Now this is getting fun. It’s like watching a good cage fight. Now The Hill is reporting that Blue Dog Democrats said they were “lied” to by their Democratic leaders (emphasis mine):

The seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee stormed out of a Friday meeting with their committee chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), saying Waxman had been negotiating in bad faith over a number of provisions Blue Dogs demanded be changed in the stalled healthcare bill.

“I’ve been lied to,” Blue Dog Coalition Co-Chairman Charlie Melancon (D-La.) said on Friday. “We have not had legitimate negotiations.

“Mr. Waxman has decided to sever discussions with the Blue Dogs who are trying to make this bill work for America,” Melancon said.

Now that’s a good line for a commercial. I can hear it now….

Although those Blue Dogs were supposed to be headed back into another meeting of the Energy and Commerce Democrats, their anger was visible.

If the two sides cannot reach an agreement, the only hope for passage of the bill in the House will be to go straight to the floor, an option leaders shied away from endorsing but said was an option.

But the Blue Dogs issued dire warnings to leaders contemplating that approach.

“Waxman simply does not have votes in committee and process should not be bypassed to bring the bill straight to floor,” Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), the lead Blue Dog negotiator, said on Friday. “We are trying to save this bill and trying to save this party.”

Melancon said there would be 40-45 “solid no” votes from the 52-strong Blue Dogs, among other problems throughout the caucus.

“If they try to bring it to the floor, I think they’ll find out they have more problems than the Blue Dogs.”

A leadership aide said no decisions have been made on how to proceed.

Ouch.

So far I have to say I am proud of the Blue Dogs for standing on principle. The big question is whether they have the character and gumption to continue to stand together against the liberal tide and do what is right for this country.

Here is a great list from Tea Party Patriots that provides not only which committee each representative is on, but whether they are Blue Dog. Call the Energy Committee members, especially Waxman. Lend the Blue Dogs your support.

From Michelle Malkin: Waxman wants Blue Dogs to heel, signals committee bypass

Just how bad is it for the opposition? Dallas Tea Party activists outflank MoveOn at Obamacare protest

Hot Air: Waxman threatens to bypass own committee.

UPDATE 2: Is there a possible rift starting to appear? According to The Hill, there just might be: Waxman may let health bill skip committee. Here is the quote of interest:

Democratic critics of the bill have warned that the bill doesn’t have enough votes to pass on the floor, and say an end-run around the committee would galvanize opposition among centrists.

“That would clearly ruffle some feathers,” said an aide to a Blue Dog lawmaker.

Breitbart is reporting: Conservative House Dem says health talks collapse:

The head of a group of fiscally conservative Democrats says negotiations with House leaders on health care have collapsed.

Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., who heads the Blue Dogs’ health care task force, told reporters Friday that after a week of talks, the effort to reach agreement between the leadership and the conservative to moderate Democrats fell apart. He said that leaves Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., without the votes to advance the health care bill out of his committee.

However, Waxman has threatened to force a floor vote to break the impasse within Democratic ranks on President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

Pray for the Blue Dog’s and lend them your support. Here is a great list from Tea Party Patriots that provides not only which committee each representative is on, but whether they are Blue Dog. Call the Energy Committee members, especially Waxman, and the the Blue Dogs. Let them know you support them and as long as they do the right thing for this country, we have their backs.

Michelle Malkin: Waxman wants Blue Dogs to heel, signals committee bypass.

CNN Political Ticker is reporting: House Democrats splinter over health care

UPDATE 1: Really Bad News: Waxman: Blue Dogs must relent on health reform:

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) says there is “no alternative” to having healthcare legislation bypass his committee if Blue Dog Democrats don’t agree to legislation.

Waxman said if the seven Blue Dogs on his panel do not relent, they could join with the committee’s Republicans to “eviscerate” healthcare reform.

“I won’t allow them to hand over control of our committee to Republicans,” Waxman told reporters.

“I dont see what other alternative we have, because we’re not going to let them empower Republicans on the committee ”

But its okay to sell-out the American people. Has Waxman and the Blue Dogs checked Obama’s latest poll numbers? Less than 50% as of today – for the first time. Tread lightly.

Look at it this way – you are not empowering Republicans, you are saving your jobs.

