Post-claims underwriting

How to save money: cancel a mother's insurance because she didn't disclose a minor condition before you have to pay for the son's heart surgery.

Four months after her first son, Jack, was born, Jessica Bath received a letter from her health insurance company, Blue Shield of California, saying she and Jack were no longer covered. Jack was born at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center on April 8, 2003, with a hole in his heart. Bath was counting on Blue Shield to pay for a scheduled surgery to repair it....

Blue Shield claimed it was canceling the Morro Bay resident’s policy because she had a medical condition, which she failed to disclose when she applied for the insurance. She and her lawyer contend the condition was insignificant and did not have anything to do with her son’s heart problem.

Law and Disorder?

Alberto Gonzales and Vincente Fox

OK, this is interesting.

Apparently, sometime in late 2005 Alberto Gonzales had a secret meeting with Vicente Fox, President of Mexico. He made an offer that essentially traded a decrease in border crossings with a reduction in the number of criminal prosecutions of illegal Mexicans in the US.

A sticking point, however, was that Gonzales also wanted to make the deal contingent on Fox's re-election and that the deal would not only be reneged if Fox lost, but prosecutions would be increased as would INS harrassment of Mexican illegals. Gonzales assured Fox that he had the backing of the President to ensure that "millions of Mexicans" would soon be on flights home.

Fox's opponent, Andres Obrador, got wind of the deal while it was being contemplated and it was quickly and quietly dropped.

Biskupic opinions

Josh@TPM did some followup research about Steven Biskupic, the US Attorney whose voter fraud case was thrown out of court recently.

Now, we've written a good bit about Biskupic. He's the one who didn't find the Democratic 'vote fraud' conspiracy Republican operatives wanted him to find. And that apparently landed him on the DOJ US Attorney firing list.

But then he got pulled off the list. That's made people take a second look at his prosecution of a bureaucrat in Wisconsin's Democratic governor's administration. That conviction got overturned by an appeals court last month. And not just overturned, but judged "beyond thin" and "preposterous" and sent back for a directed acquital.

That raised the question: Did Biskupic get in trouble with the failure to pursue bogus 'vote fraud' cases and then save his job by bringing a bogus corruption case?

Since we first reported on this issue, I've spoken to a number of people familiar with Biskupic and his record. This is a standard stage in reporting in a case like this. And the results of such conversations are usually very revealing. Often -- particularly in the US Attorney Purge case -- a few such conversations quickly reveal patterns of questionable conduct about the person in question. The smoke rapidly reveals fire.

Not in this case though. Having raised the questions about Biskupic noted above, I feel compelled to note that in subsequent conversations with others who I believe come with as much credibility as Comey has -- which is a great deal -- I've been told pretty much the equivalent of what Comey said today. These people don't necessarily know the specifics of the case in question. But they know Biskupic. And they vouch for the guy's character and reputation. They say they know him and he just would never do something like that.

Jackson on USAs

Just came across this link: I'll excerpt specific sections later.

ACORN indictments rushed against policy?

Hey, Gonzo, remember how you keep bringing up ACORN to prove Democratic Voter Fraud?

Read this.

But Bradley Schlozman -- the former U.S. Attorney for Kansas City and controversial deputy head at the Civil Rights Division -- broke with the policy. Not only that, but there's evidence that he rushed four indictments to land just before last November's election.

Indeed, timing aside, even Schlozman's decision to pursue the cases at all is questionable in light of established Justice Department practice. Although trumpeted as cases of voter fraud, the cases alleged only registration fraud, and there's no evidence that those registrations were intended to result in actual fraudulent votes. For that reason, other U.S. attorneys have passed on pursuing similar prosecutions. But Schlozman, who'd worked to push voter I.D. laws while in the Civil Rights Division, leapt at the opportunity....

It had been the longstanding practice of the Justice Department not to bring such indictments so close before an election. That's according to Joe Rich, the former head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Section, and a Justice Department manual written by Craig Donsanto, head of the Election Crimes Branch at Justice, which advised that “Federal prosecutors and investigators should be extremely careful to not conduct overt investigations during the pre-election period or while the election is underway.”

Even Alberto Gonzales himself said just two weeks ago that "We have guidance about that, doing those kind of investigations near an election," to be "sensitive about the effect it has on particularly minority participation."

