Orrin Hatch is an adult

Since no one yelled out something during a speech or accused anyone of wanting to put the nation's grandmothers into an apple press for "ciderizing" you might be under the impression that our elected betters are returning, if not to the emotional level of adults, at least to the level of less angsty teenagers. Well, you didn't read the list of 534 amendments proposed to Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee health bill. To be fair, neither did I. But I read someone else's summary, and while there are some worthwhile amendments in there, it mostly goes to show how juvenile and childish the Senate is.

Roberts 144: To ensure that if people like the hometown hospital they have, they can keep it.

Did I miss this meme? Was there an "Obama's gon stealz ur hospitalz" movement that came right on the heels of the grandma murder one?

Ensign 409: Transparency in Czars.
Hatch 511: Prohibits authorized or appropriated federal funds under the Mark from being distributed to or used by ACORN.
Ensign 543: Strike the word “fee” everywhere it appears in the bill and replace with the word “tax”.

When I think of things that are absolutely vital to the fight to reform health care, czars and getting pissy about ACORN are the first two things I think about, not to mention making it easier for my colleagues to demonize something as a tax.

But perhaps the childish coup de grâce, after you get though all the amendments prohibiting the government takeover of health care, amendments getting the vapors over rationing, or stripping out anything useful from the bill, was delivered by Orrin Hatch of Utah...Utah....U.....tah:

Hatch 497: add transition relief for the excise tax on high cost insurance plans for any State with a name that begins with the letter ‘U’.

Whew, thank God he's trying to get that one in there. That's got to help, what, 20-30 extra states dodge that tax fee on gold plated policies, right? Glad to see you're taking this seriously Orrin. Now I'm kind of hoping that Rockefeller 612, the amendment that states "any doctor is allowed to beat any person named Orrin with a sack of surgical grade oranges on any day ending with the word 'day'" passes.