Yesterday, U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter filed the maximum 2000 petition signatures required to seek Michigan’s 11th Congressional District seat. Rep. McCotter spent filing day the same way he spends every day – working hard for the people of Michigan. While managing the GOP’s time under the House’s Committee of the Whole, his resolution honoring the late Ernie Harwell was sent to the full House.

Looking at the retirement of Kansas Congressman Dennis Moore, Michael Barone suggests Democrats may be facing a tough year.

2010 undoubtedly looks like an uphill race for Dennis Moore. By announcing his retirement, he is free to vote for House Democratic leaders’ unpopular legislation without political repercussion and is spared the trouble of extensive campaigning. That’s fine for him. But if other Democratic incumbents in marginal districts—and, remember, the 3rd district voted for Obama—choose to follow Moore’s course, that could make it much harder to Democrats to maintain a big majority in the House and could make it easier for Republicans to gain most or all of the 41 seats they need to win a majority there.

Dave Janda looks at the Obama-Pelosi-Reid health care bills, the unaccountable panels empowered to oversee them, and the frightening lengths to which the Democrats have gone to guarantee they last forever. His conclusion? This is a weapon of mass destruction worse than any Al Qaeda attack.

To make matters worse, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) identified language in the Senate version, which should make every American question the underlying purpose of this legislation. On Page 1020, referring to The Medicare Advisory Board, the Senate version states:

“It shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.”

It becomes evident this legislation is not about creating affordable, available and quality based health care. It is about controlling every American’s life.

Thomas Sowell has a piece up on RealClearPolitics today. Sowell takes a look at the cynicism of passing bad health care legislation simply to say you have passed “any” health care legislation.

Supporters of government health insurance call its passage “historic.” Past attempts to pass such legislation– going back for decades– failed repeatedly. But now both houses of Congress have passed government health care legislation and it is just a question of reconciling their respective bills and presenting President Obama with a political “victory.”

In short, this is not about improving the health of the American people. It is about passing something– anything– to keep the Obama administration from ending up with egg on its face by being unable to pass a bill, after so much hype and hoopla. Politically, looking impotent is a formula for disaster at election time. Far better to pass even bad legislation that will not actually go into effect until after the 2012 presidential election, so that the public will not know whether it makes medical care better or worse until it is too late for the voters to hold the administration accountable.

The utter cynicism of this has been apparent from the outset, in the rush to pass a health care bill in a hurry, in order to meet wholly arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines. First it was supposed to be passed before the August 2009 Congressional recess. Then it was supposed to be passed before Labor Day. When that didn’t happen, it was supposed to be rushed to passage before Christmas.

Sowell rightly points out that while the costs of this folly will be felt immediately, any possible benefit (though more likely the chaos of actual implementation) was held off until after the elections of 2012. Punting responsibility down the road while frontloading costs is the worst kind of arrogance.

There are some interesting reads today in the papers (can we call them that anymore since most are accessed online?). Obama continues to push Stimulus II, despite a cool reception from most. The Wall Street Journal covers his big gamble with your ante.

President Barack Obama pressed forward with an expansion of his $787 billion stimulus plan Tuesday, unveiling job-creation proposals that largely build on the initial package, including a hiring tax credit that his own party jettisoned as unworkable and some business owners deemed ineffective.

Meanwhile, the USA Today notes that supporters of the health care bill are jamming it full of all sorts of goodies.

Eight years ago, when terrorists declared war on the United States by murdering three thousand souls in New York City, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.
Now, the Obama Administration has announced its decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terrorists in a U.S. civilian court in New York City, one of the very [...]