Gina Keating & Carol Bishopric | Los Angeles | November 20

Reuters - A Florida jury on Thursday ordered cigarette maker Philip Morris USA to pay $300 million in damages to a 61-year-old ex-smoker named Cindy Naugle who is wheelchair-bound by emphysema.

The Broward Circuit Court jury assessed $56.6 million in past and future medical expenses against the company, part of Altria Group Inc, as well as $244 million in punitive damages.

The verdict is the largest of the so-called Engle progeny cases that have been tried so far, both sides said.

Michael Smallberg | Nov 20

POGO - The House Financial Services Committee voted 43-26 yesterday afternoon in favor of an amendment introduced by Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Alan Grayson (D-FL) that would remove restrictions preventing the GAO from auditing the Federal Reserve. The amendment was modeled after Rep. Paul’s long-standing bill to audit the Fed, which was co-sponsored by over 300 Members in the House and supported by POGO and many other groups.

The vote on the final passage of the financial regulatory package to which the Paul-Grayson amendment is attached has been delayed until after Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, yesterday’s vote signals a defeat for Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), who had introduced an alternative amendment that would have limited the scope of the GAO’s audits.

Kudos to FDL: FDL Statement on the Committee Passage of H.R. 1207, the Paul-Grayson Bill to Audit the Fed

THE DEPROLIFERATOR -- As you no doubt know, deterrence is the product of a balance of power -- nuclear arsenals, in other words, that are roughly equal. Constrained by the eye-for-an-eye principle, but to the umpteenth power, states armed with nuclear weapons, such as the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and India and Pakistan today, keep their nukes holstered.

But terrorists, according to conventional thinking, are immune to deterrence. If they ever obtained nuclear weapons, they'd suffer few qualms about using them. First, they're secure in the knowledge that they're ostensibly stateless. It's unlikely that the state which they've attacked with nuclear weapons, such as the United States, would retaliate against the state which served as their command center for the attack. (Can't speak for another possible target, Israel, though.)

Warren Richey | Washington | November 19

CSM - Judge David Hamilton is elevated to the US appeals court, after GOP effort to stall a vote failed. Republican resistance signals more political fights are likely over Obama's nominees to the federal bench.

The US Senate voted 59 to 39 on Thursday to elevate Judge David Hamilton from his current job as chief judge at the federal courthouse in Indianapolis to a seat on the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals.

The vote comes eight months after Judge Hamilton was nominated to the Chicago-based appeals court.

Scott Lanman | Washington | November 19

Bloomberg - A U.S. House committee advanced a proposal to remove a three-decade ban on congressional audits of Federal Reserve interest-rate decisions, a measure backed by a lawmaker who has called for the abolition of the central bank.

The House Financial Services Committee today, in a 43-26 vote and a second voice vote, attached the amendment for a broad audit of the Fed to legislation creating a council of regulators to monitor systemic risk. The proposal was offered by Representative Ron Paul, a Republican from Texas, and based on a bill with more than 300 co-sponsors.

Johann Hari | Nov 20

The Independent - Before you can appeal to America's voters you have to appeal to the corporations

Almost a year after Barack Obama ascended to the White House, many of his supporters are bemused. His healthcare bill is a hefty improvement but it still won't provide coverage for all Americans, and may not provide a public alternative to the over-charging insurance companies - if it passes at all. His environmental team is vandalising the vital Copenhagen conference by saying the US – the single biggest emitter of warming gases – will not sign up to any legally binding restrictions there. He has placed the deregulation-fanatics who caused the New Depression, like Lawrence Summers, in charge of the recovery. Despite the real improvements on Bush – such as the end of torture, the resumption of stem-cell research, and opposition to the coup in Honduras – many people are asking: why he is delivering so little, so slowly?

A pair of seemingly small stories about the forces warping American politics can help us to answer this question. At first glance, they will seem like preposterous caricatures, but the facts are plain. The institutions that are blocking progress on all these issues – Republicans in the Senate, and the mighty corporate lobbying machine that bankrolls both parties – have rallied over the past few months to defend two causes with very little popular support in the United States: rape and slavery. No, really. If we begin to explain how this came to pass, then we might see why the American political system is malfunctioning so badly, even after a landslide victory for change.

James Halpin | Anchorage | Nov 18

adn.com - Two Anchorage men who told investigators they were horsing around with a "redneck flamethrower" set a 5-year-old boy's head on fire and have been charged with felony assault and reckless endangerment, according to police and court records.