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Original Post:

Sound familiar – like with the cap-and-tax bill. Just jamming it down our throats. Well it looks quite possible that Ralph Emanuel may be correct in that a vote will happen next week. From the National Review:

Inside Health Policy’s Julian Pecquet, who’s staking out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, reports that Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman “stormed out” of yesterday afternoon’s health reform meeting and told reporters he has nothing to announce. Asked whether the speaker could bypass his committee and take health care reform straight to the House floor, Waxman replied, “Ask the speaker.”

Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, is also in the meeting, along with Rahm Emanuel and Phil Schiliro. And if you’re really desperate for details, we can also tell you that staffers were given Girl Scout cookies.

UPDATE: Following the meeting with Blue Dogs was a separate confab with Pelosi, Clyburn, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and — this is where it gets interesting — Rules Committee Chair Louise Slaughter. Pelosi mostly avoided reporters as she left the meeting. But when asked about bypassing Energy and Commerce she said, “I don’t want to do that.”

Hoyer and Slaughter said no decision has been made.

Apparently, this ain’t over yet. Keep up the pressure; email and phone your representative. To find out who your representative is and write them check here. To contact your representative by phone go here.

More from Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey: Rahm Emanuel says House will vote on ObamaCare next week. Ed says “Uh, sure”. But don’t count out Nanny State Nancy yet.

If this does not derail Nancy and Ralph, I don’t know what will: Also from Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey: Rasmussen: Obama loses majority support.

Also read How To Kill Private Healthcare – Allow Lawsuits Against Employers

Sweetness & Light: Pelosi Not Bound By Obama’s Rx Deals

In other news and opinion:

Surprise! Dems run away from Gitmo again. From Michelle Malkin.

I guess in politics you also reap what you sow. From The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is paying a price on healthcare reform for the arm-twisting she did on the climate change bill last month.

Democratic House members were rankled by how the climate bill passed — and stunned by the criticism they got at home.

Those memories are fueling a revolt among conservative Blue Dogs and a drive among freshman lawmakers to drop plans for a surtax on the wealthy in healthcare reform.

An aide to one conservative Democratic lawmaker said the climate bill was “really rammed down our throats.”

And there’s a general sense of unease among others members of the caucus.

“I think the well’s a bit poisoned,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.). “A lot of people went home and got beaten up on climate. Now they want to make sure they understand it before they vote on it. People still want to do it. It’s just going to be a little bit harder.”

Many centrist Democrats pushed Pelosi and the Democratic leadership to put off the climate change debate and pass a healthcare overhaul first, giving members more time to work through the issues and get comfortable with the complex issue.

And what still rubs many members raw is that if the climate bill ever comes back from the Senate, it’s likely to be significantly weaker. So they voted for tough and expensive regulations that will likely never become law.

The fresh memory of the difficult vote has hit the Democrats’ plan to pass a healthcare bill before August like a Mack truck.

It also looks like other sections of the Democratic Congress are just a little concerned:

Despite a massive listening campaign organized by Pelosi and other leaders, the objections to the healthcare bill are coming from diverse parts of the caucus.

Freshmen are circulating a letter calling for the surtax to be eliminated because they believe it will unfairly hit small businesses.

“Republicans called the last one a tax increase and it wasn’t. But this one really is,” said an aide to one Democratic freshman lawmaker.

Blue Dogs have a host of complaints, starting with irritation that the bill doesn’t wring enough cost savings out of the healthcare system and leaves Medicare reimbursement unfairly low in their rural districts. They launched a formal protest last week that delayed the rollout of the House bill.

But after Pelosi introduced it with great fanfare Tuesday, Blue Dogs complained that few, if any, of their concerns were fixed.

The conservative Blue Dog’s have a strategy:

So the Blue Dogs on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have banded together to change the bill. They’ve warned they have the votes to stop the bill in at least one committee if those changes aren’t made

This tactic is designed to weaken the divide-and-conquer strategy used in the climate bill. However, leadership aides note their own parties opposition members are not so much against a bill; the previous climate bill arm twisting and subsequent backlash in their own backyards gives angry Blue Dogs a chance to flex their muscles and demand changes necessary to alter the bill to one they can support. The elephant in the room is whether these markups avoid dooming America to sub-standard health care and unsustainable debt. The only way to avoid disaster is to do away with the public option in any form.

Even a public option that is allowed to compete with private insurance on an exchange (as the current bill is written), would push out private insurers and drive them out of business. Nobody can compete with a non-profit government capable of printing money when deemed necessary. The current bill is implicitly designed to destroy private insurance. I’m from Canada – trust me, you don’t want that system.

