The White House on Thursday made good on President Obama's pledge to evaluate the medical malpractice system and take steps to discourage "defensive medicine" and frivolous lawsuits.

All without committing much money.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced her department would award $25 million in grants to states and health care systems to test new patient safety and medical liability measures and review existing state laws that discourage malpractice suits, by channeling claims through screening panels or out-of-court mediation.

At a White House briefing, Sebelius echoed the administration's line, by saying she didn't think malpractice suits were really driving health costs off the rails -- as some conservatives in Congress claim. But she allowed that the threat of litigation was chilling professionals in specialties like obstetrics and neurosurgery, by forcing them to order more diagnostic tests and take other potentially costly precautions.

Was it our imagination, or was President Obama showing flashes of anger on Tuesday while explaining his new, tougher tone on the political upheaval in Iran?

Obama opened his fourth solo White House news conference with his strongest condemnation yet of the Tehran regime, declaring, "No iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful protests of justice."

By calling out authorities for threats, beatings and imprisonments, and invoking the widely viewed scene of a young woman bleeding to death from an apparent gunshot wound, Obama departed from his detached, measured approach to the Iranian crisis -- one predicated on respecting Iranian sovereignty and not making the U.S. a convenient scapegoat for Iranian authorities.

It’s been a long time since the power trio of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman made music together. Since the election, the former Republican presidential nominee and his Senate colleagues have been mostly working on solo projects, with McCain and Graham teaming up to send the occasional joint letter to the White House.

Today, they got the band back together — to ask President Obama not to prosecute the Bush administration lawyers who wrote the “torture memos.”

It’s been a long road for Obama, from ruling out prosecutions to passing the buck to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. But to the McCain trio, Obama’s first position was the correct one.

So what Republican ideas, exactly, did Democrats include in that stimulus bill that got no Republican votes in the House yesterday? Oddly enough, the one the White House keeps mentioning was an idea that came from House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia.

Yes, that Eric Cantor. Otherwise known as, the guy whose job was to make sure no Republicans voted for it.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has given Cantor credit for suggesting that the spending in the stimulus bill be made as transparent as possible, with all of the details posted on the Internet so the public can track where the money is going. (He just told the same story again at today’s press briefing.)

It doesn’t sound like House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio is losing any sleep over the fact that no Republicans voted for the stimulus, despite President Obama’s visit to the Hill Tuesday to hear their concerns.

In fact, the memo he just sent out to House Republicans, setting up their three-day retreat that starts today, praises his colleagues for not bucking the party line and casting votes that might allow Obama — and the Democrats — to claim they had achieved bipartisanship.

“When we meet later today at The Homestead, we’ll set to work immediately, building on the unity, common purpose, and common vision that brought us together over the past few weeks and culminated in last night’s vote,” Boehner wrote. “I am proud of our team, and eager to get to work.”

Maybe Obama never really had a chance.