Health Care Battle
Dems advance proposals to spread health coverage
Democrats at both ends of the Capitol accelerated their drive to enact health care legislation on Tuesday, outlining proposals to extend coverage to uninsured millions but omitting most details on plans for raising more than $1 trillion needed to cover costs.
The Difference Between Socialized Medicine, Single-Payer Health Care, and What We’ll Be Getting
Health Care Spending Disparities Stir a Fight
The Terrorists Are Winning
Kansas Abortion Clinic Operated by Doctor Who Was Killed Closes Permanently
The clinic of Dr. George R. Tiller, in Wichita, had been one of a few in the country to provide abortions to women late in their pregnancies, and for decades, women had traveled there from all over the nation and overseas. The office, Women’s Health Care Services Inc., was also the state’s only remaining clinic, even for abortions performed early in pregnancy, outside the Kansas City area.
How a murder fed conspiracy theories about the liberal media. (Thomas Frank)
Two weeks ago, former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline sent out a fund-raising letter asking for help paying down legal bills he incurred during one of his fights with that state’s abortion providers. After recounting his battles with Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller and others, Mr. Kline moaned that “They must silence the truth by silencing the messenger.”
[…]
What makes this particular fund-raising missive supremely awkward is that it arrived in people’s mailboxes after Tiller himself had been silenced forever, gunned down in a Wichita church, allegedly by a man from the fringes of the antiabortion movement.
Stay Classy, GOP
Boehner: ‘First step in the Democrats’ plan to import terrorists into America’
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), What a Doofus!
China airs fears: congressman (via Talking Points Memo)
He said he told the Chinese that the budget deficit could be even bigger than predicted, due in part to the rising costs to the US economy of health care.
‘One of the messages I had – because we need to build trust and confidence in our number one creditor – is that the budget numbers that the US government has put forward should not be believed‘
Most don’t know who speaks for GOP
“Torturegate”
London’s Metropolitan Police accused of waterboarding suspects
[S]enior policing officials are most alarmed by the claim that officers in Enfield, North London, used the controversial CIA interrogation technique to simulate drowning.
Lawsuits Force Disclosures by C.I.A.
So far, President Obama has managed to curb Congressional calls for a national commission to investigate Bush administration detention policies. But Mr. Obama cannot control the courts, and lawsuits are turning out to be the force driving disclosures about brutal interrogations.
Sore Losers And Whiners
Lieberman, Graham Threaten to Shut Down Senate
Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) threatened to hold up any and all legislation in the Senate until Congress passes its legislation to prohibit the release of photos showing detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Economy Watch
For U.S., a Sea of Perilous Red Ink, Years in the Making (Excellent. Highly recommended by TC News Division)
There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years.
The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.
Obama Urges Congress to Tighten ‘Paygo’ Budget Rules
10 Large Banks Allowed to Exit U.S. Aid Program
The Obama administration marked with little fanfare a major milestone in its bank rescue effort — its decision on Tuesday to let 10 big banks repay federal aid that had sustained them through the worst of the crisis —
U.S. banks face tough time, in or out of TARP
It is in Beijing’s interests to lend Geithner a hand (The entire article is here)
House subpoenas Fed over BoA-Merrill role
The Federal Reserve was served with a subpoena from a Congressional committee on Tuesday, as lawmakers demanded documents related to Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch.
Bank of America’s Chief Says Fed Pushed for Merrill Purchase
Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis said federal officials pushed him to complete the purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co. after he became aware of “significant accelerating losses” at the New York-based brokerage.
A Failure of Regulation, Not Capitalism by Ed Glaeser (Nice column but a no-kidding-Sherlock)
The Bair maximum
Bair’s attack has been mostly good news for those interested in seeing a stable, if not sexy, banking system. By threatening the things most precious to bank executives — their pay and jobs — she has sent a clear message to the industry: Your bailout is not without a price. We expect results.
War On Terror
First Guantanamo suspect moved to U.S. for trial
The United States transferred the first detainee from Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday to stand trial in a U.S. civilian court in a test case for President Barack Obama’s plans to close the controversial prison for foreign
Pacific island may take Chinese Muslim prisoners from Guantanamo Bay
The Obama administration is close to an agreement that will see a group of Chinese Muslim prisoners from Guantanamo Bay resettled on the remote Pacific island of Palau, according to officials.
Iraqi accused in deaths of five US soldiers is freed
The surprise release of a Shi’ite militant linked to the killing of five US soldiers in Iraq is part of a high-stakes gambit that could result in freedom for five British hostages and a political role for a major Shi’ite extremist group with reputed ties to Iran.
War bill tally could top $105B
The White House’s ever-expanding wartime spending bill could soon exceed $105 billion even as President Barack Obama remains stymied by divisions in Congress and a set of terrorism-related issues that have strained relations in his own party.
Around The World
At least 15 dead in Pakistani hotel blast
Car bomb kills 15 in southern Shiite area in Iraq
Could North Korea Provoke a New Korean War?
Beat The Press
Love or lust, Obama and the fawning press need to get a room
‘It’s time to enshrine Hank Paulson as national hero’ WTF?
Police Brutality
New Jersey police officer pounds man on tape
What You Do For Love
How a hummingbird in love can move faster than a fighter jet
The dramatic courtship dive of a small hummingbird has been found to be the quickest aerial manoeuvre in the natural world for an animal compared to its size. It even outpaces the movements of a jet fighter and the Space Shuttle on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
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