When Rush Limbaugh apologized to Sandra Fluke after calling her a ‘slut’ for daring to argue that the government should force health insurance plans to include medicinally beneficial birth control pills in their plans, I thought this was a good thing.  If there’s one thing I’m much in favor of, it’s civility in the political discourse. Rush was uncivil in his comments, period. And unlike what some of my conservative friends believe, I don’t think apologizing for a mistake like that makes you weak. I actually think it shows that Rush isn’t a coward; instead, he mans up to his mistake. This is how things are handled in the real world. You make a mistake, you apologize for it, and that’s the end of it.

Well, that should have been the end of it. Instead, Ms. Fluke rejected the apology, saying it only came after advertisers started pulling support. Fine, that’s her prerogative.| MORE ›

The Republican National Committee just released a new ad video, in which the GOP just about destroys President Obama – which is, obviously, a good thing.

In it, the RNC challenges Obama’s economic decision and record over the last two-and-a-half years, reports Wake up America!

Transcript (via WuA, with some slight corrections):| MORE ›

No joke. That’s the kind of “choice’ Obama was talking about when he told Americans his plan would give them more choices than they have now:

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance.| MORE ›

That’s Obama’s personal motto and political strategy. ‘The rich’ vs. ‘the poor,’ ‘the patient’ vs. ‘the doctor,’ ‘the cop’ vs. ‘you.’ William Kristol touched on this subject in a recent blogpost (for the Washington Post). Read it.

Divide and conquer can be extremely useful. Caesar used it – and for good reasons.| MORE ›

Hot Air reports, quoting Politico, that when Senator Tom Coburn wanted to pitch his criticism of the Democrats’ health care plan last month, he decided to ignore conservative websites and, instead, turned to the Huffington Post.| MORE ›

Fox News reported the other day that the Florida Senate recently passed a bill outlawing Florida physicians from asking patients whether or not they own a gun, unless there’s a legitimate reason for doing so. The Florida House of Representatives recently passed it as well:| MORE ›

When key House chairman and moderate House Democrats on Tuesday agreed to a White House-backed proposal that would give an outside panel the power to make cuts to government-financed health care programs, Politico reports, White House budget director Peter Orszag declared the plan “probably the most important piece that can be added” to Obama’s health care reform plans.| MORE ›

According to football fan James Carville, we’ll know whether the Obama administration is a playoff caliber franchise within the next few months.| MORE ›

Writes Robert L. Samuelson:

They’ve left the impression that somehow magical technological breakthroughs will produce clean energy that is also cheap. Perhaps that will happen; it hasn’t yet. They’ve talked so often about the need to control wasteful health spending that they’ve implied they’ve actually found a way of doing so. Perhaps they will, but they haven’t yet.

Jennifer Rubin comments:| MORE ›