For example, on Dec. 10, one of the lawmakers under investigation, Representative Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, left the Capitol during the House debate to attend a fund-raising event for him hosted by a lobbyist at her nearby Capitol Hill town house that featured financial firms, along with other donors. After collecting thousands of dollars in checks, Mr. Crowley returned to the floor of the House just in time to vote against a series of amendments that would have imposed tougher restrictions on Wall Street.

That same day, Representative Tom Price, a Georgia Republican on the Financial Services Committee, scheduled what he called a “Financial Services Luncheon” at the Capitol Hill Club, as part of a fund-raising push that netted him nearly $23,000 in contributions from the industry in a two-month period around the vote.

The Office of Congressional Ethics is an independent office, led by a former federal prosecutor, that has been riling members on the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct with its aggressive pursuit of what it considers unethical conduct. The New York Times notes that given the two groups’ differences, it’s unlikely that the committee will punish any of the accused members even if the investigation ends up recommending action.

“ObamaCare will clip the wings of the American Dream(liner),” the Republicans say, citing estimates that the charge will reduce Boeing’s earnings by 20 cents a share in the first quarter of this year.

But before you shed tears for Boeing, consider some context. Boeing is the second largest government contractor in the country, with almost $11 billion in federal contracts in 2008 alone. It’s well on its way to winning a $40 billion deal to build an Air Force tanker. And Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), a long-time supporter of the Seattle-based company, was recently named head of the defense appropriations committee, which controls the purse strings of the Pentagon contracts that have treated Boeing so well.

As a result, the company isn’t exactly suffering. Indeed, its stock went from $35.58 a year ago to $73.53 yesterday — a jump of nearly $38, or 107 percent. Suddenly that 20-cent loss to help fund health reform doesn’t seem so disastrous, particularly considering the extent to which taxpayers have bolstered the company’s earnings over the years.

It’s a nuance that seems to be lost on the RSC.

In a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the Republicans argue that the Democrats’ plans to expand Medicaid, a program funded jointly by state and federal governments, would squeeze the state’s already strapped budget and threaten other vital programs.

Georgia has estimated that the cost of the House and Senate passed unfunded mandates, for just new enrollees, would cost a staggering $2.64 billion under the House version (not including the Stimulus extension or a Primary Care Reimbursement increase) and anywhere from $1.54 billion to $1.79 billion under the Senate version.

This raises many concerns since Georgia currently cannot afford the cost of expanding Medicaid under the House and Senate bills. Due to the crippled economy, Georgia is facing significant budget problems and has been forced to make cuts to current services including K-12 education, public assistance, corrections, transportation and others.

Signing the letter were Georgia GOP Reps. Tom Price, Phil Gingrey, Jack Kingston, Nathan Deal, Lynn Westmoreland, John Linder and Paul Broun.

They have a point. Democratic leaders have proposed a Medicaid expansion precisely because it’s one of the cheapest ways to extend coverage for the uninsured, who tend to be lower-income folks. But Medicaid also suffers periodic funding problems because, as a safety net program, enrollment tends to jump during economic crises when states are least able to afford the additional costs — a fundamental funding flaw that neither the House nor the Senate bill addresses. Indeed, this was exactly the concern that led Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to insist that the federal government pick up the entire tab for the Medicaid expansion proposed in the Senate bill.

Recognizing that problem, Democrats included roughly $80 billion in federal Medicaid help in last year’s economic stimulus bill — a treatment of the symptoms, but not the root of the problem. If lawmakers want to avoid having to pass emergency Medicaid spending every time the economy turns south, they’d do well to tackle the underlying flaw in how the program is funded. The only other option, as the Georgia Republicans point out, is for states to slash other things.

Presenters at the premiere of "Tea Party: The Documentary Film" Wednesday in Washington (Photo: David Weigel)

Getting into Wednesday’s Washington, D.C., premiere of “Tea Party: The Documentary Film” meant walking through a steady rain into the Ronald Reagan building, a sprawling downtown trade and convention center where the economic conservative group FreedomWorks, which helped organize a number of Tea Party protests, had rented a foyer and a sizable auditorium. The stars of the film relaxed and talked with former House Majority Leader and FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) handed out business cards to a steady stream of well-wishers. All of the guests made their way into the auditorium on the FreedomWorks version of a red carpet — a strip of green astroturf.

