WASHINGTON -- Swedish researchers report that antioxidants make cancers worse in mice. It's already known that the antioxidant beta-carotene exacerbates lung cancers in humans. Not exactly what you'd expect given the extravagant -- and incessant -- claims you hear made about the miraculous effects of antioxidants.
WASHINGTON -- By early 2011, writes former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he had concluded that President Obama "doesn't believe in his own [Afghanistan] strategy, and doesn't consider the war to be his."
WASHINGTON -- First order of business for the returning Congress: The No Bailout for Insurance Companies Act of 2014.
Make it one line long: "Sections 1341 and 1342 of the Affordable Care Act are hereby repealed."
End of bill. End of bailout. End of story.
WASHINGTON -- The lie of the year, according to Politifact, is "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it." But the story of the year is a nation waking up to just how radical Obamacare is -- which is why it required such outright deception to get it passed in the first place.
WASHINGTON -- In explaining the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, President Obama told Chris Matthews he had discovered that "we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly."
An interesting discovery to makeafterhaving consigned the vast universe of American medicine, one-sixth of the U.S. economy, to the tender mercies of the agency bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Internal Revenue Service.
"Even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got."
-- Bill Clinton, Nov. 12
WASHINGTON -- So the former president asserts that the current president continues to dishonor his "you like your plan, you can keep your plan" pledge. And calls for the Affordable Care Act to be changed, despite furious White House resistance to the very idea.
"Obama to campaign to ensure health law's success"
-- The New York Times, Nov. 4
WASHINGTON -- The Obamacare website doesn't work. Hundreds of thousands of insured Americans are seeing their plans summarily terminated. Millions more face the same prospect next year. Confronted with a crisis of governance, how does President Obama respond?
He campaigns.
WASHINGTON -- Every disaster has its moment of clarity. Physicist Richard Feynman dunks an O-ring into ice water and everyone understands instantly why the shuttle Challenger exploded. This week, the Obamacare O-ring froze for all the world to see: Hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters went out to people who had been assured a dozen times by the president that "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan. Period."
WASHINGTON -- For all the hyped indignation over GOP "anarchism," there has been remarkable media reticence about the president's intransigence. He has refused to negotiate anything unless the Republicans fully fund the government and raise the debt ceiling -- unconditionally.
WASHINGTON -- The Obamacare/shutdown battle has spawned myriad myths. The most egregious concern the substance of the fight, the identity of the perpetrators and the origins of the current eruption.