Jonathon Michael Miller, 29, and Stephen Ray Dilley II, 32, were jailed Tuesday after inflicting second-degree burns to the boy's head and singing his hair with an aerosol sprayer and lighter, according to Alaska State Troopers. The child, who was injured Friday, did not receive medical treatment until arriving at school near his home in Anchor Point on Monday.

"It was described to the troopers as an accident," troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said. "I mean a child, two guys, can of Quick Start, Bic lighter: How could this not go wrong?"

According to a troopers' affidavit filed in court, Miller told investigators he's been trying to toughen the boy up and the best way to do it is to "scare the s--t out of them when they don't see it coming."

Asked why the child had not gotten treatment, Miller told investigators, "Why go make bills for yourself over little things," according to the affidavit.

And people wonder why I am not a Christian anymore:

Posters to various message boards tell stories of seeing bumper stickers with the message “Pray for Obama – Psalm 109:8” on the highway, only to look up the verse and find, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” …

Anyway, now it’s a real thing: CafePress is selling T-shirts and bumper stickers . . .

However, as a number of commentators have noted, the wording that follows this bumper-sticker appeal is somewhat more disturbing:

Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor.
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Love thy neighbor, indeed.

Brad Knickerbocker | Washington | November 18

CSM - Though the congressional debate and legislative sausage-making are far from over, the Senate took a major step Wednesday in putting forth a $849 billion healthcare reform bill.

The bill, launched by Senate majority leader Harry Reid – and vigorously opposed by Republicans – aims to provide health insurance for 94 percent of all Americans, including 31 million people now uninsured.

Nov 19

Jerusalem Post - The US is too bogged down in Afghanistan to engage Iran militarily over its nuclear program, an ex-CIA South Asia expert and current adviser to US President Barack Obama said in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

Bruce Riedel, a senior Brookings Institute and Saban Center fellow for political transitions in the Middle East and South Asia, addressed scholars and journalists at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies.

He warned that the US was fighting a losing battle against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, and that Washington would soon have to make difficult choices on beefing up troop levels there.

"Israelis need to understand that there's going to be a huge drain on resources, attention and capital, and that will have implications," Riedel told The Jerusalem Post before his talk.

He acknowledged that those implications would primarily affect the Iran question.

During his address, Riedel referred to the US's commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said, "We've got two wars. You've got to be bold to say, let's start a war against a third party, particularly when the third party can hit you in the first two fronts."
The US has learned that it "can't fight two medium-sized wars simultaneously," he said (h/t Bernhard)

Kristen mack | Chicago | Nov 19

LA Times - Studs Terkel, the American storyteller, author, radio host, actor and activist, sought a job at the FBI, according to recently released documents.

Terkel, who died last year at 96, applied for a job in the FBI's fingerprints division in the 1930s. "It's a non-agent position," FBI spokesman Bill Carter said. "You would have to go through a background investigation, the same as you would for an agent, but you don't have arrest powers."

Instead of hiring Terkel, the agency ended up amassing a file on him. The FBI spent 45 years tracking him as a suspected communist, according to the 147 pages released from his 269-page dossier. The file was obtained by the New York City News Service under an act that requires the FBI to release certain documents to the public after an individual has died.

Terkel's paper trail started in 1945. It references Terkel speaking at a Paul Robeson rally in Chicago and quotes a source who questioned Terkel's "loyalty to the United States" because he worked with the BBC on a piece about the "sordid side of life in Chicago."

His file ends in 1990, when agents cut and pasted a Wall Street Journal article quoting his reaction to financier Michael Milken's junk-bond scandal.

"We live in a corrupt, amoral moment," Terkel said. "There are a million Milkens. He's reflective of our society at this time. People have lost their sense of outrage."

Richard Fausset | Atlanta | Nov 19

LA Times - A federal judge says the agency showed 'gross negligence' in the years before Katrina. The ruling could leave the government open to billions in claims.

In a ruling that could leave the government open to billions of dollars in claims from Hurricane Katrina victims, a federal judge said late Wednesday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had displayed "gross negligence" in failing to maintain a navigation channel -- resulting in levee breaches that flooded large swaths of greater New Orleans.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval peppered his 156-page decision, issued in New Orleans, with harsh criticism of the Army corps, at one point citing its "insouciance, myopia and shortsightedness" in failing to maintain the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, known locally as MRGO.

