Brown was the fourth black unarmed black man to be killed by police in the last month. Blacks are imprisoned for drug offenses at ten times the rate of whites despite breaking drug laws at similar rates, according to the ACLU. Black motorists are far more likely to be stopped than white motorists even though…
U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson today ruled an Alabama law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals is unconstitutional, saying that it poses an undue burden on women’s right to abortion.Abortion providers sued to block the law, passed in 2013, saying it would force three of Alabama’s five abortion clinics to close.The…
It seems quite evident that Texas is the canary in the coal mine for the United States when it comes to right-wing/libertarian regulatory ideals. Lax power plant pollution rules in the east have been disturbing enough. In this report, Rachel Maddow explains that not only does the State of Texas not have ANY fire codes,…
Ohio’s first-term Republican Governor John Kasich said in a statement earlier this month that the renewable energy standards “are simply unrealistic and will drive up energy costs for job creators and consumers.” He made the case that the bill was a compromise from scrapping the RES entirely, and by “temporarily holding at our current level…
A federal appeals court has ruled that the public has the right to film cops in public and has reinstated a lawsuit against a local New Hampshire police department brought by a woman arrested for filming a traffic stop. The plaintiff in the case, Carla Gericke, was arrested on wiretapping allegations in 2010 for filming…
Bare-bones health insurance could cost just $11 a month for a family of four in Indianapolis on the federal governments new exchanges, which start serving customers next week. A similar family in New Orleans might pay as little as $23 a month, although they’d have to shell out $282 for a more generous “silver” plan,…
When Congress wrote the law known as the Affordable Care Act, their idea was to maintain Americans current health coverage as much as possible, to boost consumer protections in the health insurance market for individuals, and to cover the uninsured. That doesnt mean all workers will keep what they have. The Congressional Budget Office predicts…
Doug Collins, representative from Georgia came on Politics Nation and it was no surprise when he started spouting the typical one-sided nonsense about how they weren’t shutting down the government and were in fact funding the government – as long as it didn’t include the affordable care act. Nothing shocking there, but what may have…
As many states prepare to introduce a linchpin of the 2010 health care law — the insurance exchanges designed to make health care more affordable — a handful of others are taking the opposite tack: They are complicating enrollment efforts and limiting information about the new program. Chief among them is Florida, where Gov. Rick…
In today’s New York Times, Jonathan Weisman and Robert Pear report on a peculiar problem faced by the Affordable Care Act: Republicans who’re unable to repeal it also refuse to permit any tweaks or technical correction that would help it work better. In fact, they’re creating new problems by withholding implementation funds. This is…
There’s new evidence to suggest that Obamacare is impacting the health industry for the better by successfully encouraging a greater emphasis on primary care. Ensuring that Americans are receiving regular preventative care is an important tenant of the health law, since it can ultimately help lower costs by preventing people from delaying medical treatment…
If a woman in Virginia has a miscarriage without a doctor present, they must report it within 24 hours to the police or risk going to jail for a full year. At least, that’s what would have happened if a bill introduced by Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain R had become law. And yet,…
Here’s what the IRS has been looking for. The biggest political farce on earth is the extraordinarily naïve perception that a Tea Party 501 (c) (3), the right-wing entity that sprung up nationwide, fully nurtured and politicized in a matter of weeks, hasn’t been in daily violation of the letter and spirit of what…
Defense Distributed, the Texas-based company specializing in 3-D-printed plastic firearms, took down its downloadable files on Thursday at the request of the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Control Compliance. The company posted a blueprint for the first fully-operational printed plastic handgun, “The Liberator,” on Monday at its site, DEFCAD; the file was downloaded more…
Late Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced a bill that would repeal part of a law aimed at fighting offshore tax evasion. The law, called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, was passed in 2010 and is supposed to go into effect on January 1, 2014. It requires foreign financial institutions to report information…
The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., is sometimes called the second most important court in the country, regularly delivering the final word on major environmental, labor and national security cases. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has a whopping four vacancies, the most in the nation, including one…
Republican lawmakers in Arkansas voted on Monday to override a veto by the states Democratic governor and approve a bill that requires voters to show photo identification at the polls, prompting an outcry from civil libertarians who vowed to fight the law. Legislators in the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives voted 52-45 to override Democratic…
This aspect of the health law is a hot topic in Texas, Florida, California and Missouri — among other places. Meanwhile, a Medicare trustee questions the viability of the federal funding commitment. The Hill: Medicare Trustee Doubts Future Funding For Medicaid Expansion A Medicare trustee is questioning whether the federal government will maintain its commitment…
With Obamacare on the pathway towards full implementation, critics have attempted to point out every perceived flaw in the health reform law to marshal public opinion against it. Recently, reform opponents have focused their sights on the rule that prevents insurers from charging seniors more than three times the premiums they charge younger Americans,…
The Wall Street Journal reports on this trend. Meanwhile, other news outlets report on state-specific developments regarding the debates over expanding the health program for low-income people. The Wall Street Journal: In Medicaid, A New Health-Care Fight Employers in several states are bracing for higher health-care costs as some governors, worried about the impact…