Because … they’re American citizens, Chris? Entitled to petition for the redress of grievances? Don’t get grumpy just because, for once, they’re making life difficult for your pal Nancy. What’s doubly strange here is that he follows up by clarifying that it was merely the bishops’ lay staff, not the boys themselves, who were leaning on Pelosi about the Stupak amendment, which seems to make a big difference to him for reasons I don’t understand. If you object to religious lobbying of politicians, what does it matter if the lobbyists are wearing robes or not?

They’d better keep up the pressure, too, because pro-choicers are “prepared to stop at nothing.” More demagoguery from the president of NOW:

She said she understood the president’s frustration in wanting to pass health care reform, but “it is not acceptable for him to achieve that goal by pushing women back into the back alleys to die.” And the anti-abortion amendment added to the health care reform legislation “does just that.”…

“The president has handed us a bill that reverses Roe v. Wade,” she told ABC News, condemning the amendment originally drafted by Stupak and Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Penn. “Stupak-Pitts is such a sweeping denial of insurance coverage of abortion for women that it in fact in essence makes abortion unavailable to women. In Roe v Wade the court said the government may not restrict women from exercising their choice to have an abortion and Stupak-Pitts clearly stops women from doing that.”…

“There’s no question that Hillary Clinton would have fought for our rights,” she says.

Aren’t the pro-choicers going to end up winning simply because they can play the trump card of having five votes on the Supreme Court (Kennedy usually sides with the Roe crowd)? Why would Blue Dogs risk derailing the bill by digging in on an amendment that’s likely to get tossed by a judge after an inevitable lawsuit is filed? Or is that actually an argument Pelosi will use to persuade pro-choicers — that no one expects Stupak’s amendment to survive constitutional scrutiny so they might as well embrace it and wait for Kennedy to take care of business? Click the image to watch.