United Liberty

This should make for interesting television.

Tonight at 8pm EST, C-Span will simulcast the final debate among the candidates for the GOP nomination for Senate in Kentucky. The frontrunners, of course, are Rand Paul and Trey Greyson.

You can watch on C-Span, or via the online live stream.

We will try to have video of the debate tomorrow.

The folks over at C-SPAN have come up with a way to waste more of my time, launching a website containing every show that has aired since 1987.

Of course, none of the health care negotiations we were promised by President Barack Obama will be on the website. However, they do provide us with a list of memorable moments over the last 23 years that shaped American politics and changed the world, for better or for worse.

As the business community and more public polling shows opposition to ObamaCare, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tells us, “[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”

President Barack Obama made a promise to promote transparency by having negotiations broadcast on C-SPAN. Even though C-SPAN encouraged President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress to let people see the process, they failed to follow through. Even if they had made good on the promise, certain aspects of ObamaCare are going to be controverisal, such as the individual and employer mandates and breaking the pledge not to tax the middle class.

You don’t hide the process. That’s how you make sausage, not health care policy.

Well, it looks like congressional leaders are dead set on keeping ObamaCare negotiations behind closed doors, despite candidate and President Barack Obama’s repeated claim that we will be able to watch everything live on C-SPAN.

While I’m sure supports of this poor proposal will claim that congressional leaders are keeping it off televisions, and there is some truth to that, the political reality is that President Obama has political capital to spend and could make his promises have some substance. He is choosing not to, and that is why this bill continues to be crafted away from sunlight.

H/T: Health Care BS

In a letter to congressional leaders, C-SPAN is pushing for a live broadcast of negotiations between the House and Senate as they hammer out the details of ObamaCare (no, they don’t call it that):

As your respective chambers work to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate health care bills, C-SPAN requests that you open all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings, to electronic media coverage.

The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of these sessions LIVE and in their entirety. We will also, as we willingly do each day, provide C-SPAN’s multi-camera coverage to any interested member of the Capitol Hill broadcast pool.

Since the initial introduction of the America’s Affordable Health Care Act of 2009 in the House and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the Senate

C-SPAN has televised literally hundreds of hours of committee hearings, mark ups and floor debate on these bills for the public to see. And importantly, we have archived all of this video for future generations to study in the C-SPAN Video Archives.

President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation’s editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation’s health care system. Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the Chambers, we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American.

We hope you will give serious consideration to this request. We are most willing to employ the latest digital technology to make the cameras, lights and microphones as unobtrusive as possible.

A little over a year ago, I watched my first presidential primary debate of the 2008 election season. My wife was pregnant, my job was hectic, and I spent a lot of my free time following sports. One year later, a lot has changed. My daughter just turned one, family life is now more hectic than the job, and I watch C-SPAN about forty times as much as I watch ESPN.