The pop analysis of why conservative Blue Dog Democrats have slowed the health care overhaul to win concessions is that they are tools of the insurers and drug company executives who donate to their campaigns.

Nobel Prize-winning New York Times op-ed writer Paul Krugman fumed this week about the Blue Dogs, raising the possibility that they are "nothing but corporate tools, defending special interests" and noting their campaign receipts before softening his stance to say he's "not quite that cynical."

Krugman, who doesn't cover Congress, and others of his ilk should look at an electoral map in addition to campaign finance reports.

In 2008, President Obama lost six of the seven districts of the Blue Dogs who temporarily put the brakes on the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee. And, it's safe to say Obama is more popular in those districts than the House leaders who wrote the health bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called health insurers "the villains" in the unfolding story of the health care overhaul on Thursday, ratcheting up an anti-insurer theme trotted out by President Obama earlier this month and encouraged by other Democratic leaders in Congress.

"It is somewhat immoral what they are doing. Of course, they have been immoral all along how they have treated the people that they insure," MSNBC's Luke Russert quoted her as saying. "They are the villains in this."

Pelosi, of course, has accepted campaign contributions from said villains this year and in the past, as have most of her Democratic colleagues. Pelosi's campaign committee, for example, took $2,500 from AFLAC's political action committee on April 13. But she's not giving the money back just because she thinks the sources are immoral and villainous.

"As the Speaker's opposition to the health insurance companies being in charge of American's health care shows, there is no link between political contributions and positions on policy," said her spokesman Brendan Daly.

After two days of receiving and reviewing entries in the Name-the-Public-Option contest, the winners are Don Tatro, who is Sen. Tom Coburn's press secretary and Adam Levin of CQ.

Adam's: Mutual of Obamaha

Don's: MaybeCare

Contestants were charged with coming up with a name for the proposed public insurance option of health care overhaul legislation. (Sec. 221 of HR 3200)

Notepad is looking for CQ swag to distribute as prizes.

CQ staffer Meghan McCarthy gets a special shout-out for describing red-baiting entrants as Medi-McCarthyists.

Thanks to all who participated.

The amazing story of Rep. Pete Sessions earmarking money for blimp design for a company nowhere near his district is renewing questions about how often the earmark-disclosure system is abused by lawmakers who falsely report details of their "pork" priorities.

Under House rules, lawmakers are required to file publicly available request letters for earmarks that list "the name and address of the intended recipient or, if there is no specifically intended recipient, the intended location of the activity."

Politico reported that the beneficiary of Sessions', R-Texas, $1.6 million earmark for a streamlined blimp -- a company that paid a former Sessions aide handsomely for lobbying services -- isn't located at the address listed on the lawmaker's disclosure form from 2008.

It's hard to say whether it was their strategy all along, but those center-to-right tilting Democrats in the House, the Blue Dogs managed to push off the floor vote on health care until after the August recess and, at the same time, paint liberals as the latest impediment to moving forward.

Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., struck a deal with the Blue Dogs on his committee on Wednesday, but found the pact, centered on requiring a new public health insurance entity to negotiate payment rates with providers rather than pay 5 percent more than Medicare rates, was unpalatable to his liberal base.

Now the Blue Dogs are publicly out of the way, but Waxman, who repeatedly has committed the cardinal chairmanship sin of calling markups without the needed votes in hand, is not nearly out of the woods, according to CQ's health reporting team of Alex Wayne and Drew Armstrong.

They explain why Waxman needs the liberals to get on board, and I'll provide the background for how the Blue Dogs boxed him in.

Government health benefit programs often have catchy names like Medicare and Medicaid. What, then, should the proposed public insurance option (Sec. 221 of HR 3200) be called?

Submit your entries today and tomorrow, with a prize -- abstract or concrete -- to be awarded to the best positive label and the worst negative tag.

A couple of my favorites: Medicure and Meddie Mac.

