Rep. John Dingell, the House’s longest-serving member, brought a bit of history to Saturday’s health debate.

The former Energy and Commerce Committee chairman presided over a rules debate in the morning while House leaders stepped out to meet with President Barack Obama. The gavel he used was the same one he banged down the day the House passed the bill to create Medicare in 1965.

In recent weeks, the 83-year-old Michigan Democrat has been carrying the gavel around the Capitol, hoisting it in the air at events and comparing the health bill to the act that guaranteed senior citizens health insurance.

“It is very humbling to stand here at a time when we can associate ourselves with the work of those who passed Social Security, those who passed Medicare. And now we will pass health-care reform,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

Naftali Bendavid reports from the Capitol

Critics sometimes suggest that someone on the House floor is acting like a baby. At one point in today’s heated health care debate, it was literally true.

Rep. John Shadegg, an Arizona Republican, held up his granddaughter Maddy, who appeared to be several months old, as he attacked the Democrats’ health bill.

“Maddy believes in freedom,” Mr. Shadegg said, as his granddaughter reached toward the microphone. “Maddy likes America because we have freedom.”

He added, “She came here to say she doesn’t want the government to take over health care … She doesn’t want a health care bill that will cost $1.5 trillion.” And he said that if the bill passes, Maddy knows her mother will lose her health insurance.

Maddy was remarkably well-behaved, holding a plastic toy and not shouting or calling out, unlike some of the House members at other points during the debate.

When Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) regained the microphone, he said, “That was a remarkable child and a great ventriloquist.”

Jess Bravin reports on the Supreme Court.

Set the DVR for Walter!

Of the many illustrious members of the Supreme Court bar, none will be more frustrated Sunday night than Walter Dellinger. That’s because the former acting solicitor general, clerk to Justice Hugo Black and Duke law professor will be en route to China on business, guaranteed to miss the season finale of his favorite television program, “Mad Men.”

“How do you find ‘Mad Men’ in Shanghai?” he says before embarking on his trans-Pacific journey.

Dellinger is so taken with the basic cable program, set in a New York advertising agency in the early 1960s, that he began posting fan comments at an online blog devoted to the show.

“‘Why would Peggy?’ is the less interesting question. Why would Duck?” Dellinger wrote in a comment after a surprising assignation between senior ad exec Duck Phillips, the picture of mid-century white male entitlement, and Peggy Olson, the plain-jane copywriter trying to claw her way up the man’s world of Madison Avenue. Duck “could and would have his way with more conventionally appealing women if the encounter were really about sex,” Dellinger continued. “He is more likely using Peggy as a means to some further end,” probably “to undermine Don [Draper],” the show’s charismatic protagonist.

But many of Dellinger’s comments have been directed to the show’s treatment of the social forces about to upend American society as the 1960s unfold.

“The white men of ‘Mad Men’ don’t know what’s coming,” says Dellinger, 68 years old. He lived through the period, a young man from North Carolina then studying at Yale Law School, while his wife, Anne, worked as a technical writer in New York City. He says he’s particularly impressed by the deft treatment of race relations–for instance, that Don, uninterested, tries to turn off Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech when it airs on the radio.

“I think the show accurately captured Northern indifference to what was happening in the South,” Dellinger says. “Madison Avenue was paying scant attention to what was going on other than wondering if there was a market you could reach through Ebony magazine.”

At the same time, as a poor boy from the South, Dellinger says he understands a bit how Don, self-made in countless ways, views the swells into whose society he has climbed. “I had never been to New York before I was a summer associate in 1965 and I was astounded by the amount of drinking people would do, even at lunchtime,” Dellinger recalls. “I have a sense of what Don Draper feels around the Roger Sterlings of the world,” he says, referring to the scion of the ad firm’s founder, the insouciant wit with a trophy wife. (Still, Dellinger confesses that Roger is his favorite character; “the show always lights up whenever Roger Sterling is in a scene.”)

Last week’s episode depicted Nov. 22, 1963, the day of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.

The show treated it “exactly the way it intruded upon an ordinary day for everyone,” Dellinger says. He was working as a waiter in the Yale dining halls, he says. “Because people were going away for the football weekend, I agreed to finish up and reset the table for dinner by myself. Someone rushed by and said, ‘Did you hear? The president has been shot.’ I couldn’t leave because I had to work for another half-hour. I thought, Maybe this is true, maybe it isn’t,” and continued cleaning up.

Dellinger the professor says “Mad Men,” beyond the clever dialogue, the verisimilitude of its costumes and sets, and the intricate character relationships, has something broader to teach people of all generations.

“It shows very much how time-bound our cultural assumptions are about roles,” particularly those of sex and race, Dellinger says. “There are things we are not understanding about our own culture at the time we go through it.”

To be sure, Dellinger isn’t the only legendary litigator who follows “Mad Men.” “My wife and I are big fans, but I think Walter is in another league,” says former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who now runs the appellate practice at King & Spalding.

