As this election season is heating up, so are attacks on Obama’s health care reform. Today in the Senate, Republicans tried and failed to weaken the law’s funding, while in Florida a judge heard initial arguments in the second state challenge to the law. As FSRN’s Jacob Fenston reports, both challenges focus on the law’s effect on small businesses.
President Obama is looking for ways to boost the economy: he wants to extend some $130 billion in tax breaks to businesses, and invest billions more in roads and railways. As FSRN’s Jacob Fenston reports, these proposals should have bipartisan appeal, but still face a tough road ahead in Congress.
The Senate has yet to act on the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy despite a push from President Obama to repeal it. Meanwhile, the military continues to dismiss “mission-critical” personnel. That’s according to new military data, which finds women are dismissed at a much higher rate than men. FSRN’s Jacob Fenston reports.
Virginia’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, has been at the center of the national health care debate for months. He filed a lawsuit to stop reform immediately after the federal legislation passed in March. Yesterday, a judge in Richmond ruled that challenge could move forward in the courts. Now Cuccinelli is stepping into the immigration debate. Yesterday he released a legal opinion saying local law enforcement can inquire about immigration status when stopping people for other offenses. FSRN’s Jacob Fenston has more.
The Obama Administration wants to make it easier for the FBI to access people’s internet activity in the course of an investigation. The proposal would allow the FBI to force telecom companies to turn over information about their customers’ Internet activity if it’s part of a terrorism investigation. And they could access the data before a judge gives approval. FSRN’s Jacob Fenston reports.
The Defense Department can’t account for billions of dollars used in reconstruction efforts in Iraq. That’s according to an audit out today by the Inspector General for Iraq reconstruction. FSRN’s Jacob Fenston has more.
A portrait of former Bay Area Congressman Norman Mineta now hangs in Washington’s National Portrait Gallery. Jacob Fenston reports.
During World War II, the French national railway transported some 75,000 Jews to Nazi death camps. This still strikes a sensitive nerve for some Holocaust survivors. This month, a subsidiary of that railway took over operation of a commuter train in northern Virginia and survivors are upset, as Jacob Fenston reports.
A bill that would give Native American tribes more control over law enforcement on tribal land is poised to become law. The Tribal Law and Order Act passed in the House yesterday, and has already cleared the Senate. The bill’s supporters say it will help reduce and prosecute violent crime – and eventually decrease sexual assault against women. FSRN’s Jacob Fenston Reports.
At a hearing in Washington today, Senators grilled federal scientists on the use of chemical dispersants in the Gulf oil spill. EPA and NOAA officials say they still don’t know the long-term effects of these chemicals, or whether they are contaminating sea food. FSRN’s Jacob Fenston reports.