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Mar 14 2012 - 12:16pm
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textWashington Post Romney Hit Piece Implodes
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May 13 2012 - 11:11pm
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textOne Woman's Ordeal with Texas' New Sonogram Law
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Mar 26 2012 - 9:48am
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textDershowitz Blasts Zimmerman Prosecution: 'Not Only Immoral, But Stupid'
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Apr 23 2012 - 11:47am
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textAutopsy results show Trayvon Martin had injuries to his knuckles
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May 17 2012 - 11:57pm
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textJust Think: GOP Says Her Knowledge of Birth Control Issues Doesn't Count
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Feb 20 2012 - 6:50pm
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textProsecutors Say Zimmerman Profiled Martin
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Apr 20 2012 - 6:46am
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textCoke Dumps ALEC
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Apr 27 2012 - 12:07pm
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stephley GOP Can't Decide Between Some or Nothing on Health Care May 17, 2012 9:26 PM Thirty minutes. That’s the roughly time it took for conservatives to jump all over Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his leadership team after the GOP’s game plan for dealing with President Barack Obama’s health care law leaked to the media. Their gripe? Republicans would try to replicate popular parts of Obama’s health care law if the Supreme Court overturns the law this summer. Rather than sending out news releases or rushing to cable TV for a rant, conservatives blasted House Republican leadership on a private Google email group called The Repeal Coalition. The group is chock- full of think tank types, some Republican leadership staffers, health care policy staffers and conservative activists, according to sources in the group. The behind-the-scenes fight among Republicans richly illustrates why House GOP leadership is so cautious, sensitive and calculating when it comes to dealing with the conservative right. POLITICO obtained the email chain, the contents of which show that health care reform remains just as emotional an issue as ever. Wesley Denton, an aide to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), questioned whether the “GOP now against full repeal?” “Should we change the name of this [listserv] to ‘partialrepealcoalition’ or ‘someofobamacareisprettygood’?” Denton wrote to the group. Brian Worth, a GOP leadership staffer responsible for coordinating with outside groups, shot back that “the House has already passed a full repeal bill.” “Has the Senate passed that bill yet?” Worth asked Denton, in the email chain. Russ Vought, a former House Republican staffer who is now at Heritage Action for America, bluntly said, “that has absolutely nothing to do with it.” The “House GOP is going to cave after winning an election on full repeal … and before winning the next election to finish the job.” “Unreal,” he said. The common Washington narrative holds that Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) have trouble wrangling the members in the House Republican Conference. That might be true — at times. But groups on the outside are also problematic. When a certain issue gets hot, email groups like The Repeal Coalition pop up, causing spirited debate among staffers and activists. It also gins up opposition to — or support for — leadership, creating a sense of group-think that’s often hard for leadership to contain to control. For example, during the debt ceiling debate last summer, a group of conservatives gathered on a Cut, Cap and Balance email chain — taking its name from a plan pushed by conservatives like Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio. It’s another turn of the screw for a Washington that is influenced by deep-pocketed, high-profile legislative-action groups. From Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform to Heritage Action to Club for Growth, these groups are frequent judges of Republican Washington and aren’t afraid to speak out against fellow conservatives. House GOP leadership sees these outside conservative groups as being on the fringes and irrationally distrustful of Republicans in power. Boehner has tried to repeal or weaken the president’s health care law dozens times this Congress, leadership insiders say. Why would conservatives think he’s all of a sudden going soft on his commitment to overturn what they dub “Obamacare”? Plus, anything Boehner does after the Supreme Court ruling, his allies say, would be done with a GOP tinge. The speaker issued a statement Thursday to reaffirm his support for full repeal of the Affordable Care Act. “The only way to change this is by repealing ObamaCare in its entirety,” Boehner said in the statement. “We voted to fully repeal the president’s health care law as one of our first acts as a new House majority, and our plan remains to repeal the law in its entirety. Anything short of that is unacceptable.” Plus, the plan being debated in the Repeal listserv — as revealed in a POLITICO story Wednesday night — didn’t detail how Boehner planned to address popular provisions they’re looking to preserve; those decisions