I had started writing my post to debunk the utter canard that the IPCC’s and media’s treatment of uncertainty have left the public with an overestimation of projected climate impacts on our current emissions path.
But then came her latest jaw dropper:
Wellpoint CEO Angela Braly
After all, federal law has required insurers to end rescissions since Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in 1996. That law gave states the authority to enforce the rescission ban, but permitted the federal government to take over if states failed to adequately protect consumer interests. Over the last 14 years, insurers have been able to take advantage of weak state regulations to purge their rolls of costly patients without triggering a response from the federal government. What’s still unclear is how or if the federal government will enforce the rescission requirement under health reform. The new law restates the rescission prohibition and leaves enforcement of the rule to the states. The federal government is again the regulator of last resort. A fail-safe, if you will.
In short, regulators must trust but verify. As health policy analyst Peter Harbage said, “People have this idea that someone is going to flip a switch and rescission and other bad insurance practices are going to end. Insurers will find ways to undermine the protections in the new law, just as they did with the old law. Enforcement is the key.”
HHS Secretary Sebelius has issued a statement touting the new progress, but she can also encourage states to reevaluate their regulations to ensure they’re in compliance with the federal guidelines (and the insurers new promise). And if states can’t protect their residents from insurance rescissions, then the federal government must. Otherwise, it will be another five or ten years until the next crop of rescission horror stories crop up in the press.
When President Obama condemned Arizona’s draconian and potentially unconstitutional immigration law last Friday, he predicted that “if we continue to fail to act [on immigration] at a federal level, we will continue to see misguided efforts to open up across the country.” Indeed, it’s already happening.
Last week, Wonk Room reported on the involvement of the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) — the legal arm of a designated nativist-extremist hate group — in drafting Arizona’s controversial immigration law. IRLI lawyer Michael Hethmon boasted about being “approached by lawmakers from four other states who have asked for advice on how they can do the same thing.” In the aftermath of the passage of Arizona’s law, many states and localities across the country are in fact in the middle of or about to embark on copy cat pieces of legislation:
| STATE | BILL | STATUS |
| Utah | Require immigrants to carry proof of status, require law enforcement officers to question anyone they believe is in the country illegally, and target employers who hire or transport undocumented immigrants. | Legislation still has to be drafted, but Rep. Stephen Sandstorm (R) claims he “has the support to do it.” |
| Georgia | Nathan Deal (R), who is running for Governor, wants to propose legislation that mirrors Arizona’s. | Tentatively pending Deal’s election. |
| Colorado | Today, Colorado gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis (R) said that if he were governor, he would seek to pass something “very similar” to what Arizona enacted. | Tentatively pending McInnis’ election. |
| Maryland | State Delegate Pat McDonough (R) “plans to start sending a survey to every candidate for the General Assembly — along with the candidates for governor — asking them whether they agree with Arizona’s approach.” | McDounough’s survey will start being circulated this week as he hopes to “know who is in favor of the Arizona bill and who is not” by this summer. |
| Ohio | Butler County Sheriff Rick Jones and Ohio Rep. Courtney Combs (R) sent a letter to Gov. Ted Strickland asking him “to employ” his “leadership role” “to assure legislation is passed that will mirror” Arizona’s. | Strickland’s press person says he “hasn’t had an opportunity to review Arizona law” and is concerned it might be unconstitutional. |
| North Carolina | Local anti-immigrant groups claim that lawmakers have told them that “the chances similar legislation will be filed here is over 95%.” | The same groups also concede that such legislation wouldn’t “get far” in their state. |
| Texas | Republican state Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball says she plans to push for a law similar to Arizona’s. | Riddle says she will introduce the measure in the January legislative session. |
| Texas | Farmers Branch, a Dallas suburb of 30,000 people, passed an ordinance written by IRLI lawyer Kris Kobach which would prevent landlords from renting houses or apartments to undocumented immigrants. | Last month, a U.S. District judge ruled the ordinance unconstitutional. IRLI is helping Farmers Branch repeal the District judge decision. | Missouri | The state legislature is considering a law, likely written by Kobach, that would make it unlawful for any person to conceal, harbor, transport, or shelter “illegal aliens” and would also make it a crime for undocumented immigrants to transport themselves. | The bill has been referred to the Missouri House International Trade and Immigration Committee. |
| Oklahoma | Restrict the ability of undocumented immigrants to obtain IDs or public assistance, give police authority to check the status of anyone arrested, and make it a felony to knowingly provide shelter, transportation or employment to the undocumented. | After IRLI filed an amicus brief in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of HB 1804, the court refused to reconsider its decision that prohibits Oklahoma from enforcing two of the main parts of HB 1804. |
| Nebraska | Residents in Fremont Nebraska likely will vote in July on a proposed ordinance to ban the “harboring,” hiring and renting to undocumented immigrants. | Last Friday, the Nebraska Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that there was no authority to stop an election on the ordinance following a petition filed by Kobach. |
For more on the Immigration Reform Law Institute, visit the Wonk Room.
