Big Pharma To Spend Millions To Pass Heathcare Bill
March 16, 2010
Politico Pulse
By Chris Frates
The drug industry, which has held off running ads until officials sign off on the final reconciliation bill, is growing more comfortable with the emerging legislation and is preparing a substantial pro-reform ad buy in 43 Democratic districts, according to a senior industry source. The amount and timing of the buy have not yet been set and hinge largely on action in the House. Still, the development is a substantial step forward from Monday morning, when industry officials, coming off a tough weekend of negotiating with Democratic staffers, said there were no ads in the works. The movement should also help appease the White House, which has been leaning on the industry to provide Democrats air cover, according to industry sources.
ANTI-ABORTION GROUPS MOUNT FINAL PUSH – Two of the nation’s most prominent pro-life groups will launch separate efforts today to push Democratic House lawmakers to support the House-passed restrictions on federal funding for abortions. Americans United for Life, the nation’s oldest pro-life advocacy organization, will roll out a $350,000 print, online and grassroots campaign initially aimed at eight Democratic lawmakers, who supported Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak’s amendment to the House health care reform bill. Beginning today and running through Friday, AUL will run newspaper ads in the districts of eight Democrats who voted for the Stupak language: Reps. Jerry Costello, Joe Donnelly, Baron Hill, Marcy Kaptur, Alan Mollohan, Earl Pomeroy, Nick Rahall and Charles Wilson. The group is soliciting contributions with plans to target as many of the 63 Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment as possible. And to demonstrate how unpopular taxpayer funding for abortion is, The Susan B. Anthony List is releasing poll results that show voters in seven Democratic districts oppose it. With this newest poll, the group has surveyed a total of 19 districts. This round includes: Reps. Joe Donnelly, Dale Kildee, James Oberstar, Allen Boyd, Earl Pomeroy, Richard Neal and John Barrow.
–The progressive groups HCAN, SEIU, AFSCME, Catholics United and MoveOn are spending $1.7 million to run ads in 17 House districts between today and Friday. The ads both support members who voted “yes” on the House bill in November and urge “no” votes to flip. A technical note, because MoveOn spends PAC money, its commercials will air separately. WATCH
– AFSCME and Americans United for Change go up with a $200,000 buy Wednesday through Friday on Fox, CNN and MSNBC in Washington, aimed at opinion leaders and lawmakers. The ad, which calls on lawmakers to hold insurers accountable, is running on CBS during the NCAA tournament on Thursday and Friday.
–MoveOn went up with a six-figure national cable buy Monday asking lawmakers if they’ll side with insurers or reform supporters on this historic vote.
–AHIP is running a full-page ad in the WSJ today and USAT tomorrow, which is an open letter warning Americans that without more cost controls the health care system could face a crises on par with the financial meltdown.
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Obama Launches Last Push on Health-Care Overhaul
March 4, 2010 by Brandy
Filed under Government
March 3, 2010
The Wall Street Journal
By Laura Meckler and Janet Adamy
President Barack Obama opened the final act of a year-long drama over health-care legislation Wednesday, calling on Democrats in Congress to approve the sweeping bill despite political risks and Republican opposition.
The president vowed to rally Americans and wavering lawmakers alike. White House aides said a pair of trips next week will be followed by a stream of public and private lobbying. The White House wants final votes by month’s end.
“At stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem,” Mr. Obama told a crowd of white-coated doctors and nurses in the East Room, where a year ago he started the drive for the legislation.
With polls showing that the legislation is unpopular and congressional Democrats bracing for big losses in this fall’s elections, the president urged them to ignore the politics. “I do not know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right,” he said. “Let’s get it done.”
Democrats and the White House are balancing high risks and rewards. Passing the health overhaul would fulfill a decades-old Democratic dream, bringing insurance to some 30 million Americans, and represent the greatest expansion of coverage since Medicare was created in 1965. But if the public judges the overhaul harshly, it is likely to cost some Democrats their seats, and the party’s majority in the House could be at risk.
The White House argues that, despite the negative poll numbers, Americans will like the measure if it becomes law, since the focus then could shift from the legislative process to the measure’s impact. Polling does find stronger support for the bill’s individual provisions than for the package as a whole.
Mr. Obama Wednesday also highlighted a handful of Republican ideas used in the legislation. Republicans dismissed the gesture as insufficient.
