Last night on MSNBC, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi felt the need to correct Rachel Maddow, saying that Bart Stupak wasn’t trying to hijack the Democrats’ government-run health care bill. According to Pelosi, Republicans are the only ones capable of hijacking their government takeover agenda:

But one week ago, it was Stupak who said he was “prepared to take responsibility” for bringing down government-run health care if the House was forced to vote on the Senate Democrats’ bill that provides federal funding of abortion:

It’s no secret that House Dems don’t like Harry Reid’s bill. That’s why it’s no surprise that they tried to bend the rules to pass it. Yesterday, the Senate parliamentarian foiled their plan to pass their government-run health care experiment without voting for highly unpopular provisions – like taxpayer funded abortions, middle-class tax hikes, and backroom deals – in Harry Reid’s bill. The latest special state carve-out to surface was for Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) to raid a trust fund for mine workers. In the past, Sen. Byrd had been a staunch opponent of using the reconciliation process to pass health care reform. Yet he now seems to be changing his mind. Coincidence?

What other sketchy provisions will House Dems have to affirm when they pass the unamended Senate bill? Check out our Research Briefing, “11 Things…” to learn more.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to protect free speech rights in Citizens United v. FEC, Democrats have been trying to paint this decision as one that will “open the floodgates” of special interest money. Sen. Chuck Schumer went even further, attacking the Supreme Court’s decision as “un-American.” And as CBS News’ chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford notes, President Obama’s attack on the Supreme Court during his State of the Union address was just as ridiculous:

It wasn't enough that Mr. Obama, for the first time in modern history, took a direct shot at the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address, when he slammed the justices for their recent campaign finance reform decision. Six of them looked on -- including the author of the opinion, key swing vote Anthony Kennedy -- while Democrats jumped up to whoop and holler. All that, of course, was too much for Justice Samuel Alito, who shook his head and silently mouthed, "not true." The next day, the White ... more

Obama has claimed many times that he’s committed to making “his administration the most open and transparent in history.” Yet, when it comes to his labor union bosses, Obama has no problem blocking their activities from public view:

Since President Obama took office, the Labor Department has rescinded or delayed three sets of rules proposed by the George W. Bush administration that would have required unions and their leaders to more specifically detail their finances … The rules were rolled back while the Obama administration was seeking more stringent regulation of corporate America, including banks, insurance companies, health care providers and publicly traded companies.

During the Bush administration, unions had to disclose where their money was going, giving American union members valuable information about how their dues were being spent. As a result of these rules that President Bush put in place, it was discovered that unions gave $3.2 million to the 2008 Democratic ... more

Last month, we took you on a week-long retrospective of Obama’s $862 billion stimulus and all the waste, fraud and abuse the American taxpayer ended up financing. But a new Congressional report shows that taxpayers actually get hit twice with much of the fraud from the stimulus.

The report reveals more than 730 allegations of stimulus fraud have been received by federal investigators. While this number is staggering, what is more disturbing is that the Education Department’s inspector general has stated that 60 percent of his budget is going towards monitoring and reporting stimulus fraud. Other agency inspector generals have reported that up to 40 percent of their budget will be used to tracking down stimulus fraud. Not only are stimulus funds being wasted, but additional taxpayer funds have to be used to investigate the wasted funds. 

They might’ve “messed with Joe” once, but they’re costing the American taxpayer twice.