On Dec. 30, 2007, Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, passed away from cancer, making him the first detainee to die of natural causes at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Hekmati, who regarded as a “war hero” in his native Afghanistan for opposing both the Russians and the Taliban, was captured in 2003 and held in Guantanamo until his death. Afghan officials say that Hekmati’s plight “demonstrates the enduring problems of the tribunals at Guant¡namo.”

CREW sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey today, asking that he appoint a special council to investigate “whether the White House violated federal record-keeping laws by knowingly failing to preserve and restore millions of emails.” CREW executive director Melanie Sloan stated:

“The importance and historical significance of the missing emails makes it imperative that an impartial special counsel be appointed without delay to investigate the disappearance of these records. [...] The missing emails do not belong to the Bush administration, but to the American people. The Attorney General should take action to protect the right of future generations to look back and understand the role of White House officials in critical events.”

Here’s Pollster.com’s summary of the state of the race on the eve of super-duper-enormous Tuesday. There are kind of two ways you can look at this chart. One is that Clinton’s had about the same level of support forever and now that it’s a two person race the undecideds will break against the de facto incumbent and Obama wins. Another is that Clinton’s maintaining a small lead and will probably secure a narrow victory tomorrow that takes the wind out of Obama’s sails and leaves her victorious.

As is frequently the case in America’s oddly arbitrary candidate selection process, an enormous amount hinges not on the objective results tomorrow but on the reporting of the results. The ambiguity between the results viewed as a race for delegates, as a race for states, and as a race for the semi-national Feb 5 popular vote only increases the extent to which basically made-up media narratives will be very important. Given that he usually gets good press, Obama probably has the edge in terms of winning a spin war in the event of an ambiguous outcome.

In 2000, the World Health Organization ranked the United States 37th in health care out of 191 countries. Nevertheless, in December, President Bush proclaimed that “we have fabulous health care” compared to “other systems around the world.”

Today, OMB Director Jim Nussle echoed Bush’s inaccurate claim while explaining Bush’s new budget. Despite almost $200 billion in Medicare and Medicaid cuts over the next five years, Nussle alleged the United States still has the “best” health care:

So beneficiaries, I don’t think, will see the differences. … We have the best health care in the world. And our seniors especially get great health care. And that will not be affected by this small drop in percentage increases over the next five years.

Watch it:

In reality, Bush’s harsh budget cuts will make the dismal state of U.S. health care even worse.

The budget cuts Medicaid by $18.2 billion over five years, essentially “shifting costs to the states” and forcing “states to institute even bigger program cuts or tax increases,” according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). On Medicare, Nussle claimed that “access and quality should not suffer at all.” But as CBPP noted:

Many of the proposed cuts go well beyond the reductions that MedPAC, Congress’ expert advisory commission on Medicare payments, recommended and considers safe. These reductions could drive some health care providers to limit the number of Medicare patients they see or drop out of the program entirely. That, in turn, would jeopardize health care for significant numbers of people who are elderly or have serious disabilities.

Much of the Medicare savings would be achieved “by reducing the annual update in federal payments to hospitals,” many of which serve “large numbers of the uninsured poor.”

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) noted the irony of preserving Bush’s tax cuts “at a cost of $2.2 trillion” while proposing hundreds of billions in health care cuts. “We believe that is a very odd sense of priorities. That is not a sense of priorities that are shared by the American people,” Conrad said.

Mickey Kaus comes out in favor of Hillary Clinton, arguing convincingly that if you want to stop sensible, humane immigration reform a Clinton victory is your best shot. This seems right to me. The best scenario for immigration reform would be for Democrats to gain congressional seats and John McCain to be elected president. Kevin Drum, meanwhile, decides to back Obama.

In a press release last week, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL) attacked the new economic stimulus bill for sending “hundreds of millions of dollars” to “foreign citizens,” including “residents of Puerto Rico and territories like Guam.” Calling her comments “infuriating and contradictory,” the Puerto Rican House of Representatives demanded “a public apology” today from Brown-Waite for referring to Puerto Ricans as “foreign citizens.” Puerto Ricans were made American citizens in 1917.