For more than 40 years, the judge said, the corps had known that a crucial levee protecting suburban St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood would be compromised by the deterioration of the channel. The corps had "myriad" ways to address the problem, he wrote, but failed to do so.

Duval awarded a total of $719,000 to a small group of flood victims that sued the government in April 2006.

But according to Pierce O'Donnell, the lead plaintiff's counsel, roughly 100,000 New Orleans-area residents and businesses who have filed flood-damage claims with the Army corps were now potentially eligible for payment.

"The judge agreed with us that Katrina was not a natural disaster," O'Donnell said. "Katrina was a man-made disaster caused by the Army Corps of Engineers."

The results of this poll are pretty interesting:

Americans don't want to shoulder the cost of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul themselves. They think the rich should pay for it.

I don't think it will happen that way, however. As a matter of fact, I know it won't. At least not yet. But it's another indication that Americans are much more progressive, especially when it comes to taxation, than politicians realize--I also think it is an indicator of just how pissed the middle class is with the wealthy in this country.

As I have noted many times here, I am in favor of a return to golden-era Eisenhower-like taxation, but I'm not holding my breath. If the Democrats really wanted a decent health-care plan, one that creates real health-care cost savings across the board, however, they could push one through. Instead we'll get a mushy-halfway plan that will be more of regressive tax on the middle class. But we all knew that, didn't we?

A familiar anthem to many. And an anthem that has permeated the armed forces possibly.
_______________________________________________________
ABC.net.au - The Pentagon has responded to the massacre at an army base in Texas by deciding to screen all United States defence services for staff who are unstable and potentially violent.

News of the urgent review broke as the Pentagon revealed that soldier suicides this year would set another record.

Last week, 13 people were killed at Fort Hood in Texas when an army psychiatrist allegedly opened fire.

Rachel Maddow had Frank Schaeffer on again. The rhetoric from the far right has become more "incite"-full.

Video after the jump.

Strange days up here in Minnesota. A guy by the pseudonym Robert Erickson spoke to an anti-immigrant Tea Party rally at the State Capitol on Saturday. Turns out he punk'd them and demanded "Columbus Go Home" and the deportation of all these European immigrants. The videos were hits on YouTube. I got the reverse angle of the crowd in HD, now we've got a bit of a viral event unfolding!

98000reasons.org: Quanisha Scott from American Association for Justice on Vimeo.

The entire staff of the Agonist has already come out against the health care bill because it's essentially a giveaway to the big health insurance companies. Well here's one more reason to oppose it.

The video above tells the story of 29-year-old Quanisha Scott who underwent a partial thyroidectomy to remove a goiter at a hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas. Twelve hours later, she began to develop a shortness of breath and began feeling her neck tighten. Despite complaints to the nurses, her condition was not appropriately monitored or reported to a physician. She went into respiratory arrest and suffered severe brain damage. It was later discovered that she had a hematoma at the site of the surgery. She is now bed-ridden and totally dependent on her mother for care.

Things like this happen to 98,000 Americans every year. If we lose our right to sue bad doctors due to "tort reform" people like Quanisha will be dependent on the tax dollars of the rest of us for care while the doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies that harmed her walk away scot free.

The Senate has indicated (page 210, PDF) they're eager to throw out our right to sue bad doctors as part of the current "health care reform" package. See the excerpt in the full entry.

Disclosure: I'm proud to be helping the American Association for Justice fight for patient's rights.

Mary Williams Walsh | Washington | November 16

NYT -
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York gave up much of its power in high-pressure negotiations with the American International Group’s trading partners last year, according to a government report made public on Monday.

Just two days before the New York Fed paid A.I.G.’s partners 100 cents on the dollar to tear up their contracts with the insurance giant, one bank volunteered to take a modest haircut — but it never got the chance.

UBS, of Switzerland, alone offered to give a break to the New York Fed in the negotiations last November over how to keep A.I.G. from toppling and taking other banks down with it. It would have accepted 98 cents on the dollar.

Rachel Donadio | Rome | November 16

NYT - The 200 women who answered a Rome modeling agency’s advertisement for tall, attractive party guests thought they would be attending an elegant soirée on Sunday. They were — only the host turned out to be the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and instead of hors d’oeuvres he offered them copies of the Koran and urged them to convert to Islam, the Italian news media reported Monday.

