Despite votes from 44 House Republicans for an override, President Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program stands. We were aware that Bush’s veto blocked the expansion of health insurance benefits to include an additional 10 million kids, but we didn’t know this: This legislation included a measure to expand the Family & Medical Leave Act (FMLA) for the first time ever, allowing more unpaid leave for families of service members injured in combat. By vetoing this bill, President Bush rejected a recommendation made by his own Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors. We urge Congress […]
D.C. IMPROV: Ladies And Germs, Arlen Specter!
INQUIRER: Specter finished second last night in a contest to determine the funniest celebrity in the nation’s capital, a charity event to benefit VH1’s Save the Music Foundation and the Institute of Musical Traditions. Most of the other performers were members of the media, so Specter stood out not only for his age — at 77 he was the oldest contestant by a good quarter-century — but for being a good sport among his famously dour and introverted congressional colleagues. Specter, looking trim and relaxed, a consoling martini nearby, said his jokes ranged from “the questionable to the highly questionable […]
VIET NOW: Baiting The Kill Zone
WASHINGTON POST: A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of “bait,” such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents. The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed. “Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy,” Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite […]
I Went To The Daily Show & All I Got Was A Good Time
BY EVA LIAO The first thing you learn about seeing Jon Stewart tape “The Daily Show” is that you have to wait — in line, for three hours to be exact — but it’s worth every tedious, snail-paced minute you spend in the Comedy Central queue. The vendor outside is making a killing selling overpriced hotdogs at $2.50 apiece (my friend and I, showing foresight, came prepared with a fifth of whiskey and a joint). Surprisingly, the crowd was not nearly as overwhelmingly white and college-y as we’d expected — though there were four Penn students representing — but unsurprisingly […]
WELCOME TO THE HOTEL VINCENT FUMO: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave
PHILADELPHIA. If you’re looking for a new house, State Sen. Vince Fumo is trying to sell his Fairmount-area mansion. He may be asking almost $7 million, but you’ll save a ton in taxes. Philadelphia’s Board of Revision of Taxes has valued Fumo’s 29-room home at $250,000 for the past six years, just a fraction of his $6,995,000 asking price. The BRT has required Fumo to pay just $6,611 in real estate taxes each year, which according to tax advocate Brett Mandel is the most vivid picture of the problems with the city’s assessment process. “Even though thousands of people in […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
POE DISPUTE TURNS GRAVE, DARKER THAN ‘THE NIGHT’S PLUTONIAN SHORE’ In the Oct. 4-11 issue of the City Paper, local literary blogger Edward Pettit declared that Edgar Allan Poe, who flourished in Philadelphia but inconveniently died in Baltimore and is buried there, must be exhumed and reinterred in Philadelphia by 2009, marking 200 years since his birth. Poe lived in Philadelphia from 1838 to 1844. Baltimore Sun columnist Laura Vozzella replied with a caustic piece headlined “We Have the Body and We’re Keeping Him!” Baltimore mystery novelist Laura Lippman groused, “What’s next, a crab cake hoagie?” Jeff Jerome, curator of […]
MISSION OF BURMA: Top Democracy Activist Arrested
FINANCIAL TIMES: Burma’s defiant military junta captured a leading dissident who had been on the run for weeks as its official mouthpiece warned “national traitors will soon meet their tragic ends.” Htay Kywe, a charismatic democracy activist who had been the target of a huge manhunt since late August, was seized in a raid on a house where he was hiding with two other members of the 88 Generation Students group. Amnesty International expressed concern that the arrested dissidents would be tortured. Although it made no direct reference to the Saturday arrests, The New Light of Myanmar newspaper, the junta’s […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Ashes Of American Flags
BILL MAHER: Show me a man wearing an American flag pin in his lapel, and I’ll show you an asshole. I’m sure there are exceptions, but in general people need to remember that lapels aren’t for wearing pins to create the illusion that you’re supporting the troops. They’re for wearing ribbons to create the illusion that you’re helping cure a disease. Last week we had the first genuine controversy of the presidential campaign: the shocking news that Barack Obama doesn’t wear an American flag lapel pin, so apparently he and America are no longer going steady. “No lapel pin, Senator? […]
NAOMI WOLF: First They Came For The ‘Terrorists’…
In Boulder, two days ago, a rosy-cheeked thirtysomething mother of two small children, in soft yoga velours, started to tear up when she said to me: `I want to take action but I am so scared. I look at my kids and I am scared. How do you deal with fear? Is it safer for them if I act or stay quiet? I don’t want to get on a list.’ In D.C., before that, a beefy, handsome civil servant, a government department head — probably a Republican — confides in a lowered voice that he is scared to sign the […]
WORTH REPEATING: Red Meat For Rotting Vegetables
THE NEW REPUBLIC: But in the case of his trip to South Philly, Giuliani’s choice showed more than a willingness to pander to a guy he not so long ago might have rebuked. It also brought up another common knock against the man who foisted Bernie Kerik on the nation: He’s a lousy judge of character. On the surface, Giuliani’s camp likely saw Vento as an example of the outer-borough sort he once wooed as mayor. Before he put up his English-only sign, Vento’s most prominent political statement came in outfitting Geno’s staffers in t-shirts calling for Mumia Abu-Jamaal’s […]
BREAKING: Former Vice President Al Gore Wins Nobel
WASHINGTON POST: Former Vice President Al Gore Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today along with a United Nations panel that monitors climate change for their work educating the world about global warming and advocating for political action to stop it.The Norwegian Nobel Committee characterized Gore as “the single individual” responsible for convincing world governments that climate change was real, caused by human activity, and posed a threat to society. MORE
Iran Not Totally Straight, But Definitely Less Gay
[Illustration by ALEX FINE] TEHRAN (Reuters) — Iran’s president was misrepresented by Western media when he was quoted saying there were no gays in Iran, and actually meant there were not so many as in the United States, a presidential aide said on Wednesday.
WORTH REPEATING: Reality Has A Liberal Bias
“That’s right, hate mongers like Media Matters [SEE upper right of blog] take innocent statements like mine, Rush Limbaugh’s, John Gibson‘s, and Bill O’Reilly’s and make them offensive by posting them on the internet, allowing the general public to hear words that were meant for people who already agree with us. Media Matters, you want to end offensive speech? Then stop recording it for people who would be offended.” –Stephen Colbert [via CROOKS & LIARS]