From KCBS radio in California (via Michelle Malkin):

A key legislative committee in California revived a bill Thursday to create a government-run health care system in the nation's most populous state, two days after Massachusetts elected a senator who opposes the president's national health care plan.

The Senate Appropriations Committee released the bill for a vote by the full Senate next week. The legislation had been held over from last year because of the state's ongoing budget crisis.

So that must mean the "ongoing budget crisis" is over, time for another bloated government entitlement from the CA legislature!

[State Senator Mark] Leno said the system could be funded with a payroll tax along with existing state and federal money and increased efficiencies from a state-managed system ...

Oh yes, because we all know how efficient state-managed systems tend to be. And increasing payroll taxes sure will help the state's unemployment rate, which is higher than the national rate of 10 percent.

But this plan has at least one advantage over the proposed "health care reform" bills being debated in Congress - it will be inflicted on only one state rather than on the entire nation. This is the beauty of federalism, and one more reason to defeat ObamaCare.

This morning, RNC Chairman Michael Steele made some comments about Harry Reid's alleged "Negro dialect" statement. Steele pointed out the obvious and blatant double standard that is applied to Republicans vs. Democrats in such situations.

Bringing another example of the establishment media's inability to go beyond their own hackneyed liberal views, CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin, appearing this morning on CNN's "State of the Nation" program, made some comments somewhat defending the double standard:

[CNN host John] KING: But when they say -- Jessica, jump in, when you say they're not going to let this get in the way, of course, the Republicans would like to keep this getting in the way. And their African-American national chairman, Michael Steele, who, as I said in the last block, is no stranger to controversy of his own, but he was out this morning making a point, Jessica.

Listen to Michael Steele. His point is, if a white Republican had said this, everyone wouldn't go, oh, he apologized, it's over.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEELE: Mitch McConnell had said those very words, that this chairman and this president would be calling for his head, and they would be labeling every Republican in the country as a racist for saying exactly what this chairman has just said. So if I sat here and said what he just said, if Mitch McConnell used those words, no one would find it to be credible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The other chairman, of course, the Democratic chairman, Tim Kaine, sitting right there with Michael Steele.

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: First of all, a masterful political play by Michael Steele because he would like to change the topic this morning from some of his own issues right now.

And sure it's true that the Republican Party has a different history and a different baggage, Abraham Lincoln notwithstanding, on the issue of race. Just like the Democratic Party has different history and baggage on national security. And so they each have to be careful -- more careful than the other party on those particular topics.

To some extent he may be right. But, look, and let's point out we've all heard racial gaffes. Joe Biden himself said something very similar and he became -- what did he say, he was -- Obama was clean and articulate and he became vice president. So the country is kind of used to gaffes like this.

Really? It's the Republican Party that has all the baggage on race matters? Not the party of Jim Crow segregation? The party of Bull Connor and George Wallace? The party of current Senator and former Klansman Robert Byrd?

By her inability to look beyond the typical liberal viewpoint on Republicans vs. Democrats and race, Yellin merely reinforced Mr. Steele's point.

We're not usually big fans of Michael Gerson's columns, but his piece from yesterday on Brit Hume and Tiger Woods is really good, taking on the blatant intolerance of the secular left in response to Hume's comments about Christianity on Fox News Sunday last week.

....

Hume's critics hold a strange view of pluralism. For religion to be tolerated, it must be privatized -- not, apparently, just in governmental settings but also on television networks. We must have not only a secular state but also a secular public discourse. And so tolerance, conveniently, is defined as shutting up people with whom secularists disagree. Many commentators have been offering Woods advice in his travails. But religious advice, apparently and uniquely, should be forbidden. In a discussion of sex, morality and betrayed vows, wouldn't religious issues naturally arise? How is our public discourse improved by narrowing it -- removing references to the most essential element in countless lives?

True tolerance consists in engaging deep disagreements respectfully -- through persuasion -- not in banning certain categories of argument and belief from public debate.

....

Read the whole thing.