See, this exactly why the Republicans are throwing it into the bill. Not because they’re deathly afraid that this healthcare bill will help sex offenders pay for ED medication (which certainly has negative scenarios but it’s a fairly intricate hypothetical), but because this way come election season, they can hit any Democrat who voted against the amendment with “he supports sex offenders having access to viagra!”
The flip side to this is that amendments can sneak in to bills and affect policy without it being directly decided by congress. The perfect example of this is the drug war amendment that was slipped into the Higher Education Act that loses a student Financial Aide (for 1-5 years) with any marijuana conviction, including a misdemeanor for a single joint.
Hemalin
3022
I’m wondering how that amendment would get through reconciliation. If it actually made it in, it’d probably have to be stripped out anyway to make it through the reconciliation process and not be filibustered.
Menzo
3023
Unless I’m mistaken, the Senate just voted in the reconciliation bill. Back to the House!
Dunno if this was posted already, but the douchebag who threw money at Parkinson’s guy at a Teabagger rally has been outed:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/03/24/dollar-bill-throw.html
Couldn’t have happened to nicer gentleman.
Is this because of the over-broadness of the sex-offender term or some more fundamental objection.
In a similar vein, what about permanent revocation of driver’s license after the third felony DUI conviction or the like? (i.e. is this a recidivism/justice served belief on your part)
Cubit
3026
Both. I don’t believe a person who has been convicted of a crime like you describe (rape, pedophilia, etc…) sometime in their life should be denied access to certain aspects of health care because of this crime.
Depending on how liberal or conservative the future ends up being here, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Congressman expend a significant amount of time and money trying to bar felons from any sort of involvement with the government exchanges or whatnot.
Indeed, my question was “Why not acquiesce to the reasonably harmless ones to blunt that attack.”
Sure, this one is harmless, but I don’t think that stops them. The Democrats keep trying that approach on national security and keep getting their ass handed to them. See The Bitch-Slap Theory.
Yeah, I never understood the previous generation’s fascination with “petting.”
EDIT: I, uh, meant the word, not the act.
MikeJ
3029
I don’t know that it’s harmless. It’s another layer of red tape. Do the insurance companies offer a different plan for sex offenders? Duplicate everything in order to make sure they can’t buy viagra? Either it’s an annoying and awkward exception, or they put in organizational infrastructure that will make it easier to chisel out coverage for other things for other unpopular groups.
Cubit
3030
Rachel Maddow played some of the angry voice mails left for Bart Stupak on her show last night. Pretty repulsive stuff.
Woo! Anthrax hoax party at Rep. Weiner’s office! Get down with the HAZMAT squad and complain about healthcare reform!
WarrenM
3032
Ugh, my Texan relatives are starting up on Facebook now. It’s so difficult not to just Hide everyone but that wouldn’t be great for family relations. So annoying!
WarrenM
3033
Rachel Maddow played some of the angry voice mails left for Bart Stupak on her show last night. Pretty repulsive stuff.
I don’t get it … you’re going to get THIS ugly over giving health coverage to people? I don’t even remotely see how this is a hot button issue. It’s fucking astounding. “People are being taken care of and lives are being saved? I’ll kill your children, RAWR!!”. What the FUCK people?
Remember that Republican Eric Cantor had a BULLET shot through his window by angry leftists!! Oh…wait, not so much maybe:
Sounds less like a deliberate shot through Cantor’s window and more like an excellent argument for gun control.
I win!
So, Cantor was targeted for political violence 36 hours before anyone else, by someone shooting up into the air and knowing that the bullet would break a window on the first floor of the building his office is in when it came back down to earth.
Makes sense to me.
Damn, beaten to the punch.
It has absolutely nothing to do with policy. It is pure tribalism at this point. The Democrats “winning” on anything is simply unacceptable.
Well, there are a lot of people who know about the bill only via “It’s turning America into a socialist state” or “It’s going to bankrupt the country” or “They’re taking the money from your grandparents plates!” and there’s no more critical thought that goes into it than that. Throw in liberal amounts of calling your opponent idiots, un-American, vile, evil, and the like, and people begin to think it’s okay to threaten them with violence because they’re obviously bad.
Also, don’t fall into the same trap: There are 3xx million people in this country, and there are maybe a few thousand leaving messages like this. Talk about your extreme outliers.
Exactly. We’re spending a lot of time talking about nutballs.
Is there any conservative voice out there who argues against the health reforms with anything remotely like compassion? I’d very much love to read that person’s thoughts.
Corollary: I’d very much love to never read/hear another word about nutballs.
Hah, it gets even better. Now that Frum and AEI have parted ways Bruce Bartlett feels he can go on the record. Ol’ Bruce says that Frum asked if he wondered why AEI’s health care scholars were so quiet. Frum then told him it’s because they were told to be quiet because they were agreeing too much with Obama’s plan.
Lol.