have not yet been made. The provisions include keeping children on their parents’ health care until 26, encouraging insurance companies to provide coverage to those with pre-existing conditions and keeping the so-called Medicare “donut hole” closed. That didn’t stop the staffers and activists on the health care email list from getting pretty heated. Avik Roy, a Forbes columnist and Manhattan Institute scholar, wrote to the email group that forcing insurance companies to cover folks with pre-existing conditions “would destroy the private insurance market.” Congressional Republicans also want to keep closed the Medicare “donut hole” — Washington-speak for a gap in Medicare’s prescription drug coverage that requires seniors to pay more out of pocket for medicine. Roy said that much-maligned gap in coverage — eventually closed in the Democrats’ law — has “actuarial importance in preventing wasteful drug spending.” ”Brian, if you or someone else can explain the policy rationale of these provisions, I’d love to hear it,” Roy wrote to the email list. Worth shot back, “[I] don’t leak out of meetings, so I won’t comment on this story.” Some of these groups — with their legislative scorecards and criticism of leadership — have engendered a good deal of tension among GOP aides. Worth, the leadership staffer, blasted the email group, asking “when did conservatives start believing everything they read in the press?” He said “House Republicans continue to support full repeal of Obamacare.” “It’d be great if we all focused on the problem rather than creating an internal firing squad,” Worth said on the email chain. He also took Heritage Action to task, remind them that they’ve supported the House GOP’s repeal efforts in the past. “So,” he wrote, “that doesn’t matter now?” Cognizant of the conservative anger, Dave Schnittger, Boehner’s longtime deputy chief of staff, sent a separate email to a small group of fellow leadership aides Wednesday night, saying that, during his weekly media availability, the speaker would “knock … down” the plan that had leaked. Boehner did not address health care once in his 12-minute news conference. Aides say he was prepared to talk about it — if the issue came up. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76471.html
stephley When Not Even McCain Will Go There... May 17, 2012 1:18 PM The front page of the Character Matters PAC's proposal for a five-minute film criticizing the President. Speaking of radioactive politics, conservatives lately have been dipping their toes into old controversies lately. Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) remarked in a speech last weekend that President Obama that "in his heart, he's not an American." Coffman apologized once tape surfaced of the speech. The folks at the late Andrew Breitbart's site have the top link on the Drudge Report right now with something about a 21-year-old booklet that says President Obama was born in Kenya. (Nice that the article is prefaced by a lengthy We're Not Birthers!™ disclaimer.) The more hilarious example is a new "birther" film, “Dreams From My Real Father" (get it?), which among its very outlandish assertions, claims that President Obama's father was a Communist...from Hawaii. (You can imagine why that's confounding the "birthers" out there who kick it old school, and claim that he's from Kenya.) Conservatives toy with this stuff all the time. But this morning, anyone picking up (or logging into) the New York Times' front page learned that a super-PAC called Character Matters (really) backing presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney was gearing up an effort to get serious using an even older bogeyman: the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Timed to upend the Democratic National Convention in September, the plan would “do exactly what John McCain would not let us do,” the strategists wrote... “The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way,” says the proposal, which was overseen by Fred Davis and commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. Mr. Ricketts is increasingly putting his fortune to work in conservative politics.” The use of Wright by conservatives in the 2008 campaign is well-remembered as rather overt race-baiting, and this also fits that bill. (Wright didn't help matters when he revealed himself as what I deemed at the time as a "crab in the barrel," turning on the President first with his cartoonish Press Club appearance in April of 2008.) The juiciest and most hilarious part of the Times piece, bar none, was this: The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an “extremely literate conservative African-American” who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln.” Really? They needed a conservative black spokesman, and an "extremely literate" one at that? The jokes write themselves, particularly when they come to phrases like "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln," which sounds like more of a compliment. To say the least, the reaction to this has been swift. Republicans were quick to respond negatively, including Romney. As Greg Sargent notes, the fact that Romney himself employed the Rev. Wright bogeyman in a February radio interview didn't stop his campaign today from coming out with a statement that read, in part: “It’s clear President Obama’s team is running a campaign of character assassination. We repudiate any efforts on our side to do so.” (Romney repeated that "repudiation" just now in live remarks, quickly pivoting off of them to attack the President for attacking him. When