“We’re goofing on Hollywood,” said FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe, dressed in evening wear alongside his wife Terry. “It was [producer] Luke Livingston’s idea.”

[GOP1]The award show trappings were the only tongue-in-cheek part of the evening. “Tea Party: The Documentary Film” is, according to its stars and filmmakers, an attempt to celebrate — and correct — the history of what Armey called a movement to “fulfill the destiny of this land.” Livingston said he and his volunteers paid for the movie, “maxing out our credit cards,” for a total of around $500,000. Two more members of Congress, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), joined the proceedings to pay tribute to the activists who organized the 9/12 “taxpayer march on Washington,” which drew an estimated 60,000 people to the Capitol to protest the Democrats’ economic agenda. In remarks before the start of the film, Blackburn made a spirited pitch for Tea Partiers to come down to Nashville for February’s national Tea Party Convention.

“When you come to Tennessee,” said Blackburn, “they’ll be sure in telling you — like my husband likes to say — when it comes to taxes, if 10 percent is good enough for God on Sunday, it’s good enough for the government on Monday.”

Price, the sponsor of a resolution paying tribute to the 9/12 march, credited Tea Party activists with giving Republicans “the courage to do what we need to do.” After his short remarks, he asked more than a dozen activists to join him onstage to accept framed copies of the resolution, which has been sponsored by 148 members of the Republican conference but has not come up for a vote.

“It’s not like you haven’t seen one of these before,” Price said, passing off a copy to Armey, “but I don’t think you’ve seen one that truly recognizes freedom and liberty.”

For the activists, makers, and stars of the movie, it was all a bit overwhelming. The movie hadn’t been finished, said director Pritchett Cotten, until three days before the premiere. He and a small group of volunteers spent a month of 17-hour days editing the film with Apple’s Final Cut Pro software, stopping only for Thanksgiving. The finished product elicited many moments of spontaneous applause from the audience, as well as some tears, and a final standing ovation.

“Tea Party: The Documentary Film” is part tribute, part “official” history, and part human interest story. Cotten, who cut his teeth on commercials and corporate training films, has the most success with the human drama.

“I didn’t want to make a policy movie,” said Cotten.

Focusing on six people who participated in the 9/12 march at various levels, the film presents them — and, by extension, all Tea Partiers — as average Americans less concerned with partisanship or economics than with a government that, according to all six of the subjects, “doesn’t listen.”

In the film’s telling, the movement began with anger at President George W. Bush. His voice, announcing the September 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 with warnings of what will happen “if the free market is allowed to work,” is the first sound viewers hear at the start of the movie. Price, the member of Congress featured most often in the film, later argues that Tea Party anger goes back to the March 2008 collapse of BearStearns, and the government’s corresponding rescue package.

From there, the Tea Party movement is portrayed as a natural next step in America’s history of peaceful rebellion against the government. William, a minister and Revolutionary War re-enactor, explains how the movement is in step with the original Boston Tea Party. (The film’s footage depicting colonial America was filmed at Colonial Williamsburg, Va., according to one note in the credits.) Painstakingly, Cotten and his stars make the case against charges of “racism” in the movement, relying on William’s membership in a mostly African-American church and through the testimony of Nate, an African-American activist who is deeply apologetic about his 2008 vote for the Obama-Biden ticket.

“You have to understand how that played with the psyche of a black man or a black woman,” Nate says, “to see the highest seat of power, and it’s held by a black man.” The film shows Nate making the case to black men in Detroit that “black people we never really had a political voice.” He also admits that he stands out in the mostly-white Tea Party crowds of which he’s been a part. There is a “voice in my head,” he says, that tells him one day he’ll be less alone.

The race issue surfaces a few more times in “Tea Party,” most jarringly when a group of doctors, participating in the Sept. 10, 2009 mass lobbying effort in Congress, engage Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) in a back-and-forth about health care reform. “It went well until he pulled the race card,” says Dr. Robert Shessell , another one of the film’s subjects, “and said the only reason they did it was to embarrass the first black president.” All of this, argue the filmmakers, is the height of irony. The music played during the march itself, titled “It’s Time to Party,” puts the march into a rich and multi-racial context: “in the spirit of Martin, of Gandhi, of Jesus.”

