There are two cards no leftist leaves home without: the race card and the McCarthy card. The Henry Gates case was a particularly egregious recent example of the playing of the former. For a recent example of an uncommonly sleazy deployment of the latter, see Richard Cohen 's attack on Sarah Palin in which he mounts the lunatic thesis that "Palinism" is "an updated version of McCarthyism."
An excellent antidote to Cohen's delusional tripe is provided by Thomas Sowell in Whose Medical Decisions? Excerpt:
As for a "death panel," no politician would ever use that phrase when trying to get a piece of legislation passed. "End of life" care under the "guidance" of "some independent group" sounds so much nicer– and these are the terms President Obama used in an interview with the New York Times back on April 14th.
He said, "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out there." He added: "It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. That is why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance."
But when you select people like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel to give "independent" guidance, you have already chosen a policy through your choice of advisors, who simply provide political cover. The net result can be exactly the same as if those providing that guidance were openly called "death panels."