Yet another one for the you-can't-make-this-up file:
This morning, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) called in to MSNBC's Morning Meeting to discuss health insurance reform. During the interview, host Dylan Ratigan asked Grassley about the so-called "death panels" in the House reform bill. Grassley, incredibly, responded that the fervor over end-of-life counseling is the result of "a distortion coming from the far-left."
Did Grassley forget who started this lunacy?
SARAH PALIN: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
A lunacy that has been embraced by many notable Republicans, including Grassley himself:
There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life. And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn't have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you're going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don't have any problem with things like living wills. But they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma.
And while Grassley is quietly walking back that bit of idiocy, the fact remains that it was Republicans who created and pushed the lie about death panels.
And this is who the Democrats are negotiating with on a so-called compromise on health care reform.