That title is a hoary old doctor joke, and the punchline is, of course, "...but the patient died on the table."

Two years ago, Joe Biden was famously quoted for saying to Barack Obama upon the occasion of health care reform legislation finally passing: "This is a big [expletive deleted] deal." In the past week or so, the White House has rolled out a big media push to support Obama's signature legislation. Next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the subject of whether the law, as written, passes constitutional muster or not.

We'll get to all of that in a moment, but we have some Republican primary prognostication to quickly take care of first.

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Mitt Romney's campaign has entered a sketchy phase. Or, more precisely, an etchy-sketchy phase.

OK, enough with the cheap jokes, as there certainly is no shortage of poking fun at Romney today, so we'll just move right along. What happened, in case you haven't heard, was that a senior Romney campaign official was caught in a "Washington gaffe" (defined as: accidentally admitting the truth in a political setting). His full quote, after being asked about whether Romney was being pushed too far to the right by his primary campaign opponents to appeal to moderates in the general election:

Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.

This is conventional wisdom in American politics, in actual fact. All candidates (of both parties) tack to the fringes for the primary campaign, and then pivot and tack back to the center for the general election campaign. But it's one of those things you're not supposed to admit out loud, especially not while being interviewed on the air.

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Two hundred and forty-five years ago this week, celebrations of a political nature were held throughout the American colonies. The occasion, in 1767, was the first anniversary of the repeal of the hated Stamp Act. While not unique as a reason for celebration or as a piece of enduring American politics, it was likely this was the first time Americans celebrated such a thing together -- as Americans, in other words, celebrating a purely American victory.

The Stamp Act itself wasn't even all that unique, as Americans had to cope with a number of attempts by the British Parliament to tax the colonies to retire their war debt from the French and Indian Wars. The Stamp Act wasn't even the first of these attempts -- the Molasses Act (or Sugar Act) passed in 1764, a year before the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act, however, was a new tax (a molasses tax had been around for over thirty years), which taxed pretty much everything printed on paper, including newspapers, pamphlets, university diplomas, deeds, passports, and every other printed matter you can imagine, including even "every pack of playing cards, and all dice."

Historians today mark the Stamp Act as the spark which lit the fire of the American Revolution. But if the British Parliament had just ended their attempts at levying taxes on their colonies with the Stamp Act's repeal on March 18, 1766, the Revolution might never have gotten off the ground -- and we might today still celebrate the Stamp Act repeal while at the same time honoring the Queen of England's Diamond Jubilee as loyal subjects of the Commonwealth. However, Parliament continued to pass harsher and harsher laws to deal with the upstart colonies, and Act after Act (Townshend, Intolerable, Tea...) mostly served to enrage Americans even further.

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Once again, it's primary day! Woo hoo!

Well, OK, that was kind of snarky. Just barely over the halfway point, it's to be expected that predicting the outcomes of the Republican nominating contests has gotten less fun and more of a chore than anything else, so we'll keep things mercifully short today.

First, a quick review of how things stand. Mitt Romney unsurprisingly swept Puerto Rico, after Rick Santorum visited the island and informed them -- incorrectly -- that there was a constitutional requirement that they adopt English as their official language before they could become a state. Statehood is an enormous issue in Puerto Rico, and Rick pretty much buried any hopes he held of picking up a few delegates by this one offhanded remark.

I called this correctly last Friday, which slightly improved my overall tally of making accurate predictions this year.

Total correct 2012 primary picks so far: 36 for 55 -- 65%.

Today's contest is a big one, with 69 delegates up for grabs. However, the state of Illinois is a pretty easy one to call, as Mitt Romney's been out in front in the polling in recent days, at times opening up a double-digit lead over Rick Santorum. Illinois has more urban and suburban voters than the past few states, which also plays to Romney's strengths. Santorum might have had a chance here, because Illinois is smack in the middle of the contiguous block of states he's so far picked up in the Plains and Midwest, but so far in the more urban of the Midwestern states (Ohio and Michigan) Romney has managed to eke out victories. Illinois is also a fairly expensive state to campaign in, giving Romney's far-better campaign organization and his far-deeper campaign chest a decided edge.

I'm betting that there won't be any surprises or upsets tonight, and that Mitt Romney will walk away with a clean win, and also pick up the lion's share of the delegates. Rick Santorum will place comfortably in second, with Newt Gingrich far behind him in third, edging out Ron Paul.

Those are my picks, what are yours?

[Previous states' picks:]
[IA] [NH] [SC] [FL] [NV] [CO, MN, and MO] [ME] [AZ and MI] [WA] [Super Tuesday: AK, GA, ID, MA, ND, OH, OK, TN, VT, and VA] [Guam, KS, Virgin Islands, Northern Marianas] [Puerto Rico]

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

When those of a certain age hear the term "rare earth," what immediately springs to mind is a 1970s band of the same name, whose biggest hit was a song called "Get Ready." The song was catchy, but the lyrics ("Well tweedley-dee and tweedley-dum/Look out baby, 'cause here I come") weren't exactly profound. The chorus repeated the "Get ready, 'cause here I come" phrase quite a few times. But it had a solid beat, and you could dance to it... as they said back then.

