Did someone really just accuse the Dems of offending God by holding a vote on Sunday?  Oh, the silliness that has become our political dialog.  Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on the Glenn Beck radio program:  "They intend to vote on the Sabbath, during Lent, to take away the liberty that we have right from God..."

And now, a word from the real world:

If Congress passes the $940 billion healthcare bill, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects a $138 billion savings over ten years. While this sounds impressive in deficit reduction terms, in reality, it represents an infinitesimal percentage of the federal budget. Consider this.

“Birther” Lawyer Orly Taitz has qualified to run for California Secretary of State, giving Debra Bowen new competition for her position. Taitz, a USSR native and naturalized U.S. Citizen, has gained notoriety for her numerous legal challenges to the legitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency.

There are over 242,000 Defense Department contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This at times exceeds the amount of troops we have officially deployed.  The cost is well over $100 billion to American taxpayers.

A study released earlier this week by the University of California Los Angeles showed that almost 25% of Californians under the age of 65 lacked health insurance during all or in part of 2009.  That is a 28 percent increase as compared to the 6.4 million uninsured in 2007.  With California’s unemployment at 12.5 percent, an increase in the number of the uninsured was expected.  But it has been reported that even these numbers took the researchers by surpris

Steve Poizner is California’s State Insurance Commissioner, and now the Stanford graduate is running for governor of California. Poizner, like his main rival Meg Whitman, is an individual with extensive experience in the business world. And like Whitman, he is looking to be nominated by the California Republican Party for the gubernatorial run.

According to the conclusion from observations noted in an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury, the federally mandated healthcare bill that the House will vote on this weekend is a bad bill for the state of California.  The Governor’s office is saying the bill imposes an “unfunded mandate” on California, posing a burden on the state.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s quest to convince the federal government to put-up-or-shut-up by paying California an additional $6.9 billion he says the state needs to carry out Washington D.C. imposed mandates is just one high-profile example of states increasingly asserting their rights.

Amidst the current, highly contentious debates over national healthcare policy, it is often easy to forget that the House and Senate are more than battlefields for the competing interests and ideologies of the two main parties.