Forgive Me

My personal preoccupations of the early 80s apparently left me permanently out of sync with the rest of the world in some ways, and I never fell under the spell of the Thriller album. The most recent Michael Jackson song I really enjoy listening to these days is Never Can Say Goodbye, though the love song to the homicidal rat Ben always gets a laugh. For at least the last decade, Michael Jackson has seemed like an amazingly tragic and pathetic spectacle, and I have a tendency to think it rude to gawk at such people.

Cable news obviously thinks differently.

If there is anything I'd want less than another evening of repeating loops of Michael Jackson videos, news footage from the trial, and random vigils in LA, Gary, or Paris, it's got to be Deepak frickin' Chopra talking about Michael Jackson in a split-screen with repeating loops of Michael Jackson videos and news footage. Any minute now they'll be asking the people at the wildlife sanctuary about how Bubbles is reacting to the news.

No cable news for me tonight, I guess.

Just in case you don't know, the House passed the global warming bill, and things are deteriorating in both Iran and Iraq. I'm just sayin'.

Tell Me Again...

why having a 'public option' for health insurance is a bad idea?

Executives of three of the nation's largest health insurers told federal lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday that they would continue canceling medical coverage for some sick policyholders, despite withering criticism from Republican and Democratic members of Congress who decried the practice as unfair and abusive.

The hearing on the controversial action known as rescission, which has left thousands of Americans burdened with costly medical bills despite paying insurance premiums, began a day after President Obama outlined his proposals for revamping the nation's healthcare system.

An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant Inc. canceled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.

It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for rescission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.

At least if the government were involved in my health care, I could complain to my Congressman and maybe do something, or at least have a vote.

The executives -- Richard A. Collins, chief executive of UnitedHealth's Golden Rule Insurance Co.; Don Hamm, chief executive of Assurant Health and Brian Sassi, president of consumer business for WellPoint Inc., parent of Blue Cross of California -- were courteous and matter-of-fact in their testimony.

But they would not commit to limiting rescissions to only policyholders who intentionally lie or commit fraud to obtain coverage, a refusal that met with dismay from legislators on both sides of the political aisle.

Imagine having auto insurance, and then, when you are in a crash, being denied coverage because you once took your car to have it washed and waxed.

A Texas nurse said she lost her coverage, after she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, for failing to disclose a visit to a dermatologist for acne.

The sister of an Illinois man who died of lymphoma said his policy was rescinded for the failure to report a possible aneurysm and gallstones that his physician noted in his chart but did not discuss with him.

The committee's investigation found that WellPoint's Blue Cross targeted individuals with more than 1,400 conditions, including breast cancer, lymphoma, pregnancy and high blood pressure. And the committee obtained documents that showed Blue Cross supervisors praised employees in performance reviews for rescinding policies.

One employee, for instance, received a perfect 5 for "exceptional performance" on an evaluation that noted the employee's role in dropping thousands of policyholders and avoiding nearly $10 million worth of medical care.

Surely, insurance companies should only be worried about ignoring intentional fraud, right?

Late in the hearing, Stupak, the committee chairman, put the executives on the spot. Stupak asked each of them whether he would at least commit his company to immediately stop rescissions except where they could show "intentional fraud."

The answer from all three executives:

"No."

What Is It With These Guys?

The truth about another conservative stalwart revealed:

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), who had been considering a 2012 presidential campaign, has now admitted to an extra-marital affair, and will hold a press conference later today in Nevada to explain it further.

Chris Cillizza reports that the affair took place between December 2007 and August 2008, with a woman who worked for Ensign's re-election campaign and his Battle Born leadership PAC. The Associated Press reports that the woman was married to one of Ensign's Senate staffers.

I guess that might help explain why he thought we needed an Act of Congress for the Defense of Marriage. If he's willing to sleep with the spouse of one of his staffers, who knows what might have happened if that spouse was a man? Eeek!

What A Concept!

Charging someone, and then bringing them to trial...what a novel idea! I wonder who came up with that.

WASHINGTON – U.S. authorities have brought the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to the United States, flying him into New York to face trial for bombing U.S. embassies, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

The department said Ahmed Ghailani arrived in the early morning hours Tuesday. U.S. Marshals took custody of Ghailani from his military jailers and brought him to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Ghailani is scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court later Tuesday.

Despite the paranoia of the Congress, it appears that this prisoner has no super-powers, and that the US Marshall Service is fully capable of controlling him, even though (gasp) he is now on mainland soil.

Silver Lining(?)

It sure was nice of George W. Bush to complete two terms without capturing Osama bin Laden, if only so that we could actually get proof that GOP claims about al Qaeda being happy if Obama got elected could be proven wrong.

Shortly after Obama arrived Al Jazeera television aired a recording by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in which he said the U.S. president had planted seeds for "revenge and hatred" toward the United States in the Muslim world.

Bin Laden said Obama was continuing in the steps of his predecessor George W. Bush and told Americans to be prepared for the consequences of the White House's policies.

Moral Quandry

Is it wrong to feel gleeful watching the Sotomayor nomination forcing the Right into fits of uncontrollable racist, sexist lunacy, dialing their inanity up to 11, right where everyone can see?

Am I wrong to enjoy the way that major Republican rhetorical stalwarts like Newt, Rush, G. Gordon, Glen and Karl spewing the most dreadful, hateful nonsense just puts them in the worst light? Should I look forward so to the way their comments will look when Judge Sotomayor actually appears at a hearing, and comes across as a calm, intelligent and generally impressive nominee?

Is it right to think that it might, actually, be a good thing that the American people are getting a chance to see the leaders of the modern Republican party in their most rabid, full-throated hateful howl, and reject their insane bigotry?

Attention To Detail

WASHINGTON – New questions surfaced Wednesday about the accuracy of a CIA document meant to settle who in Congress knew about severe interrogation methods approved by the Bush administration.

Three new errors appeared to emerge in the CIA's matrix of 40 congressional briefings on so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.

Oops.

The CIA chart states that a Senate staffer, Chris Mellon, attended a briefing on July 15, 2004. However, Mellon told The Associated Press that he left the Senate in April 2004 and did not attend the briefing.

On Wednesday, CIA spokesman George Little said the CIA has reviewed its record and agrees that Mellon was erroneously listed as having attended the 2004 briefing.

Well, I'm sure it was just one small mistake.

The CIA chart also shows former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss attended a March 8, 2005, briefing as a member of Congress. However, Goss was at that time the director of the CIA. He took that job in November 2004.

"On the March 8, 2005, briefing, we were true to the records," Little said. "Although Mr. Goss was CIA director at that time, the underlying records list him as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. There's a record of an earlier briefing that lists Rep. (Pete) Hoekstra as chairman."

On Tuesday, House Appropriations Chairman Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., said that one of his committee staff members was erroneously listed as attending a briefing in September 2006. The CIA stands by its record on that count.

Obey's spokeswoman, Kirstin Brost, said the CIA was wrong.

"Our records are clear. Our records are detailed. They are mistaken," she said.

Yeah, well, it's not like we're counting on these guys to provide accurate information about things in the world, right? I mean, when has knowing who was meeting whom when ever been important in determining policy? I'm sure it must be hard gathering accurate details, what with having to look at their own records and also publicly available documents. It's not like they're some kind of intelligence gathering agency, for goodness sake.

Oh. Wait.

Uh-oh.

His Lips Were Moving

Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel of McClatchy News, who did some of the rare good reporting in the run-up to Iraq, took the time to truthsquad Cheney's speech yesterday. Guess what they found?

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.

In his address to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy organization in Washington, Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."

He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."

In a statement April 21, however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.

Much more where that came from.