“You can’t add a couple of Republican sprinkles on the top of a 2,700-page bill and claim that it’s bipartisan,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio).
Rejecting Republican calls to start again, the president said that given the “honest and substantial differences between the parties,” there was no point. “Everything there is to say about health care has been said,” he said to laughter, “and just about everybody has said it.”
For the first time, the president explicitly called on Congress to use a procedural technique that will let the Senate give its final approval with a simple majority vote. He didn’t use the word for that technique—”reconciliation”—but characterized the process as a way of calling a simple “up or down vote” that has been used for big bills before.
Republicans say the reconciliation process was never intended for such major legislation. “History is clear: Big legislation always requires big majorities,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said on the floor Wednesday.
Democrats need to approve the changes in the Senate through reconciliation because they no longer have 60 Senate votes necessary to end a standard debate, due to the loss last month of the Massachusetts seat long held by the late Edward Kennedy. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs downplayed the significance of the reconciliation measure, calling it a set of “technical corrections” to the original Senate measure. The reconciliation version contains some significant differences from the Senate bill, including taxes on the wealthy and lower levies on high-value health-insurance plans.
Under the Democratic plan, the process would work like this: First, the House would vote on the bill that the Senate approved in late December. House leaders hope to pass both that Senate bill, and then the reconciliation package, by March 17. After that, the Senate would need to pass the reconciliation bill. By month’s end, Democrats hope, the measure would go to the president to be signed into law.
Obama May Ban All Foreclosures Without HAMP Review
February 26, 2010
Bloomberg
By Dawn Kopecki
The Obama administration may expand efforts to ease the housing crisis by banning all foreclosures on home loans unless they have been screened and rejected by the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program.
The proposal, reviewed by lenders last week on a White House conference call, “prohibits referral to foreclosure until borrower is evaluated and found ineligible for HAMP or reasonable contact efforts have failed,” according to a Treasury Department document outlining the plan.
“It is one of the many ideas under consideration in the administration’s ongoing housing stabilization efforts,” Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said in an e-mail. “This proposal has not been approved and there are no immediate planned announcements on the issue.”
She confirmed the authenticity of the document, which hasn’t been made public.
At present, lenders can initiate foreclosure proceedings on any loan that hasn’t been submitted for HAMP eligibility. Under current HAMP rules, foreclosure litigation can proceed while borrowers are under review for the program or even in a trial modification.
The proposed changes would prohibit lenders from initiating new foreclosure actions before loan screening by HAMP and would require lenders to halt existing proceedings for borrowers once they are in a trial repayment plan.
‘Improved Protections’
The Treasury Department will soon release guidance “which will include a set of improved protections for borrowers” in HAMP, Phyllis Caldwell, chief of Treasury’s Homeownership Preservation Office, said today in testimony prepared for a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee. She didn’t provide details.
The proposal goes further than rules adopted amid the crisis by federally controlled mortgage-finance companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which require lenders to review borrowers for a federal loan modification before a foreclosed property can be sold.
Foreclosure proceedings can still be initiated without a review, said Freddie Mac spokesman Doug Duvall. Fannie Mae spokeswoman Amy Bonitatibus said it adopted the same policy last March.
About 89 percent of outstanding residential mortgage loans are covered by the voluntary HAMP program.
About 2.82 million U.S. homeowners lost properties to foreclosure last year and 4.5 million filings are expected in 2010, RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California data company, said last month.
Seven Million
Obama’s foreclosure prevention initiative, announced in February 2009 to help as many as 4 million Americans avert foreclosure, has modified 116,297 loans through steps such as lowering interest rates or lengthening repayment terms. More than 830,000 borrowers received trial repayment plans through January, according to Treasury data.
“Foreclosure processes differ among states, and the process is often confusing to homeowners already facing distress,” Caldwell said in her prepared testimony. “Treasury has been reviewing guidelines around outreach and the foreclosure process as part of its continual assessment of program effectiveness and transparency.”
Foreclosures may reach as many as 7 million mortgages, and an additional 5 million are at risk of default because borrowers owe more than the property is worth, Laurie Goodman, senior managing director at Amherst Securities Group LP in New York, said in a Feb. 17 interview.
