Today in the Senate Finance Committee markup of health care legislation, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) tried to make the case that the U.S. system is the best in the world and bristled at data that the country lags in halting preventable deaths compared to other industrialized nations. Ensign argued that those comparisons are unfair because they include deaths from auto accidents and gun violence, which are unique “cultural factors”:

ENSIGN: When you take into account cultural factors — the fact that we drive cars a lot more than any other country; we are much more mobile.

If you take out accidental deaths due to car accidents, and you take out gun deaths — because we like our guns in the United States and there are a lot more gun deaths in the United States — you take out those two things, you adjust those, and we actually better in terms of survival rates.

Watch it:

Basically, Ensign is proud of U.S. “cultural factors” that, as he admits, kill thousands of Americans each year. Instead of trying to improve the health care system to better address injuries from cars and guns, Ensign would like to just wipe them off the books and ignore them because they’re so unique to America.

As Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) responded, anyone can “rack and stack” the figures all they want, but the bottom line is that “other countries that do have universal care and do a much better job of controlling costs than we do, on metric after metric, finish ahead of us.”

The United States health care system isn’t going to take care of everyone except gunshot and automobile collision victims, so it’s unfair to exclude such data. Comapred with Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, the United States ranks last in all dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. The United States currently ranks 50th out of 224 nations in life expectancy, with an average life span of 78.1 years, according to 2009 estimates from the CIA World Factbook.

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UPDATE: The video is now working.

A popular right-wing objection to federal health care legislation is that it’s unconstitutional. These “tenthers” argue that since the U.S. Constitution never explicitly gives the federal government the right to regulate health care, the 10th amendment leaves that power to the states. Texas tenthers have held pro-secession rallies, and officials in various states have raised the possibility of legislation to exempt their residents from federal health care.

Yesterday in the Senate Finance Committee markup, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) took these concerns to the next level by saying that people who “hold the Constitution pretty high in their lives” should be able to opt-out of being required to purchase health care insurance, making it similar to a religious objection:

ENSIGN: We’ve allowed exceptions for religious and various other reasons. But some people hold the Constitution pretty high in their lives, and if they believe that this thing is unconstitutional, and they then say, “I choose not to have health insurance, I’m not going to buy it,” we could be subjecting those very people who conscientiously — because they believe in the U.S. Constitution — we could be subjecting them to fines or the interpretation of a judge, potentially, all the way up to imprisonment. That seems to me to be a problem.

Ensign also predicted that some people would actually drop their health insurance “just out of conscience” in order to make a point and show solidarity with the tenthers. Watch it:

Basically, Ensign believes that anyone who claims any law is unconstitutional should be allowed to ignore that law. While Congress has allowed “exceptions for religious and various other reasons,” in the 1990 case Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, Justice Antonin Scalia actually warned that allowing a person “to become a law unto himself” defies “common sense”:

The government’s ability to enforce generally applicable prohibitions of socially harmful conduct, like its ability to carry out other aspects of public policy, “cannot depend on measuring the effects of a governmental action on a religious objector’s spiritual development.” To make an individual’s obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the law’s coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the State’s interest is “compelling” — permitting him, by virtue of his beliefs, “to become a law unto himself,” contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense.

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Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) told the Las Vegas Sun yesterday that, despite admitting an extramarital affair with a staffer and that his parents paid the woman and her family nearly $100,000 in hush money, he would not be resigning his seat and will be running for re-election in 2012. According to the Sun, Ensign said “his support is coming from his fellow senators as well as those ‘on both sides’ of Senate leadership.” However, it appears that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is not part of that group. Today during a press conference on Capitol Hill, he declined to offer his public support for Ensign:

QUESTION: Senator McConnell, Senator Ensign has said that he will remain in office (inaudible) reelection. Do you support him in (inaudible)?

MCCONNELL: Well, I think Senator Ensign will have to speak to those issues himself. And you can ask him about it.

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) reportedly received a “round of applause” from his GOP colleagues today at the weekly conference lunch, his “first meeting with them since the sex scandal that cost him his leadership position.” “All I can say for sure is that it [Ensign's speech] was very, very sincere, very heartfelt and very well received in our caucus,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who was at the meeting. Ensign’s welcome is similar to the reaction Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) received, when “he was welcomed back to a closed Republican Senate luncheon with a loud standing ovation” after admitting his involvement with an escort service run by the DC Madam. However, Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) — who faced charges of “lewd” sexual conduct in a men’s public restroom — faced calls to resign.

On his Fox News show last night, Sean Hannity touted a poll showing that Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), who admitted to an affair with a campaign staffer last week, has a higher favorability rating than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). “Ensign remains more popular than another Nevada politician whose popularity is remarkably low,” said Hannity.

In the next segment, however, Democratic strategist Bob Beckel called out Hannity for seemingly “defending John Ensign” despite being “a big family values guy.” “Here’s a guy that cheats on his wife, not just with somebody, but somebody on his staff who’s married. Now what do you think?” asked Beckel. Hannity reluctantly admitted that he thinks such behavior warrants a resignation:

BECKEL: Excuse me. Excuse me for a second, Mr. University Prager. I want — I want him to answer this question.