Indiana University Study proves what we've known all along

Commentator uses name-calling more than once every seven seconds in 'Talking Points Memo'

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Bill O'Reilly may proclaim at the beginning of his program that viewers are entering the "No Spin Zone," but a new study by Indiana University media researchers found that the Fox News personality consistently paints certain people and groups as villains and others as victims to present the world, as he sees it, through political rhetoric.

The IU researchers found that O'Reilly called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.

"It's obvious he's very big into calling people names, and he's very big into glittering generalities," said Mike Conway, assistant professor in the IU School of Journalism. "He's not very subtle. He's going to call people names, or he's going to paint something in a positive way, often without any real evidence to support that viewpoint."
.... read more by clicking on the link above. It's enough to make one puke.

The Plot Against the First Amendment

Harpers has some thoughts on the subject.

In the summer of 2005, Alberto Gonzales paid a visit to British Attorney General Peter Goldsmith. A British civil servant who attended told me "it was quite amazing really. Gonzales was obsessed with the Official Secrets Act. In particular, he wanted to know exactly how it was used to block newspapers and broadcasters from running news stories derived from official secrets and how it could be used to criminalise persons who had no formal duty to maintain secrets. He saw it as a panacea for his problems: silence the press. Then you can torture and abuse prisoners and what you will—without fear of political repercussions. It was the easy route to dealing with the Guantánamo dilemma. Don't close down Guantánamo. Close down the press. We were appalled by it." Appalled, he added, "but not surprised."

About Damn Time

I've been saying for a while this might happen. Read this, you won't be disappointed. I'm in with it.

http://www.unity08.com/

On Reflection

I was mulling over the Iraq situation and the governments responses to it and came to an epiphany.

Party, party like it's 1975...du duh du du duh.

Vietnam collapsed when funding was cut in 1975. That, almost alone, set up the long distrust of most Americans when it comes to Democrats and the nations defense.

Now we're back to square one. When you think about it, Bush and the GOP are in a no-lose situation. Any compromise solution in funding works out to Bush's advantage. If Iraq is lost to insurgents, Bush points to Dem intransigence and the blame moves to them. If Iraq stabilizes Bush points to that and says he was right all along.

Regardless, the stage is set for another "X" years of the Democrats being perceived as pussies and not serious about national defense. Rightly or wrong.

Which steers right into '08. Americans do not elect known pussies as Presidents. They will elect softies as Congressmen or Senators, but not Presidents (do your own damn research, if you know how).

I could be way wrong...or not. The end of the funding bill debacle and what happens overseas will tell the tale. If I'm right ..... goodbye Dems. Oh fuck, lying ass Republicans. We don't win either way, do we?

The REAL Way to Support the Troops

...is to stop playing political games with the funding for their mission. The real way is to acknowledge there are differences between Congress and the Executive and work those out without artificial timestables and declaring the war is "lost".

The real way is to find a solution that first protects the troops, second the country, and third the stability of Iraq.

The real way is to never, ever telegraph to your enemies timestables and keep your battles internal. And that way is not politically expedient to the Dems who would sell out the soul of this country to consolidate power. Shame.

The real way to support the troops...

...is not to veto their funding.

Today, in your veto message regarding the bipartisan legislation just passed on Operation Iraqi Freedom, you asserted that you so decided because you listen to your commanders on the ground.

Respectfully, as your former commander on the ground, your administration did not listen to our best advice. In fact, a number of my fellow Generals were forced out of their jobs, because they did not tell you what you wanted to hear -- most notably General Eric Shinseki, whose foresight regarding troop levels was advice you rejected, at our troops' peril.

The legislation you vetoed today represented a course of action that is long overdue. This war can no longer be won by the military alone. We must bring to bear the entire array of national power - military, diplomatic and economic. The situation demands a surge in diplomacy, and pressure on the Iraqi government to fix its internal affairs. Further, the Army and Marine Corps are on the verge of breaking - or have been broken already - by the length and intensity of this war. This tempo is not sustainable - and you have failed to grow the ground forces to meet national security needs. We must begin the process of bringing troops home, and repairing and growing our military, if we are ever to have a combat-ready force for the long war on terror ahead of us.