E-mail entries to jallen@cq.com or submit through the comments section.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., wants the Energy Department to lead by example when it comes to efficiency standards.

So, he is filing an amendment to the Energy and Water Appropriations bill that would cut administrative funding for the department in a push, he says, to encourage greater efficiency efforts in the wake of an inspector general's report detailing how energy is wasted at the department's facilities.

Through that report and others, Coburn pegs inefficiencies from technology miscues and intemperate thermostat controls at $13.8 million. Technically, the amendment simply reduces administrative funding for the department by that amount, and it's not clear that Coburn will even offer it.

But if nothing else, the junior senator from Oklahoma again has demonstrated a creative/mischievous streak a mile wide.

Randall Terry, the controversial former head of Operation Rescue, is predicting that extremists would retaliate with violence if a health care overhaul allows taxpayers to foot the bill for abortions.

Terry offered his forecast during an unusual meeting on Tuesday between two dozen or so anti-abortion activists and an aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., during which Terry spilled hundreds of miniature plastic babies from a small faux casket onto a conference table in a room adjacent to Pelosi's personal office in the Cannon Building.

During the meeting, Terry warned of ominous repercussions from extremists if House provisions that would expand insurance coverage for abortions are made into law.

Barack Obama's Hawaiian birth was affirmed indirectly Monday night with the help of seven of 10 House Republicans who have inflamed fringe "birther" doubts about the legitimacy of the president's citizenship.

The Republicans joined the House in voting in favor of a resolution commemorating Hawaii's 50th anniversary as a state. The resolution included a clause stipulating that "the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961."

The group of 10 Republicans had raised questions about Obama's nationality by sponsoring legislation that would require future presidential candidates to provide copies of their birth certificates when they file papers to run for the office.

Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, writes to offer a different perspective on Notepad's ongoing discussion of whether Congress will continue a longtime ban on insurers of federal employees covering abortion.

Here's what Johnson wrote in an e-mail earlier today (Notepad has added links to his letter).

Mr. Allen,

"Regarding your Notepad piece, "Abortion Foes Seeing Threats Where They Don't Yet Exist," I have a little different take on that.

Taxpayers for Common Sense released its findings on the House Defense Appropriations bill this afternoon.

"The 18 members of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hauled in 299 earmarks worth $881.8 million," TCS wrote on its Web site. "The lucky dozen and a half lawmakers outmaneuvered the other 417 House members and pulled down 32 percent of the earmarked dollars and more than a quarter of the earmarks."

Last week, Notepad wrote that anti-abortion activists were sweating the small stuff by wringing their hands over the Senate version of an appropriations bill that would not prohibit federal employees from having abortions covered under their health insurance program.

Over the weekend, activist Jill Stanek responded, writing "Allen got it backwards. A Senate committee led by rabid pro-abort Dick Durbin passed a funding bill that deleted a provision banning taxpayer funded abortion from the federal employees health care plan - thereby proposing a change in current law to permit it."

Read on to find out why I didn't get it backward, and why the Senate appropriations bill is both a tiny tea leaf -- and the wrong one -- to read in what is a much larger battle over public subsidies for abortion.

Republican and Democratic foes of abortion are so worried about taxpayers footing the bill for terminated pregnancies under a health care overhaul that they are starting to see signs of encroachment on abortion limitations where they don't exist -- at least not yet.

The clearest instance is a hypercharged reaction to the absence from the Senate's annual Financial Services spending bill of a ban on abortion coverage under the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program.

"The text of S 1432 has just been made available online, with a startling revelation: The Smith Amendment tagged on the bill in the House, and prohibiting taxpayer subsidized abortions through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program has been deleted," anti-abortion activist Jill Stanek wrote on her blog Thursday. The blog post is making the electronic rounds on Capitol Hill and ended up in Notepad's inbox last night.

