-aggrandizing speeches to that effect. The American economy is still a disaster, and the American people know it. Any efforts to tell them otherwise merely increase their anger and cynicism, causing them to wonder what real ends might be served by such disastrous and obviously counterproductive fiscal policy.

The same conclusion is no less inevitable regarding Democrat environmental policy. Amazingly, though the issue is vastly different, the pattern of liberal involvement remains identical. A calamity of unfathomable proportions is invented by the left and repeated incessantly until a sizeable portion of the public becomes sufficiently panicked to accept the proposed “solution” which inevitably requires taxes to be raised and freedoms to be trampled.

Just as the only “fix” for the ailing economy demands the confiscation of the earnings from Americans and ever stricter limits on their economic options, the planet can only be steered from the path of ecological catastrophe by confiscating still more money from the people and curtailing even more of their freedoms.

We have been there before. And the ploy is beginning to seem very familiar, as the exact pattern of alarmism and governmentally sponsored salvation was also promulgated with regards to the impending “healthcare” crisis. To nobody’s great surprise, on yet another front “We the People” are expected to accede to the notion that our liberty and our property, the most direct means of determining our individual futures, must be subordinated and surrendered to the collective interests of the state.

Who knows what “emergency” will descend upon us next. What can however be predicted with great confidence is that the liberal/Democrat response will be the same, namely more taxes and less freedom.

It is against this menacing backdrop that Barack Obama sorely wants to recast himself and his agenda. He would have us all believe that nothing is wrong with his miserably inept governing style, but rather that we, as his subjects, are simply too stupid to recognize his beneficence and wisdom. As a result, he will endeavor on several fronts to change his image, while resolutely maintaining his drive to move America as far to the left as possible.

The upcoming “joint” healthcare summit, to which he solicited the involvement of Republican House and Senate leaders, is no indication of a move to the “middle.” Instead, it reflects his hopes that the historically hapless Republicans will once again take the “bait” of bipartisanship and thus give him and his agenda political cover. Ultimately, his intention is as it has always been, to apply any veneer necessary in order to impose socialized “medicine” on a nation that would never willingly accept such a monstrosity.

America can expect much more of the same between now and the mid-term elections, but with increasing intensity. Having lost their filibuster-proof Senate super majority under the most implausible circumstances, Democrats are nonetheless devoted to their leftist/Marxist agenda. Their current hesitance only reflects concerns over how to implement their plan while minimizing voter backlash.

So, in the upcoming months, America can expect a “public relations” campaign the likes of which they have never seen before. “News” stories touting the fiscal and environmental triumphs of left-wing policies have only just begun. Between now and the mid-term elections, their frequency and effrontery will only increase. But, ultimately they will fail. Real America has grown wise to the strategy, and wants no more of it.

When you're president of the United States and your primary claim to fame is your economic prowess but your economic record fails by all objective measures, what do you do? You call on your skills as a virtuoso propagandist.

With the perceived catastrophic economic crisis of 2008-09, President Barack Obama captured the presidency at the perfect time in America's modern history for him to unleash his grandiose socialist policies -- policies so ambitious that the American people would never have tolerated them under any other circumstances.

With the nation in near panic over the impending doom of the economy, Obama presented his now-infamous "stimulus plan" to artificially create government demand by spending more than $800 billion of borrowed money to "jump-start the economy."

Being a die-hard Keynesian, Obama probably believed his program would create jobs. But given his attitude about the wealthy being undeserving of their good fortune, he probably wasn't risking too much in the event it didn't work. The funds would redistribute wealth to those less fortunate and whom society, in Obama's view, has cheated. It would also force allocations of money to "green" enterprises that would never be pursued if left to the sanity of private-sector consumer demand, further expand the public sector in general and provide ample slush money to reward unions and other supporters to shore up his re-election efforts.

According to Keynesian theory, as I understand it, it doesn't matter much where the government spends other people's money -- just as long as it spends it. Once the money is injected into the economy (never mind that an equal amount is taken out of the economy from the private sector), a multiplier effect unfolds to stimulate economic growth and jobs.

But Obama wasn't always disciplined in his message. Sometimes he allowed his exalted opinion of himself to seduce him into projecting that his plan would guarantee that unemployment would not exceed 8 percent.

A year later, with employment still about 10 percent, Obama has dispatched his minions to tout the enormous "success" of his plan, without which, he claims, we would have suffered a depression. It's no accident that he included "audacity" in the title of one of his books.