Indeed. Dellinger heads the appellate practice at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, meaning that an hour of his time could be worth $1,000 or more. He’s contributed to leading newspapers and law journals, and often quoted on legal affairs in daily news coverage. So why does he bang out blog comments for free and post them online, where they easily could be lost amid the cacophony of online rants and raves any member of the riff-raff could offer?

“Lack of anything better to do at 11 o’clock at night,” he says.

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Prescriptions is following the floor debate over health care legislation in the House of Representatives throughout Saturday.

The midterm elections of 2010 are about a year away, but the guests on this Sunday's talk shows will try to gauge what's in store for Democrats and Republicans.

Peter Landers reports on health care.

Republicans are seizing on Friday’s unemployment report to step up attacks on the Democrats’ health-care bill. In statements on the floor of Congress today, Republican lawmakers repeatedly referred to the rise of unemployment above 10% to make the case that Democrats have “misplaced priorities,” in the words of Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.).

Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican minority whip, said at a news conference that the Democratic plan would “impose higher taxes on small business while we’re expecting them to create jobs.” Small-business groups say the tax on married couples earning more than $1 million could hit some business owners. They also oppose penalties the bill would impose on businesses with payroll of more than $500,000 that don’t offer employees health coverage.

Another frequently repeated phrase was “government takeover” – which is what Republicans say will happen to the health-care system if the Democrats’ bill becomes law. What Democrats really want, said Rep. John Shimkus (R., Ill.), is a single-payer system where the government is the only entity paying health-care bills.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) raised the specter of single-payer systems overseas, which she said deny people timely treatment for cancer and other diseases. “We have all heard the horror stories of what happened in Europe and Canada,” she said.

On this day in 1962, Richard Nixon gave his "last press conference" after losing the California governor's race.

Said Nixon: "Gentlemen, think of what you're going to miss. You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore."

Just six years later he was elected president.

Here is the text of President Barack Obama’s remarks Saturday afternoon in advance of the House vote on the health-care bill. The president made the remarks at the White House after visiting the Capitol to speak to House Democrats.

Good afternoon, everybody. I just want to say a few words about the landmark vote that the House of Representatives is poised to take today — a vote that can bring us one step closer to making real the promise of quality, affordable health care for the American people.

For the better part of a year now, members of the House and the Senate have been working diligently and constructively to craft legislation that will benefit millions of American families and millions of American businesses who urgently need it. For the first time ever, they’ve passed bills through every single committee responsible for reform. They’ve brought us closer than we have ever been to passing health insurance reform on behalf of the American people.

Now is the time to finish the job. The bill that the House has produced will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality, affordable options for those who don’t; and lower costs for American families and American businesses. And as I’ve insisted from the beginning, it is a bill that is fully paid for and will actually reduce our long-term federal deficit.

This bill is change that the American people urgently need. Don’t just take my word for it. Consider the national groups who’ve come out in support of this bill on behalf of their members: The Consumers Union supports it because it will create — and I quote — “a more secure, affordable health care system for the American people.”

The American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association support it on behalf of doctors and nurses and medical professionals who know firsthand what’s broken in our current system, and who see what happens when their patients can’t get the care they need because of insurance industry bureaucracies.

The National Farmers Union supports this bill because it will control costs for farmers and ranchers, and address the unique challenges rural Americans face when it comes to receiving quality care.

And the AARP supports it because it will achieve the goal for which the AARP has been fighting for decades — reducing the cost of health care, expanding coverage for America’s seniors, and strengthening Medicare for the long haul.

Now, no bill can ever contain everything that everybody wants, or please every constituency and every district. That’s an impossible task. But what is possible, what’s in our grasp right now is the chance to prevent a future where every day 14,000 Americans continue to lose their health insurance, and every year 18,000 Americans die because they don’t have it; a future where crushing costs keep small businesses from succeeding and big businesses from competing in the global economy; a future where countless dreams are deferred or scaled back because of a broken system we could have fixed when we had the chance.

What we can do right now is choose a better future and pass a bill that brings us to the very cusp of building what so many generations of Americans have sought to build — a better health care system for this country.

Millions of Americans are watching right now. Their families and their businesses are counting on us. After all, this is why they sent us here, to finally confront the challenges that Washington had been putting off for decades — to make their lives better, to leave this country stronger than we found it.

I just came from the Hill where I talked to the members of Congress there, and I reminded them that opportunities like this come around maybe once in a generation. Most public servants pass through their entire careers without a chance to make as important a difference in the lives of their constituents and the life of this country. This is their moment, this is our moment, to live up to the trust that the American people have placed in us — even when it’s hard; especially when it’s hard. This is our moment to deliver.

I urge members of Congress to rise to this moment. Answer the call of history, and vote yes for health insurance reform for America.

In early summer, pollster David Petts showed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds (D) how he could the win the general election.

The advice in the memo obtained by Politico: "Go negative on the Republican nominee, capitalize on his natural advantage with independents, and be wary of two fellow Democrats -- incumbent Gov. Tim Kaine and President Barack Obama."

Deeds "ultimately followed many of the recommendations laid out at the end of the 24-page strategy document" only to be crushed by Bob McDonnell (R) in "the worst blow-out in a gubernatorial election in nearly a half-century."