Misreporting, Spin, and Ambiguity

Here is The New Republic‘s Jonathan Cohn on some of the reports that have been flying around the Internet concerning health care reform:

If you were following the news on Thursday, you probably heard about one if not both of these developments:

1) The Senate Parliamentarian issued a ruling, effectively forcing the House to pass the Senate health care bill before the Senate could consider amendments to it. This is, of course, not what the House wants to do.

2) House leadership signaled they were breaking off negotiations with Bart Stupak over abortion.

Neither development is particularly surprising–or, I should say, would be particularly surprising. After a series of conversations Thursday evening, I’m not 100 percent sure either development actually happened exactly as everybody seems to think.

And in an update to the above:

Sure enough, here’s a Brian Beutler dispatch from TPM making clear that leadership has not broken off talks with Stupak. And Congressional Quarterly is apparently reporting that the Parliamentarian’s “ruling” was misreported.

Unfortunately, you will not be able to read the Congressional Quarterly article unless you have a subscription, which I don’t happen to have, so I have no idea what it says.