By every reasonable measure, his stimulus plan has been an abject failure. When you examine the empirical evidence, you'll find there is an inverse relationship between the monies he spent and employment; as more money was spent, there was less employment. The chart doesn't lie.

Obama now claims he saved some 2 million jobs that would not have been saved but for his stimulus package. But as Heritage Foundation scholars note, he bases his numbers not on any evidence whatsoever, but on the preposterously circular argument that Keynesian theory holds that these government expenditures must have created that number of jobs.

But in fact, reports Heritage, we have lost 3 million real jobs held by real people (as opposed to cartoon characters producing widgets), making the gap between Obama's promised 3 million jobs gained and the actual jobs lost some 6 million jobs. In the meantime, most of the money Obama purloined from the private sector has been completely wasted. Did you see the report that his inane plan to create 90,000 "green" jobs throughout America has succeeded in weatherizing only 9,000 homes at an average cost of $57,362? But don't worry; Obama hasn't finished spending all our money yet, and he's planning a second stimulus as we speak. There is never a shortage of cartoon characters or widgets.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that history doesn't repeat. For 70 years, liberals have been spinning the yarn that FDR's New Deal, despite all the evidence that it exacerbated and prolonged the Great Depression, quickened our economic recovery. Indeed, I remember scratching my head when one of my college history professors in the 1970s tried to convince us of that theory and its corollary -- an even better howler -- that FDR was actually a conservative, because if he hadn't implemented his socialist programs, the republic would have died right there.

But despite all of Obama's assaults on America and its solvency during the past year, we have witnessed one encouraging development: The American people aren't buying his propaganda anymore -- so let him keep talking.

The only man causing President Obama more headaches than Joe Biden these days is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who, coincidentally, was right after Biden on Obama's short-list for V.P.).

Despite Obama's personal magnetism, the Iranian president persists in moving like gangbusters to build nuclear weapons, leading to Ahmadinejad's announcement last week that Iran is now a "nuclear state."

Gee, that's weird -- because I remember being told in December 2007 that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that Iran had ceased nuclear weapons development as of 2003.

At the time of that leak, many of us recalled that the U.S. has the worst intelligence-gathering operations in the world. The Czechs, the French, the Italians -- even the Iraqis (who were trained by the Soviets) -- all have better intelligence.

Burkina Faso has better intelligence -- and their director of intelligence is a witch doctor. The marketing division of Wal-Mart has more reliable intel than the U.S. government does.

After Watergate, the off-the-charts left-wing Congress gleefully set about dismantling this nation's intelligence operations on the theory that Watergate never would have happened if only there had been no CIA.

Ron Dellums, a typical Democrat of the time, who -- amazingly -- was a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, famously declared in 1975: "We should totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, brick by brick, nail by nail."

So now, our "spies" are prohibited from spying. The only job of a CIA officer these days is to read foreign newspapers and leak classified information to The New York Times. It's like a secret society of newspaper readers. The reason no one at the CIA saw 9/11 coming was that there wasn't anything about it in the Islamabad Post.

(On the plus side, at least we haven't had another break-in at the Watergate.)

CIA agents can't spy because that might require them to break laws in foreign countries. They are perfectly willing to break U.S. laws to leak to The New York Times, but not in order to acquire valuable intelligence.

So it was curious that after months of warnings from the Bush administration in 2007 that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was leaked, concluding that Iran had ceased its nuclear weapons program years earlier.

Republicans outside of the administration went ballistic over the suspicious timing and content of the Iran-Is-Peachy report. Even The New York Times, of all places, ran a column by two outside experts on Iran's nuclear programs that ridiculed the NIE's conclusion.

Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control and Valerie Lincy of Iranwatch.org cited Iran's operation of 3,000 gas centrifuges at its plant at Natanz, as well as a heavy-water reactor being built at Arak, neither of which had any peaceful energy purpose. (If only there were something plentiful in Iran that could be used for energy!)

Weirdly, our intelligence agencies missed those nuclear operations. They were too busy reading an article in the Tehran Tattler, "Iran Now Loves Israel."

Ahmadinejad was ecstatic, calling the NIE report "a declaration of the Iranian people's victory against the great powers."

The only people more triumphant than Ahmadinejad about the absurd conclusion of our vaunted "intelligence" agencies were liberals.

In Time magazine, Joe Klein gloated that the Iran report "appeared to shatter the last shreds of credibility of the White House's bomb-Iran brigade -- and especially that of Vice President Dick Cheney."