But the long-standing law -- "No funds appropriated by this act shall be available to pay for an abortion, or the administrative expenses in connection with any health plan under the Federal employees health benefits program which provides any benefits or coverage for abortions" -- has always been a House provision (note the reference in Stanek's blog to Rep. Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey).

Typically in recent years -- as is the case this year -- the Senate bill has been silent on the matter and the House provision has been included in the final law. Neither chamber has voted directly on the issue in years. When they have, abortion opponents have won consistently.

Still, an aide to a conservative senator said that fears about the larger health care overhaul providing for taxpayer-funded abortions, either through subsidized health insurance for individuals or coverage by a government-backed plan, are likely to bring heat on the Senate's omission of FEHBP ban.

"It won't come to senate floor without a fight," the aide said. "Taxpayers don't want to pay for abortions for federal employees."

A handful of House Republicans forced a clerk to read much of a 54-page motion aloud to a nearly empty chamber Thursday evening as their GOP colleagues escaped to attend an annual "beach party" thrown by Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio.

After about half an hour, they withdrew the first motion and offered a second one, prolonging the process to roughly 45 minutes.

A Boehner spokesman said in an e-mail that he was "headed down now" to the party at Cantina Marina as the clerk labored to finish a task that is typically dispensed with in seconds by unanimous consent.

Sen. Roland W. Burris, D-Ill., was one of nine freshman Democrats to sign a letter to Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., on Thursday that calls for cost-cutting measures in a health care overhaul.

"We hear daily from our constituents about this issue; many of them are concerned that we are not doing enough to control costs," wrote Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia, Mark Begich of Alaska, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Burris, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Mark Udall of Colorado, and Tom Udall of New Mexico.

With deep Democratic divisions delaying committee action on the president's health care plan, a senior Democratic House aide tells Notepad the chances of a bill getting a vote next week are next to nil.

"It will be a huge accomplishment if we even get this bill out of the Energy and Commerce Committee before August," the aide said.

A Democratic congressman from Michigan says he has the votes to stop the health care overhaul bill in its tracks if House leaders don't give him a chance to win adoption of an amendment that would exclude abortion coverage from the scope of a government-backed health insurance program.

Rep. Bart Stupak said he and dozens of other Democrats are prepared to vote against the rule governing debate on the health care bill if it precludes them from offering the abortion amendment -- a warning that goes a step further than Stupak's past allusions to the breadth of concern over the issue within the Democratic caucus.

"If we don't get a shot, then we can take down the rule," said Stupak, who wrote a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., along with 18 fellow Democrats requesting that a health care bill not allow for publicly funded abortions. He says the number of Democrats who will vote with him on the issue is far greater than the number who signed the letter.

One way to gauge the problem House leaders are having getting a health care overhaul bill to the floor is through the geographic and demographic diversity of the set of lawmakers who have made their recalcitrance public.

More than 60 separate lawmakers have signed onto at least one of three letters -- one from the Blue Dog Coalition, one from a group of mostly freshmen members upset about tax hikes for wealthy constituents and one from abortion foes -- expressing deep concerns with the legislation as it is currently written.

They come from at least 33 states (some of the Blue Dog signatures are indecipherable -- which might not be a bad idea when you're opposing the Speaker): Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississipppi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

Insert your own it-ain't-exactly-brain-surgery joke into this reaction to the House health care legislation ...

"America's neurosurgeons strongly support improving our nation's healthcare system by ensuring insurance coverage for all our citizens. Unfortunately, as it is currently constructed, this bill goes far beyond what is necessary to fix what is broken with our healthcare system," Troy M. Tippett, president of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons said in a statement released Monday afternoon. "Rather than pursuing a carefully targeted set of reforms, the House bill could amount to a complete government takeover of healthcare."

President Obama's rhetoric on health care has shifted in recent days to make unpopular insurance companies, rather than popular health care, the target of his "reform" efforts.

Up through July 15, when he delivered remarks on health care from the Rose Garden, the president emphasized the importance of "health reform," efforts to "reform the health care system," and achieving "health care reform."