An entirely different kind of rare earth is in the news these days: the kind that actually comes out of the ground. A whole group of elements (which aren't actually all that rare) are classified as "rare earth" minerals. Their importance in the modern world is growing by leaps and bounds, because they are a key component of most high-tech devices (such as cell phones, computers, and electric car batteries). Even more critically, they are a key component of high-tech military hardware such as night-vision goggles, guided missiles, and Aegis warships.

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Sometimes I'm just astonished at the inability of political campaigns to do a simple web search. Case in point: the story about Mitt Romney's dog Seamus.

That's a good Irish name (pronounced: "shay-muss"), but I already wrote my St. Patrick's Day column yesterday, so I'm going to just skip right over that aspect of the situation.

Instead, what flabbergasts me is that in the whole Seamus-as-political-football fracas, nobody has yet bothered to dig out the Pink Floyd song of the same name.

This is an incredible oversight, due to the song itself. It's experimental, as many Pink Floyd songs, but not in the way that you'd think. For them, it was a rare venture into the realm of the blues. That's right -- the blues. Or maybe even bluegrass. The only way you'd know it was Pink Floyd is actually the synthesized dog howls in the background of the song. It's a short song, and the lyrics are close enough to the "Mitt tying his dog on the roof of the car" story for someone to use against him:

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I realize I'm a wee bit early for a Saint Patrick's Day column, but tomorrow is our regularly-scheduled Friday Talking Points, and Saturday I will be hoisting a pint of Sir Arthur Guinness' fine product, so we'll just have to make do with today.

Being pressed for time, I thought I'd just re-run my explanation of what "Saint Patrick banishing the snakes from Ireland" actually means, as it is an entertaining story to tell down at your local pub this weekend, full of rich Irish history that will amaze your sozzled friends. If you can remember the story, at the time, of course.

But that was before I had read the story of Nike putting "its foot in it" (as the Irish Times summed it up) with a mis-branding faux pas for the ages. We'll get to that in a moment.

Before we do, I have a piece of advice for all American tourists who ever find themselves in Ireland. Be it on Paddy's Day, or be it any other day of the year, the advice I have to give will still be sound. Because you'll arrive in Ireland starry-eyed with the magic of the Emerald Isle, and will immediately want to explore the nearest quaint pub and drink deep of the... ahem... flavor of the local life, not to put to fine a point on it.

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Both houses of Congress are currently considering a bill which, in my humble estimation, would be wildly popular with the public -- if they knew about it, that is. This is a truly non-partisan issue, one that pits every taxpayer in the country against the 535 members of Congress themselves -- regardless of their party affiliation. The idea is a simple one, as evidenced by the bill's official title: the "No Budget, No Pay Act."

That's it in a nutshell. The title is so good, it barely needs explaining. If Congress doesn't pass a completed budget on time -- both the budget blueprint and the 12 appropriations bills necessary -- then when the new federal fiscal year dawns on the first of October, they stop getting paid. Their paychecks halt until the budget is complete, and they are not allowed to (later on, under the cover of night) award themselves retroactive pay for this period.

Quick survey: how many of you, upon reading that last paragraph, thought that sounds like a dandy idea? Passing a budget is one of the most important duties which Congress has. Yet, year after year, they fail to perform their duties on time. Some years there are "continuing resolutions" which allow the government to keep spending money, essentially on autopilot, and some years there are gigantic budget battles -- but, either way, Congress normally fails to meet the deadline. No matter which party happens to be in charge, I should point out.

I personally am a big fan of the idea. In fact, I've written three columns over the years with almost exactly the same title as the bill. The first I wrote in 2007, when Democrats controlled both houses (as I said, this is a non-partisan issue). I concluded this article with:

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Today, the mainstream media informs me, could be an absolute game-changer in the Republican primary race. Of course, that is what they have told me every other primary night so far this year, so you'll have to forgive me if I sound a little jaded at this point by such talk.

This time they may actually be right, though, if the results cause Newt Gingrich to finally admit he's never going to be president and give up his quixotic run. That would indeed classify as a major change in the game. Then again, even if Newt loses he can still soldier on as long as the money flows in from his Las Vegas Sugar Daddy, so even that's not a foregone conclusion.

There are actually four contests today, although you certainly wouldn't know this if you only relied on the mainstream media for your information. Good thing you have dropped by here to read this article, eh?

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The TelePrompTer seems to be in the news again, due to Rick Santorum desperately trying to make it an issue in the Republican primary race. He apparently wants to make it illegal for presidential candidates to use these new-fangled machines when speaking to the public. This is an old slam against President Obama, but Santorum has a new twist: Mitt Romney apparently also uses one of these devices when speaking.

Sigh. You know, just the other day I was thinking: "Gosh, I sure do miss Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain." No, seriously. I mean, Bachmann and Cain could be counted upon to say something outrageously crazy, just about every time they were interviewed. Rick Santorum is a pale imitation of such wild and wooly candidate quips. Even when he tries to sound crazy, he mostly just comes off as stern and finger-wagging. Not quite the same thing.

I suppose it's kind of ironic. I loved watching Bachmann and Cain for precisely the point Santorum is making: when a politician goes "off script," sometimes unintentional (and amusing) things happen.

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