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"I would like to request that the task force give particular consideration to the needs of the nation's farmers... Rural populations have a high proportion of uninsured people, rising health care costs, and often experience lack of services." He concluded by noting, "your efforts are worthy, and I hope you will remember this constituency as the task force progresses. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any assistance."

Is that the mole hill that is supposed to be some insuperable mountain? Puhleeze. What was he supposed to say, something like "I hope you totally and completely ignore the poor rural farmers in Texas"?

What numbnuts thinks that this is the functional equivalent of a ringing endorsement of every little jot and tittle that got stuffed into Clintoncare?

In fact, did you even bother to look at the date on the letter? Did you then check the facts to see when the details of Clintoncare became public? I didn't think so.

The timeline is illuminating:

The group that was charged with coming up with the whole thing - the "Task Force" - was empaneled in January of 1993.

The letter from Perry is dated April 6, 1993.

The details of the Clintoncare bill did not become fully public until September 1993 - the Task Force was a basically closed-door organization (which was sued several times over its lack of transparency) - and the Harry and Louise commercial did not start running until September 8, 1993.

Therefore, it is almost certain that Texas Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry did not know the details of what the Task Force was cooking up and it would have been a dereliction of his duties and obligations to the rural farmers of Texas - his constituents as it were - to not raise their particular concerns with the federal entity that was bidding fair to significantly change health care in the United States.

And that is all this letter does; it doesn't endorse the full-fledged idiocy that eventually came out of the Task Force - the facts needed weren't available in April of 1993 - and it doesn't independently urge that the Task Force propose a socialist health care system.

In fact, if we want to get into reading the tea leaves, since we all know that socialized health care is particularly bad for the rural poor - go ask the Cubans who have the misfortune to need something more complicated than a band-aid or an aspirin - the letter can just as easily be read as asking that the Task Force avoid anything - including socialized health care - that would just hurt the rural poor.

Tempest in a Teapot indeed.