Liberal columnist Bill Press said, "No matter how badly Bush and Cheney wanted to carpet-bomb Iran, it's clear now that doing so would have been a tragic mistake."

Naturally, the most hysterical response came from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. After donning his mother's housecoat, undergarments and fuzzy slippers, Keith brandished the NIE report, night after night, demanding that Bush apologize to the Iranians.

"Having accused Iran of doing something it had stopped doing more than four years ago," Olbermann thundered, "instead of apologizing or giving a diplomatic response of any kind, this president of the United States chuckled."

Olbermann ferociously defended innocent-as-a-lamb Mahmoud from aspersions cast by the Bush administration, asking: "Could Mr. Bush make it any more of a mess ... in response to Iran's anger at being in some respects, at least, either overrated or smeared, his response officially chuckling, how is that going to help anything?"

Bush had "smeared" Iran!

Olbermann's Ed McMahon, the ever-obliging Howard Fineman of Newsweek, agreed, saying that the leaked intelligence showed that Bush "has zero credibility."

Olbermann's even creepier sidekick, androgynous Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe, also agreed, saying American credibility "has suffered another serious blow."

Poor Iran!

Olbermann's most macho guest, Rachel Maddow, demanded to know -- with delightful originality -- "what the president knew and when he knew it." This was on account of Bush's having disparaged the good name of a messianic, Holocaust-denying nutcase, despite the existence of a cheery report on Iran produced by our useless intelligence agencies.

Olbermann, who knows everything that's on the Daily Kos and nothing else, called those who doubted the NIE report "liars" and repeatedly demanded an investigation into when Bush knew about the NIE's laughable report.

Even if you weren't aware that the U.S. has the worst intelligence in the world, and even if you didn't notice that the leak was timed perfectly to embarrass Bush, wouldn't any normal person be suspicious of a report concluding Ahmadinejad was behaving like a prince?

Not liberals. Our intelligence agencies concluded Iran had suspended its nuclear program in 2003, so Bush owed Ahmadinejad an apology.

Feb. 11, 2010: Ahmadinejad announces that Iran is now a nuclear power.

Thanks, liberals!

It was an odd week for a staunch conservative to be in agreement with Barack Obama. In the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s dramatic Senate victory in Massachusetts, Democrat leaders were stunned and shaken. But as usual, they quickly gathered themselves and coordinated a strategy of interpreting Brown’s election in terms that they hoped would minimize damage to their agenda. And this effort was led, of course, by Obama himself.

In keeping with this ploy, the Narcissist in Chief attempted to proffer the absurd notion that somehow, a hard-right turn in Massachusetts was actually a ringing endorsement of him. According to Obama, “The same thing that swept Brown into office swept me into office.” And for those who might have missed his meaning he added, “People are angry and they are frustrated. Not because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

Nevertheless, the lone grain of truth in Obama’s statement vastly overshadows his transparent attempts at obfuscation and self-aggrandizement. The towering reality of this situation is that his ascendancy did not result in any way from those overblown speeches of the last year or two (Obama’s empty promises of “hope and change”) but from a public rejection of the general national course plotted by President Bush and those all-too-compliant Republican “moderates” in the Senate and House.

Neither the 2006 mid-term Democrat gains nor the 2008 electoral catastrophe represented any national shift to the left. Rather, they embodied a widespread backlash against a Republican Party that had done too little to combat such treacherous ideas. On one major issue after another, from outrageous spending binges (which admittedly, now seem minuscule in comparison to the abominable fiscal excesses of the Obama/Reid/Pelosi cabal) to the attempts at granting amnesty and defacto citizenship to the twelve million plus illegal aliens, to the abject abandonment of constitutional principle in implementing campaign finance “reform,” Heartland America felt completely betrayed and forsaken by virtually the entirety of the GOP.

The “Tea Party” movement, mocked and maligned by Democrat mouthpieces and their media minions, is alive and well. Traditional America, seeing its heritage being obliterated and the constitutional foundations of the nation decimated, is rising up and making known its resolve to restore such things for itself and its posterity. “Politics as usual,” either from the Democrats or the Republicans, which translates into societal breakdown and the institution of the “nanny state” (either on the fast track or one that is somewhat slower, depending on party) has been soundly rejected.

At this crucial time, it is imperative that the authors of this movement remain steadfastly committed to principle, and not be swayed by prominent personalities. And at such a time, it is not surprising that Arizona Senator and former Presidential candidate John McCain is among the attempted “hangers on.” But what did come as an enormous shock and disappointment was the willingness of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to aid in this subterfuge.

