The SCOTUS overturned the Arthur Andersen Enron related conviction today, and that has Arianna pissed:
The sour cherry atop this icky sundae is today
by John Cole| 21 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
The SCOTUS overturned the Arthur Andersen Enron related conviction today, and that has Arianna pissed:
The sour cherry atop this icky sundae is today
by John Cole| 63 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
The battle, I believe, has been lost:
At a time when Congress has been torn by partisan battles, 24 ideologically disparate leaders representing the health care industry, corporations and unions, and conservative and liberal groups have been meeting secretly for months to seek a consensus on proposals to provide coverage for the growing number of people with no health insurance.
The participants, ranging from the liberal Families USA to the conservative Heritage Foundation and the United States Chamber of Commerce, said they had made progress in trying to overcome the ideological impasse that has stymied action on the problem for eight years.
The group, which first came together last October, has not endorsed any specific plan, but has discussed a range of options, including tax incentives for the purchase of insurance, changes in Medicaid to cover more low-income adults and the creation of insurance purchasing pools at the state level.
“This effort holds as much promise as any I’ve participated in over the last decade, probably more,” said Kate Sullivan Hare, the executive director of health care policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce.
Historically, such efforts have failed because of profound disagreements over the proper role of government. The group is far from any final agreement, but persist in seeking common ground, even as the problems of the uninsured have been eclipsed on Capitol Hill by Social Security and other issues.
There will be some form of nationalized health care in the next 10-15 years.
by John Cole| 4 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
This is pretty damned amusing:
It’s official: even Clear Channel is sick of Clear Channel. The company has set up a fake pirate radio station [taken down, 5/26/05] in Akron, Ohio, which it’s using to hurl insults at other Clear Channel stations. For about a week, Radio Free Ohio has feigned overthrowing Ohio’s media monopoly by bleeding its broadcasts into WNIR and other Clear Channel stations.
Shoddy and shady and silly, but pretty creative for the stuffed shirts at Clear Channel. (via Pandagon)
by John Cole| 5 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
I’ll be damned. All those stories you heard as a kid might be right- you could go blind:
Federal health officials are examining rare reports of blindness among some men using the impotence drug Viagra.
The Food and Drug Administration still is investigating, but has no evidence yet that the drug is to blame, said spokeswoman Susan Cruzan.
This type of blindness is called NAION, or non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. It can occur in men who are diabetic or have heart disease, the same conditions that can cause impotence and thus lead to Viagra use.
The FDA has 50 reports of the blindness. Viagra has been taken by more than 23 million men worldwide.
“We take this seriously,” said FDA’s Cruzan.
“We take this seriously.” So does Bob Dole.
by John Cole| 16 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
It appears the numbers have been updated from the earlier estimates:
The country’s economic performance in the opening quarter of 2005 was better than first thought, logging a solid 3.5 percent annual growth rate in a new sign of a strong springtime business expansion.
The latest reading on gross domestic product, released by the Commerce Department on Thursday, was an upgrade from the 3.1 percent pace initially estimated for the January-to-March quarter.
”The 3.5 percent pace is really a safe and solid pace for the economy to grow. By that I mean, it is not so fast that you can have an inflationary accident and not too slow to create new jobs,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group. ”It is right on the economy’s speed limit.”
The higher estimate for economic growth mostly reflected a slight improvement in the nation’s trade deficit, which was less of a drag on growth than the government previously thought. More brisk spending on housing projects also helped.
Good.
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Via Radley Balko comes this fascinating WaPo story of some ranchers, a bull, and a deadly blood feud.
by John Cole| 16 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Reason (via Instapundit):
Who needs to make monkeys out of the Kansas Board of Education when its members are doing such a good job of it themselves?
Members of the Kansas board convened hearings this month to hear testimony from proponents of the theory of intelligent design that the theory of evolution is bunk. How deliciously wacky of the board to hold their kangaroo court on evolutionary theory on the 80th anniversary of the arrest of Tennessee high school teacher John T. Scopes for illegally teaching biology to his students. And like the Tennessee court back in 1925, the Kansas education officials in the 21st century have found evolutionary theory guilty again.
“Heh.”