Republican Criticism
“This is a problem of mammoth proportions,” Goodman said. “You can’t throw 12 million people out of their homes, so you need a successful modification program. My fear is that this isn’t it, but I’m highly confident that the administration will continue to iterate until they succeed.”
The Treasury proposal would require all borrowers who are 60 or more days delinquent on their mortgage to be sought out for participation in HAMP. Mortgage companies would need to try to contact the borrower at least four times by phone and twice by certified mail over 30 or more days before going to foreclosure.
Under current Treasury policy, foreclosure proceedings are only halted when a borrower receives a permanent modification plan.
House Republicans criticized HAMP as a failure today, saying in a report that it is prolonging the economic crisis and harming homeowners.
“By every empirical measure, HAMP has failed,” according to the 18-page report released by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “In its current form, HAMP both hurts homeowners who might otherwise spend their trial-period mortgage payments on rent and also distorts the housing market, delaying any recovery.”
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Obama Attempts To Save His Health Bill
February 26, 2010 by JP
Filed under Government
February 26, 2010
Yahoo News
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Cue the cameras. President Barack Obama and his Republican arch foes will argue their case on health care overhaul at a bipartisan summit expected to stretch out for a solid six hours on live, daytime television Thursday for millions of Americans.
Expect them to collide, not come together. Without a no-nonsense referee to slam the gavel on mind-fogging jargon, not to mention apocalyptic rhetoric, some viewers might wish Judge Judy was presiding.
Obama is hoping to resurrect his signature issue and restore his reputation as a different kind of politician who can deliver real results. Congressional leaders of both parties are worried about self-preservation and political control in the November elections.
The goal for Obama is to draw a glaring contrast between the big bill he’s backing and the limited steps Republicans are willing to take, hoping he can fire up anxious Democrats for what may be their last chance in a generation to provide health insurance coverage to nearly all Americans. They have the votes, but do they have the will?
Sen. Chris Dodd, D.-Conn., who will be among the lawmakers participating, worked a rally of supporters on the eve of Thursday’s meeting, scheduled to start at 10 a.m. EST.
“After that meeting, you can either join us or get out of the way,” Dodd said.
Not if Republicans have anything to do with it. Riding a populist backlash against the widening reach of government, they insist that Obama start from scratch, a notion the White House rejects. They’re unified in opposing the Democratic bills passed last year and have pulled back from more ambitious GOP-backed plans that might have provided a foundation for compromise.
With premiums going up by double digits for some consumers, polls show the public wants Congress and the president to deal with spiraling medical costs, shrinking coverage and questionable quality. But Americans are split over the Democratic bills. If Obama and the Democrats can’t get their legislation passed, there may still be a chance for a modest measure this year that smooths the rough edges of the current system but stops well short of coverage for all.
Obama will be the moderator in chief for talks on four topics: revamping insurance, cost containment, expanding coverage and the impact of health care legislation on deficit reduction. The summit will take place at Blair House, the presidential guest quarters across the street from the White House. Here’s a viewer’s guide for consumers on issues critical to working families, seniors and businesses:
• WORKING FAMILIES
While the cost of health insurance is a worry for most Americans, it’s a crisis for the nearly 50 million uninsured and about 27 million who buy their own coverage directly from an insurer. The $1-trillion, 10-year plan Obama and the Democrats have drafted focuses mainly on these two groups.
People with coverage from large employers would get some benefits, like being able to keep children in their late 20s on the company plan — but wouldn’t face major changes unless they lose their jobs or strike out on their own.
People who buy insurance directly, as well as small employers, would be able pick a plan in a new kind of competitive marketplace offering choices similar to what federal employees and Congress members get. But it wouldn’t be a free ride.
Most Americans would be required to carry health insurance and prove it to the IRS.
Obama and the Democrats say their plan would make coverage affordable by providing federal subsidies to help more than 30 million now uninsured. But solid middle-class families may still have to stretch to pay premiums. The help is a lot better for people on the lower income rungs.
Under the plan Obama released Monday — his opening bid at the summit — a family of four making $66,000 would have to pay $6,257 in premiums, close to 10 percent of its income. That’s even after receiving $3,000 in federal tax credits.
By comparison, a similar family making only $44,000 would pay $2,763 — about 6 percent of its income. The estimates come from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
“There’s no question that it’s better than the status quo,” said Larry Levitt, an analyst with Kaiser.