Another goal of the film is to challenge 10 months of media coverage while subtly deciding who does and does not speak for the movement. The role of FreedomWorks in helping to organize the 9/12 march is fully covered, down to a scene where Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots takes notes and talks on a conference call led by FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe. The closest the film gets to a suspense scene is a real-time account of a bomb threat against FreedomWorks, which occurs while Martin is in the office. “We’re going to come out twice as strong tomorrow,” Kibbe says to cheers from other activists. Notably less present in the movie — although there are images from some of its events — is Americans for Prosperity, the rival group which, unlike FreedomWorks , supported the Troubled Asset Relief Program to bail out Wall Street firms. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), an avid early endorser of the Tea Parties, does not appear in the film at all. But Livingston said he scrambled to include a shot of a sign reading “Thank You Glenn Beck,” hoping to grab the attention of the talk radio and Fox News star. That moment drew some of the screening’s loudest, rowdiest cheers.

The film, like Price’s resolution, also pushes forward the idea that turnout for the 9/12 march was larger than the media reported. Time lapse footage shows the 9/12 crowd at its maximum size. “The park service said this was the largest event that D.C. has ever had,” argues Jack, one of the organizers that Cotten’s camera followed to Washington. That isn’t true, but the controversial statement is followed quickly by emotional footage of Jack visiting the Vietnam War Memorial with other activists, eyes wet with tears. The film ends with a slow-motion shot of the flags at the World War II memorial. “I need you to stand up for our freedom!” says one of the rally’s African-American speakers. “Patriots! Stand up! Stand up! Stand up! Stand up!”

Inside the Reagan building, there was just as much enthusiasm, and just as much disinterest, with how the media was covering the movement. Armey joked from the stage about “liberal interlopers” in the room who could stick around and learn something. As he introduced Wilson, DeMint used the uproar over Wilson’s “you lie” outburst during President Obama’s joint speech to Congress in September to teach a lesson.

“When I heard this ‘you lie’ comment, the president turned and looked at me and I said ‘Oh no, they think it’s me,’” said DeMint. “The next day when I found it was Joe, I said ‘Oh no, he’s dead meat, they’re gonna get him.’ And a couple days later, I was saying — after he raised a few million dollars off of it — I was saying, ‘why didn’t I say that?” The lesson, he said, was to provide some “passion and anger.”

“The only reason we don’t have national health care right now,” said DeMint to the audience, “is you.”

But the Republicans, I think, will be a loyal opposition. They will support the president. The president simply needs to be patient, give the — General Petraeus and General McChrystal know what they’re doing.

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), The Wall Street Journal, today:

Mr. Obama may need Republicans to back his latest troop increase to make up for Democratic antiwar defections. The GOP, however, will question any decision that falls short of Gen. McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops, said Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.). In a phone interview from Afghanistan, where he and other lawmakers were visiting, Mr. Price was skeptical of what he feared would be half measures to try to please both parties. “If what you’re trying to do is to please all people, than that might not make any sense,” he said.

Obama’s troop increase — his second this year — is probably going to total around 30,000 combat troops. Then the administration is going to the NATO ministerial to seek another 10,000. Someone get that congressman a calculator, because I’d like to see how that adds up to a half-measure. But if this is going to be the Hill the Republican quasi-opposition/quasi-support for the Afghanistan war wants to die on, far be it for me to stand in its way.

There’s all sorts of money that has been ill-spent to date. I would propose to the president that he begins to decrease spending in non-defense areas, non-defense discretionary areas in Washington where you can save significant amounts of money. A penny on the dollar will get us hundreds of billions of dollars in order to accomplish the priorities that we ought to have for the American people. And one of the priorities absolutely has to be and must be the protection of our land and degrading the resources that Al Qaida has.

And it’s not only Republicans dismissing the war-tax proposal. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday that it’s not realistic that Congress could push through such a tax in the middle of an economic downturn.

In the middle of a recession we’re probably not going to be able to increase taxes to pay for it. There should have been, as far as I’m concerned, tax increases for upper bracket folks who did so well during the Bush years — that’s where the tax increases should have taken place. But that should have happened some time ago.