The Obama administration has leapt into action to respond to the growing crisis of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, which killed 11 workers and left a West-Virginia-sized oil spill in the Gulf Coast. But in the weeks before the calamity, President Barack Obama promoted his initiative to expand offshore drilling as “not risky” and repeated the conservative myth that Hurricane Katrina did not cause any oil rig spills. At a town hall meeting in South Carolina on April 2, the president was challenged that his “decision to allow offshore drilling could have the effect of chilling investment into alternate sources of energy.” While recognizing that “energy efficiency and renewable, clean energy” is his “biggest priority,” Obama also defended offshore drilling:
I don’t agree with the notion that we shouldn’t do anything. It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore.
Watch it:
This is incorrect.
Eighteen days later, the Deepwater Horizon rig operated by BP America 41 miles of the Louisiana coast exploded. The giant spill has not yet reached the beaches of the Gulf Coast, and there is a chance the damage can be limited by setting some of the oil ablaze.
Obama’s claim that oil rigs did not cause any spills during Hurricane Katrina is simply false, as the Wonk Room reported in June, 2008, when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other conservatives made the same false claim:
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused 124 Offshore Spills For A Total Of 743,700 Gallons. 554,400 gallons were crude oil and condensate from platforms, rigs and pipelines, and 189,000 gallons were refined products from platforms and rigs. [MMS, 1/22/07]
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused Six Offshore Spills Of 42,000 Gallons Or Greater. The largest of these was 152,250 gallons, well over the 100,000 gallon threshhold considered a “major spill.” [MMS, 5/1/06]
On April 23, three days after the rig caught fire, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama’s support for offshore drilling was unchanged.
The Los Angeles Times reports that, at a tea party rally in the San Diego County city of Ramona , Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) stated that U.S. citizen children of undocumented immigrants should get deported along with their parents to save the state of California money:
QUESTION: Would you support deportation of natural-born American citizens that are the children of illegal aliens?
HUNTER: I would have to, yes. [...] We simply cannot afford what we’re doing right now. California is going under. How much in debt are we? Twenty billion dollars? [...] And we’re not being mean, we’re just saying it takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It’s what’s in our souls.
Watch it:
The U.S. Supreme Court explicitly ruled in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that anyone born in the United States would be a citizen regardless of their parents’ nationality. However, that hasn’t stopped Hunter from cosponsoring The Birthright Citizenship Act of 2007, legislation that would attempt to overturn the 14th amendment by ending the practice of granting anyone born in the U.S. citizenship status. In fact, Hunter feels so adamantly about the issue that he has co-sponsored five other similar bills over the past thirteen years.
According to Hunter, Arizona’s law is “a fantastic starting point.” However, if Arizona succeeded in fulfilling its goal of deporting all of its undocumented immigrants, estimates show that the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs. Meanwhile, a study by the University of Southern California found that putting California’s 1.8 million undocumented Latino immigrants on a path to legalization would generate $16 billion annually.
The great debate over the scheduling of comprehensive immigration reform versus clean energy and climate legislation has engulfed Washington. Lost in that frenzy is the need for Congress to do both. John D. Podesta, CAPAF President and CEO explains why in this repost.
Today, after Republicans voted against beginning debate on Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) financial regulatory reform bill for a third time, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Democrats said that they were prepared to keep the Senate in session all night, forcing the GOP to actively filibuster the bill.
“All the talk of the Republicans about wanting to do something about this bill before it gets on the floor is really anti-Senate and anti-American,” said Reid. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) added that the plan “is to stay all night asking consent of Republicans to let us debate Wall Street reform. I just don’t get why we can’t debate.”
However, before it got to that point, the Republican leadership caved, and now seems poised to let Dodd’s bill come to the floor for debate. There doesn’t seem to have been any deal cut with the Republicans, aside from unspecified “loopholes” that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) claims were closed in the $50 billion resolution authority fund that the GOP has been railing against (but that many, including Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair, support).
Already, Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) have said that they will be voting to move to debate. Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) also seemed poised to vote to proceed earlier today, while Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) dismissed the “alternative” plan that Republicans have been circling today (which, in large part, looked like Dodd’s bill anyway).
What remains to be seen is the sort of amendments that Republicans will propose during the actual floor debate. If they look anything like the amendments Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee drew up (then never offered) during committee markup, Democrats will have to take a strong stand against them. Floor debate is expected to take up to two weeks.
The Senate unanimously agreed to move to debate.
Facing a primary from ultra-conservative former congressman J.D. Hayworth, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been veering far to the right. He went as far as to claim that he never called himself a “maverick.” McCain has reversed his positions on a host of issues, from climate change to immigration, in an attempt to appease right-wing voters; he is now doing the same on gun control.
Yesterday, McCain and Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) introduced legislation that would force the District of Columbia to weaken its gun laws:
The Second Amendment Enforcement Act aims to change the District’s gun laws by repealing the city’s registration rules, amending federal law to allow D.C. residents to buy guns in Maryland and Virginia, while also allowing law-abiding Washingtonians to transport firearms in the District. The legislation would also alter city laws that recommend guns be kept unloaded and either unassembled or locked in homes.
