Top Republican Distances Himself From GOP’s Election-Rigging Plan

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) distanced himself from his party’s effort to rig the election by appropriating electoral votes based on gerrymandered Congressional districts, telling MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Friday that he opposes the effort.

Republican party leaders in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan have proposed legislation that would change how most electoral votes are allocated, awarding more electoral votes to the winner of individual Congressional districts, rather than the winner of the state as a whole. Since Republicans plan to implement the proposal in states that are heavily gerrymandered to favor the GOP, the resulting maps would guarantee that Republican candidates would win a majority of each state’s electoral votes, even if the Democratic candidate wins the state as a whole.

A growing number of Republicans have rejected the plan. Barbour has now joined their ranks:

ANDREA MITCHELL (HOST): If it were done nationally, Mitt Romney would have been taking the oath of office on Monday.

BARBOUR: That’s true this time. Other time it might have been just the opposite. I’m a traditionalist myself. I really am a conservative. I’m a little bit skeptical of this. [...]

MITCHELL: Doesn’t it make it look as though the Republicans are trying to sort of game the system? [...]

BARBOUR: As I said, I would not be for it. I don’t think there’s any sort of national movement, and you have sort of convinced me that in Virginia there may not be even state movement. It may be an isolated legislator.

Watch it:

During Barbour’s appearance, Mitchell suggested that Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) would also publicly oppose the election rigging scheme.

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McChrystal: Women will serve in special-forces units including SEALs, Rangers

Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal predicted Sunday that women will eventually become part of special operations units like the Navy SEALs and Army Rangers, saying that including female servicemembers could improve the elite groups’ operations.

McChrystal, the former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he supported the move from the Pentagon this week to lift the ban on women serving in combat.

“I think you’ll see them probably in all of those units,” said McChrystal, who once was an Army Ranger himself.

“You already see them serving in functions around those units: intelligence, pilots and whatnot,” he said. “There are positions that are much better for females, there are things you can do in special operations with females that are more difficult to do with just males. So I think it will come.”

McChrystal noted, however, that there are still plenty of complications surrounding implementing the policy move.

Both he and former CIA Director Michael Hayden said Sunday that the physical standards for combat positions cannot change, even though women have different general fitness standards.

“If the standard is here, and only a small percentage of women could match that standard for reasons that are biological, the standard has to stay there,” Hayden said. “Otherwise you’re risking mission success.”

While the Pentagon lifted the ban on women in combat, it’s still unclear yet whether women will be allowed in special-forces units like the Army Rangers. The Pentagon is giving the military services until 2016 to request that some occupations or units remain closed to women, a decision that the secretary of Defense must agree to.

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Arizona Bill Requires Hospitals To Screen Immigration Status Of Uninsured Patients

Hospitals would need to check the immigration status of uninsured patients under a new bill introduced by an Arizona lawmaker. Rep. Steve Smith’s (R) H.B. 2293 would require hospital staff to “reasonably confirm” patients’ status during check-in or treatment, and immediately report those who do not have the required papers to immigration officials.

Smith claimed it is a hospital’s civic duty to check immigration status:

“I would hope if you witnessed somebody who is not lawfully present in this country taking advantage of, getting, acquiring any benefit or social service or something that they’re not entitled to, or something they’re abusing or neglected, I would hope somebody would pick up the phone and go, ‘Maricopa police, Buckeye police, I think — I’m not sure — but I think this is happening.”’

The Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association has already rejected the attempt to turn hospitals into another front for immigration enforcement: “When does this begin or end?” a spokesman said. “What other industry should be screening their customers for citizenship verification?” The National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights and National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health also called the measure “unconscionable” and legalized “harassment.” With roughly 19 percent of Arizona’s population lacking health insurance, the bill could deter many immigrants and their children from seeking care, as well as burden hospitals.

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FDA approves 3 new diabetes drugs from Takeda

WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved three new formulations of a Takeda Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd. diabetes drug designed to help patients control their blood sugar.

The common ingredient in all three drugs is a new compound called alogliptin, which stimulates the release of insulin, a hormone that controls blood-sugar levels. The FDA approved the drug in stand-alone form under the brand-name Nesina. The drug will also be sold in combination with metformin, under the name Kazano, and with pioglitazone, as Oseni. Metformin is a diabetes drug that has been used for decades. Pioglitazone is a newer diabetes drug sold by Takeda as Actos.

