Friday, May 02nd
Last update04:22:19 AM GMT
Political Glance
Republican governor Rick Scott's push to privatize Medicaid in Florida is highly controversial—not least because the health care business Scott handed over to his wife when he took office could reap a major profit if the legislation becomes law.
Scott and Florida Republicans are currently trying to enact a sweeping Medicaid reform bill that would give HMOs and other private health care companies unprecedented control over the government health care program for the poor.
It appears the explosive Wisconsin law stripping nearly all public employee collective bargaining rights could take effect as early as Saturday despite a court order that blocked its publication by the secretary of state.
That's because the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau has published the law instead. The action was noted on the Legislature's website Friday. Publishing a law allows it to take effect.
Two Justice Department memos describing the National Security Agency’s (NSA) illegal warrantless wiretapping program were made public late Friday as part of an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
The memos, a May 2004 memo authored by the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith and a November 2001 memo from John Yoo, then the deputy assistant attorney general, are most notable for what they don’t reveal. The memos are heavily redacted.
A prominent Republican fund-raiser was charged Wednesday in a federal grand jury indictment with orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The fund-raiser, Timothy Durham, 48, was arrested early in the morning at his West Hollywood home and charged with 12 counts of securities and wire fraud in federal court here.
Prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu is being heavily criticised in Israel for his blatant exploitation of the murder of five members of one family (including three children) at the Itamar settlement near Nablus.
Particularly egregious has been Netanyahu's demand that president Mahmoud Abbas personally appear on Palestinian radio and television to condemn the killings, although Abbas had issued an unusually strong statement as soon as he heard of the tragedy.
Yucca Mountain is still breathing. It's been 24 long years since Congress first designated the desert locale in southern Nevada as the best place to store the nation's nuclear waste.
While opponents have gained the upper hand in trying to block the project in recent years — in 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that "Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table" — a group of House Republicans is fighting back. They want to revive the site as part of a broader plan that calls for building 200 new nuclear plants by 2030.
American Crossroads GPS, an advocacy group that reported spending about $17 million on advertising before the midterm elections, generated controversy by using its nonprofit status to shield donors' identities.
As it turns out, the Internal Revenue Service hasn't even approved the group's nonprofit status. Crossroads filed an application in September but the agency has not acted on it.
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