From Saturday's Washington Post: "Spotted: ... Stevie Wonder at Blues Alley on Thursday night. He stopped in to see saxophonist Najee and jumped onstage for two songs."

Now that must have been a sight to see. So to speak.

Boucher voted "no" in November, but had been listed as undecided. This report makes his position seem pretty clear:

U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., said Friday he could not support health care reform legislation that includes heavy cuts to Medicare, a position he has held since his first vote against the package and his party’s move to push legislation through Congress.

The Hill reports:

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the healthcare bill will pass by next weekend.

"We'll have the votes when the House votes, I think, within the next week," Gibbs said on "Fox News Sunday."

Gibbs added that those on next week's Sunday talk shows "will be talking about healthcare not as a presidential proposal but I think as the law of the land."

Gibbs is making clear that the vote House Democrats face next weekend is whether or not to make the Senate bill--with its tax on union health care plans and special deals for Nebraska, Florida, and Louisiana--"law of the land."

Remember him? The guy who won Ted Kennedy's Senate seat by running explicitly against Obamacare?

Excerpts:

Now we know. Two million of the “good jobs” America needs to create in the next five years are to come from doubling American exports. So President Obama promised Thursday. We are to have a “National Export Initiative,” an “export promotion cabinet” consisting of representatives of several federal agencies, a private sector advisory committee on international trade, and promotion of exports by a president who will get tough with our trading partners who “have not played by the same set of rules” as we have.

Pelosi to break transparency pledge to put health care bill online for 72 hours -- again.

Politico: Matheson foe keeps hammering Gavel-gate.

Jonah Goldberg on the "al Qaeda lawyers" ad.

Politico reports:

Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t tell the Senate Judiciary Committee about seven Supreme Court amicus briefs he prepared or supported, his office acknowledged in a letter Friday, including two urging the court to reject the Bush administration’s attempt to try Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant.

Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the USCCB is sounding the alarm to vote against the health care bill. "It looks like the House leadership's just going to try to jam this bill through the House without fixing any of the problems on abortion, so we'll have to oppose it," says Doerflinger. "We're getting out our alerts by fax and email."

The message? "It's basically: Vote 'no,'" says Doerflinger, "if they bring forward the legislation without fixing the problems on life and conscience."

If you're wondering which members of Congress are the most important to contact about Obamacare, Andy Wickersham and I have put together our list -- along with indicating how red or blue their districts are, and whether or not they voted for the Stupak Amendment (to preserve longstanding protections against taxpayer-funded abortion, which the Senate bill scrapped).

The odds were always against President Obama's deficit commission. The 18-member panel, co-chaired by former Republican senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowels of North Carolina, is due to release a report in December that will "put forward proposals to balance the budget excluding interest payments on the debt (the so-called primary budget) by 2015 and to meaningfully improve the long-term fiscal outlook," according to OMB director Peter Orszag. The hitch: proposals won't be made unless they earn the backing of 14 commission members. Hence a five-person bloc can effectively veto drastic spending cuts or, more likely, tax increases.

Bart Stupak tells National Review's Robert Costa that the House Democratic leadership is "ignoring" him. The good news: Stupak affirms he won't cave in and is a "definite 'no' vote" because Democratic leaders have made it clear the abortion language won't be fixed.

The bad news: "At this point, there is no doubt that they’ve been able to peel off one or two of my twelve," says Stupak. "The others are having both of their arms twisted, and we’re all getting pounded by our traditional Democratic supporters, like unions."

If Obamacare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party. “It would be very, very hard for someone who is a right-to-life Democrat to run for office,” he says. “I won’t leave the party. I’m more comfortable here and still believe in a role within it for the right-to-life cause, but this bill will make being a pro-life Democrat much more difficult. They don’t even want to debate this issue. We’ll probably have to wait until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this.”

Stupak told a radio show earlier today that Henry Waxman said during negotiations: "we want to pay for abortions."

From Rachel Maddow's show last night, here's a jaw-dropper from the woman who brought you, "We have to pass the bill, so you can find out what's in it." As I keep saying, the Democratic message mavens are working overtime, apparently to woo the all-important swing vote in Williamsburg to health care:

"Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance."

The AP had a great story this week about the growing number of self-identified "tea" activists in China. The article describes how activists, dissidents and even ordinary Chinese citizens often have their first encounter with state security when they are invited to "have a cup of tea" with the authorities. Instead of a warm drink and a friendly social chat, however, the "cup of tea" turns out to be an interrogation about the citizen's online political activity that touched on some taboo topic. While this practice has been commonplace for decades, it has increasingly become publicized as the tea drinkers -- particularly young tech-savvy signers of Charter 08 who are experiencing their first harassment by China's extensive security apparatus -- have defied the authorities instructions and posted stories about their outings on the internet.  There are now several websites that are devoted to stories about "drinking tea" with the authorities.  Some "tea drinkers" have even posted their experiences in real time via their mobile phones.  