All three new drugs were approved for patients with type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease that affects about 24 million Americans. People with the disease have excessive levels of sugar in their blood, which can lead to heart attacks, kidney problems, blindness and other serious complications.

The FDA created tougher cardiovascular-safety standards for diabetes drugs in December 2008 after concerns were raised about certain treatments such Avandia, which was found to increase the risk of heart attacks.

Last year the patent on Takeda's best-selling diabetes drug Actos expired, allowing generic drugmakers to market cheaper versions. Nesina gives the company a new exclusive medicine in the diabetes market.

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Arizona Bills Require Public School Students To Recite Loyalty Oaths

Public high school students in Arizona will have to “recite an oath supporting the U.S. Constitution” to receive a graduation diploma, if a new bill introduced in the new session of the state legislature is passed and signed into law. The measure, House Bill 2467, was offered by Rep. Bob Thorpe (R), a freshman tea party members who also backs a bill preventing state enforcement of federally enacted gun safety laws. Here is the text of HB 2467:

As written, the bill does not exempt atheist students or those of different faiths from the requirement, though Thorpe has pledged to amend the measure. “In that we had a tight deadline for dropping our bills, I was not able to update the language,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Arizona Republic. “Even though I want to encourage all of our students to understand and respect our Constitution and constitutional form of government, I do not want to create a requirement that students or parents may feel uncomfortable with.”

A separate measure introduced by Thorpe’s colleague would also “require all students in first through 12th grades” “to say the pledge of allegiance each day.” Currently, “schools must set aside time for the pledge each day, but students may choose whether to participate.”

Constitutional experts warn that both proposals are unconstitutional. As American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona Public Policy Director Anjali Abraham explained, “You can’t require students to attend school … and then require them to either pledge allegiance to the flag or swear this loyalty oath in order to graduate. It’s a violation of the First Amendment.”

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How To Convince The NRA That Assault Weapons, Not The Media, Are Responsible For Gun Massacres

Stephen King — best selling author of the very kind of violent books that gun advocates say contribute to gun violence — has penned Guns, a 25-page essay dismissing their criticism, while calling for universal background checks for gun purchases, and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

A self-described “blue-state American” who also owns guns, King is no stranger to how individuals can and do turn to art as inspiration for violence. During the 1990s, no fewer than four shooters read Rage — an early work King wrote in high school years and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman years later — entered their high schools with guns, held students and teachers hostage, and in some cases killed them. The book chronicles how Charlie Decker, a troubled high school student with a “domineering father,” brought a gun to school, killed his algebra teacher, and held his class hostage — only to see his classmates experience a “psychological inversion” and come to his defense.

After copies of Rage were discovered in the possession of multiple high school shooters, King voluntarily pulled the book from publication. He did so not because the thin tome inspired would-be killers to commit unspeakable carnage; rather it acted “as a possible accelerant” for boys who spent time in psych wards pondering suicide or endured the kind of bullying that results in severe medical paranoia. These boys found a “soul brother” in Decker. He gave them “blueprints to express their hate and rage” and for that, King decided, he “had to go.” “You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it,” the author writes in Guns.

But while art that taps into the heart of a troubled soul can “accelerate” violence, there is little evidence that it causes it. Those arguments, often advanced by conservative lawmakers with A ratings from the National Rifle Association — and the NRA itself — “throw popular culture into the debate in the hopes that it’ll be distracting chum to piranhas hungry for scapegoats but reluctant to fight difficult battles to make America safer.” They also avoid any examination of the “state of our own popular culture and the profound fears about justice, disempowerment, and the state of civil society that are reflected in it.”

As King puts it, “To claim that America’s ‘culture of violence’ is responsible for school shootings is tantamount to cigarette company executives declaring that environmental pollution is the chief cause of lung cancer.” Americans consume relatively high levels of gun violence, but we’re not acting out in response to it. Nor are we completely saturating ourselves in it. For instance, King observes that only two of the 10 most popular works of fiction in 2012 featured violence. Just one of the top-grossing movies of 2012 (Skyfall) showed gun killings. Sports, dance, and Mario Brothers are the nation’s most popular video games, and football and detective shows consistently score the highest television ratings.

