Believe it or not, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer's "Truth Squad" segment actually did some genuine journalism tonight re: Bart "Don't Look At Me, I Only Rented A Room On C-Street" Stupak's nonsensical claim about the Health Care bill.
Please forgive the briefness of this diary, but seeing this on ABC, rather than just, say, Maddow, was surprising, and I thought it should be shared.
From Media Matters:
If Stupak had a factually based argument here in terms of what's in the bill, he might (by some) at least be commended for sticking to his religious principles, whether one agrees with them or not (I personally do not, as I have this little problem with religion mixing with politics as it tends to push governments toward theocratic rule, and I'm fairly sure that Thomas Jefferson, if his letter to the Danbury Baptists is anything to go by, would have agreed).
But Stupak doesn't have any factual basis for his objection. So the way I see it, one of two things is going on here: he's either simply misinformed (which would be highly unlikely as his misinterpretation of the language in the bill can quite easily be explained away, as it is in the ABC report above), or he knows very well that the bill doesn't fund abortion and he's trying to move Congress to all but overturn Roe vs. Wade via a vain attempt to somehow prevent private insurance companies that cover abortion from being part of the exchange...
...which is just a little odd, considering that, as the Washington Post correctly pointed out today:
Today the feds devote at least $250 billion a year to subsidizing employer-based coverage... A Guttmacher Institute study says that 87 percent of typical employer plans cover abortion, and a Kaiser study found that 46 percent of covered workers had abortion coverage.
The bottom line is that he has no factual basis for his objection, and neither do his supposed "10 other" Congressmen who support him in this.
Now if only someone would explain these facts to Chris Matthews, who, amazingly, allowed Stupak to continue his little Misinformation Tour without so much as a mild counter-argument last night.