Yes, Virginia, spines exist.  And, yes, even some Democrats have them.  We know this to be true because Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) went to the House floor this week and said this:

House Republicans immediately demanded that he apologize.  So, he did:

But Grayson wasn't done there.  No, sir.  He still needed to locomote his 6'4" spine-equipped frame into Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room:

The study that Grayson refers to was recently published by Harvard.  It updates a study that I cited in a previous post, where I noted that 18,000 Americans die annually because they do not have health insurance.  The Harvard study pushes this number up to 45,000, which amounts to a loss of life equivalent to 9/11 every month rather than every two months as I had previously estimated.

I really love watching trite-ass Wolf Blitzer's irony-bereft faux outrage for Grayson's supposedly maligning the Republicans.  What a toolbox.  After spending all summer entertaining all of the scaremongering of the right, he just can't believe his ears.  Blitzer's amazement is simply due to the fact that he can't believe someone is breaking Beltway decorum, hence the attempt to make this somehow analagous to Rep. Joe Wilson's infamous outburst.

One of my favorite things about the Internet is that I can be reminded in short increments exactly why I don't watch cable news.  Thanks to Rep. Grayson for taking a fact-based, moral stand and refusing to kowtow to the Washington game.

What the Republicans have been doing is an insult to America.

- Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL)

UPDATE: Rep. Grayson is a newcomer, having just joined Congress this year, so I'm not all that familiar with him, but then I remembered seeing him grill the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve:

There's also this pointed grilling of Ben Bernanke:

More recently, during the Acorn kerfuffle, Rep. Grayson also proposed a "corporate death penalty" for organizations that commit fraud, meaning that they would be barred from doing business with the federal government in the future.  The list of offending organizations would include pretty much every major defense, pharmaceutical and telecommunications company that the federal government does business with.