Hat tip to The Hill.

Whereas on September 29, 2009, during proceedings on the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. Alan Grayson from Florida described the Republican health care plan as “die quickly”;

Whereas on September 29, 2009, during Rep. Grayson’s speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, he presented a sign for display, which read, “The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly”;

Whereas on September 29, 2009, Rep. Grayson repeatedly stated that “Republicans’ health care plan” was for Americans to “die quickly”;

Whereas on September 29, 2009, Rep. Grayson concluded his speech by saying, “Remember, the Republican plan: Don’t get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly.”

Whereas the conduct of the Representative from Florida was a breach of decorum and degraded the integrity and proceedings of the House;

Now, therefore be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives disapproves of the behavior of the Representative from Florida, Mr. Grayson, during proceedings on the floor of the House of Representatives on September 29, 2009.

Grays On

How to Take Back America Conference, St. Louis (Photo by: David Weigel)

ST. LOUIS — Kitty Werthmann has made quite a career out of warning Americans that fascism is on its way. The 84-year-old native Austrian survived the excesses of the Third Reich and, in her dotage as a leader of the South Dakota branch of the Eagle Forum, recorded tapes and videos explaining just how Hitler took power. She made her case during George W. Bush’s presidency, but the audience was small–fringe conservative activists, radio hosts like Alex Jones. Then came President Barack Obama. On Saturday, at the “How to Take Back America” conference, Werthmann found herself speaking to an overflowing room of conservative activists about the parallels between Obama and the rise of Hitler.

“We had prayer in school before we started class, and after class,” said Werthmann. “One day I came into the classroom and the crucifix was gone, and there was Hitler’s picture, and the Nazi flag on either side. And our teacher said, ‘Today we don’t pray anymore. We sing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles.’”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

The audience of mostly female conservative activists murmured; some of them scrawled out detailed notes, shaking their heads at what they were hearing. It had been a few days since Fox News reported that a New Jersey school had children sing a song of praise to President Obama. They kept on writing and listening as Werthmann explained how Hitler had euthanized mentally handicapped children, and how he’d kept lists of political enemies.

“What would you suggest we do,” asked one activist, “if we are asked to give up our guns?”

“Don’t you dare give up your guns!” thundered Werthmann. “Never, never, never!”

“Give them back one bullet at a time!” called out another activist. The tense atmosphere melted a little bit; the room broke up with laughter.

According to Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum, the “How to Take Back America” conference was the largest summit the group had held in all of its 38 years. Schlafly, who turned 85 in August, moved slowly through the halls of the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac, a 30-minute drive west from the center of the city, as new attendees shook her hand and begged her for autographs and photos. She told TWI that the registration topped 600, beating the previous record of around 300, and the size was overwhelming as hurried hotel staff tried to break down and build up tables for meals, for books, for punch at the end of the day.

“Kitty has pointed out the parallels between the slow, incremental Hitler takeover of Austria and some of the things that are happening today,” said Schlafly, asked about Werthmann’s “How to Recognize Living Under Nazis and Communists” session. “She’s an expert on that. I see what [Obama] is doing as absolute socialism, as government ownership of the means of production.”

The “How to Take Back America” conference was no place for soft critiques of the Obama administration. It was a weekend of speeches and training sessions that were laden with doom, cries of mounting fascism, and long prayers for salvation. It was the kind of event where Schlafly, a conservative icon who’s often seen as a leader of the movement’s far right flank, could take the role of a pragmatist, sticking to the sort of criticism of the Obama administration that might appear on Fox News and asking activists to elect a Republican Congress in 2010. And Schlafly succeeded in bringing big Republican stars to the conference. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) was the biggest draw, but six members of Congress attended, too–Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), and Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.). Several 2010 Republican candidates hosted workshops, including Ed Martin and Vicky Hartzler, both running for Democratic-held U.S. House seats in Missouri. But some of the rhetoric went beyond partisan politics. At worst, the speakers argued, fascism was on the horizon. At best, this was a pivotal time in a war on Christian values. Some of the speakers split the difference.

“If you look at the classic model for moving to Marxism,” said retired Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who would give the conference’s opening speech, “you look at what every Marxist organization has done, they nationalize. They redistribute wealth. They restrict gun ownership. They then go out and suppress the opposition. And then, finally, they censor the media.”