The women, all between the ages of 18 and 35, assembled in a Rome hotel before being screened by both metal detectors and the fashion police, who turned away anyone in a miniskirt or provocative clothing, according to Paola Lo Mele, a journalist for the ANSA news agency, who answered the modeling agency’s request and went undercover to the event. The women were each paid $75 to attend.

Gina Kolata | Nov 17

NYT - Most women should start regular breast cancer screening at age 50, not 40, according to new guidelines released Monday by an influential group that provides guidance to doctors, insurance companies and policy makers.

The new recommendations, which do not apply to a small group of women with unusual risk factors for breast cancer, reverse longstanding guidelines and are aimed at reducing harm from overtreatment, the group says. It also says women age 50 to 74 should have mammograms less frequently — every two years, rather than every year. And it said doctors should stop teaching women to examine their breasts on a regular basis.

Just seven years ago, the same group, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, with different members, recommended that women have mammograms every one to two years starting at age 40. It found too little evidence to take a stand on breast self-examinations.

The task force is an independent panel of experts in prevention and primary care appointed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Its new guidelines, which are different from those of some professional and advocacy organizations, are published online in The Annals of Internal Medicine They are likely to touch off yet another round of controversy over the benefits of screening for breast cancer.

Ian Urbina | Nov 17

NYT - Several times every year, Teodoro Nguema Obiang arrives at the doorstep of the United States from his home in Equatorial Guinea, on his way to his $35 million estate in Malibu, Calif., his fleet of luxury cars, his speedboats and private jet. And he is always let into the country.

The nation's doors are open to Obiang, the forest and agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its president, even though federal law enforcement officials believe that "most if not all" of his wealth comes from corruption. The graft is related to the extensive oil and gas reserves discovered more than a decade and a half ago off the coast of his tiny West African country, according to internal Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents.

And the doors are open despite a federal law and a presidential proclamation that prohibit corrupt foreign officials and their families from receiving U.S. visas. The measures require only credible evidence of corruption, not a conviction for it.

Susan Pittman, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement in the State Department, said she was prohibited from discussing specific visa decisions. But other former and current State Department officials said Equatorial Guinea's close ties to the American oil industry are the reason for the lax enforcement of the law. Production of the country's nearly 400,000 barrels of oil a day is dominated by American companies such as ExxonMobil, Hess and Marathon.

"Of course it's because of oil," said John Bennett, U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, adding that Washington has turned a blind eye to the Obiangs' corruption and repression because of its dependence on the country for natural resources. He noted that officials of Zimbabwe are barred from the United States.

Tony Pugh | Washington | Nov 17

McClatchy - The number of U.S. households that are struggling to feed their members jumped by 4 million to 17 million last year, as recession-fueled job losses and increased poverty and unemployment fueled a surge in hunger, a government survey reported Monday.

These "food-insecure" households represent about 49 million people and make up 14.6 percent, or more than one in seven, of all U.S. households. That's the highest rate since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began monitoring the issue in 1995.

Additionally, more than one-third of these struggling families — some 6.7 million households, or 17.2 million people last year — had "very low food security," in which food intake was reduced and eating patterns were disrupted for some family members because of a lack of food.

In phone interviews, more than two-thirds of people with very low food security said they went hungry from time to time, and 27 percent of these adults said they didn't eat at all some days.

These families make up 5.7 percent of U.S. households, again the highest rate since 1995, up from 4.1 percent and 4.7 million households in 2007.

Julia Duin | Baltimore | Nov 16

Washington Times - Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, defended the bishops' involvement in national health care legislation Monday, saying the church must be "leaven" in the debate.

Speaking at the opening of the bishops' annual business meeting, "to limit our teaching or governing to what the state is not interested in would be to betray both the constitution of our country and, much more importantly, the Lord himself," he said.

Not only did USCCB staff and individual bishops play a vital role in getting abortion restrictions into the recently passed House version of the health care overhaul bill, they served notice Monday they will influence the bill's future.

Duff Wilson | Nov 16

NYT - Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.

In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.

The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year.

Drug makers say they have valid business reasons for the price increases. Critics say the industry is trying to establish a higher price base before Congress passes legislation that tries to curb drug spending in coming year.

Maggie Fox | Washington | November 16

Reuters - American squeamishness about talking about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported Monday.

Latest statistics on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis show the three highly treatable infections continue to spread in the United States.