The Republicans Were Against Medicare Before They Were For it. Or Something.

When does political expedience become cowardice? When you're Republican congresspersons who vow to gut Medicare, the sick and poor be damned, gets faces full of reality from senior citizens with canes and walkers at town hall meetings back home, and return to Washington with their tails between their legs.

That should surprise no one with an intelligence quotient north of Eric Cantor's.

Speaking of the House majority leader, who has sung from the Give To The Rich hymnbook louder than anyone east of Paul Ryan, he now wants "to seek common ground" with Democrats after he and his colleagues were tongue lashed back on the hustings, as well as being the recipients of a few unkind words from the man with the long-form birth certificate.

With deficit reduction talks resuming today, Cantor suggests that savings might come from ending payments to wealthy farmers, limiting lawsuits against doctors, and expanding government auctions of broadcast spectrum to telecom companies.

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In yet another example of why health-care reform is so popular and that Republicans try to gut it at their peril, insurance companies are reporting a flood of applications from young adults taking advantage of a provision in the law that allows people under 26 to remain on their parents' health plans.

WellPoint, the nation’s largest publicly traded health insurer with 34 million customers, said the dependent provision was responsible for adding 280,000 new members, or about one third of its total enrollment growth in the first three months of 2011.

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While there seems to be a ceasefire in the Republican war on the middle class and poor people, the war against women continues full bore, and at the top of House Speaker John Boehner's post-recess to-do list is not dealing with that pesky deficit or any number of ailments in the body politic, but ramming through the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act, which among other things would require rape audits.

Yes, rape audits.

Rape and incest victims who are not persuaded by Sharron Angle's view that getting raped is "God's plan" and want abortions would have to prove their trauma to IRS agents.

The bill passed the House yesterday and will now move on to the Senate where it will receive a well deserved death.

This still leaves the pesky matter of being able to get cervical cancer screenings at Walgreens, which was first reported on Fox & Friends. You can be sure that Republicans will get around to dealer with that outrage sooner or later.

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The filibuster has been a favorite tactic of Senate Republicans (yes, Democrats have done it, too) regarding judicial nominees, but an effort yesterday to block the nomination of John McConnell to the federal bench bombed when 11 Republicans joined Democrats to vote yea.

The chamber, which pretty much dictates what the GOP does when it comes to business, asserts that McConnell, a Rhode Island trial lawyer, is an anti-business ambulance chaser.

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I thought I was being a bit rash in predicting the day after Ryan introduced his Reverse Robin Hood deficit reduction plan that it would die in its crib, but now I'm feeling pretty chuff about it.

Well, at least the Obama As Weak On Defense meme is holding up.