Crossing the Rubicon

"We have to keep our eyes on what we're trying to do here,” Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin said yesterday, while fending off a reporter’s niggling question about why so much bribery was required to get the CongressCare bill passed. “We're trying to cross a demarcation line. On one side is health care as a privilege, on the other side is health care as a right. With these votes, with the vote that we'll take before Christmas, we will cross that line finally and say that health care is a right of all Americans."

This may not be the most frightening political quote of 2009. But it certainly ranks near the top of the heap.