* Perhaps taking a cue from her most rogueish guest, Oprah Winfrey has decided she will no longer be shackled behind her talk show.

* The Senate takes up its version of the health care bill tomorrow morning. Harry Reid needs 60 votes just to proceed with debate, because the Republicans do not want to deal with this thing at all. If they filibuster, let us hope they forgo the phonebooks and pledge allegiance to the flag for twelve hours straight. (Eat your heart out, Todd Akin!)

* Said health care bill is 2,074 pages long. Tony Perkins and his fightin' evangelicals have released something called "The Manhattan Declaration," which manages to cover "the sanctity of life, traditional marriage and religious liberty" in just 4,700 words.

* President Obama will make a decision about Afghanistan troop levels after Thanksgiving, assuming he's not in a food coma.

Tom Tomorrow looks at what both camps are bringing to the health care reform debate…

Hey, you can't make an omelette without disenfranchising an enormous percentage of the electorate. Am I right, fellas?

Wouldn't it be ironic if the party known for fighting a woman's right to choose actually offered its own female employees a health plan that covered abortion procedures — as, for the record, most employer health plans do?

And don't you think they'd notice that clause in their policies before some Politico reporter did?

The Republican National Committee will no longer offer employees an insurance plan that covers abortion after POLITICO reported Thursday that the anti-abortion RNC's policy has covered the procedure since 1991.

"Money from our loyal donors should not be used for this purpose," Chairman Michael Steele said in a statement. "I don't know why this policy existed in the past, but it will not exist under my administration. Consider this issue settled."

Steele has told the committee's director of administration to opt out of coverage for elective abortion in the policy it uses from Cigna.

Yep, issue settled, unless you happen to have a uterus, a job at the RNC and an unwanted pregnancy.

Oh well! At least the GOP's loyal donors can sleep soundly again, secure in the knowledge that their dollars will not go toward standard insurance policies that cover legal health care services for people with uteri. Nope, their dollars will only go toward important things, like web design.

First the issue of abortion de-testicled the public option. Then it tormented the House vote. Finally Democrats agreed to pass an anti-choice amendment offered by Bart Stupak (D-MI), because hey, sometimes you gotta compromise minority interests for the greater good. (Before you say it: Yes, women are more than half the population. But they tend to be smaller than men, so they aren't more than half the nation's total mass.)

Now the Stupaked-up bill heads for the Senate, where some people want to be sure its provisions stay in…

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid found his health reform efforts seriously complicated Monday by the explosive issue of abortion, as key centrist senators said they wanted to see airtight language in the bill blocking federal funding for the procedure.

Didn't we already have regulations that block federal funding for abortion? How is the current "compromise" more "airtight"?

[Stupak] prohibits public money from being spent on any plan that covers abortion even if paid for entirely with private premiums. Therefore, no plan that covers abortion services can operate in the [public] Exchange unless its subscribers can afford to pay 100% of their premiums with no assistance from government "affordability credits." As the vast majority of Americans in the Exchange will need to use some of these credits, it is highly unlikely any plan will want to offer abortion coverage.

Seriously? Even though 87% of current employer health plans offer abortion coverage? You know, this reminds me of a powerful editorial I read a few months ago, entitled "We need to reform the reform." Here's the best part:

Instead of expanding coverage to the uninsured, the legislation upends the current employer-sponsored insurance system, ends patients' choices, and puts a bureaucrat between you and your doctor.

Thank you, Sen. Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire! I look forward to hearing you make this exact same argument on the Senate floor in the coming weeks.

Fancy Nancy Pelosi has her heart set on a Saturday vote for this health care thing, because there is nothing in the Constitution to stop her from working on a weekend, but people on both sides of the aisle are digging in their heels, shaking their heads, throwing things, etc., so the vote may not happen until Sunday if it happens at all.

The reason should be obvious…

The question of abortion coverage in the health care bill has bedeviled top Democrats for weeks. Under its current language, the measure would allow individuals to purchase policies through a new insurance exchange that would cover abortion procedures.

Getting "abortion" mixed up with "valid legal medical care" is, of course, contrary to everything America stands for. Doesn't anyone have a better idea, one that won't just cater to pro-choice types?

Democratic leaders may turn to compromise language drafted by Rep. Brad Ellsworth, an Indiana Democrat opposed to abortion rights. Ellsworth has proposed using private contractors to pay providers of abortion services – an idea that has come under fire from both supporters and opponents of abortion rights.

Nice work, Rep. Ellsworth! I don't have a dictionary handy, but I'm pretty sure that's the textbook definition of a compromise.

Twenty-four hours ago I wrote this silly list of the different public option versions we've seen floating around, and silly me, I missed one. Meet what a CNN headline writer is calling the "tempered" public option…

This version would allow doctors to negotiate reimbursement rates with the federal government, the aides said Wednesday.

The proposal would be a blow to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has argued for a more "robust" public option, one that ties reimbursement rates for providers and hospitals to Medicare rates plus a 5 percent increase.

But the votes aren't there for a robust public option, so the "more moderate" "tempered" "other" public option it is. None of those descriptors are catchy at all! How about we call it the "alternative public option"? That might appeal to disenfranchised youth. "Lite public option," on account of that obesity problem? Or, duh: "doctored public option."

By the way, in case you are confused, here is exactly why the public option has been de-testicled:

Democratic House aides said party leaders had yet to resolve long-standing disputes over provisions to prevent federal funds from being used to subsidize abortions and to block illegal immigrants from receiving benefits.

So good luck with your cancer or whatever as the costs of the [adjective here] public option get tied to the medical inflation rates that made a public option necessary in the first place. The important thing is that no money's going to those gals who receive the legal medical service of pregnancy termination. And no Mexicans, either.