Most Republicans are opposed to an insurance mandate, although they generally like the idea of allowing 20-year-olds to remain on parental coverage. They want to concentrate on stimulating the private market to provide affordable alternatives. One idea: allowing consumers in high-cost states to buy coverage from insurers in low-cost areas.
Republicans also want to help people denied coverage because of medical problems by pumping federal money to high-risk insurance pools run by the states. Obama sees that only as a temporary measure; his plan would ban pre-existing condition denials starting in 2014.
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Third of Young U.S. Adults Lack Health Insurance
February 26, 2010
Reuters
By JoAnne Allen
A third of young U.S. adults — nearly 13 million people — had no health insurance coverage in 2008, according to a government report released on Wednesday.
The survey of more than 9,000 people aged 20 to 29 by the National Center for Health Statistics found that 30 percent of young adults had no coverage and were almost twice as likely as adults aged 30 to 64 to be uninsured.
People aged 20 to 29 account for more than a quarter of the estimated 45 million uninsured people in the United States, although they make up just 14 percent of the overall population, said Robin Cohen, who worked on the report.
The uninsured rates for people aged 20 to 29 are typically high because their coverage is disrupted as they move from childhood into adulthood, when they may be losing the coverage they had through their parents’ insurance or have reached the age limit for coverage under a public program, Cohen said in a telephone interview.
“They may be taking jobs of lower wages or temporary jobs typically available to young adults and many of these jobs often come with limited or no health benefits,” Cohen added.
The White House offered a plan on Monday that would allow young adults up to age 26 to stay on a parent’s health insurance plan but would not require employers to offer insurance.
The administration plan is aimed at closing gaps between House of Representatives and Senate legislation in order to revive its effort to overhaul the $2.5 trillion healthcare industry.
The government’s report said lack of health insurance coverage may “leave young adults vulnerable to high out-of-pocket expenses in the event of a serious illness or injury.”
“Young adulthood is also a time that there’s a high risk created for unintended pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, substance abuse and injury and these are things that are directly related to the need for health care services,” Cohen said.
More findings from 2008 National Health survey:
* Although 58 percent of those surveyed had private health insurance coverage, men with insurance were less likely than women to seek medical services.
* Young adults with no insurance were four times as likely as those with private insurance and two times as likely as those with Medicaid to have unmet medical need.
* Uninsured young women were almost twice as likely as uninsured young men to have had unfilled prescriptions in the past year.
* 10 percent of young adults needed medical care in the past year but did not get it due to cost.
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Anger to be Classified as Mental Illness
February 22, 2010
Mail Online
By Jerome Burne
Do you live surrounded by clutter – ancient copies of magazines, your children’s old toys, articles you’ve clipped out of newspapers over the years?
If you find it hard to throw out things of limited or no value, you could be suffering from hoarding disorder.
‘Hoarding’ is just one of the new mental conditions being added to the psychiatrists’ bible, or the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders (DSM), to give it its proper name.
Other new conditions identified as possibly needing professional help include binge eating – which is said to affect many people who are seriously obese – and ‘cognitive tempo disorder’, which seems very like laziness (symptoms include dreaminess and sluggishness).
There’s also ‘intermittent explosive disorder’, which involves occasionally becoming very angry suddenly.
Most bizarre of the proposed additions is one defined as ‘getting a thrill at being outraged by pornography’.
It was also described as Whitehouse syndrome after the campaigner Mary Whitehouse, who objected to sexual content on TV.
The DSM is a large book that lists all psychiatric disorders and describes their symptoms. If a condition is in there, it means it’s considered a mental illness.
But some of the new entries are controversial, not least because of fears they will result in many more people being put on drugs that could be ineffective or dangerous.
The DSM is produced by the American Psychiatric Association and is hugely influential worldwide.
‘Once a condition has got a label you’ve got a better chance of being treated and researchers are more likely to investigate it,’ explains Professor David Cottrell, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Leeds.
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White House to Unveil Health Care Plan
February 22, 2010 by joel
Filed under Government
February 22, 2010
Good Morning America
By Jake Tapper
The White House this morning unveiled President Obama’s health care plan and the changes he wants to make to the Senate Democratic health care bill. Even before the release of the proposal, it had already met with fierce Republican resistance.
The plan will reduce the deficit by $100 billion over the next decade, and more than $1 trillion in the years after that, and expand health care to 31 million more Americans, according to the White House.
