Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) is a leader in the pack of “tenther” politicians who believe that pretty much everything the federal government does is unconstitutional. Hoping to start a “10th Amendment movement,” Perry has proposed opting out of Social Security, called constitutional amendments “mistaken“, and offered secession as a way to avoid the “oppressive” federal government. Particularly piqued by the passage of health care reform, Perry is now setting his “tenther” sights on a specific target: Medicaid.

As Mother Jones’s Suzy Khimm notes, “one of the hallmark accomplishments of health-care reform” was the expansion of Medicaid. Under the new health care law, new insurance subsidies “will add an estimated 16 million new Medicaid enrollees.” While many GOP and Democratic-led state governments oppose the expansion, Perry is pushing Texas to drop out of Medicaid entirely.

First floating the idea on CNN last Sunday, Perry told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren yesterday that states should “be given the opportunity to opt-out of the Medicaid program we are looking at today”:

VAN SUSTEREN: Health care, there’s going to be a lot of challenges in the next two years. What is your view of the health care program?

PERRY: I’d like to see states be given the opportunity to opt-out of the Medicaid program that we are looking at today. We think in Texas over the next six years that we could take and find a private insurance solution and better serve our people, put more people under coverage, and save $40 billion for the state of Texas and $40 billion for the federal government because it is a matching program.

Watch it (starting at 3:22):

As Khimm notes, Perry’s only “underlying rationale” for “sacrificing the health coverage” of Texas’s 3.6 million poor people dependent on Medicaid would be “if it solves the state’s budget crisis.” But as WonkRoom’s Igor Volsky explains, none of Perry’s proposal actually makes any sense. Rather than “bankrupting the state” as Perry’s legislative pals may claim, 95 percent of all new spending would actually be footed by the federal government. Indeed, as Health Beat’s Maggie Mahr notes, Texas would actually benefit more than most states because while Medicaid enrollment will rise by 46 percent, “state spending on Medicaid rises by about 3 percent. Meanwhile, Federal spending in Texas is expected to increase by 39 percent.”

Not only would Perry be turning away millions in federal spending, Perry would actually be “taking billions out of the state economy that goes on to support hospitals and other providers,” Volsky notes. Thus, “hospitals and doctors would have to swallow the costs of caring for uninsured individuals who will continue to use the emergency room as their primary source of care,” which further burdens the state budget.

The actual “lose-lose” outcome of Perry’s proposal has led many health policy experts to question its legitimacy and sincerity. Perry’s eagerness gut Medicaid while providing no actual viable alternative to cover the poor pushed one Texas hospital’s chief to call his idea “so bizarre as to be unworthy of consideration.”

North Carolina Rev. Phillip “Flip” Benham’s wild-west antics earned him two years probation yesterday after a judge convicted him for stalking an abortion doctor. Leader of the “unashamedly” Christian, anti-abortion group Operation Save America, Benham distributed old-West style “Wanted” posters earlier this year that “included the names, addresses and photos of four Charlotte, N.C., doctors who perform abortions.” While Benham claimed his actions were protected by the First Amendment, he violated a new North Carolina law meant to protect citizens from being targeted by “a lone-wolf assailant”:

Benham and his group took the posters to the doctors’ offices and to their neighborhoods. They placed the posters on cars and tacked them up on doors.

Detective Milton Harris with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department says this violated the state’s new law against targeting an individual at his home.

“By them handing out the flyers with doctors’ photos on it, it was an indication to us that they were actually singling those doctors out within that residential neighborhood to protest,” Harris says.

He also says that this is the first prosecution under the new law.

“The purpose of the law is to protect that person’s identity against basically a lone-wolf assailant coming in there and possibly doing harm to that individual or that family,” Harris says.

Aware the well-documented history of murders, shootings, bombings, arson, acid attacks, and anthrax threats against doctors who provide abortions, one of the doctors targeted by the posters said he “fears for his life.” The doctor at the trial believed the poster was a “call for my murder” and said he now “gets down on his hands and knees to make certain there are no bombs under his car.” Benham, however, “denies the posters are a threat” and claims “they’re a tool to inform the community” that the doctor “kills babies…for a living” and has “no respect for life of children in the safety and neighborhoods of their mothers’ wombs.” Still, while doctors and the judicial system view him as a threat, Benham can rest comfortably knowing that his followers still view him as the pro-life “Robin Hood.”

See below for the “Wanted” poster:

With stories about President Bush’s new memoir dominating the headlines this week, Financial Times Westminster correspondent Alex Barker reports on his “favourite Bush anecdote,” which he writes, “for various reasons we couldn’t publish at the time. Some of the witnesses still dine out on it“:

The venue was the Oval Office. A group of British dignitaries, including Gordon Brown, were paying a visit. It was at the height of the 2008 presidential election campaign, not long after Bush publicly endorsed John McCain as his successor.

Naturally the election came up in conversation. Trying to be even-handed and polite, the Brits said something diplomatic about McCain’s campaign, expecting Bush to express some warm words of support for the Republican candidate.

Not a chance. “I probably won’t even vote for the guy,” Bush told the group, according to two people present.“I had to endorse him. But I’d have endorsed Obama if they’d asked me.”

Barker said that British officials looked “dumbfounded” and that Brown’s “poker face gave way to a flash of astonishment.”