links for 2009-08-02

Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to produce its first bomb, Western intelligence sources have told The Times.

The sources said that Iran completed a research programme to create weaponised uranium in the summer of 2003 and that it could feasibly make a bomb within a year of an order from its Supreme Leader.

A US National Intelligence Estimate two years ago concluded that Iran had ended its nuclear arms research programme in 2003 because of the threat from the American invasion of Iraq. But intelligence sources have told The Times that Tehran had halted the research because it had achieved its aim — to find a way of detonating a warhead that could be launched on its long-range Shehab-3 missiles.

The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the U.S. to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison.

Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum security prison in Michigan and the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold the 229 suspected al-Qaida, Taliban and foreign fighters now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

The officials outlined the plans — the latest effort to comply with President Barack Obama's order to close the prison camp by Jan. 22, 2010, and satisfy congressional and public fears about incarcerating terror suspects on American soil — on condition of anonymity because the options are under review.

For the second time in less than two weeks, the Canadian public health care system has flunked an international comparison test, says the Health Consumer Powerhouse (HCP), a research organization. Canada's health care system ranks 23rd among 32 nations surveyed for quality, access and innovation.

The second annual Euro-Canada Health Consumer Index measures patients' rights and information, waiting times for treatment, outcomes, the range and reach of services provided and access to pharmaceuticals. Out of the 1,000 points available, the Index ranked countries in the following manner:

* The Netherlands was in the top spot with 824 points.
* Austria was second with 813 points.
* Luxembourg and Denmark took third and fourth place with 795 and 794 points, respectively.
* Germany came in fifth with 769 points.
* Canada placed 23rd with a score of just 549 points.

Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger government rôle in health care. Much of the public assumes their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. However, before turning to government as the solution, some unheralded facts about America's health care system should be considered.

he “Blue Dogs,” a group of moderate to conservative House Democrats who have worked to limit the price tag of health care reform legislation, are taking a hit from a prominent Republican who is suggesting that the group will ultimately prove ineffectual.

“The Blue Dogs, they always bark and they never bite,” Arizona Sen. John McCain said on an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “They almost always – in fact, always, roll over and then play dead.”

Transplantable organs are a scarce commodity, and people die every day waiting for them. So it’s no wonder that they’re a perpetual source of tension, as we were reminded yet again today by some news from the other side of the Atlantic.

The U.K. is set to ban private transplants from dead donors, after media reports that private patients from overseas traveled to the U.K. to receive organs, the BBC reports. The livers of at least 50 British donors from the National Health Service were transplanted into foreign patients over a two-year period, according to the Times of London.

Tens of thousands with chronic back pain will be forced to live in agony after a decision to slash the number of painkilling injections issued on the NHS, doctors have warned.
The Government's drug rationing watchdog says "therapeutic" injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.

Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.
Specialists fear tens of thousands of people, mainly the elderly and frail, will be left to suffer excruciating levels of pain or pay as much as £500 each for private treatment.

To get the economy back on track, will President Barack Obama have to break his pledge not to raise taxes on 95 percent of Americans? In a “This Week” exclusive, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told me, "We’re going to have to do what’s necessary.”

Geithner was clear that he believes a key component of economic recovery is deficit reduction. When I gave him several opportunities to rule out a middle class tax hike, he wouldn’t do it.

“We have to bring these deficits down very dramatically,” Geithner told me. “And that’s going to require some very hard choices.”

“We will not get this economy back on track, recovery will be not strong and sustained, unless we convince the American people that we are going to have the will to bring these deficits down once recovery is firmly established,” he said.
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Why, of course because Obama LIED during his campaign – just like Bill Clinton.

National Republican Senatorial Committee / Public Opinion Strategies (R)
400 likely voters, 4.6% margin of error
Mode: Live telephone interviews
(release)

North Dakota

Favorable / Unfavorable
John Hoeven (R): 86 / 5
Sen. Byron Dorgan: 69 / 24

2010 Senate
Hoeven 53%, Dorgan 36%

Sen. John McCain says President Barack Obama has failed in his effort to be a bipartisan leader.

McCain, who lost the election to Obama last year, said Sunday the success of Obama's initiatives in Congress shouldn't be mistaken for bipartisanship.

As one example, McCain said the health care bill was written without Republican input.

He added that while Obama has managed to pick off a few Republican votes, the president has failed to change the partisan climate in Washington as he said he wanted.

The Arizona Republican said that Obama is undoubtedly an effective president and an excellent communicator with sizable majorities in Congress.

McCain spoke to CNN's "State of the Union" for its Sunday broadcast