Up for re-election this year, McCain suddenly found himself in a truly contested primary race against former Republican Congressman and conservative powerhouse J.D. Hayworth. By all rights, McCain has committed more than enough treachery against conservatism to warrant a voter-sponsored retirement. And it is inarguable that, on an issue-by-issue comparison, Hayworth is much more closely aligned to Palin than McCain has ever been. So for Palin to labor on behalf of McCain’s reelection effort represents a devastating blow against those principles.

Even more reprehensible is what this episode says of McCain’s abject disingenuousness as a politician. By calling on Palin at this time, he proves his knowledge of what resonates with voters, and what adjustments to his reputation would help his electoral bid. Yet that is an image that Hayworth, not McCain, actually deserves. Were McCain to be honest with his base and consistent with his past, he would instead have asked Joe Liebermann, a Connecticut liberal, or Arlen Specter, the former “RINO” now turned Democrat Senator from Pennsylvania, to visit Arizona and burnish his image for the voters. For it is with their likes that McCain’s true sympathies lie.

Sarah Palin has received nothing but vitriol from liberal Democrats in both parties, including many from McCain’s own staff. Even members of his own family have expressed complete contempt for the precepts that define her. Conversely, real America has ignored such derision and consistently rallied in support of her.

For whatever allegiance she feels towards the man who reluctantly chose her as a vice-presidential running mate (his first preference was Liebermann), Palin offers her loyalty at great expense to the very movement of grassroots conservatism sweeping the nation that she so eloquently sought to advance in her Nashville speech on February 6.

America will have lost a great opportunity, both in real substance and symbolic significance, if Hayworth loses to McCain in the Arizona Primary. And with so much hanging in the balance, Palin needs to be publicly asked which of her guiding principles align more closely with McCain as opposed to Hayworth, and therefore how a McCain re-election would benefit her vision for the nation.

Ultimately, as the reality of that event (if it does indeed transpire), and Palin’s complicity in it, sinks in with the American people, it is her own connection to them that will have been fatally undermined. Those fighting to restore the freedom and goodness of this nation will have no other choice but to move beyond this breach of trust, and remain committed to their principles, or face a potentially insurmountable setback to their effort.

It's not a good idea for Republicans to accept President Barack Obama's invitation to a "bipartisan" health care summit, because it would not advance acceptable health care reform. The only thing it likely would advance would be Obama's propaganda message -- and, thus, his socialist agenda.

Everyone knows Obama wouldn't be considering such a move if the American people had not so resoundingly rejected Obamacare.

From the very beginning, he has approached this issue more as a dictator than one interested in hearing genuine input from the other side. Nor has he shown good faith, having broken his cynical promise to televise the debates on C-SPAN and having misrepresented his plan in a number of particulars.

When called on the C-SPAN pledge, he glibly replied that most of the process has been televised in regular sessions of Congress and committee hearings, knowing full well that's not what anyone understood him to mean when he made his promise.

He has been as highhanded and dishonest in dealing with this issue as he has been with any other, which is quite a mouthful. He has ridiculed Republicans for their alleged obstruction and for not offering ideas of their own, when it was Republicans who first called for bipartisan talks last May and who did offer alternative plans, which Obama summarily rejected.

He looked us straight in the eye and told us, disingenuously, that in his plan, there would be no federal funding for abortion, no rationing, no interference in the doctor-patient relationship, no forcing people out of their private plans, no bill that was not budget-neutral, no single-payer plan and no decrease in patient choice with his public option.

If he wouldn't even square with us in his short statement on the proposed "bipartisan" health care summit, why should we expect him to in the meeting itself?

When he announced that he is "going to continue to seek the best ideas from either party," what were other members of his administration saying?

One White House official told The Washington Post, "This is not starting over. Don't make any mistake about that." And Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that Obama will "absolutely not" reset the legislative process. "I think he sees this as a step to actually accelerating the process forward," she said. "He wants a bill at his desk, and he sees this as kind of closing the loop and let's go."

He views this, just as he did his appearance at the Republican retreat, as an opportunity to use Republicans as a prop, to depict them as partisan obstructers of his magnanimous plan to save our health care system.

Obama says the American people are demanding bipartisanship and "a seriousness of purpose that transcends petty politics."

I don't think so. And I don't think his primary concern is what the American people want. If he were truly listening to the people, he would hear their rejection of Obamacare and the rest of his socialist agenda. He would heed the freshly released Rasmussen poll showing that 61 percent of Americans want him to drop health care reform. Yes, the American people have spoken, but what they're demanding is not bipartisanship. Rather, they want him to cease and desist from his socialist schemes.