asked about the fact he'd used the Wright attack himself back in February, Romney claimed he was unable to recall exactly what he'd said -- but he stood by it, "whatever it was." ) You can line both of those statements up next to Romney's "it's not the language I would have used" response to Rush Limbaugh's sexist remarks about Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke. Keep in mind that in 2008, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), for fear of being deemed racist, made it explicit that these sorts of attacks were out of bounds. What Romney has done is considerably softer. Repudiation is the refusal to be associated with something; condemnation is a lot stronger, and what this moment called for, according to the Obama campaign, who called the Romney response "tepid": "The blueprint for a hate-filled, divisive campaign of character assassination speaks for itself. It also reflects how far the party has drifted in four short years since John McCain rejected these very tactics. Once again, Governor Romney has fallen short of the standard that John McCain set, reacting tepidly in a moment that required moral leadership in standing up to the very extreme wing of his own party. A third party leaked the full memo authored by ad man Fred Davis' firm Strategic Perception to the Times; Davis' firm is not only behind this effort, but also is known for other similarly notorious race-baiting ads (see above) for Republican politicians in the past. Whether or not today was an accidental leak, or it was their way of testing the waters, it says a lot that Davis is now walking it back, and that the Ricketts super-PAC is now saying they have no plans to use Rev. Wright in their ads, saying essentially that it was just an idea, calm down, everyone: “Joe Ricketts is a registered independent, a fiscal conservative, and an outspoken critic of the Obama Administration, but he is neither the author nor the funder of the so-called “Ricketts Plan” to defeat Mr. Obama that The New York Times wrote about this morning. Not only was this plan merely a proposal - one of several submitted to the Ending Spending Action Fund by third-party vendors - but it reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take. Mr. Ricketts intends to work hard to help elect a President this fall who shares his commitment to economic responsibility, but his efforts are and will continue to be focused entirely on questions of fiscal policy, not attacks that seek to divide us socially or culturally.” http://mhpshow.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/17/11745106-exactly-what-john-mccain-would-not-let-us-do
stephley VA GOP: Rejection of Gay Judge Not Bigotry... May 17, 2012 12:35 PM Richmond prosecutor Tracy Thorne-Begland, a former Navy fighter pilot, had his nomination to a state judgeship in Virginia rejected early Tuesday morning. Democrats say it's because he's gay; Republicans say it's complicated: "He holds himself out as being married," said Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William), who is running for U.S. Senate. Noting that gay marriage is not legal in Virginia, he said that Thorne-Begland's "life is a contradiction to the requirement of submission to the constitution." Marshall, the Family Foundation of Virginia and others who raised concerns about Thorne-Begland's nomination said they did not object to him because he is gay, but because of his outspokenness on the subject of gay rights. Thorne-Begland also supported the repeal of the military's discriminatory Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. So it's not, strictly speaking, correct to say Thorne-Begland was rejected because he was gay. He was rejected because he believes being gay entitles him to the same rights as people who aren't. If Thorne-Begland had lived a life of closeted celibacy and talked like Tony Perkins, Marshall would have thought he was qualified to serve as a judge. This is coming from a guy who tried to install a state-level DADT policy for the Virginia National Guard because "If I needed a blood transfusion and the guy next to me had committed sodomy 14 times in the last month, I'd be worried." Virginia Republicans didn't reject Thorne-Begland because he's gay, but because he supports gay rights. The closet magically eliminates sexually transmitted diseases, which are never contracted by heterosexuals. Some voters in Virginia apparently find this kind of logic compelling enough to keep Marshall in office. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/05/virginia-gop-tries-explain-why-vote-against-gay-judge-wasnt-bigotry
stephley Fate of 'uninsurables' hinges on Supreme Court May 17, 2012 12:20 PM WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cancer patient Kathy Watson voted Republican in 2008 and believes the government has no right telling Americans to get health insurance. Nonetheless, she says she'd be dead if it weren't for President Barack Obama's health care law. Now the Florida small businesswoman is worried the Supreme Court will strike down her lifeline. Under the law, Watson and nearly 62,000 other "uninsurable" patients are getting coverage through a little-known program for people who have been turned away by insurance companies because of pre-existing medical conditions. "Without it, I would have been dead on March 2," Watson said of the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, known as PCIP. That's when she was hospitalized for a life-threatening respiratory infection. It's not clear how the Supreme Court will rule on Obama's law, but Watson's