The Blue Dogs have the fate of the country in their hands. On their death beds will they remember their lives with fondness, pride, and a swelling sense of dignity, or know they have sold out the souls of countless millions and doomed them to an inkling of an existence? Will they uphold the spirit of our forefathers and preserve liberty and dignity? History, the cruelest judge of all, remembers. If they are principled enough to change the course of disaster set by Obama and avoid the destruction of the greatest of countries, they will be remembered as heroes; men and women of honest disposition, worthy of great praise. As for the other option – sellouts, crooks, pirates of liberty, spineless and unprincipled hacks – these words will describe the men and women who vote against principles of common sense, even though each and every one of these labels provides for a loftier descriptive for such lowly scoundrels.

Further Reading: Even The NYT Won’t Avoid The Truth – Socialized Healthcare Stinks

In related news and opinion:

Michelle Malkin: Inside the monstrous Obamacare bureaucracy. Also check out, Putting a face on the casualties of Obamacare.

Sister Toldjah: CBO pours cold water on Obama admin’s claims about “savings” from ObamaCare. Heh.

Stop the ACLU: Snowe Dampens Dems Healthcare Ardor and Polls Begin to Turn

I am going to predicate this post with a request. Skip over it for now and go to the bottom in other news and opinion. Stopping health care reform in its current state is more important at this time. Read the stories you find there and then come back and read this story. Civic duty first. If Obama is shown to be ineligible to server then all bills he signs will be null-and-void. But that must wait for another day. The courts are moving forward on the birth certificate issue and those who question Obama’s eligibility to serve are gaining in credibility every day.

_____________________

Before summarily dismissing this case, look at the facts:

• Obama is deliberately hiding multiple documents, including a letter written to Honolulu’s Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women and Children, which claims it received a letter from the president declaring his birth there. Robert Gibbs refused to confirm that the letter which was used by the hospital to solicit donations is, in fact, a real correspondence.
• Wikipedia says Obama born in Kenya. Check out how quickly and how often statements about Obama shifted throughout the day until settling on Hawaii as the only possible birth place.
• When WND exposed doubts about the authenticity of the letter because it was created with HTML computer code and had no presidential or White House seal, the hospital which for nearly six months proudly declared Obama was born at its facility commenced an active cover-up, hiding that White House letter from its original webpage and refusing to confirm such a letter actually exists.
• There are at least two reports citing Obama’s birth in Kenya.
• And that came on the heels of several online information sites changing the president’s supposed birthplace from one hospital in Hawaii to another, after WND broke the news of the letter said to be from the White House.
• Barack Obama has refused to do something very simple – release his long-form birth certificate. Something easily accomplished with the stroke of a pen
• There has been at or slightly above 1 million dollars spent on sealing these documents from public view.
• While honest mistakes are often made, the Ghana Daily Graphic quoted Ghana’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni “It is expected that President Obama will make a major foreign policy statement on Africa”. The paper then went on to state that for Ghana, Obama’s visit will be a celebration of another milestone in African history as it hosts the first-ever African-American President on this presidential visit to the continent of his birth.

Just because Shepherd Smith calls those who question Obama’s eligibility “crazy” does not make it so. And those basing their interpretation of these events based solely on one man’s judgment forfeit their right to call themselves critical and objective thinkers.

From Right Side News: Judge Decides Obama’s Eligibility is a ‘Serious’ Question

One of the many cases brought against Barack Obama challenging his eligibility to hold the office of President of the United States has a U.S. Magistrate, Judge Joel Schneider of Camden, N.J. describing the dispute as a “serious” constitutional issue. The Judge is now adding letters of comment from the public to the court record.

The report of this action by Judge Joel Schneider is made by Attorney Mario Apuzzo, who is handling the Kerchner vs. Obama case, which Apuzzo filed in January, 2009.

Attorney Apuzzo filed the lawsuit, naming as defendants Barack Hussein Obama II, the U.S., Congress, the Senate, House of Representatives, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

This case alleges failure of the Congress to follow the Constitution, stating that the Constitution “provides that Congress must fully qualify the candidate ‘elected’ by the Electoral College Electors.”