In the coming days and weeks, gun manufacturers and lobbyists will spend millions convincing American gun owners who actually support sensible regulations that they are “under siege” from President Obama’s government. They’ll argue that the administration’s proposed universal background checks for all gun purchasers and waiting periods are tantamount to big brother keeping tabs on Americans who own firearms, and say that limiting the availability of military-style assault weapons that can fire off tens of bullets in rapid succession without reloading would leave Americans defenseless from home intruders or a government takeover.

They’ll deflect attention from guns and propose expanding access to mental health services, stationing guards in schools, and of course clamping down on the media’s glorification of violence. “One only wishes [NRA Executive VIce President and CEO] Wayne LaPierre and his NRA board of directors could be drafted to some of these [school shooting] scenes, where they would be required to put on booties and rubber gloves and help clean up the blood, the brains, and the chunks of intestine still containing the poor wads of half-digested food that were some innocent bystander’s last meal,” King writes. Maybe then they’ll focus less on the make-believe death in media and the very real destruction that open access to military-style weapons can cause.

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Republicans’ Effort To Rig Electoral College Gets National Backing

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R), who was the chief elections officer when the state experienced massive voting problems in 2004, is planning to lead a national effort to rig the electoral college in favor of the 2016 Republican presidential candidate.

Republicans who hold power in states that have voted Democratic in the last few presidential contests, including Virginia and Pennsylvania, are considering a change to their apportionment of electoral votes. Instead of a winner-take-all system for the state, electoral votes would be doled out by congressional district, using highly-gerrymandered maps. The result is that a state like Pennsylvania, which voted for President Obama by more than 5 percent in 2012, would have given most of its electoral votes to Mitt Romney.

That plan is now receiving national backing, thanks to Blackwell and GOP operative Jordan Gehrke. The two men detailed their effort in an interview with the Atlantic and conceded that the effort could make it easier for Republicans to win the White House:

ATLANTIC: You are a Republican operative, though. And it’s Republican legislators who are pushing this in all the states where it’s come up so far. You can claim this is about policy, but doesn’t it really make it easier for Republicans to win presidential elections?

BLACKWELL & GEHRKE: That could be a byproduct, depending on who drew the lines last and who’s running – a lot of different things. What it’s really about is making sure that more people in more congressional districts get attention.

Though Blackwell and Gehrke argued that allocating electoral votes by congressional district is more representative, that doesn’t mean they support the much simpler, fairer system of a national popular vote. “Abolishing the electoral college is very difficult to do,” they claimed.

What’s both true and sad, though, is that rigging the system to ensure the Republican candidate wins, no matter how Americans actually vote, is far easier to accomplish in Republican-controlled states.

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FDA head and company CEOs cheer bumper haul of new drugs

* Approvals in past 2 years "cause for optimism" -FDA head

* Scientific progress, better diagnostics help productivity

* Pick-up follows lean period for drug industry R&D labs

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Pharmaceutical industry productivity is improving as a more targeted approach to drug development yields dividends and regulators offer speedier decisions on medicines that make a real difference to patients.

That is the view of both the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and drug company CEOs meeting in Davos this week at the World Economic Forum.

"The products that we have approved in the last two years do give us real cause for optimism," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told Reuters.

A total of 39 new drugs won approval last year - a record only beaten in 1996 - up from 30 in 2011, which itself was a marked improvement on the 21 cleared in 2010.

The industry badly needs a winning streak after delivering poor returns for several years due to a wave of patent expiries on older products and a notable failure to bring enough new drugs to market to replace them.

The advance reflects progress in understanding the basic science of many diseases - notably some types of cancer - as well as smarter use of tests to target treatments to specific patient groups based on genetic profile.

"Not only have we been able to approve more new drugs that have real benefits for patients but also classes of drugs that signal where we are going in areas like personalised medicine, where we've been able to use diagnostics to target sub-populations of responders," Hamburg said.

The attitude of the FDA has also helped, according to Novartis CEO Joe Jimenez.

"The FDA has really shifted back to a very disciplined scientific approach to drug approvals, so we are starting to see more drug approvals come through," he said.

These days, however, winning approval for a new medicine is not the whole story. Drug manufacturers also have to fight hard to win a place for their usually pricey new products on lists of treatments covered by insurers or state health services.

The rigour of having to prove the value, as well as clinical effectiveness, of new medicines is helping to make companies more targeted in developing drugs that have a clear edge - even is this involves zeroing in on small, niche markets, said Sanofi Chris Viehbacher.

Discovering new medicines and progressing them through the three required stages of clinical development remains, however, a complex business with a fair dose of serendipity.

