The count was 243 to 183, with 11 Democrats voting against the measure, and just one Republican — Rep. Michael Burgess, a Texas physician — voting in favor of it.

The proposal has been the top legislative priority of the American Medical Association for years, and Democratic leaders are hoping today’s vote might entice the powerful doctors lobby to get behind the broader health reforms moving through Congress.

The $210 billion doc-fix bill, however, stands little chance in the Senate, where budget hawks on both sides of the aisle have been unwilling to support the measure unless it’s paid for. (The House bill is not.) Indeed, just last month the upper chamber killed a similar proposal because it was unfunded. The vote in that case was a lopsided 47 to 53 — well shy of the 60 supporters it needed to pass.

The ACLU has been trying to get its hands on those photos, as well as other records, since 2003 through the Freedom of Information Act, which is supposed to make them public. But the Bush administration objected, and the ACLU’s been litigating the issue ever since. Although President Obama at first promised to turn over the photos, he later changed his mind, and despite two court orders to turn them over, the administration has still so far refused. It’s appealed the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is supposed to decide whether to hear the case on October 9.

Some members of Congress, however, are not prepared to leave it to the courts to decide. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) has introduced an amendment to the appropriations bill that would allow the defense department to exempt the photos of abuse from the scope of the Freedom of Information law.

Here’s part of the response from Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project, from a statement released on Wednesday:

Congress should not give the government the authority to hide evidence of its own misconduct, and if it does grant that authority, the Secretary of Defense should not invoke it. If this shameful provision passes, Secretary Gates should take into account the importance of transparency to the democratic process, the extraordinary importance of these photos to the ongoing debate about the treatment of prisoners, and the likelihood that the suppression of these photos will ultimately be far more damaging to our national security than their disclosure would be.

In Blue Dog Dem Heath Shuler’s North Carolina district, cap and trade is supported by 55% of voters, versus 29% opposed.

In Blue Dog Dem Baron Hill’s Indiana district, cap and trade is supported by 45%, versus 30% opposed.

In Dem Rep. Tom Perriello’s conservative Virginia district, cap and trade is supported by 42%, versus 25% opposed.

All three voted for the House climate bill, which makes the results not quite as surprising. More interesting would be the results in the districts of the 44 Dems who voted against it.

In the wake of health care pioneer Sen. Ted Kennedy’s passing, the Democratic leadership in Congress is renewing its push for a public option. This morning, House leaders distributed a memo to congressional Democrats, reminding them that the public option has widespread popular support. On the Senate side, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who up to this point has mostly kept mum on a public plan, is now explicitly supporting such a plan, saying, “We have a problem in America and it’s called the private insurance industry.” Of course, Kennedy’s death deprives Democrats of their 60th vote in the Senate, and so they’re scrambling to fill his seat with a like-minded lawmaker.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is predicting that the growing federal budget deficit will necessarily limit the scope of health reform. He also maintains that a bipartisan health care bill is still possible — provided the Democratic leadership doesn’t “overrule” or “undercut” it. And Republicans aren’t the only ones pushing back against Obama’s health care proposal: cardiologists and other specialists are wary of Obama’s plan to emphasize preventive care at the expense of emergency treatment.

“A public option,” she says, “is the best option to lower costs, improve the quality of health care, ensure choice and expand coverage.”

But that’s different than saying that House Democratic leaders will hinge their support for a final bill on whether it includes such an option — like she did last month when she said, “If we’re going to have real health care reform, we must have a public option.”

This is what it looks like to walk back insistence.

Enter the House Democrats.

A House Appropriations subcommittee today approved a massive $161 billion funding bill for the labor, health and education departments, including language to pluck the needle-funding ban that Obama didn’t.

Reuters has the money quotes that are indicative of the partisan debate that’s sure to loom, first from Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.):

Scientific studies have documented that needle exchange programs, when implemented as part of a comprehensive prevention strategy, are an effective public health intervention for reducing AIDS/HIV infections and do not promote drug use.

And on the other side, here’s Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kans.), the senior Republican on the Labor/HHS Appropriations Subcommittee:

I am very concerned that we would use federal tax dollars to support the drug habits of people who desperately need help.

Earlier this year, we reported on how the Obama White House had bucked our European allies to oppose a nonbinding international resolution in support of so-called “harm reduction” measures, which include needle exchanges, safe injection facilities, drug substitution therapies and other programs designed to curb the damaging health effects related to illegal drug use. At the time, several House Democrats had raised eyebrows (and written letters) about the administration’s position, only to fall silent when it became clear that the White House was sticking to its guns.

In the eyes of many in the health care community, Congress redeemed itself today.

Today, however, Rep. Dennis Moore (D-Kans.), who heads the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, announced that his panel will take a closer look at just how prevalent government insider trading really is. The hearing, entitled “Preventing Unfair Trading by Government Officials,” is scheduled for July 13.

Expect attendance to be spare.

They’ll want to take that back. Doggett just took to the House floor to announce that he’s now supporting the bill. The reason? He was tired, he said, of listening to the members of “the flat earth society” across the aisle making “inane” arguments.

Boehner: Well, first, let’s not — I don’t know whether it’s going to come up or not. Rumors, they’re clearly pushing to bring it up, but we’ll see. I don’t think they have the votes yet.

Reporter: You don’t — you don’t think they have the votes?

Boehner: No, I do not.

If this bill isn’t diluted enough to pass even the House, where Democrats have a whopping 77-seat advantage, wait until this bill hits the Senate.

“We should not delay one day more the suffering of the American consumers at the hands of deceptive practices of the credit card industry,” Gutierrez said.

This is a weird thing for Gutierrez to say because the original bill would have put the new consumer protections into place 90 days after the bill passed — and then Gutierrez, as chairman of the House Financial Services subpanel on consumer credit, pushed that timeline from three months to 12. Good of him to draw the line of what constitutes an acceptable delay at 275 days and not 276.