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Fix Healthcare? Define “Fix” A couple years ago, the WaPo OpEd page carried an odd piece of bi-partisan puffery from Sens Bill Frist (R-TN) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) – now both potential 2008 presidential candidates. As experts on healthcare – Dr. Frist’s daddy founded HCA, which made him filthy rich, while Clinton was appointed in 1993 by her hubby to put her estimable cattle futures investing skills to work revamping America’s broken, overpriced, and heartless healthcare system. The following quote isn’t news to those of us who aren’t privileged enough to have private healthcare coverage paid for by the federal...

WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and other senators yesterday announced an agreement on legislation to open more federal waters to oil and natural-gas exploration. With lawmakers under pressure to help ease fuel prices, the agreement was presented as a breakthrough on stalled energy legislation. It would allow drilling in an area of the eastern Gulf of Mexico that is rich in natural gas, and open the way for coastal states to share in royalty revenue that otherwise would go to the federal government. Addressing Florida lawmakers' concerns, the agreement includes a ban on energy development within 125 miles...

In a letter to the president, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) urged Bush on Friday to intensify efforts to put interceptor missiles at a Europe site. ...

At a Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center just a few miles from my office in the U.S. Capitol, you can glimpse a piece of American medicine's future. Sitting at an ordinary desktop computer, Dr. Ned Evans hits a few keys on the keyboard and clicks his mouse a few times. Sample patient data spill out: X-ray images, lab notes, and blood pressure numbers. "Everything I might want, everything I need, I can see right here," he says. "It's a seamless part of life. It lets me do just about everything better." And when the New England Journal of Medicine...

The immigration bill I voted for in the Senate started the United States down the road to a much better immigration system. But it's not finished. In its broad outlines, I support the comprehensive approach that the Senate bill takes. History has taught us that immigration reform measures cannot work in isolation. Simply strengthening physical border security or beginning a guest worker program will not fix the deep, underlying problems in America's immigration system. Any bill Congress sends to the president must enhance border security, create an operational temporary worker program, provide for work-site enforcement, and address the status of...

Senator Robert Byrd, 88, one of Congress's most eloquent and outspoken critics of the US military presence in Iraq, became the US Senate's longest-serving member. The frail octogenarian who hobbles through the corridors of the Senate with the aid of a cane in each hand was first elected to the legislature's upper chamber in 1958. Known for his florid oratory, in recent years he has given numerous speeches from the Senate floor against the upward spiraling cost of rebuilding Iraq and the US motives for invading that country. He has represented the eastern coal-mining state of West Virginia the Senate...

Weekend Talk Show *Preview* for 5/27 - 5/28/06 (not the live thread)The main message is the Sunday Shows.  Message 1 will be the Saturday Shows and message 2 will be the show guest links post.  Then I'll post the ping list.ABC This Week (George Stephanopoulos) Meme: The power of the MSM is unassailable!watch as they destroy the evil right wingers and crown the good progressives while blaming everything on the United States (It's what they do best) Topics: Reports of a massacre in Haditha, IraqThe immigration debate Guests Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. Duncan Hunter doesn't realize it yet, but he's...

The best-known members of Congress aren't necessarily the most powerful. The Democrats' last presidential candidate, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, for example, is ranked 61st in terms of clout among the Senate's 100 members, according to a new analysis. A much junior colleague and likely competitor for the party's White House nomination in 2008, New York Sen. and former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, ranks 41st. Both are well behind lesser-known Republican Reps. Jerry Lewis of California and Don Young of Alaska, respectively chairmen of the House Appropriations and Transportation committees and listed as the third and fourth most powerful House...

Weekend Talk Show *Preview* for 5/13 - 5/14 (not the live thread)The main message is the Sunday Shows.  Message 1 will be the Saturday Shows and message 2 will be the show guest links post.  Then I'll post the ping list.ABC This Week (George Stephanopoulos) Meme: It's Mother's Day - they want the day off to be with Mom.Put Biden and Hagel on... it's autopilot time... we can phone this one in!We say that the NSA programs are all bad, therefore they're bad.  Don't listen to anyone else.See?  We're not being mean to (Laura) Bush, which means we're fair and...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Faced with growing pressure from Southern states, the Bush administration wants the military to come up with ideas to help solve security problems along the U.S. border with Mexico. In back-to-back moves this week, the Pentagon began exploring ways to lend support at the Southern border, while the House on Thursday voted to allow the Homeland Security Department in limited cases to use soldiers in that region. At the Pentagon, Paul McHale, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, asked officials to offer options for the use of military resources and troops -- particularly the National...

