Del.icio.us Links

links for 2009-06-06

  • After months of confidential negotiations on health care reform, details of what the overhaul might look like leaked out late Friday in the form of a draft of part of the bill being written in the Senate by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

    The draft, which is now making the rounds of Washington, D.C., insiders who are closely following the health care reform negotiations on Capitol Hill and was obtained by Roll Call, concerns the issue of “coverage.”

    The document reads as bill language. But Anthony Coley, a spokesman for HELP Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), characterized the leaked material as “a draft of a draft.”

    “HELP Democrats are still discussing options among themselves and their Republican colleagues,” Coley said Friday evening.

    (tags: Obamacare)
  • A former U.S. State Department official and his wife have been arrested for spying for the Cuban government for nearly 30 years, the Justice Department said on Friday.

    Walter Myers, 72, and his wife Gwendolyn Myers, 71, were charged with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government and with communicating classified information to Cuba, the Justice Department said.

    They were also charged with wire fraud and acting as illegal agents.

    The arrests come as the United States and Cuba have offered glimmers of hope that they might be ready to end years of hostility. In mid-April, President Barack Obama pledged a "new beginning" with Cuba after slightly easing the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Havana.

    (tags: cuba Spy)
  • There's been a Mitch Daniels boomlet in Republican political circles lately. The governor of Indiana has been mentioned as a possible 2012 contender by a number of well-connected pundits, he's been featured on the cover of National Review, and GOP leaders selected him to give a recent Saturday radio address.

    It's a lot of good exposure if you're looking to raise your national profile. But why Daniels? And why now?

    "It shows you how slim the pickings are," Daniels told me Wednesday, after he spoke at another profile-raising event in Washington, a panel discussion on "Making Conservatism Credible Again" sponsored by the Hudson Institute and the Bradley Foundation. Lest anyone read that as a dismissive take on the current Republican leadership, Daniels added, "I think you'll see new sprouts flowering up more quickly than you'd expect."

  • Canada has refused a request from the Obama administration to take men cleared for release from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay.

    Kory Teneycke, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, today said recent inquiries concerning 17 Chinese Muslims called Uighurs at Guantanamo were rejected.

    Mr. Teneycke says Canada won't take any detainees. He says they have no connection to Canada and there are security concerns.

    U.S. authorities no longer consider the Uighurs enemy combatants but have not been able to find a country willing to accept them and have opposed their release into the United States. The Uighurs fear persecution if they are sent back to China.

  • How could steadily, moderately rising medical bills, a roughly static business and legislative environment, and a small increase in the uninsured, possibly have driven up bankruptcies so massively?

    Answer: they didn't. What Warren et. al. neglect to mention is that bankruptcies fell between 2001 and 2007. In fact, they were cut in half. Going by the numbers Warren et. al. provide, medical bankruptcies actually fell by almost 220,000 between 2001 and 2007, a fact that they not only fail to mention, but deliberately obscure.

    Are Warren, et. al. unaware that bankruptcies fell by half? No bankruptcy analyst could possibly be unaware of this fact; it has been the most talked-about phenomenon in the bankruptcy area since the 2005 law was passed

  • Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) “dared” members of his own Conference to vote against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court during a meeting Thursday with Latino leaders.

    During a brief press conference after the session, Reid reaffirmed his support for Sotomayor’s nomination and issued his challenge to Democratic lawmakers: “I dare any one of them to say they’re not” supporting Sotomayor.

    Reid’s statement comes on the heels of comments by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — a moderate Member with a strong independent streak — in which he questioned some of Sotomayor’s statements on race and the role of the judiciary.

  • While Judge Sonia Sotomayor stands in the liberal mainstream on many issues, her record suggests that the Supreme Court nominee could sometimes rule with the top court's conservatives on questions of criminal justice.

    The Supreme Court's five conservatives in January held that it was acceptable for prosecutors to use evidence seized by police who mistakenly thought they had a warrant to arrest a suspect.

  • AOL News has been bending over backwards lately to make sure that the do not cover the controversy surrounding Playboy.com writer Guy Cimbalo's vile attack on conservative women. AOL News has taken some drastic steps to censor any mention, let alone criticism, of Playboy's screed. They have deleted posts about the article, banned contributors from mentioning it, and even fired one of their liberal writers over it.

    The fact that banning reporters from, well, reporting is so contrary to the purpose of a news organization it really is puzzling. It seems to be in direct contrast to their commitment to "traditional journalistic values".
    +++++++
    Sounds to Flap like internal media bloodletting and all about business.

  • A new Strategic Vision poll in Florida finds Gov. Charlie Crist (R) crushing Marco Rubio (R) in a Republican Senate primary, 59% to 22%.

    In general election match ups, Crist runs way ahead of Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL), 59% to 29%. With Rubio as the GOP Senate nominee, Rubio edges Meek, 31% to 30% with 39% undecided.

    Meanwhile, in next year's gubernatorial race, Bill McCollum (R) edges Alex Sink, 41% to 39% with 20% undecided.

  • The carnage in state budgets is getting worse, a report said Thursday, with places like Arizona being hurt by falling revenue on multiple fronts, like personal income and sales taxes. Other states are having mixed experiences, with some tax categories stable, or even rising, even as others fall off the map.
  • The 8.9 percent April unemployment rate was based on 13.7 million Americans out of work. But that number doesn't include discouraged workers or people who gave up looking for work after four weeks. Add those 700,000 people, and the unemployment rate would be 9.3 percent.

    _The official rate also doesn't include "marginally attached workers," or people who have looked for work in the past year but stopped searching in the past month because of barriers to employment such as child care, poor health or lack of transportation. Add those 1.4 million people, and the unemployment rate would be 10.1 percent.

    _The official rate also doesn't include "involuntary part-time workers," or the 2 million people like Noel who took a part-time job because that's all they could get, plus those whose work hours dropped below the full-time level. Once those 9 million workers are added to the unemployment mix, the rate would be 15.8 percent.

One Comment

  • Ling

    I hope it is indeed a darft, because that healthcare bill isn’t going anywhere in it’s present form. Has something about employers being forced to provide coverage.