HANNITY: My answer is, if you’re going to be a family-values candidate and a family-values politician, and you don’t live up to that, I think you should resign.

BECKEL: Well…

HANNITY: I don’t know where he stands.

When Beckel said he wanted to “let the record show that that you called for John Ensign to resign,” Hannity tried to hedge his words again, saying “I don’t know where he stands on the issues.” Watch it:

Hannity claims to not know where Ensign stands on “family values” issues, but as ThinkProgress has pointed out, Ensign has previously positioned himself as a protector of “the institution of marriage.”

In 2007, Ensign called on then-Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) to resign after he in an airport men’s restroom on disorderly conduct charges, but he declined to call for Sen. David Vitter’s (R-LA) resignation after he acknowledged an affair involving prostitution. In July 2007, Hannity said that Vitter should resign as well.

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Earlier today, Politico reported that it was “far from certain” that Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) would hold on to his Senate leadership position in the wake of his admitted affair with a former campaign staffer. Now, MSNBC reports that Ensign is stepping down from his role as the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee:

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza reports that Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), a member of GOP leadership and a potential candidate for president in 2012, will hold a press conference later today in which he will acknowledge having an extramarital affair “with a campaign staffer who was married to an employee in Ensign’s Senate office.” Ensign flew back to Las Vegas to make the public announcement.

Since his election to the Senate in 2000, Ensign has been a leading conservative voice who demanded the resignation of former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig in September 2007. Ensign called Craig a “disgrace” after he was arrested in June 2007 in an airport men’s restroom on disorderly conduct charges. But when Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) acknowledged having an affair, Ensign didn’t call on him to resign.

Ensign has also been an ardent opponent of gay marriage. In Feb. 2004, Ensign announced his support for an amendment to the Constitution that would have defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Ensign said the amendment, which ultimately failed, was necessary to protect “the institution of marriage“:

“Sadly, the effort to redefine marriage against the wishes of a majority of the people is, with help from activist judges, succeeding,” Ensign said. “In order to defend the institution of marriage, uphold the rights of individual states, and maintain the will of the people, I believe we are compelled to amend our country’s constitution.”

“The effort to pass a constitutional amendment reaffirming marriage as being between a man and a woman only is being undertaken strictly as a defense of marriage against the attempt to redefine it and, in the process, weaken it,” Ensign said. “Marriage is an extremely important institution in this country and protecting it is, in my mind, worth the extraordinary step of amending our constitution.”

In 1998, while running for Nevada’s Senate seat against Harry Reid, Ensign called on President Clinton to resign in light of his admitted affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky:

“I came to that conclusion recently, and frankly it’s because of what he put his whole Cabinet through and what he has put the country through,” Ensign said Thursday, becoming the first member of the Nevada delegation to call for Clinton to quit. “He has no credibility left.”

How much “credibility” does Ensign have left?

Last week, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) visited the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and declared that even if detainees are held without charge, they should remain at Guantanamo “until the war against terrorism ends.” “They are like having Charles Manson times whatever factor — these people are so dangerous,” Ensign said.

Ensign said that Guantanamo seemed so appealing to him that it would be “hard to imagine” why anyone would want to close the facility. When making this argument, however, Ensign inadvertently made a case for health care reform:

“It is hard to imagine why we would ever think about closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility,” Ensign said. “I walked away very proud of what our troops are doing down there. I think any American would be proud as well.”

Ensign said the facilities at Gitmo are nicer than prisons in the United States, and said the food detainees were served was better than what he and the traveling lawmakers ate. “They get better health care than the average American citizen does,” Ensign said.

Guantanamo detainees receive care that is “as good as or better than anything we would offer our own soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines,” the general in charge of Guantanamo has said. (Veterans care is widely considered the best health care available.) Guantanamo reportedly has 19 in-patient beds, a physical-therapy area, pharmacy, radiology department, central sterilization area, an operating room, and available psychiatric care. Notably, Michael Moore made the same argument in his movie, Sicko.

While Ensign inadvertently admitted to the dismal nature of American health care, he is currently the leader of the Republican Policy Committee (RPC), which is working to derail President Obama’s health care reforms. The AP reported this month that “Senate Republicans are already seeking and getting detailed advice on the best way to attack” Obama’s plan, and the RPC is soliciting advice from health care obstructionist Frank Luntz:

The suggestions are contained in a 28-page presentation by Frank Luntz. … Luntz reviewed his recommendations Wednesday with aides to conservative Republicans in a session organized by the Republican Policy Committee, headed by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. A copy was obtained by The Associated Press.

“The policy committee brings in all kinds of people. He presented us with ways to communicate better and we listened,” said Rebecca Fisher, a spokeswoman for the group.

Much more on conservative obstruction of Obama’s health care plan in today’s Progress Report.