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Conservatives in the Ohio House this week blocked a move widely viewed as an attempt by Governor John Kasich to set aside money he could later spend on Medicaid expansion without legislative approval. The version of House Bill 483 (HB 483) passed by the Ohio Senate included a last-minute change to move as much as $300 million in surplus state revenue to the state Medicaid Reserve Fund. Legislators feared this was an effort by the Kasich Administration to circumvent the General Assembly for spending on the Obamacare Medicaid expansion when an existing appropriation expires in mid-2015. ... Kasich, a Republican,...

With the recent announcement by NASA that the 36 year-old spacecraft Voyager 1 has officially entered interstellar space at a distance from the Sun about four times further than Neptune's orbit, and with Voyager 2 not far behind, it seems worthwhile to explore how humans managed to fling objects so far into space. Interplanetary spacecraft often use a maneuver called a gravity assist in order to reach their targets. Voyager 2 famously used gravity assists to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the late 1970s and 1980s. Cassini used two assists at Venus and one each at Earth and...

The House Budget Committee Monday initiated the process that will allow the Senate to consider health care reform under special rules which ban Senate filibusters and require a simple majority to approve the measure. The House Budget Committee Monday initiated the process that will allow the Senate to consider health care reform under special rules which ban Senate filibusters and require a simple majority to approve the measure. The budget panel approved the reconciliation resolution 21 to 16. Two Democrats, Reps. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., and Chet Edwards, D-Texas, voted against the resolution. Both voted against the health care bill in...

For the first time, Russia and Iran will hold a joint naval maneuver in the Caspian Sea, The Iranian Mehr News Agency reported Wednesday. According to the report, the maneuver will include 30 Russian and Iranian ships, as well as helicopters. A senior official in the Iranian ports authority was quoted by the report as saying that the maneuver would increase the coordination between the two countries, and focus on search and rescue operations and the prevention of pollution.

Slipping in the polls? Concerned that Americans may be paying more attention to the declining economy -- and even supporting economic regulation again -- than to your own stellar leadership abilities? What's a Republican presidential nominee to do? If you're named John McCain, the answer became apparent yesterday afternoon -- make the solution to the economic crisis all about you. Suspend your campaign. Pull out of tomorrow's debate -- a trivial exercise merely allowing Americans to judge the two candidates side by side. Change the terms of the nation's economic discussion from the course we should take, and the defects...

Mission controllers for NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander decided Saturday afternoon, May 24, to forgo the second-to-last opportunity for adjusting the spacecraft's flight path. Phoenix is so well on course for its Sunday-evening landing on an arctic Martian plain that the team decided it was not necessary to do a trajectory correction 21 hours before landing. However, the team left open the option of a correction maneuver eight hours before landing, if warranted by updated navigational information expected in the intervening hours. Sunday at 4:53 p.m. Pacific Time is the first possible time for confirmation that Phoenix has landed. The landing...

WASHINGTON, July 19, 2006 – Evacuating thousands of Americans from Lebanon is an extremely complicated undertaking, but one that servicemembers train to accomplish, Defense Department officials said here today. American servicemembers have been involved in getting U.S. citizens out of danger since the founding of the republic. Before the current non-combatant evacuation order - or NEO - for Lebanon, U.S. servicemembers helped evacuate people from Liberia in 1993, Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, Indonesia after the tsunami in 2005, Liberia again in 2004, Panama in 1989 and Saigon in 1975. Each of these NEO evacuations had different causes and different...

SACRAMENTO — Facing a potentially narrow defeat in the Assembly, Bay Area and Los Angeles lawmakers used an eleventh-hour political maneuver late Wednesday to catapult their landmark doctor-assisted suicide bill into the Senate. The move, called a "gut and amend," which transfers the legislation into a Senate bill, bypassed a Friday deadline for passage out of the house of origin and keeps the measure alive. The proposal has triggered widespread, emotional debate, with major forces lining up on either side. In committee hearings and behind the scenes, the clash has grown for months to the point where numerous Assembly members...

China-Pakistan Joint Military Maneuver(08/06/2004, photos)

Whatever it Takes: Redlegs and Riflemen December 2003 By Maj. Peter K. Bacon "Shoot, move and communicate." This three-part catch phrase is the key to tactical success in combat operations. Combined with the five elements of accurate predicted fire, they form the basis of the tactical and technical training of every junior leader in Field Artillery. The officer's basic course and career course, as well as the basic noncommissioned officer's course and advanced course, drill leaders in the understanding of these skills and their practice by professional soldiers. The majority of field training addresses tactical and technical problems related...