Death Panel
It took off thanks to a Facebook post. "The America I know and love is not one in which 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. Such a system is downright evil," Sarah Palin wrote on her Facebook page on Aug. 7 about the Obama administration's health-care reform. Soon other Republicans began echoing the former Alaska governor's phrase and warning Americans about the White House's intentions to establish euthanasia (former House speaker Newt Gingrich) and pull the plug on Grandma (Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley). Nevermind that the bill's 1,000 pages doesn't include a single mention of establishing committees to execute the infirm or the old.