Indeed, bipartisan compromise in this case would likely be very detrimental to America's best interests. What Obama means by bipartisanship is that he be allowed to proceed with his plan to expand government control over health care with the fewest possible cosmetic changes necessary to con Republicans into signing on -- a ploy right out of the Saul Alinsky street agitation playbook.

Any bipartisan action on this bill would necessarily result in further government control over health care and move us ever closer to a single-payer system. Yet the only way to improve our health care system is to roll back, not increase government's role. It follows, then, that no reform at all would be vastly superior to so-called bipartisan reform.

Seriously, does anyone believe that Obama will agree to any plan that includes market reforms? Of course not. Republicans -- on behalf of the American people -- should just say "no!"

The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are bristling with the news that Republicans have decided now is the time to suck up to Wall Street. As the saying goes, there is no truer friend than a Wall Street arbitrageur -- they are the salt-of-the-earth, the most loyal men who ever drew a breath!

What are Republicans thinking? While not every money-manipulator on Wall Street deserves to be treated like a heroin dealer, lots do. Could the Republicans be a little more discriminating in picking up the Democrats' old friends?

The Democrats are acting as if they want to punish everyone in the financial services industry, including the innocent, while the Republicans seem to want to protect everyone on Wall Street, including the guilty.

How about just punishing the guilty? The Democrats can't do that because the list of Wall Street's biggest offenders may turn out to be eerily similar to the list of Obama's biggest campaign contributors.

Employees from Goldman Sachs gave more to the Obama campaign than any other organization except the University of California -- with Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase quickly following in sixth and seventh place.

Whatever Obama has in mind for punishing the financial industry, I promise you, he won't punish his friends. After JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon took a $17 million bonus this week, and Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein got a $9 million bonus, Obama said he didn't begrudge them their bonuses, saying, "I know both those guys."

Obama seems to be hoping that his vague bluster about "obscene profits" will lure Republicans into embracing Wall Street welfare recipients -- thereby losing Americans forever.

Never bet against Republicans being outwitted.

Obama, like the rest of his party, is an ideologue who doesn't understand or particularly like the free market. He fundamentally believes in the efficacy of the welfare state, whether the beneficiary is a layabout single mother or a rich Wall Street banker.

As Peter Schweizer describes in his magnificent book "Architects of Ruin," the Democrats have been bailing out investment houses from their bad bets since the Clinton administration. The bankers got all the profits when their risky bonds were paying -- and then gave massive donations to their Democratic benefactors. But once the bets went bad, it was the taxpayers' problem.

Heavily leveraged securities packages put together by Goldman Sachs and others were the HIV virus that killed the American economy. And the reason investment firms piled leverage on leverage on leverage was that they knew the government would bail them out if their house of cards collapsed.

On one hand, Goldman put together toxic securities packages for their clients, but on the other hand, Goldman knew the mortgage securities being sold on the market were crap, so they also took out lots of insurance with AIG on crappy products being traded on the market.

It would be as if, anticipating a major earthquake, Goldman bought massive insurance policies on every house on the San Andreas fault line.

There's nothing wrong with taking risks and making bets, provided that if you bet wrong or if you bankrupt your betting partner with wild gambles: You lose.

The problem was that Goldman and AIG, among many others, knew they wouldn't lose. Twenty years of Democratic bailouts have led them to understand that when their bets go bad, the taxpayer will save them.

Which is exactly what happened.

When the earthquake hit toxic securities, the insurer, AIG, couldn't pay up. Normally, that would result in the insurer going bankrupt, an orderly proceeding in bankruptcy court to distribute AIG's assets, and Goldman recovering only a portion of the insurance payout on the crappy products.

But instead of AIG going bankrupt and Goldman taking a hit, the U.S. taxpayer made good on AIG's securities insurance. In a deal arranged by former Goldman CEO and current Obama BFF, Hank Paulson, Goldman ended up being paid -- by you -- an astonishing 100 cents on the dollar.

So Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's boast that his firm didn't want TARP money and has paid it all back is completely irrelevant. Goldman took billions of dollars -- that's millions with a "b" -- of the AIG bailout money. How about paying that back?

It took The New York Times a year and a half to figure out Goldman's jackpot winnings from the AIG bailout -- $12.9 billion, according to the Times -- so the first thing Republicans ought to do is hold hearings to determine who benefited from the Democrats' crony capitalism, and not take their bluster as fact.