In his speech, Boykin–who has gotten into hot water for speaking out against Islam while in uniform–begged the audience to pray for their country. “It’s only because of intercessory prayer that we haven’t been hit again since September 11,” said Boykin. “Pray for America for 10 minutes a day. If we can mobilize millions of prayer warriors that can pray for 10 minutes a day, we can open the gates of heaven.”

In the halls and from the stages of the conference, there were constant warnings of fascist, anti-Christian campaigns to break down American morals and sovereignty. Rev. Rick Scarborough, a pastor who advised Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign, pounded the podium at his Friday afternoon speech, warning that the president’s pro-gay agenda was endangering Christians who spoke out against gay rights.

“The day the president put his hand on the bible,” said Scarborough, “his minions were changing official White House Website to reflect a whole new understanding of civil rights, to refer to homosexuals.” The Bible, said Scarborough, called these people “sodomites, which no one wants to talk about because it reminds them of their behavior.”

Some activists followed this up with a breakout session on “How to Counter the Homosexual Extremist Movement,” where they learned about transgender awareness days at public schools. And some went to “How to Stop Feminist and Gay Attacks on the Military,” where they were informed that upwards of 200,000 active duty members of the military might quit if “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is repealed.

Those worries about the “gay agenda” came in the context of other alleged threats to the Constitution. Frank Gaffney, president of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, hosted two panel sessions; one on the United Nations, one on “How to Understand Islam.” The theme throughout was that “transnationalists” of either the Islamic school or the secular school were targeting the Constitution. Conservatives, said Gaffney, could combat this by “picking fights” over seemingly obscure issues, and he cited the work he’d done slowing the nomination for Harold Koh, now the legal advisor to the State Department. Lawyers like Koh, said Gaffney, were dangers to national sovereignty.

“The North American Union is a real thing,” said Gaffney. “It is a real transnational agenda to try to forge out of Mexico, Canada, and the United States, a real competitor to the American Union.” Beseeching his audience not to treat the NAU as “black helicopter stuff,” he claimed the existence of “something like twenty-five different trilateral working groups, each and every one of which is beavering away at new transnational regulations.”

The activists, mostly female and Midwestern, but included people who’d traveled from both coasts, moved in and out of these sessions taking copious notes. Some of them were hearing about this stuff, with this spin, for the first time. “A lot of people don’t think the U.N. is any big threat,” said Karen Clark, an activist from Utah, telling TWI what she’d learned from Gaffney’s speech. “I hadn’t heard about the two schools of transnationalism before.”

Off the stage, the fears and conspiracy theories about President Obama grew more obscure. One activist told TWI that Obama may have been “installed” after decades of lessons from Communists. Peggy Carter, an Eagle Forum leader from North Carolina, fretted that Obama was “anti-white,” and had only stealthily revealed that to Americans because “he can’t afford” to make it obvious.

Some of the most prominent attendees told TWI that they had doubts about the president’s birth records. Rep. Cynthia Davis, a Republican state legislator in Missouri who has worked with “birther” lawyer Orly Taitz for most of this year, said that lawsuits demanding proof of the president’s citizenship were chiefly about the integrity of the Constitution, and that because Obama’s father was Kenyan, Obama’s eligibility problems extended beyond his birth records.

“Her credibility is questioned because she has an accent,” said Davis, defending Taitz, “and yet the reason she has an accent is because she came from a Communist country, and she knows how awful that is, to have a government usurped.”

Other Republican politicians who’d gotten in hot water for indulging in “birther” jokes or conspiracies led popular breakout sessions. Kris Kobach, a candidate for Kansas secretary of state who had joked that neither Jesus Christ nor Obama had a birth certificate, told TWI that he wouldn’t bother with the issue if elected in 2010, and expected it to be dealt with in one of the various outstanding lawsuits. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), who had pondered a lawsuit over the president’s citizenship, told TWI he had no doubts about Obama’s citizenship, but suspected that something was being hidden by concealing the original 1961 document on file in Hawaii.

“President Obama could solve this problem and make the birthers back off by simply showing us his long-form birth certificate,” said Franks.