Senate leaders say they have reached a deal to revive a broad immigration bill that could provide millions of illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens. The agreement doesn't involve provisions of the law, but it does end, for now, a lingering political standoff. The agreement brokered by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., breaks a political stalemate that has lingered for weeks. Key to the agreement is who will be negotiating a compromise with the House and its tough enforcement-only bill. The House passed much more strict immigration legislation in December. It...

by Mark Finkelstein May 2, 2006 Katie Couric put on a display of industrial-strength umbrage this morning when Bill Frist suggested the soon-to-be CBS anchor is opposed to drilling in ANWR. In the wake of yesterday's Today show segment on Frist's proposal for a $100 gas tax rebate in which Matt Lauer gave respectful treatment to Rush Limbaugh's suggestion that the rebate amounted to treating taxpayers like ladies of the night, Frist must have known that he was walking into the lion's den this morning. At one point, Katie hit Frist with excerpts from two letters to the editor of...

by Mark Finkelstein May 1, 2006 Since we had snow - Tony Snow - in April, why not another unseasonable event - Matt Lauer citing Rush Limbaugh, if not approvingly, then certainly as a respectable source for purposes of making a point? The issue was high gas prices, and the pandering band-aid some in Congress have proposed in the way of a $100 tax rebate. Today displayed this quote from El Rushbo, from his show of this past Friday: "Instead of buying us off and treating us like we're a bunch of w----s, just solve the problem." If Lauer did...

by Mark Finkelstein April 25, 2006 Have a look at the two screen captures from this morning's shows. Same issue, different takes. Good Morning America is apparently sure that gas price gouging exists, and wants to stop it. 'Today' is agnostic, simply posing the question whether gouging is going on. But when you turn to the substance of the two segments, there was one consistency: neither show adduced any evidence of gouging. Not a scintilla to show that oil companies are in fact colluding. And without collusion there can be no sustained gouging, since any company that pushed prices higher...

HARRY THE GREATWASHINGTON -- The talk of Washington during the first week of the congressional Easter recess was how Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has seized control of the Senate despite a 10-seat advantage by the Republicans.Just before the recess began, Reid blocked immigration reform legislation scheduled by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Earlier, the minority leader had torpedoed asbestos litigation reform, also put on the Senate floor by Frist. No minority leader has so dominated the Senate since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1953-54.Actually, Frist had turned over floor management on both immigration and asbestos litigation to the Judiciary Committee...

WASHINGTON -- The talk of Washington during the first week of the congressional Easter recess was how Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has seized control of the Senate despite a 10-seat advantage by the Republicans. Just before the recess began, Reid blocked immigration reform legislation scheduled by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

The following statement was issued to clarify the felony provision in H.R. 4437. America is a nation with borders and borders matter. We are a nation of citizens and citizenship matters. We are also a nation of laws and laws matter. We have an important immigrant heritage and honoring that heritage matters. In December, the House of Representatives passed a strong border security bill aimed at securing our borders and preventing illegal immigration. However, on December 16, 2005, there were 191 House Democrats who voted to oppose House Republican efforts to reduce the crime of unlawful presence in the United...

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Journal Editorial Report (Paul Gigot) - FNC show page Meme: The Republicans are doomed if they do and doomed if they don't on immigration Topics: The Republican brawl over immigration: An interview with pollster Matthew Dowd on the politics of reform (Opinion Journal web site)Journal editors handicap the showdown between President Bush and GOP restrictionists. (Opinion Journal web site)Immigration reform and the Hispanic vote: Are hard-line Republicans jeopardizing the GOP's future as a majority party for short-term gains this November? (FNC web site) Guests Matthew Dowd I used to work for George Bush, now I work the Ahnuld on his...

E-mail Author Send to a Friend Version March 17, 2006, 1:16 a.m. Securing America’s Borders It’s a national-security issue. By Senator Bill Frist America needs secure borders. Right now, we don't have them. Every day thousands of people violate our frontiers. We don't know their identities and, quite often, we can't stop them. As a nation of immigrants who honor the rule of law, we must secure our borders before we can reform our immigration policies. That's why I introduced the Securing America's Borders Act Thursday night. The bill will take our first step towards a safer and more...