Pelosi also sought to reassure those unhappy with the Senate bill by stressing that future legislation would follow, suggesting that after they passed this legislation Dems might try to do away with the insurance industry’s antitrust exemption, among other unnamed initiatives.

“Kick open that door, and there will be other legislation to follow,” she said. “We’ll take the country in a new direction.”

The new guidelines, when finally approved, will influence textbooks for elementary, middle school and high school. They will be written next year and will be in effect for 10 years.

Even if Democrats extract the votes to put ObamaCare over the top, it will at best be a Pyrrhic victory for them. Regardless of the outcome, this monstrosity might cost the Democrats the Congress this November, ruin the party for a long time and prematurely render Barack Obama a lame duck president for the rest of his term.

So why didn't the Democrats pull back when they still had the chance? The reason is that both the Democratic Party and President Obama have mutually reinforcing blind spots that have rendered them incapable of seeing what's crystal clear to every other sentient being in the country: This was the wrong bill at the wrong time.

Few people, if any, envision Iran launching a direct attack. Rather, the concern is that Tehran will manage to stir up trouble in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, or even Syria, in order to spark a new confrontation between Israel and one of its Iran-allied neighbors.