The next step should be to get all the bailout money back.

When the government steps in to save the very financial institutions that poisoned the nation's financial system with contaminated securities and derivatives -- all while the bankers get to keep the fees and bonuses on their bad bets -- we are not talking about a free market.

We're talking about regular Americans being forced to foot the bill for the gambling habits of left-wing multimillionaires by buying the malefactors more chips every time they lose.

Republicans should defend any investment houses that never benefited from a government bailout. But anyone who took huge gambles, lost and got bailed out with taxpayer money should be tortured and then shot, miraculously brought back to life, tortured some more, then shot a few more times.

Conservatives understand that liberals often demonize their opponents rather than debate the merits of the issues because the tactic works. But you have to wonder whether another reason they lash out is that they are angry that reality doesn't cooperate with their ideologically driven solutions and it's easier to blame others than to face up to the unpleasant truth of their failed ideas.

It's not just the tirades of liberal talk show host Ed Schultz, who said he would cheat to keep Scott Brown from winning his Senate election, or Chris Matthews, who said Republicans indoctrinate their members in the same way Cambodian communists re-educated their subjects, or the nasty outbursts of presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel.

I was also reminded of this, on a subtler level, when reading a Washington Post piece on David Plouffe, Barack Obama's presidential campaign manager, who recently returned to the Obama camp to quarterback the Democrats' election efforts in 2010 and beyond.

Plouffe said: "Politics is a comparative exercise. This isn't just a referendum on Democrats. ... It's a choice. ... Republicans right now are just sitting back and slinging arrows. We need to ... shine some light over their side of the fence."

Plouffe said he would remind voters that Democrats have spent two years trying to fix problems, whereas Republicans want to wheel a "Trojan horse" into Washington and spill out bankers and health insurance executives. Sure, why not vilify bankers and insurers when it helps your guy avoid accountability for his policies?

It's shamelessly Machiavellian of Democrats to accuse the GOP of going negative, when Democrats use Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" (e.g., "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it") as an instruction manual. But hey, they're out of fresh ideas, so what other choice do they have?

On welfare, Democrats insist on ever-greater redistributionist programs with the ostensible goal of "ending" poverty. Nearly a half-century and $5 trillion since the war on poverty was initiated, we've barely made a dent in poverty. In fact, prior to the Republicans' Contract with America in 1994, we were losing ground in all relevant categories -- with black families, particularly black children, being the hardest hit.

Despite the evidence, Bill Clinton had to be dragged kicking and screaming into signing the welfare reform bill, for which, of course, he claimed full credit. But sadly, the manifest successes of the reforms -- which saw significant improvements in poverty and the rate of illegitimacy, especially among blacks -- didn't keep uber-liberal Barack Obama from rolling them back with a vengeance, something the public has barely noticed. These liberals cannot afford to allow success to stand, lest they be with fewer victims to exploit and conservatives to demonize.

On tax policy, the overwhelming successes of supply-side economics at improving the lots of all income groups without a loss in tax revenues didn't prevent liberals from falsely depicting the policies as sops for the rich and blaming them for the spending-induced deficits. More revealing was Obama's damning revelation that he favors capital gains tax increases as "a matter of fairness" despite admitting they result in decreases in revenue. Here he can't even credibly claim noble intentions. Instead of helping the poor, he's willing to hurt them, as long as everyone else is hurt, too. Class envy trumps results, which is really twisted when you think about it.

On education, liberals refuse to support school vouchers, the result being that many poor people, especially minorities, remain locked in inner-city schools without a key. Otherwise, liberals wouldn't be able to demand endless tax dollars for public education, which only they can "deliver."

On homosexual "marriage" and "don't ask, don't tell" policies for the military, liberals absurdly impugn conservatives as "homophobes" instead of addressing their valid interest in protecting traditional marriage as one of society's pillars and preserving the cohesiveness of the military unit, respectively.

On abortion, liberals refuse to consider mounting scientific evidence that the unborn are live human beings (as if further evidence were needed to confirm what we already know), because it forces them into moral accountability. Instead, they falsely declare the matter unknowable and, worse, try to co-opt the moral high ground as champions of women's rights while condemning their life-advocating opponents as bigots.

On man-made global warming, they cling to their flat-earth alarmism while refusing to discuss the evidence and accusing their opponents of willful blindness. Surreal on stilts!

On health care, they demand socialist solutions to achieve "universal coverage," when such solutions have failed everywhere they've been tried and will, studies show, leave millions uninsured.

But they're still superior because they care. Or do they?