The bill you rejected today sets benchmarks for success that the Iraqis would have to meet, and puts us on a course to redeploy our troops. It stresses the need for sending troops into battle only when they are rested, trained and equipped. In my view, and in the view of many others in the military that I know, that is the best course of action for our security.

As someone who served this nation for decades, I have the utmost respect for the office you hold. However, as a man of conscience, I could not sit idly by as you told the American people today that your veto was based on the recommendations of military men. Your administration ignored the advice of our military's finest minds before, and I see no evidence that you are listening to them now.

I urge you to reconsider your position, and work with Congress to pass a bill that achieves the goals laid out above.

Respectfully,

Major General Paul D. Eaton, USA, Retired

What The Hell?

This could be VERY interesting when fully developed. A games theory adapted for politics.

http://dyn.politico.com/playsforpresidency/table/

Boehner prevails in 10-year legal dispute with McDermott

From politico.com

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) finally prevailed Tuesday in his decade-long legal dispute with Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington over illegally taped conversations McDermott leaked to the press.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed previous court rulings that McDermott “had not lawfully obtained the tape recording” of Boehner discussing an ethics ruling against then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) with the former speaker and other members of the Republican leadership.

A Florida couple recorded the December 1996 conference call by using a police scanner to eavesdrop on Boehner’s cell phone. The Ohio Republican, who was then serving as conference chairman, was in Florida when they recorded the conversation.

After conferring with their local member of Congress, the Florida couple sent the tapes to McDermott, who leaked the contents of the recordings to the New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where justices on the high court voided the appeals court’s initial decision on the grounds that McDermott had the First Amendment right to publicize the tapes however the recordings were obtained.

With that decision, the case then went back to the district court, which granted Boehner $60,000 in damages and forced McDermott to pick up his legal fees.

The appeals court ruled, in a divided decision, that McDermott both obtained the tapes unlawfully and violated the confidentiality agreement he accepted by voluntarily joining the ethics panel. The dissenting justices disagreed with the majority decision on the grounds that the leak itself did not violate the First Amendment.

The Truth is Out There

Opinionjournal.com's James Taranto attends a panel discussion on the media. Here's his report.

'Truthers' Are Stranger Than Fiction
LOS ANGELES--Saturday afternoon found us at UCLA for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, where we had been summoned from New York to sit on a panel discussing "the future of news" with L.A. Times editor Jim O'Shea and ABC-TV's Mark Halperin. The moderator was the Times's foreign editor, Marjorie Miller. All agreed: The future of news is uncertain, though the Web is likely to be an important factor.

The audience questioners, though, were a hoot. One woman brought up the famliar left-wing trope about the dangers of corporate control of the media. She told Halperin she worried that Disney, which owns ABC, dictated the network's news coverage, especially during the run-up to the war in Iraq. After Halperin assured her that this was not the case, we chimed in: "Why the hell would Disney want to go to war in Iraq? It doesn't make sense." She looked chastened and returned to her seat.

Then there were the "truthers," members of a cult that believes 9/11 was a government conspiracy. They are easy to spot because they all wear black T-shirts with pictures of the twin towers and slogans like INVESTIGATE 9/11. (We encountered some of them near Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2006.)

Two truthers, a man and a woman, were standing in line to ask questions. The man prefaced his by saying, "I'm not going to ask the 9/11 question again." (We don't remember what he did ask.) When it was the woman's turn, she went into a long disquisition about how FDR had advance warning of Pearl Harbor, and "buildings don't fall at 10 stories a second," and finally she asked, "Where is our Bob Woodward to bring the story out?"

Our answer: "Rosie O'Donnell."

The woman started speechifying again and finally was shouted down by the crowd, which was strongly left-leaning but apparently not insane.

When you think about what the truthers are saying, it makes even less sense than the Disney-invaded-Iraq theory. They want us to believe that the government staged 9/11 and is now using totalitarian means to cover it up. But if the government were really suppressing dissent, these people would be in prison, not walking around in public wearing T-shirts identifying them as dissidents.

Unless. What if the truthers themselves are in on the conspiracy? Maybe they are agents of the government who deliberately act crazy in order to discredit the idea that it is a conspiracy.

As one of our fellow panelists put it, "So far, it's working."