If you listen beyond the media hysteria and Congressional flagellation of Toyota, you might just hear an intriguing buzz from folks involved in "sudden acceleration" cases of the past, many of which turned out to be bogus.

Ed Morrissey has the video of Bart Stupak on Fox News last night. "We're not going to accept this 'trust me, we'll fix it later,'" Stupak says. "There has to be something more." Stupak says that Democrats have been told they'll be given seven days to look at final legislative text, which would seem to put the March 18 deadline out of reach.

The fight for the GOP nomination to replace retiring U.S. senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky is one of the most interesting campaigns in the land. The establishment candidate, Kentucky secretary of state Trey Grayson, finds himself trailing insurgent eye doctor Rand Paul, son of libertarian gadfly Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Grayson says Paul benefits from the current anti-establishment mood and frequent appearances on Fox News Channel, where he discusses taxes, spending, health care, and the Federal Reserve. But Grayson wants Kentucky Republican voters to listen to Paul's thoughts on another topic: national security. They may not like what they hear.

NYT: "The [Indonesia] trip is unusual, experts say, in that there is no economic summit or other multinational gathering for the president to attend."

Dems planning to add nationalization of student loans to health-care bill.

President Obama has delayed his upcoming trip to the Pacific in order to pressure wavering House Democrats to back his health care reform. Obama was originally supposed to depart next Thursday, March 18. Now he'll leave Sunday the 21st. But that is still five days earlier than the Democrats' self-imposed deadline of March 26, when Congress is scheduled to begin its Easter Recess. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if Obama postpones the Asia trip until April. He and the leadership are engaged in a full-court press to win every vote.

From a USA Today editorial: "The fact is that many of those whom Liz Cheney is quick to brand as terrorists have been released from Guantanamo — including about 530 by the Bush administration, which admitted many posed no long-term threat."

Washington, D.C.'s Metro remains a great manifestation of liberalism today. Although it was created at the zenith of the Great Society, and although its union workforce gains overly generous pensions and maintains ridiculous job security, it is Metro's management of its passengers—its attempt to save passengers from their own idiocy—that earns it this title.

Obamacare supporters thought they may have caught a break when Rep. Dale Kildee of Michigan indicated he would vote for the Senate bill and thinks it adequately bans abortion funding. "Kildee Breaks From Stupak Over Senate Abortion Language," is how Roll Call put it. Kildee was on GOP whip Eric Cantor's list of pro-life Democrats who wouldn't vote for the Senate bill because of abortion, but Kristen Day, the executive director of Democrats for Life of America, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Kildee "wasn’t on the list of the Stupak 12" in the first place. Day is still hopeful there's a chance that Kildee will stick with Stupak in the end.

Obama hits all time low in Gallup poll.

WSJ: Holder in the hot seat, again.

Ed Whelan flags a report that trial lawyer John J. McConnell, who was nominated by the president to a district judgeship in Rhode Island, donated nearly $700,000 in the past 20 years to various Democrats. Whelan writes that McConnell's "poor rating" by the ABA "ought to set off alarm bells."

Nancy Pelosi does not have the 216 votes necessary to pass the Senate health care bill. She's planning to go ahead without the votes of the Stupak 12. Today the Senate parliamentarian ruled the Senate bill must become law before "fixes" can be made via the parliamentary tactic known as reconciliation. The GOP Senate caucus will rigorously enforce the Byrd rule, limiting the reconciliation changes to budget matters and nothing more.

What's going on?  The final push for Obamacare is about to begin. It starts on Monday, when the House Budget Committee will insert reconciliation instructions into the November House health care bill. By late Monday / early Tuesday, Budget will pass this bill and send it to the House Rules Committee, where Pelosi will change the language so that it matches the Senate bill. This is the final compromise legislation that may come to a vote on the House floor within weeks. "They're creating the shell," says Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

The AP reports:

House leaders have concluded they cannot change a divisive abortion provision in President Barack Obama's health care bill and will try to pass the sweeping legislation without the support of ardent anti-abortion Democrats. ...

Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the leadership will press ahead without reworking the abortion provision, which opponents say falls short in restricting taxpayer dollars for abortion coverage. He predicted some of the anti-abortion lawmakers in the party will end up voting for the overhaul anyway.