Now, the Democrats plan to hold closed door talks to hammer out the details of healthcare reform. C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb is urging Congressional leaders to allow C-SPAN cameras to televise healthcare meetings, but the Dems in Congress aren’t having it.

From the article:

Congressional leaders, however, reportedly are expected to bypass the traditional conference committee process, in which lawmakers from both parties and chambers meet to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of a bill. Instead, The Associated Press reports that top Democrats at the House, Senate and White House will figure out the final product in three-way talks before sending it back to both chambers for a final vote. 

This format would seem ideal for closed-door meetings, which congressional Democrats have used many times to figure out sensitive provisions in the health care bill — though President Obama pledged during the campaign to open up health care talks to C-SPAN’s cameras. 

“That’s what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are,” Obama said at a debate against Hillary Clinton in Los Angeles on Jan. 31, 2008.

Lamb urged Congress in his letter to fling open the doors in the final stretch of the negotiations. 

This is the most dishonest, most unopen, and most unethical Congress for as far back as I can recall. Under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, Congress seeks to hide discussions on dramatic changes to our healthcare system.

Shame. Shame.

See comments on Breitbart’s Big Government or return to my full site.

Above is an interesting presentation by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Notice when she says dissent and disagreement is very American when it advances causes of liberalism, but – strangely enough – not when it doesn’t favor her causes.

Filed under: Things That Make You Go Hmmm?

According to a series of questions posed by Gallup, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi trails former Vice President Dick Cheney in favorability ratings. A poll taken at the end of May suggests both prominent voices are held unfavorably by a little more than half of Americans (polled); however, Cheney’s overall favorable rating hovers at 37%, while Pelosi’s favorability is at 34%.

What is more interesting is the break down of the total figures:

• While Pelosi’s overall favorability increased during the last two years of the Bush Administration, her unfavorability spiked sharply up 8 points just before January 2009.
• Vice President Cheney’s unfavorability rating steadily increased during the end of the Bush Administration, but his favorability spiked 7 points just after Obama’s inauguration.
• Cheney’s favorability among those who consider themselves “Independent” is 12 points higher than the same demographic for Speaker Pelosi.
• Cheney’s favorability among Republicans is 8 points higher than Speaker Pelosi’s favorability among Democrats.
• Cheney’s favorability among Democrats is 5 points higher than Speaker Pelosi’s favorability among Democrats.

Gallup concludes that:

After President Obama, Pelosi and Cheney are arguably the next most prominent political figures active in the two major parties today. Both have attracted significant news coverage in the mainstream press this year, most recently for their positions on the government’s interrogation policies for suspected terrorists.

That coverage appears to have helped Cheney — at least modestly — in the image department. Given Americans’ concern about closing Guantanamo Bay, his improved ratings since March are arguably related to his ongoing outspokenness on waterboarding, tying it in with U.S. national security.

Pelosi has had a major, high profile role in the legislative agenda of Congress all year, most notably with passage of Obama’s economic stimulus package in January; however the recent controversy over her possible knowledge of waterboarding — and her claim that the CIA misled Congress about briefing her — may have more to do with her depressed favorable ratings, which are down eight points since November.

From the Washington Post:

Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered “EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah.” EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.

Whoops.