By Erin Ferns
"...Too many people do not understand or exercise their voting rights, and as a result, entire segments of our population - and especially formerly incarcerated individuals - are being underrepresented at the polls on Election Day." - New Jersey Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Newark)
Today's papers, including the Star-Ledger, the Courier News, and the NY Times, have extensive stories about Byron Halsey, who spent nearly 20 years in jail for two murders he didn't commit.
In 1985, someone brutally raped and murdered two Plainfield children. Halsey, their mother's boyfriend, was arrested and interrogated for 30 hours (!) before confessing. (He grew up in a home for the developmentally disabled.) His blood type matched blood found on the scene.
The prosecution sought the death penalty but the jury decided on a life sentence. Now, more refined DNA testing proves that semen left on the scene belongs to someone else. Ironically, that individual (now in jail for other rapes) testified against Halsey.
Bravo to the Innocence Project and New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty! I hope this news will convince any legislators still wavering to vote for the bill to abolish the death penalty and substitute life without parole.
Representative Jo Ann Davis (R-VA-1) is the sponsor of H.R. 119, the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act. The legislation requires "that health plans provide coverage for a minimum hospital stay for mastectomies, lumpectomies, and lymph node dissection for the treatment of breast cancer and coverage for secondary consultations." The minimum stay period is 48 hours. Because insurance companies do not cover that length of stay, men and women (it is mostly women, but men can have breast cancer too) are often forced to go home just a few hours after surgery, against the wishes of their doctors, still groggy from anesthesia and sometimes with drainage tubes still attached. This is just wrong and it is something that can be fixed.
The bill was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and guess who is the newly minted chair of that committee's Subcommittee on Health? Why it's none other than the very popular progressive Representative Frank Pallone. We like Congressman Pallone a lot around here and are sure he will be responsive to this legislation. However, it never hurts to give them a little nudge. If you are in the 6th Congressional District, let the congressman's office know that you support H.R. 119.
Lifetime Television has put this bill on their web page with a petition that you can sign to show your support. Go sign. It takes only moments and you'll feel good about yourself when you are done.
Assemblywoman Linda Stender (also a contender to help Dump Mike) has fast tracked her bill A-2702 through the statehouse. The bill portends to stop the Dubai port grab and seems to have a promise of passing the legislature rather quickly and being signed by Gov. Corzine expeditiously.
This bill is moving so fast, that Linda Stender is talking to the Homeland Security Committee RIGHT NOW.
So I am barely waking up this morning and I hear a blathering Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborn Boggs a.k.a. Cokie Roberts talking about how the Katrina Report was all Republicans as is the opposition to the UAE owning the port system.
First off, in fairness, the Republican committee that issued a report on Wednesday is totally Republican. However, when asked on ABC's This Week, Rep. Gene Taylor said that they didn't bother to subpoena White House records, for fear of being stonewalled and thus delaying the report. I guess the report just HAD to come out February 15th so that folks planning Mardi Gras could prepare special floats with Chertoff bullseye's painted on. Either way, the Republican committee failed to really scathe the White House because, the White House wouldn't let them see their records. Good job Committee. In other words, the reasons Democrats boycotted the committee in the first place came to fruition in the Republican's version of the GAO and DHS Inspector General reports. I won't even get into how screwed up our country is when Republicans get stonewalled by their own party's leader.
Besides, this is only the first of 3 reports on Katrina. The next one to come out is from a BI-PARTISAN Senate Committee. Too bad Cokie forgot to mention that.
However, Cokie wasn't done lifting the Republicans above all ills.
She then went right ahead and blatenly lied.
Cokie went on to say that Republicans were the only one's outraged over the UAE takeover of our Port system. This as we all know, is what Washingtonian Press Folk would potentially call, blatant disregard for the truth. Isn't it enough that Bob Menendez has to issue rapid responses to Michael Chertoff? Go ahead give it a listen, not one mention of Menendez, Clinton, or any legislation that they happen to have already introduced! Though there was a tone of belittlement when she mentioned Chuck Schumer using 9/11 familes to highlight the issue. You can almost hear her think "politicizing 9/11."
However, NPR wasn't done with their Republican cheerleading effort just yet. Immediately following Cokie Roberts' wankery, Peter Overby filed this report, which basically tried to explain the already debunked convoluted way that Harry Reid shares guilt in the Abramoff scandal. The explanation itself is totally convoluted, then again, most baseless accusations come accross this way.
This Morning Edition's pyloric parastolsis gives credence to the idea that NPR really stands for Nice Polite Republicans.