But polling shows most people like their health care. What they don't like -- or trust -- is the insurance industry.

In his remarks to the NAACP on July 16, in his public comments the following day and in his weekly radio and Internet address to the nation, the president rolled out a new tag for his plan: "health insurance reform."

The White House hasn't shared its internal polling with Notepad, but a recent Gallup poll revealed that just 4 percent of respondents named insurance companies as the entity they most trust to reform the health care system. That puts them below Republicans in Congress (10 percent), Obama/Democrats in Congress (33 percent) and doctors/hospitals (45 percent).

Obama has long portrayed insurance companies as dishonest, but now he is specifically saying his reform is aimed at them, not the larger health care system. Perhaps Blue Cross will need its Blue Shield.

**UPDATE: The president unleashed a blistering attack on insurance companies, and returned to his new mantra of "health insurance reform, during a speech at Children's Hospital in Washington this afternoon.

Read excerpts of the president's remarks today after the jump.**

The Republican National Committee is airing a health care ad in three states with potentially vulnerable Democratic senators -- Arkansas, Nevada and North Dakota -- that features the faces of children interspersed with foreboding warnings about the potential impact of President Obama's health care plan on them.

"His new experiment risks their future and our health," an announcer says in the ad.

The senators that are up for re-election in those states in 2010 are Blanche Lincoln, Harry Reid and Byron L. Dorgan.

Those states are also home to several pivotal players in the House debate over health care. Democratic Reps. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota and Dina Titus of Nevada have voted against the House bill in the Ways and Means Committee and the Education and Labor Committee, respectively, and Mike Ross of Arkansas has been giving Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry A. Waxman fits during that committee's marathon markup, which continues today.

RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho wouldn't say how much is being spent on the ad, but called it "a large buy."

Lawmakers have learned to give less credence to mass-produced letters they receive on policy issues.

So, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio is asking Republicans to send letters to local newspapers and to their representatives that feature a personal touch.

Here's an excerpt from the e-mailed request Boehner sent through the National Republican Congressional Committee this afternoon.

It's not just the Blue Dogs who are having trouble swallowing the House's health care bill.

Freshman Democratic Reps. Dina Titus of Nevada and Jared Polis of Colorado, neither of whom are members of the conservative caucus that has been outspoken in its discomfort with the bill, voted against the measure during a marathon, 24-hour markup in the Education and Labor Committee.

There's a long way to go before the bill becomes law or dies, so no it is not worth reading too much into a single event But in a week with plenty of setbacks, including the CBO director's declaration that the measure is more likely to increase rather than decrease long-term government liabilities, the Democratic "no" votes of Polis, Titus and four of the five Blue Dogs who have had a chance to pass judgment in Ways and Means and Education and Labor cannot be welcome news for Democratic leaders or the White House.

Polis led 22 House Democratic freshmen, the overwhelming majority of whom are not Blue Dogs, in sending a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Thursday expressing concern with provisions that would pay for the health care expansion by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

Among the new entries in the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is a congressional pet: earmark.

For years, congressional experts have battled over which provisions should be included in the definition of an earmark. For example, they disagree over whether the term should apply only to spending provisions or those that create special advantages for specific recipients through tax or other policy changes.

Of course, Merriam-Webster previously used the standard, livestock-driven definition of the word. But the acknowledgment of its role in the lexicon of legislation has earmark critics cheering.

"Appropriators have been trying to find the word 'earmark' in the Constitution for years. At least now they'll be able to find it in the dictionary," Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said in a press release heralding the new definition.

It's not quite a cold day in July -- at least not in Washington -- but the Family Research Council is doing its best to show it can skate over partisan differences this summer.

The self-styled arbiters of family values are encouraging their minions to thank Democrats who signed a letter threatening to withhold support for a health care overhaul if a public plan includes any coverage related to abortion.