The much anticipated health care summit is today, from 10 am to 4 pm EST. I don’t plan to live blog the whole thing but will be monitoring it on the TeeVee and may post if something strikes me as significant — like, releasing tigers.

I haven’t seen it, but Ben Dimiero of Media Matters says rightie media is furiously promoting a Breitbart TV video that shows Democrats in 2005 criticizing the “nuclear option.” Well, I’ll let him explain it —

The “nuclear option” was a term coined by Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) in reference to his proposed change to Senate rules that would have banned use of the filibuster for judicial nominations.

Reconciliation, on the other hand, requires no change to Senate rules since it has been used repeatedly over the years to pass major legislation – notably to pass major pieces of health care reform legislation. Republicans themselves weren’t quite so uncomfortable with the supposedly “dirty” process when they used it to pass President Bush’s tax cuts. Multiple times. …

…In a jaw-dropping display of audacity, the video runs several examples of Democrats railing against the “nuclear option” in 2005. The video attempts to juxtapose this with their current support for reconciliation to show their supposed hypocrisy.

This is absurd.

The Democrats in the video are railing against the “nuclear option” as defined by Lott, not the new definition conservatives have decided to bestow upon the phrase. On his radio show, Beck called the video “laughable” and “unbelievable.” I agree with those characterizations, but for slightly different reasons.

To prove a point, I propose we change the definition of “deficits” to mean “freedom,” then put together a reel of conservatives attacking “freedom.”

It would be about as honest.