“Some may ask why a Senator from Arizona and a Senator from Montana would introduce legislation that impacts the District of Columbia,” McCain said in a statement. “It’s simple — we believe that residents across this country should be able to exercise their constitutional right to have access [to] firearms to protect themselves.”
News of bill “was met with outrage from city officials,” especially considering D.C. recently gave up a chance at receiving voting rights in the House of Representatives for the first time in history after gun-rights advocates tacked on an amendment similar to McCain and Tester’s.
As Jonathan Cowan, president of the center-left think tank Third Way, noted, McCain’s sponsorship of the bill will “go down as the most spectacular and blatant reversal in Senator McCain’s political career.” In the early 2000s, McCain was a spokesperson for Americans for Gun Safety, a campaign headed by Cowan that encouraged states to enact stricter regulations. McCain cut ads on the group’s behalf, urging states with pending legislation to close the so-called gun show loophole, which allows people to purchase guns without a background check.
In 2001, McCain “rattled the gun-rights lobby” when he sponsored national legislation to eliminate the loophole. In a speech on the Senate floor at the time, McCain blasted states that hadn’t cracked down on illegal guns, saying, “We all know…[this] very dangerous loophole” needs to be closed:
We need this amendment because criminals and terrorists have exploited and are exploiting this very obvious loophole in our gun safety laws. We need this amendment because our second amendment rights do not extend to criminals who violate our laws and terrorists who hate this country. … We need this because every one of the 15 leading gun trafficking States in America has not taken action to close the gun show loophole.
“Hats off to John McCain,” famed White House reporter Helen Thomas wrote in a 2001 column, noting, “Gun-control advocates have a powerful new voice in the Senate.” The National Rifle Association was “bristling” over the gun show campaign, and “accused McCain of trying ‘to bootstrap on the Sept. 11 tragedy.’”
McCain reiterated his support for closing the loophole as recently as May 2008, when he told an NRA meeting, “I believe an accurate, fair and instant background check at guns shows is a reasonable requirement.” His moderate stance on gun control earned him scorn from gun-rights advocates during the 2008 campaign, with Gun Owners of America accusing McCain of “working with the enemy.” The group also gave McCain an ‘F’ for 2004 and 2006.
McCain’s pandering to the far right doesn’t seem to be helping him much, and his campaign opponent keeps calling out his flip-flops. So, McCain may end up losing the election along with his integrity.
I will not ask anymore:
— Michael Gerson doesn’t like the Arizona immigration law.
— Duncan Hunter wants to deport US citizens if their parents are in the country illegally.
— The parmigiana/parmiciana nomenclature confusion.
— Bob Corker on the GOP financial regulation alternative: “I’m not sure what the purpose of it is, to be candid.”
— Barney Frank assembling a task force to look at defense budget cuts.
Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, “Cool Yourself”
A group of conservative military chaplains represented by the Family Research Council (FRC) held a press conference this afternoon to complain that lifting the Don’t Ask, Don’t’ Tell policy would lead to a max exodus of “Orthodox Christian chaplains” and jeopardize their hiring and advancement opportunities. “If chaplains are forced to council same sex couples or are limited in the moral teachings that they can present, you can look for Orthodox Christian chaplains to exit the military, leaving an insurmountable void in the fostering of an environment that ensures that the man and women who wear the uniform are in their best mental, emotional and spiritual condition necessary to defend the nation and the ideals that they represent,” Perkins explained.
You get that? Anti-gay theology is so central to these chaplains’ daily work and function, that they would rather abandon the service than operate in an environment where gays and lesbians are openly recognized. In fact, without daily reminders of how sinful homosexuality really is, our men and women won’t be able to “defend the nation” and its ideals. Internal military policy and regulations must now receive the approval of Orthodox Christian chaplains before it can be adopted:
JORDAN LORENCE, Alliance Defense Fund: They will be in conflict with military policy if this law is changed by congress. It is going to create a crisis of conscience for the chaplains, the people that they serve and how that’s all going to shake out it’s not clear, but it’s not going to be good. Will people leave, will they muzzle themselves? Will the military take action against them? It’s not clear. [...]
COL. RICK YOUNG, Retired Chaplain US Army: Am I going to be forced or pressured into hiring a homosexual to be my director of religious organization, or maybe my youth worker? So I think the threatening and where the chaplains can really run risks is in several different areas of ministry.
Watch the highlights:
Fortunately, not all faith leaders agree and some military chaplains actually support repealing the policy. “As military chaplains, we routinely work with service members whose faith traditions and belief systems are different from ours. The idea that repeal of DADT will infringe on our religious liberty is insulting to all the serving chaplains who professionally minister to and with people of diverse beliefs every day,” said Captain John F. Gundlach, a retired Chaplain of the U.S. Navy. HRC has more on the broad coalition of faith leaders who support repeal here.
Powered by NewsWhip
Have a hot news tip? We'd love to hear from you. Use the form below to send us the latest.
About ThinkProgress | Contact Us | Donate
