Democratic Senator: ‘We Do Have Support’ For An Assault Weapons Ban

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) pledged to include an assault weapons ban in any legislation designed to improve gun safety and insisted, during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, that “we do have support” for such a provision.

The California Democrat, who introduced legislation banning 150 assault weapons earlier this week, conceded that the ban would present an “uphill fight,” but said that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has promised that she could introduce the proposal as an amendment should it not be included in the comprehensive gun safety bill that advances to the Senate floor:

FEINSTEIN: This has been an uphill fight. This has never been easy. This is the hardest of the hard. Now, will it only be assault weapons? No. Most likely there will be a package put together. If assault weapons is left out of the package and I’m a member of the Judiciary number two in seniority. I’ve been assured by the Majority Leader I will be able to do it as an amendment on the floor. Which is the way I did it in 1993. So that doesn’t particularly bother me. [...]

Do military style assault weapons belong on the streets of our cities? And the answer, according to the United States Conference of Mayors, according to the major chiefs of police, according to the largest police organization in the world, is absolutely no. So we do have support. Don’t mistake it.

Feinstein attributed the tepid support for a ban in the Senate to the National Rifle Association, which she called “venal” and said will come after Senators and “put large amounts of money together to defeat you.”

The senator also agreed that armed security may help prevent school shootings, noting that “one-third of the schools in America today have school guards.” But, she insisted, “having school guards really isn’t the whole answer. The more you have these weapons, these military style weapons that with the single stock of the AR-15 can be made fully automatic, the minute you have it in the Sandy Hook killer’s hands, you have a devastating weapon.”

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Michigan Republican: GOP Killed Election-Rigging Plan in 2012 Because They Thought It Would Hurt Romney

Republicans in several blue states are currently considering a plan to rig the next presidential election by changing the way electoral votes are allocated to candidates. Under the Republican Plan, key blue states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania would assign electoral votes one-each to the winner of the state’s heavily gerrymandered congressional districts. If this plan had been in effect in Michigan last year, Mitt Romney would have won 9 of the state’s 16 electoral votes, despite losing the state as a whole by nearly 10 points.

Although the Republican Plan is picking up steam among GOP lawmakers right now, several of them backed the plan during the 2012 election cycle in an attempt to rig that race for Mitt Romney. According to Michigan Rep. Pete Lund (R), however, Republicans in Michigan decided not to back the plan largely because they misjudged Romney’s chances of winning Michigan:

Rep. Pete Lund, R-Shelby Township, confirmed this week he plans to reintroduce legislation that would award all but two of Michigan’s 16 Electoral College votes according to congressional district results. The remaining two would go to the candidate winning the statewide majority.

“I believe it’s more representative of the people — closer to the actual vote,” said Lund, who proposed a similar bill in 2012. “It got no traction last year. There were people convinced Romney was going to win and this might take (electoral) votes from him.”

So Republicans were unwilling to back Lund’s plan when they thought it would benefit Democrats. Now that it’s clear that the plan rigs the election for Republicans, however, it is suddenly experiencing a renaissance.

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WashPost And AP: Obama Is ‘Liberal’ Because He Agrees With Most Americans We Need More Climate Action

This Washington Post headline sums up so much that is wrong with the media and politics today:
I understand why fossil-fuel-funded conservatives assert that climate change is “liberal.” By why does the Associated Press and WashPost fall into that trap?

I guess it’s true, as Stephen Colbert famously said, “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” See also David Frum Tweets: ‘Horrible Possibility: If The Geeks Are Right About Ohio, Might They Also Be Right About Climate?’ [Though I'll leave it to others to explain just why it is liberal to want to let women be (officially) in combat!]

These remarks in Obama’s inaugural are, apparently, what the AP and Washington Post consider liberal:

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.

Now even Rasmussen, a firm with a well-known conservative bias, found in a poll the day before the election that 68% of American voters see global warming as a “serious problem.”

Uber-wonk Nate Silver dismantles the media’s lame frame in his look “at the most recent polling on some of the agenda items Mr. Obama laid out:”:

The PollingReport.com database includes two polls on global warming conducted after the Nov. 6 presidential election. An Associated Press-GfK poll in the field from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3 found that 78 percent of respondents said they believed the planet had warmed over the past 100 years, and 49 percent said they thought global warming would be a “very serious” problem for the United States if left unaddressed (31 percent said they thought it would be “somewhat serious”).

Fifty-seven percent of the 1,002 adults surveyed said the United States government should do “a great deal” or “quite a bit” on global warming.

A United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll conducted Nov. 8 to 11 found that 57 percent of adults said they thought global warming was increasing the likelihood of storms like Hurricane Sandy.

I guess liberals are now a (silent) majority in this country!

Even the WashPost‘s own economic and White House reporter, Zachary A. Goldfarb, mocks this media spin in his piece, “Obama’s daring liberal agenda is neither daring nor liberal. Discuss”:

In his speech, by contrast, Obama hewed closely to public opinion. He defended “the commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security” — but did not propose expanding the safety net.

“Judged on an absolute scale, going back to Roosevelt, that’s a pretty centrist or conservative position: ‘I’m opposed to cutting it,’?” said James Stimson, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Back in the 1970s, the two parties jostled about who could be more generous in dispersing Social Security.”

… Obama’s call to battle climate change in his second term underscores a similar phenomenon. His position sounds liberal because it appeases the environmental base of the Democratic Party and because Republicans have increasingly opposed efforts to stem global warming. But there wasn’t always such an ideological gap between the parties. In the 2008 presidential race, Obama and his opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), had almost exactly the same plan to help solve the problem of a warming planet.

Looking at this history and today’s opinion polls, it would seem pretty easy to find consensus in America on a lot of big issues — not just “liberal” or “conservative” solutions.

Then again, in Washington, everything needs a label.

Yes, well, the media in particular need a label. Heck, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, where I work, is routinely called ”liberal leaning” by the media because we support things like climate action.

Goldfarb notes, “the central mechanism of Obamacare — the individual mandate, which Republicans blasted as a massive liberal exercise of power — began as a conservative idea.” And cap-and-trade was actually first put into law for controlling pollution by President George H. W. Bush.

Obama is basically pushing a moderate Republican agenda. It’s just that there aren’t any modern Republicans left, much as we don’t have any “below average temperature” years any more. Shifting baselines, indeed.

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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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