The Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to regulate broadband Internet service as a public utility, a milestone in regulating high-speed Internet service into American homes. Tom Wheeler, the commission chairman, said the F.C.C. was using “all the tools in our toolbox to protect innovators and consumers” and preserve the Internet’s role as a “core…
Meet the Unusual Plaintiffs Behind the Supreme Court Case That Could Destroy Obamacare
On March 4, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, a lawsuit designed by conservative advocates to destroy Obamacare. If the plaintiffs prevail, about 8 million people could lose their health insurance. Premiums are likely to skyrocket by 35 percent or more, threatening coverage for millions of others. Health policy experts…
Cross-State Health Plans Prove Popular But Unsuccessful
Despite the potential to make more money, companies haven’t jumped at the opportunity in states that have lowered barriers. Insurance department officials in Georgia, Maine and Wyoming told Governing that no out-of-state insurers have expressed interest, and no such policies have been sold. Denise Burke, a senior policy and planning analyst with Wyoming’s insurance department, suspects…
Bikes Only: London Approves New Cyclist Superhighway Plan
London Mayor Boris Johnson’s ambitious plan to reshape how the city handles cyclist traffic got final approval Wednesday, clearing the way for the spread of segregated bike lanes and dedicated traffic signals. Johnson plans to create a network for cyclists that rivals the city’s transit system. “The board of Transport for London approved a plan…
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality
The internet wouldn’t have emerged as it did, for instance, if the FCC hadn’t mandated open access for network equipment in the late 1960s. Before then, AT&T prohibited anyone from attaching non-AT&T equipment to the network. The modems that enabled the internet were usable only because the FCC required the network to be open. Companies…
Outrage Over US Secret Approval of Genetically Engineered Trees
Groups from around the world today joined together to denounce the US government for allowing the first genetically engineered tree, a loblolly pine, to be legalized with no government or public oversight, with no assessment of their risks to the public or the environment, and without regard to overwhelming public opposition to GE trees….
In Which The Democrats Finally Get A Clue
There is something truly odd about the wealthiest country no longer with the wealthiest middle class, and in which every major competitor’s middle class is converging with ours’ in standards of living. This is the real end of American exceptionalism, in which working hard in the middle class is like being on a treadmill rather…
Israeli warplanes fly over Lebanon’s capital
Israeli warplanes have repeatedly violated Lebanon’s airspace in a breach of the UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which led to a ceasefire in the war of aggression the Israeli regime waged against Lebanon in 2006 and calls on Tel Aviv to respect Lebanon’s territorial integrity. via PressTV.
The Senate Just Cemented Obama’s Judicial Legacy
In its final act of the year, the Senate blew through a dozen U.S. district court nominees on Tuesday night. That puts Obama at a whopping 89 district court and circuit court confirmations for the year, and means he’ll wrap up his sixth year in office with a grand total of 305 district court and…
Officials: Kansas Faces $279M Budget Gap By July
For the next fiscal year, the new projection was $5.8 billion in revenues — short of the nearly $6.2 billion that legislative researchers had been assuming in their unofficial forecasts. The projected shortfall of $436 million is about 7 percent, and higher than the $282 million gap estimated unofficially. The new revenue projection for the…
I Voted – Now It’s Your Turn
. Voting has begun across the country. Today I went and cast my ballot, and you need to go and do the same. If you believe that you have any bit of responsibility for the success of the society, the state, and the city you live in, then this is your most basic responsibility –…
Israelis Chant “N*ggers Go Home” Carrying ISIS-Style Flags At Anti-African Rally
Video footage of Jewish Israelis with ISIS-style flags, chanting “niggers go home” at an anti-African rally in Tel Aviv on October 5 has surfaced. Hundreds of protesters could be heard in streets of Tel Aviv chanting anti-African racial slurs, following an Israeli High Court ruling to close down “Holot” detention facility within 90 days. Holot is…
St. Louis Cardinals fans clash with Ferguson protesters: ‘Let’s go, Darren!’
The fans then begin chanting “Darren Wilson” and clapping, and a man in a Cardinals jacket calls a protester a “crack head” and urges him to see a dentist. Some of the fans engage protesters in arguments over who is tougher, and at least one fan invites a protester to cross the guardrail into the…
Mass shooting hysteria and the death of John Crawford
…there may be unintended consequences to our oversaturated coverage of mass shootings and the widespread belief that they’re increasing, even if neither produces a single new law. In 2010, there was an incident at a Las Vegas-area Costco that bears a striking resemblance to what happened in Ohio. Police gunned down Eric Scott, 38, outside…
Obama Expands Pacific Ocean Preserve, Making It Largest In The World
President Barack Obama is carving out a wide swath the Pacific Ocean for an expanded marine preserve, putting the waters off-limits to drilling and most fishing in a bid to protect fragile underwater life. The revamped expanded Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument will cover 490,000 square miles – an area roughly three times the…
Appeals court strikes down GOP plan to cut early voting in Ohio
A federal appeals court on Wednesday cleared the way for voters in Ohio to begin casting in-person ballots as early as Tuesday, 35 days before the November midterm election. A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Peter Economus earlier this month that…
U.S. reaches landmark $554 million settlement with Navajo Nation
The Obama administration has agreed to pay the Navajo Nation a record $554 million to settle longstanding claims by America’s largest Indian tribe that its funds and natural resources were mishandled for decades by the U.S. government. The accord, resolving claims that date back as far as 50 years and marking the biggest U.S. legal…
How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World
Under her leadership, the State Department worked closely with energy companies to spread fracking around the globe—part of a broader push to fight climate change, boost global energy supply, and undercut the power of adversaries such as Russia that use their energy resources as a cudgel. But environmental groups fear that exporting fracking, which…
House Of Representatives Gives D.C. The Big Foam Finger
It hasn’t always been this way. When Nancy Pelosi D-Calif. took over as Speaker of the House, she launched the Green the Capital initiative, which directed House cafeterias to use compostable cutlery made with corn-based plastic substitutes and carryout containers made with plant fibers, and instituted a composting program. A 2010 report on the Green…
NAACP accuses Mississippi country clerk of failing to process thousands of voter registrations
Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson announced at a press conference Tuesday morning that an unknown number of voter registrations have gone missing in Hinds County, Mississippi, and urged voters to cast what is known as an affidavit ballot if they arrive at the polls and find that they are not listed. According to the Jackson…