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On the first Tuesday in November, two uniformed men arrived at a voting place and took up positions by the entry doors. In the hours that followed, they harassed voters and election officials, hurled racial epithets and physically blocked persons of other races who sought to cast their votes for president of the United States. One of the men brandished a nightstick. Bartle Bull, a civil rights movement veteran, was there. He says it was "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my life in political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work...

There will be no doubt where lawmakers stand after the dust clears on healthcare, said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, who dismissed the controversy over the so-called Slaughter Solution Tuesday. Republicans are crying foul over a proposed rule that would allow for House passage of the Senate healthcare bill without an actual up-or-down vote. Gibbs called the complaints "a legislative process game."

Health Reform: Using a parliamentary trick ironically known as the "self-executing rule," Democrats plan on passing their massive health bill without voting. In November, they'll learn just how "self-executing" it was. Just when you thought Washington couldn't get more corrupt, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this week seems intent on trampling representative government itself. Unable to get the votes to pass their U.S. health care revolution, she and her fellow Democratic leaders have figured out a way to pass it without a vote. The "self-executing rule" has been "used to adopt concurrent resolutions correcting the enrollment of measures or to make...

Washington (CNN) -- Five more House Democrats said Tuesday that they will vote against Senate health care legislation, which puts opponents of reform just 11 votes shy of the 216 needed to prevent President Obama from scoring a major victory on his top domestic priority. An ongoing CNN analysis shows that opposition in the House to the Senate health care plan has reached 205 members. A total of 27 House Democrats, including nine who supported the House plan in November, have indicated that they would join a unified Republican caucus in opposing the Senate plan, which passed in that chamber...

know you're not going to listen to me. I'm going to say it anyway, because as a concerned citizen of The United States of America, I must. You are making a grave, perhaps nation-ending mistake. Attempting to "deem" the Health Care bill passed when it has not actually been voted on is not Constitutional. Article 1, Section 7: There are millions of Americans who are extraordinarily pissed off right now. Some of them, like me, write scathing columns on The Internet or we rant on Talk Radio and Television (such as Judge Napolitano) But some just smolder. Some remember the...

According to the Washington Post, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi now plans to use the "deem and pass" strategy to push through the Senate's healthcare reform bill. The strategy would ask for a House vote on a number of reconciliation fixes to the bill. A passing vote on the reconciliation package--which has been more popular among House members than the bill itself--would then "deem" the Senate bill passed, even without a direct vote on the actual legislation. Critics like Thomas Jefferson Street blogger Peter Roff question the legitimacy of the process. Bloleague Robert Schlesinger thinks it's just silly. Pelosi,...

Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday continued to project optimism that [she] could find enough votes to pass health-care legislation, as Republicans hammered them for the process they plan to use to pass the legislation. ... A cost estimate of the legislation has yet to be released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which is likely to push a vote on the legislation into the weekend. Asked about the delay in unveiling the cost estimate and the legislation itself, Pelosi said that "the numbers have to add up" before any text is released. ... House Democrats' plans to deem the Senate bill...

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Deemocrats Mocked: Deem and pass strategy #deemed worthy of a hash-tag By Garance Franke-Ruta The proposed House "deem and pass" vote strategy is already facing one of the most insidious enemies of contemporary political discourse: online mockery. Perhaps because of the resemblance of the phrase to #demonsheep, a hashtag given to a recent bewildering California U.S. Senate race ad, the deem and pass legislative procedure has been given one of its own by opponents on Twitter, where wits and wags have decided that they can play this game at home and #deem things done just by declaring them so. Some...

Even as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scrambles for the 216 "yes" votes she needs to pass President Obama's health care reform bill, strategists on both sides of the partisan divide have begun to debate the political impact of what passage will mean. All sides agree that the overall bill is not particularly popular at the moment. Republicans ascribe that unpopularity to the fact that people know what's in the bill and don't like or want it. Democrats see the current poll numbers as evidence that they have lost the message war in the run-up to passage but once the bill...

http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0310/Hoyer_Dems_dont_have_the_votes.html http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/hoyer-defends-controversial-house-procedure/ http://thehill.com/homenews/house/87047-gop-to-try-to-stop-slaughter-solution

The Tea Party protests against the health care reform efforts on Capitol Hill today were smaller than previous efforts -- a rough CBS News estimate puts the total number of protesters around 600 -- but that doesn't mean there weren't fireworks. The video at left shows what happened when the protesters reached the office of Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat. As you can see, as one protester complains of arrogance and uncomfortable-looking young staffers survey the scene, the office door is closed, prompting chants of "liar" from the group outside. The apparent ringleader of the group is then encouraged...

Yesterday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) endorsed the rumored Slaughter Rule to send the Senate passed Obamacare bill to the President without a direct up-or-down vote in the House. Don’t believe those on the left who are trying to argue that because Republicans used deeming resolutions when they were in power, it is ok for Democrats to use a similar tactic to pass legislation without a vote. Under this procedure, the House would vote on a rule setting up debate. The House would then skip a vote on the Senate passed version of Obamacare and move directly to...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is playing hardball with her rank and file in the run-up to an historic health care vote. Instead of the typical wheeling and dealing to pick up much-needed support, Pelosi and her leadership team are warning members that the bill is final, and its language is set, so don’t come seeking major changes or handouts for your district. Asked if she was willing to change the final legislation at the request of Democratic holdouts, the speaker said, “No.” That message may sound good to voters angered by the “Cornhusker Kickback” or any other last-minute deals —...

To:              Interested Parties From:         Ranking Republican David Dreier (R-San Dimas, CA) Subject:    The Slaughter Solution: Bending the Rules Beyond Belief The Democratic Majority has a problem with their efforts to pass healthcare legislation, and it’s political: they simply do not have enough Members in the House willing to vote for the Senate-passed healthcare bill. That’s understandable because it’s an awful bill loaded with special interest provisions. To solve their political problem, they’re looking for a procedural solution. That’s where the Rules Committee comes in. On Sunday, senior presidential advisor David Axelrod said on ABC News’ This Week,...