Jeff Jacoby writes that the President, who has lavished praise on the Mayo Clinic, should take heed at what the people who run the Mayo Clinic have decided to do, which is to no longer accept Medicare patients at one of their facilities. Why? Because the reimbursement rates for those patients are economically unsustainable. Doctors and other health care professionals should also closely watch this story. One possible scenario...more and more providers follow the Mayo Clinic's lead and drop Medicare patients. More and more of the elderly complain to Congress. Eventually, Congress passes a law requiring providers to take Medicare patients (just as they have passed a law that, among other things, requires insurance companies to write policies for people despite preexisting conditions, and requires people to buy health insurance whether they want to or not). Because Congress does not, and never will, fully fund Medicare, providers continue to shift costs to their privately insured patients. Those costs continue to skyrocket, so everyone complains to Congress, which passes a law outlawing private insurance, and making everyone get covered by a Super Medicare (universal, one party payer, health insurance). Providers now take whatever the government gives them, or they get out of the health care business. I leave it to you to guess what happens next.

Could Republican State Senator Scott Brown actually win Ted Kennedy's U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts? I still find it hard to believe, but recent polling shows Brown within shouting distance of his opponent, Democratic State Attorney General Martha Coakley. The only explanation I can come up with, besides the general discontent with Democrats that seems to be everywhere these days, is that Brown is actually campaigning, while Coakley had been, so far at least, invisible. Like a lot of other residents of Southern New Hampshire, I watch a lot of Boston TV stations. I have yet to see a Coakley add since she won the Democratic primary, but I have seen Brown ads (a really good one starts with an old film of President Kennedy announcing his tax cut plans, morphing into Brown advocating the same). I still think Coakley will win, but it is a special election, so turnout is key.

Things look bad for Democrats across the country, of course, and some Democrats are throwing in the towel. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has announced that he will not seek the re-election. Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut is expected to announce the same today. While a Republican pick up in Connecticut does not seem terribly likely, it may be quite possible in North Dakota.

Michael Barone writes about the political opening that the current situation creates for the GOP, unless they play their hand badly by going too negative.

Betsy McCaughey says the Obama Health Care plan is unconstitutional on a number of levels.

Michael Goodwin says Obama's initial handling of the Christmas Day attempted bomb plot was a disaster.

David Brooks has some controversial thoughts about the Tea Party movement. I believe that the Tea Party movement is similar to the Reform Party movement of the early 1990s in the sense that it taps into the frustration of average Americans over the direction of the country, especially concerning the economy and the level of government spending and taxation. Unlike the Reform Party movement, this time there is no established leader, as was the case with Ross Perot leading and, in fact, creating the Reform Party. This has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that the movement will not collapse when the leader does. The disadvantage is that, without a leader, there is no coherent platform or leadership to build the movement into a political party that can actually take power away from the Republicans and the Democrats. There is still a possibility that the Tea Party movement could siphon away Republicans, causing the GOP to wither and die, just as the Republicans did to the Whig Party in the 1850s. I do not expect that will happen. Instead, the GOP will embrace most of the Tea Party ideas, causing the Tea Party movement to eventually dissolve.

Speaking of movements, Harold Meyerson laments the fact that Progressives do not have enough grass roots energy to propel their agenda in Washington. What he fails to understand, or perhaps refuses to believe, is that the Progressive agenda, which was once a grass roots agenda from about 1930 to about 1970, is no longer. Instead, the Progressive ideology and agenda is primarily an elite agenda of people with high educations and incomes, like Meyerson. Oh, there are still vestiges of the old coalition, especially with working class union members and African-American voters, but most Progressive energy is now found within the high education and high income folks, living on both coasts, atheistic or agnostic in religious beliefs, working in offices, that kind of thing. The Progressives just do not have the men willing to fight in the streets anymore, as they did in the 30s. (They also do not have Soviet agents and paymasters stoking the flames of discontent on the streets, either).

While some people believe the Iranian government is well positioned to withstand any effort to overthrow them from within, the Iranian government continues to dig deep into their mountains to make sure no one can destroy their nuclear weapons program from without.