Rep. Peter King (R-NY) told MSNBC today that there is no need to rush on health care reform.

The health care system, he said, "may not be perfect....But it's not the rabid-type issue that had to be solved by August 1 of this year, the way President Obama was saying."

And he's right. Health care reform is not a rabid-type issue. In fact, there are no rabid type issues. Rabies, in general, is attached to no issue -- left or right.

So why is Peter King have rabies on his mind. I'll tell you why. It's because his party's activists are acting as if they are rabid. He watches these violent, screaming haters on television or the web and thinks, "Jeez, these people are rabid." So later, when he's discussing the issue, he employs the term that is at the tip of his tongue. He's thinks rabid rightwing crazies. He says, "rabid-type issue."

Of course, King has had his own rabid moments.

Here he is criticizing the media for covering the death of Michael Jackson who he calls "a low life." Of course, one doesn't have to admire Jackson or think he was an upstanding citizen. But what can you call a Congressman who, unasked, takes to the airwaves to denounce a pop star who has just died.

Believe me, Peter King, did not condemn Sinatra as a low-life, despite his mob ties.

No, he denounces Jackson for rather obvious reasons. That attack appeals to his base. Why? You figure it out. So what's the right word? Rabid? Or rancid?

Whatever, it does not apply to the health reform issue.

It applies to those stirring up hate against this President, tapping into the ugliest strains in American life and doing it with utter disregard for this country and its people. Maybe it's time to bring back the term "un-American." I always thought it was a stupid phrase and wondered what it meant. Now I know,

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Check out this column by forrmer New York mayor, Ed Koch. Koch supported Obama in the general and was quite helpful in Florida. But here he breaks with the President because he fears that under Obama's plan he might not get millions of dollars of care in his old age.

"I know from personal experience. I have been told that the cost of my hospital care, including the services of 20 doctors and 72 nurses and medical technicians over a six-week period, may ultimately cost a million dollars. My private insurance policy is paid for by my law firm, Bryan Cave LLP, and because I still work full-time, that insurance policy is my primary one, not Medicare, even though I am 84 years old. Will that continue to be the case under any law signed by Obama? Or will I be denied the right to spend my own money and that of my law firm for such unlimited coverage?"

I don't know the answer to Koch's question and it's a legitimate one. But Koch, at 84, should be ashamed to say that he'd perpetuate a status quo in which millions of young people and kids get no care to avoid making any sacrifice of his own (i.e., paying more out of pocket).

We Americans are supposed to be a generous people. I wonder.