Hitchens on Tenets New Book

Wow. Ka-blam!

A sample:

To revisit these arguments is to be reminded that no thinking person ever felt that the danger posed by a totalitarian and aggressive Iraq was a negligible one. And now comes Tenet, the man who got everything wrong and who ran the agency that couldn't think straight, to ask us to sympathize with his moanings about "Iraq—who, me?"

A highly irritating expression in Washington has it that "hindsight is always 20-20." Would that it were so. History is not a matter of hindsight and is not, in fact, always written by the victors. In this case, a bogus history is being offered by a real loser whose hindsight is cockeyed and who had no foresight at all.

Snow is Back

David Gregory notes on Tony Snow's return to the White House. A very emotional return for Snow (check the video link).

Snow is known as one of the nicest guys in Washington and it's great to see him back and looking good.

Ooh, it gets better...

Gonzales delegated all his hiring and firing decisions to Sampson and Goodling.

An original draft of Gonzales's delegation of authority to Sampson and Goodling was so broad that it did not even require the two aides to obtain the final approval of the attorney general before moving to dismiss other department officials, according to records obtained by National Journal.

The department's Office of Legal Counsel feared that such an unconditional delegation of authority was unconstitutional, the documents show. As a result, the original delegation was rewritten so that in its final form the order required "any proposed appointments or removals of personnel" be "presented to the Attorney General... for approval, and each appointment or removal shall be made in the name of the Attorney General."

U.S. Attorney Smoking gun?

Interesting timeline from the most recent document dump:

From: Hertling, Richard
Sent: Monday, March 05 15:48:29 2007
To: Burton, Faith
Subject: Re: URGENT

What is the correct response if at the US Attorney hearing tomorrow Will is asked by HJC to provide e-mails and other communications we had with the WH on firing US Attorneys?

From: Burton, Faith
Sent: Monday, March 05 16:03:43 2007
To: Hertling, Richard
Subject: Re: URGENT

We would not provide such highly deliberative docs in which the WH has such significant equities – no way would the WH allow that. Need to think about how exactly to phrase the response but Will may have some thoughts.

From: Hertling, Richard
Sent: Monday, March 5, 2007 4:05PM
To: Burton, Faith
Subject: Re: URGENT

Will is our witness. Think about how we would want to frame an answer.

March 6th:

JOHNSON: And were there memoranda or record of these meetings or e-mails or other communications on the subject that were generated?
MOSCHELLA: I don't know of any memoranda that was created. At some point, names were put on a list, but I don't know about the specific records....
JOHNSON: Mr. Moschella, I'm getting ready to run out of time and I want to ask you this question.
The committee is very interested in further inquiry into this matter. Can I have your assurance that you'll make available to the committee the individuals I have asked you about and all memoranda, e- mails and other documents on this subject as was asked by myself and previous questioners? Can I get your commitment on that?
MOSCHELLA: Congressman, we have done everything we can to cooperate, including providing documents to the committee, having the briefings. We'll continue to work with you.

March 7th:

On the Withheld Documents list, we see:

Line 160, From Faith Burton, DESCRIPTION: Discussion re: draft subpoenas for KS (Kyle Sampson), MG (Monica Goodling), ME (Michael Elston), WM (William Mercer), and MB (Michael Battle).
Line 161, From William Moschella, DESCRIPTION: Discussion re: voluntary interviews or testimony from leadership staff before the SJC (Senate Judiciary Committee).
Five of those on the list for receipt of subpoenas receive two e-mails from Faith Burton and William E. Moschella "discussing" the subject of their subpoenas.

Bush has gone AWOL?

General Odom thinks so.

"Good morning, this is Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army, retired.

"I am not now nor have I ever been a Democrat or a Republican. Thus, I do not speak for the Democratic Party. I speak for myself, as a non-partisan retired military officer who is a former Director of the National Security Agency. I do so because Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, asked me.

"In principle, I do not favor Congressional involvement in the execution of U.S. foreign and military policy. I have seen its perverse effects in many cases. The conflict in Iraq is different. Over the past couple of years, the President has let it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued.

"Thus, he lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money, and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies. The Congress is the only mechanism we have to fill this vacuum in command judgment.

"To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is 'absent without leave.' He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games."