case illustrates the potential impact of tying everything in the far-reaching legislation to the fate of one provision, the unprecedented requirement that most Americans carry health insurance. The law's opponents say if that insurance mandate is found to be unconstitutional, the rest of the law should also go, since courts should not be picking and choosing policy. The administration defends the insurance requirement but says if the court decides to overturn it, most of the rest of the law should stay. State officials who administer the federal pre-existing condition plan in 27 states are trying to make fallback arrangements in case the law is invalidated and coverage suddenly terminates. "Some of these individuals are critically ill and are being treated for very serious illnesses, whether it be cancer or HIV-AIDS, and we feel a responsibility to them to do what we can to see they don't lose access," said Amie Goldman, who oversees PCIP in Wisconsin. Federal officials who administer the plan in the remaining 23 states and Washington, D.C., remain mum on what might happen there if the law is overturned. The White House line is that Obama is confident the Supreme Court will uphold the Affordable Care Act, and his administration therefore is making no contingency plans for a reversal. None of that sounds reassuring to Watson, who owns a medical transport service in rural north-central Florida. "It's scary," she said. "They need to look at this carefully because it is going to affect a lot of people with a lot of bad conditions who are not going to have any health care coverage." Before PCIP, Watson had been uninsured since 2003, originally turned down because of elevated white blood cells. About three years ago, she was diagnosed with a chronic form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system. Unable to afford medications, she relied on the emergency room to treat flare-ups. She tried applying to a major insurance company for a small business plan for her and her employees, and was quickly rejected. Then she heard about PCIP. The temporary program is meant to serve as a patch until 2014, when the federal health care law will require insurers to accept all applicants, including cancer patients like Watson, regardless of medical history. The law's controversial mandate for individuals to carry health insurance is related to that guaranteed acceptance provision. By forcing healthy people to buy insurance, it would help keep premiums in check. Initially, Watson could not afford the $800 monthly premium the government was asking for PCIP. High premiums are part of the reason the program has not attracted more people. But officials retooled to make coverage more affordable. Watson applied again and was accepted. She met the basic requirements: uninsured at least six months, turned away because of pre-existing conditions, having U.S. citizenship or legal residence. Her premium is $363. In March, Watson went to the emergency room with what she thought was pneumonia. She was admitted, and quarantined the next morning when tests showed she had an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection, highly dangerous. She spent five days in intensive care. Without her PCIP coverage, Watson is convinced she would have been sent home from the emergency room after initial treatment to ease her shortness of breath. "I'm not a candidate for any for type of indigent program, and without insurance they would not have put me in ICU," she said. "I would have gone into cardiac arrest and probably died," she added. Emergency rooms must treat the uninsured, "but they are only required to get you stable. And then they release you and tell you to go to the health department." A government report this year found that people in the pre-existing condition plan tended to be middle-aged patients with no access to employer coverage and with medical conditions that require continuous care. The top five diagnoses: cancer, heart disease, degenerative bone diseases, organ failure requiring a transplant and hemophilia. If the federal law is struck down, some state officials are considering taking the patients into their own, separate, state high-risk insurance pools. Wisconsin, for example, has decided that PCIP enrollees would be automatically accepted into its pool. But not all states have them. In the 35 that do, premiums would generally be higher, and there might be waiting periods. Republicans, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have long favored insurance pools for high-risk patients. And Congress could take emergency action to keep PCIP going. But no assurances have been offered. Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, says Republicans are ready to work on "step-by-step, commonsense" approaches. Watson says she still disagrees with Obama's requirement that individuals have health insurance, either through an employer, a government program or by purchasing their own plan. "I approve of some of it," she said of the law, "I don't approve of the mandatory ... insurance." But she doesn't want to go back to depending on the emergency room. "I have no problem paying my insurance and paying my copays," she said. "I just think I should have the right to purchase insurance." --- http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUPREME_COURT_UNINSURABLES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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When Not Even McCain Will Go There... When Not Even McCain Will Go There...
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