Reps. Luis Gutierrez and Jeff Flake ended months of hyped speculation when they debuted their comprehensive immigration reform bill. The two had been working with Sens. John McCain and Ted Kennedy on a bill to kick off debate on the supersensitive issue this year. Negotiations fell apart in the Senate, however, when Republicans not included in the deal–such as ranking Judiciary Committee member Sen. Arlen Specter–took their gripes to the White House. That left the House, unexpectedly, to take the first steps forward on reform.
If you do a Google search for isotretinoin, also known as Accutane, a new Food and Drug Administration website is apt to figure high among your hits. The site warns consumers about the risks of buying the highly potent prescription acne medication and its generic versions–Amnesteem, Claravis, and Sotret–over the Internet. FDA officials were prompted to act by concerns that people might be seriously endangering their health by taking the drug–and possibly substandard formulations–without a doctor's guidance.
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/article.php?id=LJS2007032201 University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato in his Crystal Ball blog takes a look at demographers' predictions of the political effect of the reapportionments following the censuses of 2010, 2020,and 2030. Bottom line: The Bush 2004 states will gain 17 electoral votes; the Kerry 2004 states will lose 17 electoral votes. (Sabato assumes that the District of Columbia will gain 1 electoral vote; http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneblog/archives/070322/will_the_distri.htm, I disagree.) According to these projections, Florida will gain 9 electoral votes, Texas 8, Arizona 5, California 3, Nevada and North Carolina 2 each. New York will lose 6 electoral votes, Ohio and Pennsylvania 4 each, Illinois 3, Massachusetts and Michigan 2 each. The lineup of electoral votes will look very different from today, and very different from what prevailed in the 1960 election (which was determined by the 1950 census), the first election I followed closely. Consider the figures below for what are projected to be the dozen largest states:
AP - Two Democratic presidential candidates broke previous fundraising records during the first three months of the year, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton setting a high bar of $26 million in new contributions for the quarter.
AP - Iran's state television aired new video Sunday showing two of the 15 captured British sailors pointing to a spot on a map of the Persian Gulf where they were seized and acknowledging it was in Iranian territorial waters.
AP - After a heavily guarded trip to a Baghdad market, Sen. John McCain insisted Sunday that a U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in the capital was working and said Americans lacked a "full picture" of the progress. The U.S. military later reported six soldiers were killed in roadside bombings southwest of Baghdad.
New video of two of the 15 British military detainees being held in Iran was aired on the state-run television Sunday. The video showed the men in front of a map, apparently indicating their location when they were taken. In Tehran, hundreds of students gathered at the British embassy to protest the alleged British incursion into Iranian waters.
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