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First used in a 2009 Facebook note by U.S. politician Sarah Palin: "... my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."

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  • "Former Governor Sarah Palin made some preposterous claims over the weekend which attracted mainstream media attention. She made up the term death panel and claimed that part of the health care reform bill now working it's way through Congress required that families with children with disabilities, or elderly people who are infirm, could be judged by one of these death panels, which could control their fate and decide if they would die. GOP leadership repeated this outrageous claim across the airwaves on the Sunday morning talk shows. The mainstream media gave this claim credibility simply by repeating it.

    ...

    In fact, these kinds of claims are lies. There is no nice way to say it. This kind of stuff is far beyond the usual politicians' tricks of shading words and imputing meanings that aren't there. To quote a famous American who began the process of ending the McCarthy era in the fifties I address the MSM: 'At long last, Have you no sense of decency?'"

    - Howard Dean, The Media's Treatment of Palin's Outrageous "Death Panel" Claims, huffingtonpost.com, 10 August 2009.

    August 14, 2009

  • Also see here.

    August 14, 2009

  • At least she's not our governor anymore...

    August 14, 2009