Salon

Waxman needs to realize that healthcare, environmentalism and the labor movement are intertwined. He would do well to work for a single-payer plan that relieves the burden of healthcare costs on automakers.

Waxman is now chair of the committee that has jurisdiction over HR 676. If you live in Waxman's district, please contact him and ask him to cosponsor HR 676.

All these Democrats need to understand that without the UAW they would still be the minority party and John McCain would be president. Now is the time for them to show themselves to be worthy of all that UAW members have done for them.

Insurance Cancellation Questions Could Spread Beyond California

Today’s Health Blog jargon of the day is rescission, the insurance industry’s practice of revoking individual insurance policies because of health-related mistakes or omissions on the application for coverage. ...

... Now it looks like the push-back against rescission may be spreading. Henry Waxman, a Democratic California Congressman, held a hearing on the subject yesterday and said his oversight committee plans to investigate the issue nationally.

 Read more…

President Bush pulled an odd executive maneuver when he claimed a "pocket veto" of H.R. 1585, the "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008."

He claimed a pocket veto, while technically Bush vetoed the bill under the Constitution. In the president's Memorandum of Disapproval, he gave one main reason: his objection to Section 1083 of the legislation.

Call me crazy (or just plain realistic), but I'm reluctant to take our dear president's word as to his actual motive(s) for such a strange method of vetoing the bill.

There just might be more to it.   Read more…

Henry Waxman (Actual Member in Good Standing of the Democratic Party, representing the Golden State) is interested in how the EPA arrived at a decision to not protect California's environment as much as Californians would like to...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., sent a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson demanding "all documents relating to the California waiver request, other than those that are available on the public record."

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Come on! Don't you get it:

Vice President Cheney's office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee yesterday.

Cheney's office argued that it is exempt from the rules in this case because it is not strictly an executive branch agency. [although the President is!]

Now Waxman:

Which Henry Waxman does so very deftly:

"We want to return to civility and bipartisanship," Waxman said. "Legislation ought to be based on evidence, not ideology."

And if we can manage the discourse so that being "evidence-based" and "non-ideological" is how the words Civil and Bipartisan get redefined, then I am all for it.