Keeping seniors in the dark

Senate Republican leaders are threatening to block confirmation of President Obama's Health and Human Services nominees unless and until that department drops a "gag order" that prevents private health care companies from communicating with senior citizens about congressional bills intended to nationalize health care and insurance.

In a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and seven other Republican leaders last week wrote that America's 11 million seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage "deserve to be informed of any potential actions" that "could have broad implications on the Medicare program."

HHS had previously said that shutting down this type of communication "would violate basic freedom of speech and other constitutional rights of the Medicare beneficiary as a citizen." But the Obama administration -- putting the president's agenda ahead of the Constitution -- has since reversed that decision.

There are limits to what the GOP minority can do, especially with Massachusetts Democrats violating their own laws to bolster the Senate majority. But at least the GOP is publicizing the kind of naked intimidation Democrats are now employing in pursuit of their ruthless plan to strip hard-working Americans of their current health insurance, instead taxing the young and healthy to fund state-run rationed care for the welfare classes -- socialized medicine being, in the words of Vladimir Lenin, the "keystone in the arch of the socialist state."

Good for them.