Middle class Americans are increasingly unable to afford health insurance. “Today, more than one-third of the uninsured — 17 million of the nearly 47 million — have family incomes of $40,000 or more, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization. More than two-thirds of the uninsured are in households with at least one full-time worker.”
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s national security panel and the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee will hold hearings today on the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
The Washington Post writes of conditions at military and VA hospitals: ‘It Is Not Just Walter Reed.’ The Department of Veterans Affairs, headed by former RNC director Jim Nicholson, is “likely to come under scrutiny at the hearings.” He has been accused by some veterans and the organizations that represent them of “being primarily a mouthpiece for the Bush administration.”
According to the U.S. Climate Action Report, the Bush administration “estimates that emissions by the United States of gases that contribute to global warming will grow nearly as fast through the next decade as they did the previous decade.” Climate change experts “described the projected emissions as unacceptable given the rising evidence of risks from unabated global warming.”
Afghan President Hamid Karzai “condemned U.S. troops for shooting dead 10 civilians at the weekend as officials said nine more — five women, four children and an old man — had been killed in an air strike.”
There is no Plan B in Iraq, according to a group of governors who last week met with Joint Chiefs chairman Peter Pace to discuss the options if Bush’s escalation plan doesn’t work. “I’m a Marine,” Pace reportedly said. “and Marines don’t talk about failure.” “Plan B was to make Plan A work,” Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-TN) recalled Pace telling the group.
“Iraq’s Interior Ministry has fired or reassigned more than 10,000 employees, including high-ranking police, who were found to have tortured prisoners, accepted bribes or had ties to militias. … A soon-to-be-released internal inquiry also details 41 incidents of human rights abuse at the ministry.”
Jurors in the Libby trial will resume deliberations this week. The jury will start by receiving a response from Judge Reggie Walton to a question they submitted on Friday. “Is it necessary for the government to present evidence that it is not humanly possible for someone not to recall an event in order to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?” the jurors asked.
And finally: He may not be Oprah, but FBI Director Robert Mueller “has started a new bureau reading list to help his G-men broaden their horizons.” Some “gems” include: Public Enemies, by Bryan Burrough, about the birth of the FBI, and Louis Gerstner’s Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? about IBM’s historic turnaround.
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.
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