The Health Care Reform Debate: Shame of a Superpower

by Nomad

It’s often asked how people can vote against their own best interests. As a social phenomena, this strange, pathetic quirk of democracy is being played out before our eyes in the healthcare debate. 

For a nation that once prided itself in being a leader among nations, with a system of governance to be admired and imitated, the whole thing has been one embarrassment after another.

First the good news.

According to provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare, health insurers that covered large groups were required to spend at least 85 cents out of every dollar on medical care or “activities that improve health care quality.”

This provision became effective last year and its implementation is now producing real results. Insurers who spend more than allowed on expenses other than patient care will be required to compensate policy holders. Meaning, policyholders can expect to see a rebate check in the mail before August 1 2012. 

Strip Search: the Supreme Court's Attack on the Fourth Amendment

by Nomad

In yet another questionable ruling, the Supreme Court has decided in a 5-4 vote that police departments have every right to demand a strip search from any person they arrested, even for minor offenses, “before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband.” 

To clarify (somewhat) the meaning of the terms: According to Daphne Ha, writing for the Fordham Law Review:

A strip search is “[a] search of a person conducted after that person’s clothes have been removed, the purpose usu[ally] being to find any contraband the person might be hiding.”

Strip searches generally do not involve scrutiny of body cavities. However, policies in correctional facilities tend to include visual body cavity searches under the broad term “strip searches,” and only distinguish between visual and physical body cavity searches. This definitional problem is aggravated when courts describe strip search policies without clarifying whether a search includes a visual search of body cavities.

Michele Bachmann's Constitutional Classes: Spring Training for the Minor Leagues?

by Nomad

Normally when a Republic as great as the United States elects a citizen to a high office, the public expects that person to be politically "fully-developed." Naturally we don't expect to have to give classes to teach them what they should already be familiar with, such as, for example, the laws of the land or the basic principles upon which that republic was founded, namely the Constitution. And we certainly don't expect the American taxpayers to foot the bill for these remedial classes. 
Yet, apparently Rep. Michele Bachmann thinks that new members of Congress - read, Tea Party members - need some indoctrination into the the extreme far right's world view.