Administration officials call the health care bill a “jumping-off” point for Thursday’s televised, bipartisan discussions on health care overhaul.
“This is our take on the best way to merge the House and Senate bills,” a senior White House official told ABC News. The official said the proposal was “informed by our conversations from negotiations” before Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was elected, thus depriving Democrats of their 60-vote majority, as well as from subsequent discussions.
“We thought it would be a more productive meeting if we brought one consolidated plan to use as jumping-off point,” the official said. “We hope the Republicans do the same.”
The White House proposal doesn’t just represent ideas but a potential strategy — to have the House pass the Senate bill, with fixes to come to make it more palatable.
With Brown’s win in Massachusetts last month, Democrats no longer have a supermajority, so they would pass the “fix” using a controversial maneuver that requires only 51 votes.
White House officials are signaling that Thursday’s discussion won’t be just a parlor meeting to chat about health care principles, though they insist their minds will be open to incorporate some Republican ideas.
“Maybe we’ll sit across from each other and identify 10 things we can move forward on,” the official said. “We hope new ideas come to the table. The proposal we’re walking into the meeting with is not the same one we will walk out of the meeting with.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., believes passing the bill is “possibly doable,” the senior White House official said. “But she may ultimately decide the math is impossible.”
If that does not work, the next plan is to push a more modest bill — a smaller expansion of health insurance reform, some tax breaks for small businesses to help provide insurance for employees, a more modest expansion of Medicaid and the creation of the health insurance exchanges.
Among the fixes to the Senate bill that the president is proposing are “an additional series of measures proposed by Republicans to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse,” a White House official said. “The president believes the bipartisan discussion on Thursday will be the most productive if Democrats come to the table with a consolidated proposal — what he’s releasing today — and he hopes the Republicans will follow suit and come with their own unified proposal. He’ll be open to Republican ideas, and he hopes they’ll be open to ours.”
For the president, the conversation starts with four key parts of the Senate health care bill, which passed on Christmas Eve after weeks of deadlock.
First are insurance reforms, such as prohibiting insurers from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions, a reform that Republicans have also said they would like to see happen.
Second, as proposed in both the House and Senate bills, the president wants to see health insurance exchanges created at the state level to ensure competition, a thorny point for Republicans.
Third, there would be no option of a government-run insurance plan that would compete with the private sector. The House health care bill includes a public option, but the Senate legislation does not, and even though the president initially pushed a public option as part of a health care overhaul package, he has said that to achieve compromise that aspect would need to be given up. Republicans are staunchly against any public option, saying it would hurt competition and the private sector.
Fourth, all Americans would be required to have health insurance coverage, and Medicaid would be expanded for low- and middle-income Americans to purchase health insurance. Both are points of contention for Republicans.
Click here for the full report
Simulation Shows The Realities of Future Cyber Attack on Nation
February 22, 2010
Los Angeles Times
By Bob Drogin
The crisis began when college basketball fans downloaded a free March Madness application to their smart phones. The app hid spyware that stole passwords, intercepted e-mails and created havoc.
Soon 60 million cellphones were dead. The Internet crashed, finance and commerce collapsed, and most of the nation’s electric grid went dark. White House aides discussed putting the Army in American cities.
That, spiced up with bombs and hurricanes, formed the doomsday scenario when 10 former White House advisors and other top officials joined forces Tuesday in a rare public cyber war game designed to highlight the potential vulnerability of the nation’s digital infrastructure to crippling attack.
The results were hardly reassuring.
“We’re in uncharted territory here,” was the most common refrain during a three-hour simulated crisis meeting of the National Security Council, the crux of the Cyber Shockwave exercise.
Joe Lockhart, former press secretary to President Clinton, urged his fellow panelists to be bold. “Trust me,” he said, “you will be judged on this when this is over, and for years to come.”
The panelists apparently took him to heart and, as the scenario unfolded, tossed out ways to maintain order — including nationalizing industries, rationing fuel and snatching suspects overseas.
The public rarely gets a peek at government war games. If Tuesday’s no-cliche-left-behind version at times resembled a sci-fi thriller, no one doubts that the peril to telecommunications and other crucial computer-run systems is real and growing.
Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, this month warned the Senate Intelligence Committee, “Malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication.”