"It's not like engineering where the iPhone 5 follows on from the iPhone 4. Coming up with a new drug requires skill, insight and luck," said Merck & Co Ken Frazier.

"But we are on the verge, potentially, of a new wave of pharmaceutical innovation - and I think Merck stands to be at the forefront of that new wave."

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Peter Graff)

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Statement by the President

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For Immediate Release January 24, 2013 Statement by the President

In my State of the Union last year, I urged Congress to take steps to fix the way they do business.  Specifically, I asked them to address the fact that a simple majority is no longer enough to pass anything – even routine business – through the Senate.  And today, I am pleased that a bipartisan group of Senators has agreed to take action. 

Too often over the past four years, a single Senator or a handful of Senators has been able to unilaterally block or delay bipartisan legislation for the sole purpose of making a political point.  At a time when we face critical decisions on a whole range of issues – from preventing further gun violence, to reforming our broken immigration system, to getting our fiscal house in order and creating good paying jobs – we cannot afford unnecessary obstruction.  And I am hopeful that today’s bipartisan agreement will pave the way for the Senate to take meaningful action in the days and weeks ahead.

I also want to thank leaders in Congress for changing the Senate rules in an effort to resurrect the longstanding tradition of considering consensus district court judicial nominations on a more routine basis.  After being approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, my judicial nominees have waited more than three times longer to receive confirmation votes than those of my predecessor, even though the overwhelming majority of my nominees have been confirmed with little, if any, dissent.  These months of unnecessary delay have threatened our judiciary.  Today’s reforms are a positive step towards a fairer and more efficient system of considering district court nominees, and I urge the Senate to treat all of my judicial nominees in the same spirit.

Blog posts on this issue January 26, 2013 5:30 AM ESTWeekly Address: Two Nominees Who Will Fight for the American People

President Obama discusses his nomination of Mary Jo White to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission and Richard Cordray to continue as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

January 25, 2013 5:12 PM ESTWeekly Wrap Up: Our People, Our Future

Here’s a quick glimpse at what happened this week on WhiteHouse.gov.

January 25, 2013 3:01 PM ESTMeet the Next White House Chief of Staff

President Obama taps Denis McDonough to serve as his chief of staff and lead the team at the White House.

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Gingrich dismisses call for assault-weapons ban as ‘propaganda’

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) on Sunday dismissed the term “assault weapon” as “propaganda” and said banning more weapons would not stem gun violence.

“The term ‘assault weapon’ is propaganda,” said Gingrich on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Any true military weapon is illegal, has been illegal since 1934. Somebody’s using an AK-47, they are using an illegal weapon because it is an automatic weapon. We do not allow people to buy automatic weapons unless they have a very strict collector’s license.”

In the wake of last month’s mass shooting at an elementary school in Conn., President Obama is pressing lawmakers to ban the sale of military-style semi-automatic weapons and high capacity clips, as well as institute universal background checks.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) last week introduced a sweeping bill which would ban over 150 different semi-automatic weapons, but the bill faces tough opposition.

Gingrich on Sunday said that proposals to ban such firearms would do little to prevent future shootings.

“The person who killed the most persons – at Virginia Tech – used two pistols. And the fact is that every political attack since John F. Kennedy as president has involved a weapon which would be legal under Sen. Feinstein’s law,” said Gingrich.

“We need to look at facts, not create propaganda,” he added.

Appearing on the same program, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said that the focus on a weapons ban distracted lawmakers from addressing the root causes of gun violence. 

“I understand the senator’s passion on this, but I have to tell you an assault ban is not the answer,” she said of the Feinstein proposal.

“When I hear some of this conversation, I think we are looking at symptoms, we are not looking at root causes,” said Blackburn, who encouraged more attention to mental health issues and security at schools.

“The Speaker is right, you look at what’s actually causing the problem,” she added.  “Don’t just go say ‘we’re going to do an assault weapon ban and that is going to solve the problem.’”

Asked if he would support universal background checks, Gingrich instead pointed to the White House and said they had failed to prosecute those with criminal records caught trying to purchase firearms. 

“Well we have background checks now and there are a substantial number of felons who have actually applied to purchase a gun and the Obama administration to the best of my knowledge has prosecuted virtually none of them,” said Gingrich.

“There’s a parental desire to have the innocent have a more complicated life because of a handful of the guilty, instead of focusing on the guilty,” he said.

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