Kobach and Franks stayed away from that topic in their sessions. Kobach hosted two, on immigration and on the threats that ACORN and voter registration reform posed to America’s electoral systems. Franks introduced Maafa 21, a documentary which argues that legal abortion in the United States began as a plot to commit genocide against American blacks. During a short clip from the film–which Franks said he’d shown to members of the Congressional Black Caucus–the congressman quietly commented on the most powerful interviews.

“When we said we would no longer go to the back of the bus,” said anti-abortion rights activist Alevda King on the screen, “there was a place being reserved for us at the abortion clinic.”

“Hear, hear,” said Franks.

Whenever he got the chance, Franks told activists about his current project, the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2009, a bill that would make it illegal to perform abortions based on the race or gender of the fetus. By his logic, this could force a lawsuit that would define fetuses as people. Franks, like the other members of Congress who appeared at the conference, tied the cause of Eagle Forum activists to the goals of the founders, of Abraham Lincoln, and of true adherents to the Constitution.

By the close of the conference on Saturday night, the focus had returned to Schlafly. The boisterous, ever-present Christian radio host and conference co-sponsor Janet Porter played a series of clips from the 84-year-old activist’s career and gave her a prize: the “American Hero of the Century” award, a glass eagle with a verse from Isiah scrawled into it. And while his 2008 rival Mitt Romney spoke to the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference in Michigan, Mike Huckabee flew from New York, where he’d filmed a new episode of his show, to give a closing speech that paid tribute to Schlafly and all of the ideas that the conservatives in the room had forced into the Republican mainstream. He called for slicing the United Nations off of Manhattan, and said that with the help of conservative activists, he might “live to see the day” when abortion is banned in America.

“God bless you,” said Huckabee, “and God bless Phyllis Schlafly most of all.”

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When I got a few minutes with Wurzelbacher, I wanted to know: What ever happened to IRSVote.com, the Website where users were asked to pay $0.99 for a phone call to “vote the IRS out of business” and replace the income tax with a FairTax? While the site is still up and running, Wurzelbacher admitted that endorsing the site was probably a mistake.

“I’m learning,” he said. He started to say something about the people who hound him to endorse their products, but he thought better of it. “The basics were there for a great idea but they definitely want to do it just for money. And it was sold to me as more of a chance of doing something else. The publicity that they promised never came.”

Wurzelbacher shrugged. The idea had made sense to him, he said — people will vote for American Idol, so why not something important? But he said he’d walked away from the project, and his PajamasTV reporting job was only a three-month gig, so the high-profile projects of earlier this year were no more. He had, however, endorsed a conservative comic strip called “Microman USA,” which was on sale at the conference.

The woman right behind Wurzelbacher with the white and black Jacket is Cheryl Eager, a conservative candidate running against Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah). The woman right in front is Kitty Werthmann, a South Dakota Eagle Forum leader who led a workshop on the conference on “How to Recognize Living Under Nazis & Communists.”

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One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it. … That is heart-breaking, it is wrong, and no one should be treated that way in the United States of America.

That anecdote is false, the Journal claims, because “the efforts of [the patient's] sister and the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan got Mr. Raddatz’s policy reinstated within three weeks of his April 2005 rescission and secured a life-extending stem-cell transplant for him.”

“Mr. Raddatz died this year,” the Journal notes, “nearly four years after the insurance showdown.”

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who heads the Republican Study Committee, is patting himself on the back this morning for having speculated last week that the tale was false. His office issued a statement this morning saying that the incident “reinforces that President Obama lacks a complete understanding of the American health care system, and further does a disservice to Americans by promoting a health care plan with half-baked anecdotes.”

Not to defend Obama for twisting the tale, which he seems to have done, but both the Journal and Price have downplayed the fact that the patient’s insurer did in fact drop his coverage when he became sick, and that it took an act of the Illinois attorney general to get that coverage reinstated. Is that really insignificant? After all, how many patients have the option of soliciting such higher ups to get their insurance back? And why should they have to do so?

We wrote a piece today pointing to a few family members of patients who suffered similar horrors in dealing with the private insurance industry. Do Republicans really want to hang their hats on the defense of an industry that would deny coverage to squeeze a few more dollars to satisfy Wall Street? Seems that they do.