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“Congress is broken,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday before holding a party-line vote that disposed of rules that have guided and protected the chamber since 1789.... Here’s what then-Sen. Joe Biden said in 2005 when a Republican Senate majority threatened to use a similar “nuclear option” to allow a simple majority to carry the day: “The nuclear option abandons America’s sense of fair play . . . tilting the playing field on the side of those who control and own the field. I say to my friends on the Republican side: You may own the field right now, but you won’t own it forever. I pray God when the Democrats take back control, we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.”
8. There's a lot of upside for Republicans in how this went down. It came at a time when Republicans control the House and are likely to do so for the duration of President Obama's second term, so the weakening of the filibuster will have no effect on the legislation Democrats can pass. The electoral map, the demographics of midterm elections, and the political problems bedeviling Democrats make it very likely that Mitch McConnell will be majority leader come 2015 and then he will be able to take advantage of a weakened filibuster. And, finally, if and when Republicans recapture the White House and decide to do away with the filibuster altogether, Democrats won't have much of an argument when they try to stop them....The inexorable march no longer is inexorable.
Spurning President Obama’s plan for canceled policies, California's health insurance exchange voted against any extension for about 1 million policyholders in the state. The five-member board of the exchange voted unanimously to keep its current requirement that insurers terminate most individual policies Dec. 31 because they don't meet all the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The decision ends a weeklong drama over what would happen for policyholders who will lose their existing coverage at year-end and face finding replacement insurance that may cost them substantially more in many instances. Covered California, the state exchange, considered allowing renewals into 2014 as Obama proposed or a short-term extension through March to give people more time to shop. But state leaders ultimately rejected those options. They expressed concerns about further confusing consumers and worried that widespread renewals could keep too many healthy customers out of the broader risk pool that will shape future rates.At the same time, the California Health Exchange released figures purporting to show great progress is signing up new enrollees, close to 3000 a day, but the numbers are dwarfed by the scope of policy cancellations. Via The Wall Street Journal:
As of 11 p.m. local time Tuesday, Republican Kevin Faulconer led a field of 11 candidates with 44 percent of the vote, giving the GOP a chance to recapture an office they held for much of the last four decades and an opportunity for a rare win leading a major American city. David Alvarez, a first-term city councilman, had 25 percent. Nathan Fletcher, an executive at wireless technology titan Qualcomm Inc. and former state assemblyman, had 24 percent. Alvarez had trailed Fletcher for most of the evening, but had pulled ahead by 1,456 votes as the clock ticked past 11 p.m.Post-election analysis shows a combination of Latino voters and union support helped carry Alvarez into the next phase:
The city's burgeoning Latino population helped propel a native son and child of Mexican immigrants into a mayoral runoff against a fellow city councilman to replace the disgraced Bob Filner, who resigned amid sexual harassment allegations. David Alvarez, a first-term Democratic councilman, began the short campaign with far less name recognition than some rivals but defeated them with heavy financial backing from organized labor and support in Hispanic communities.
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the Florida bullying case of Rebecca Sedwick, the lawyers for both girls who had been charged with aggravated stalking have confirmed that charges have been dropped. From the NY Times: Prosecutors in Polk County, Fla., have dropped the charges against...
November 18, 2013 Assault reported on University Ave, near Lake St, 11/16/13 The Ithaca Police Department is investigating a reported assault that occurred on
University Ave., near Lake Street, around 3:11 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2013.
According to the male victim, he and a friend were walking on University Ave., near Lake Street, when they were approached by two males. The victim reports that the two males did not say anything, but one of the males punched the victim in the face with a closed fist causing pain and physical injury. The victim describes the perpetrators as a tall black male wearing dark clothing and a shorter Hispanic male also wearing dark clothing. The perpetrators then fled the area in a southerly direction on University Ave. The extent of the injury to the victim was not immediately apparent at the time of the incident and has been upgraded to an Assault.
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In Vancouver, the doorknob is heading into a setting sun. Its future has been date-marked, legislated out of existence in all future construction, a tip to society’s quest for universal design and the easier-to-use lever handle. And as it goes in Vancouver, so will it go in B.C., Canada, and perhaps even the world..... And, as doorknobs go, so too will go those other ubiquitous knobs, the ones that turn on and off water faucets. For they too are being legislatively upgraded to levers more conducive to the arthritic, gnarled or weakened hands we earn with age. In September, Vancouver council adopted new amendments to its building code, effective next March, that, among other things, will require lever handles on all doors and lever faucets in all new housing construction.A columnist at Popular Science is quite pleased (via Memeorandum):
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a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to maximize the number of uninsured Americans who enroll in health coverage made available by the Affordable Care Act.As such, Enroll America cannot get involved in any political activity. Project Veritas, however, discovered that a Texas-based Enroll America official was willing to push the limits (to put it charitably) or even break the law (to put it not charitably) in order to help someone he thought was a Democratic operative. Here's the explanation from the Project Veritas website, Enroll America Director Conspires to Release Private Data (emphasis in original):
Do you know where your personal data is going? After meeting with several Obamacare Navigators who openly encouraged our undercover reporters to lie about income status, health history and more, it became clear that personal data was also being “cross-pollinated.” Enter Enroll America, a Sebelius-linked group dedicated to signing people up for Obamacare and Chris Tarango, Texas Enroll America Communications Director who Project Veritas caught on tape agreeing to help obtain a private list of potential Obamacare enrollee data for election/political purposes. Tarango goes so far to say he’ll “Do whatever it f****** takes.”Here's the video, the first 15 minutes of which are the edited video, the remainder the raw video: Eliana Johnson at National Review has a more complete explanation:
The state of Florida has dropped all charges against the 12-year-old girl accused of bullying Rebecca Sedwick, a 12-year-old who committed suicide in September, according to a press release from Jose Baez, the attorney representing the defendant. Baez, who famously won an acquittal for Casey Anthony, is expected to hold a news conference later Wednesday to discuss the new development.The 12 year old girl had been charged with aggravated stalking in October in connection with the case. A 14 year old girl was also charged with the same at that time. Authorities alleged that both of the girls harassed Sedwick for months before she took her own life.
They are not righteous rebels or principled provocateurs. They are not constitutionalists, using the ruling framework built by the founders. Just the opposite: they are a militant fringe of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government trying to nullify an established law by extortion. This is not the design of the Constitution. Nor are they Martin Luther King Jr., or Rosa Parks or Winston Churchill — preposterous comparisons made on the floor of Congress by those whose only real fight is with progress.... We know now why Senator Ted Cruz, the most hated man in Washington, said he fears that once Obamacare is up and running people will like it — and then it will be too late for the obstructionists.... They wrecked the car, dug their own grave; no matter what you call it, history’s verdict came early.Little did Egan or the others belittling the warnings about Obamacare realize that history's verdict would be against them; that Obamacare was it was not as it was sold and would cause Democrats to scramble for distance; that the Tea Party would be viewed as more in touch with American values than the ideology behind Obamacare; that big government would become the most hated thing outside Washington, even if Ted Cruz remained "the most hated man in Washington." The sweep of history is upon us, and it is not with the bigger government Democratic Party.
"They were looking for payment"...