“There existed significant public doubt and grievances from plaintiffs and other concerned Americans regarding Obama’s eligibility to be president and defendants had the sworn duty to protect and preserve the Constitution and specifically under the 20th Amendment, Section 3, a Constitutional obligation to confirm whether Obama, once the electors elected him, was qualified,”

The suit further says “Congress is the elected representative of the American people and the people speak and act through them,” continuing with, the defendants “violated” the 20th Amendment by failing to assure that Obama meets the eligibility requirements,”

“Plaintiffs’ complaint raises significant issues necessitating that the named defendants engage competent counsel to represent their interests. Given the high ranking positions of the defendants, the decision as to who will represent them in this case is not simple and straightforward,” the Judge indicating that this is indeed serious enough he feels that Obama, the Congress, the Senate, the House, Pelosi and the rest need sufficient time to get their representation lined up.

WND reports:

The defendants “violated” the 20th Amendment by failing to assure that Obama meets the eligibility requirements,” the lawsuit said.

Apuzzo told WND that while the judge recently granted the government extra time to line up defense counsel for the named defendants, his ruling described the issue as a serious constitutional question.

“Plaintiffs’ complaint raises significant issues necessitating that the named defendants engage competent counsel to represent their interests. Given the high ranking positions of the defendants, the decision as to who will represent them in this case is not simple and straightforward,” the judge said.

But as soon as attorneys are lined up, “the case will proceed expeditiously,” he said.

The case has attracted numerous public comments directed at and delivered to the judge, who has started adding them to the case file, Apuzzo noted.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “The court put the letters on Pacer.”

Pacer is a fee-based court website through which interested parties can research cases and their documentation.

“This is really strange,” said the attorney, noting that judges typically do not accept or even acknowledge public commentary on cases that are pending before them.

“The point is the letters are there in the docket,” he said.

I still think the question of Obama’s eligibility deserves its day in court without being dismissed. If a judgment requiring Obama to provide access to his long form birth certificate is appealed, that should raise serious questions. Obama should be forced to provide access to any and all records pertaining to his birth so we can just put all of this to rest.

Check out a video from The Michigan Grapevine.

In other news and opinion:

Michelle Malkin reports Obamacare in the House: Do the Blue Dogs have any bite?. Call those phone numbers she has listed.

“Centrist” Democrats in the House say they oppose the government health care takeover plans of their leaders and their president.

They’re barking loudly, demanding major amendments to protect small businesses and taxpayers.

But do the Blue Dogs have any bite? Or will they be bought off like many of them were on cap-and-trade and Porkulus One?

Also read Michelle’s Socialized health care and the death of choice

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey has a doozy. Seems like the House health care plan implicitly outlaws private insurance:

Investors Business Daily’s editors quickly read through the actual legislation of the House health-care reform bill looking for hidden time bombs — and they found a doozy. On page 16 of over a thousand pages of text, they discovered a clause that essentially locks people into their current plan, and locks everyone out of any other plan. Well, presumably the public plan will be an exception:

From IBD:

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

Ed continues:

Surprise! You can, as Obama promised, keep your current coverage — as long as it remains available. However, if your employer stops offering health-care benefits, or if you buy it privately and your insurer cancels your plan, you can’t just pick up another private plan. Enrollments will be closed as of the first day the bill becomes law.

That will have the effect of forcing millions of people into the public plan whether they want it or not. Even worse, if insurers get barred from attracting new customers — which this clause outlaws — then they will eventually see their rolls drained, thanks to the natural flow of the market as employers drop plans and skip the expense of offering medical insurance. It won’t take long at all for insurers to exit the market and leave the field for just the public plan, which will automatically get the customers of each individual insurer as they close up shop.

Over at the Hill: Blue Dogs threaten to bring down Pelosi’s healthcare bill

Centrist Democrats are threatening to oppose their party’s healthcare legislation unless House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accepts changes that make the bill more to their liking.

Seven Blue Dogs on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have banded together to draft amendments that they’ll co-sponsor in the committee markup, which starts Thursday. Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), the Blue Dogs’ point man on healthcare, says if those changes aren’t accepted, they’ll vote down the bill.

“We cannot support the current bill,” Ross said. “Last time I checked, it took seven Democrats to stop a bill in Energy and Commerce.”

Ross knows of three additional Democrats on the committee who won’t support the bill in its current form, creating a base of 10 Democratic opponents. The committee has 59 members: 23 Republicans and 36 Democrats.

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said he’s aware of the centrists’ concerns and is prepared to make changes even before the committee starts voting.

“Can a bunch of members bring a bill down? Sure,” Waxman said. “What we need to do is work together to pass a bill.”