INQUIRER: Gov. Christie plans to seek approval for a proposal that would deny Medicaid coverage to adults in a family of four with an annual household income of little more than $6,000, down from the current $30,000. A single mother raising three children who earned as little as $118 a week would not qualify for the government-funded medical coverage. The eligibility-requirement change […] would follow Christie’s eliminating – for the second year – a long-standing line item that would provide nearly $7.5 million in funding to family-planning clinics. […] On Monday, Democrats linked Christie’s opposition to funding the family-planning clinics – which provide a range of health-care services – and his attempt to all but freeze future Medicaid enrollments, which experts say would disproportionately affect poor mothers, as part of a larger “war against women” by the Republican governor. […] The clinics are a source for Pap smears, breast-cancer screening, and STD treatment, according women’s health advocates. Since the first cut last year, six of the state’s 58 family-planning centers have closed. MORE
RELATED: [Radio] host Eric Scott pressed Christie on whether his stance on family planning funds wasn’t primarily motivated by his pro-life beliefs. “Even with your Treasurer talking about an extra $500 million, her bill would cost, what, $7.5 million? I mean, Governor, is it really about money, or is this about ideology?” he asked. Christie insisted, however, that “my decisions on this have always been based on not only whether we have enough money, but whether the money we’re spending is duplicative.” Also, he said, the extra funds enjoyed by the state this year are no excuse to spend more on pet projects. MORE
RELATED: Not surprisingly, most of the headlines today regarding Gabriel Sherman’s lengthy piece about Roger Ailes are devoted to the anonymous contention that the Fox News Channel CEO thinks Sarah Palin is “stupid.” But that really buries the lead. The most remarkable part is the indication that Ailes is actually out actively soliciting candidates to run for the Republican presidential nomination, as he allegedly did with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. If that’s even 80 percent true — and Sherman’s reporting, part of a book on which he’s working, sounds authoritative — it pretty much puts the lie to any assertion FNC might make about the channel not being essentially an adjunct of the Republican Party. MORE
RELATED: A few months ago, Ailes called Chris Christie and encouraged him to jump into the race. Last summer, he’d invited Christie to dinner at his upstate compound along with Rush Limbaugh, and like much of the GOP Establishment, he fell hard for Christie, who nevertheless politely turned down Ailes’s calls to run. Ailes had also hoped that David Petraeus would run for president, but Petraeus too has decided to sit this election out, choosing to stay on the counterterrorism front lines as the head of Barack Obama’s CIA. MORE