Google, for example, recently disclosed what it called a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” originating in China in mid-December on its search engine infrastructure and e-mail, as well as on at least 20 other companies. China’s government denied any role in the shadow attacks.
Attacks on government networks are also ubiquitous. According to a 2008 report by the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies, NASA and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Commerce “all suffered major intrusions by unknown foreign entities” the previous year.
Click here for the full report
First Lady Links Obesity to National Security
February 12, 2010
CNS News
By Penny Starr
At a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the launch of the ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to end childhood obesity in the United States, an epidemic she said is costly and a threat to national security.
“A recent study put the health care cost of obesity-related diseases at $147 billion a year,” Mrs. Obama said. “This epidemic also impacts the nation’s security, as obesity is now one of the most common disqualifiers for military service.”
The ceremony, attended by many officials of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, followed the signing earlier in the day of a presidential memorandum establishing a task force to study the problem and make recommendations after 90 days.
Obama announced a long list of goals she said she hopes the “Let’s Move” campaign will accomplish, including many that can be done “in a generation.”
“This isn’t like a disease where we’re still waiting for a cure to be discovered – we know the cure for this,” Obama said. “This isn’t like putting a man on the moon or inventing the Internet. It doesn’t take some stroke of genius or feat of technology.
“We have everything we need, right now, to help our kids lead healthy lives,” Obama said.
Some of the goals include ending what Obama referred to as “food deserts” with a $400 million a year “Healthy Food Financing Initiative,” which will bring grocery stores to low-income neighborhoods and “help places like convenience stores carry healthier food options.”
Obama called for overhauling many federal laws and guidelines, including adding $10 billion over the next decade to “update” the Childhood Nutrition Act, which feeds 31 million children at school and would add funding to feed more children.
The federal food pyramid would also get a makeover through the campaign, and there would be new efforts to get manufacturers to add “family friendly front-of-package labeling” that discloses a product’s nutritional value.
The First Lady said a broad coalition of groups interested in children’s health are coming together to form the Partnership for a Healthier America, which will use professional athletes, members of the media, and state and local dignitaries to promote the “Let’s Move” campaign and its goals around the country.
Obama used anecdotal details from her own life to explain the challenges faced by overworked parents and children who spend too much time watching TV or playing video games because their neighborhoods are unsafe for playing outside.
“So many parents desperately want to do the right thing, but they feel like the deck is stacked against them,” Obama said. “They know their kids’ health is their responsibility but they feel like it’s out of their control.”
Click here for the full report
Global Warming Hearing Postponed Due to Snow
February 10th, 2010
FOX News
By Bret Baier
The blizzard conditions here in the nation’s capital have shut down most area federal government activity. A scheduled Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing discussing the impacts of global warming had to be postponed because of the snow and frigid temperatures.
Meantime, Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry tells The Hill newspaper, those who think climate change legislation is dead for the year because of the harsh winter weather are “dead wrong” and guilty of what he calls “inside the Beltway thinking.”
Oklahoma Republican Senator and vocal global warming skeptic James Inhofe used the winter wonderland to have a little fun at the expense of climate activist Al Gore. Inhofe posted on Facebook photos of his family building an igloo near the Capitol, with a sign that read “Al Gore’s new home.” Liberal blog Think Progress didn’t find the joke amusing with Brad Johnson writing: “Scientists have been warning for decades that global warming would increase the severity of winter storms.” More about this in the panel.
Higher Calling
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent about five minutes at last week’s National Prayer Breakfast talking about helping the late Mother Teresa open an adoption ministry here in Washington, D.C.
But a Christian publication reports the Mother Teresa Home for Infant Children is no longer operating and may never have actually facilitated any adoptions. World Magazine says the ministry’s building was sold in 2002.
Philippe Reines from the State Department tells Fox: “[Hillary Clinton] remains very proud of her work with Mother Teresa in opening this home in 1995. Their partnership is a success story to be emulated.”
Not Funny
And finally, it seems the White House press briefings have been no laughing matter in recent months. Politico reports that instances of laughter, as indicated in official transcripts, have decreased from 179 per month in the first six months of the Obama administration, to 89 per month in the second half of the year.
American Urban radio reporter April Ryan noticed the change: “There are lots of serious questions begging for serious answers. Those questions do not meld with laughter and light banter.”
Click here for the full report
