"In case you forgot -- or didn't know in the first place -- Wendell Potter, the former head of corporate communications for CIGNA, says profits drive the insurance industry, and that its highly paid executives deceive and manipulate to put shareholders first - above the health needs of their members.

Potter, certainly a guy in a position to know, said further that "there are no government 'death panels.' The law doesn't cut Medicare benefits and it doesn't call for a 'government takeover' of health care. . . . My colleagues and I came up with that term to scare the heck out of people." (emphasis added)

Anybody else feel manipulated and deceived?

Trespassing, yes. DUI, No: DUI conviction of man who was sitting in a parked car, in a private driveway, with the motor off, is overturned by the Nebraska Supreme Court. Said the Court:

We do not believe the Legislature intended to make a citizen drinking a beer while cleaning out his vehicle parked in his driveway guilty of a crime because the vehicle is overhanging the sidewalk," Justice William Connoly wrote in the 38-page ruling.

The county court concluded that because McCave had stated that he was leaving while he was in his vehicle with the keys in the ignition and the motor off, the officers could infer that McCave drove to (his father's and stepmother's) house intoxicated. We disagree.

For once, a sensible decision from the courts. Too bad it had to go all the way to the state supreme court first.

Starving the beast: "How cuts to Social Security Administration will hurt you."

You know, I see all this talk about budget cutting and how the lower and middle income people are going to have to suffer and sacrifice for the good of all. When are the wealthy people, who can most afford to make some sacrifices, going to be called upon to do their share?

New York High Court: lack of seat belts in busses actionable at law. I've always wondered how bus companies get away with having no seat belts. This court ruling shows that they will not necessarily get off scott free. From a personal injury point of view, this is a good decision.

Tennessee lawmaker who pushed guns-in-bars law charged with DUI: You reap what you sow?

Citizens say: Leave Social Security, other benefits alone. The takeaway from this story is that programs like Social Security are absolutely vital to millions of Americans. Any kind of profound change could destroy lives. It's easy to pontificate that we do not need such programs. It's a lot harder when we are absolutely dependent upon them.

Social Security Disability Requests Stalled To Give SS Supervisors Bonuses, Hurting The Injured. Normally, a Social Security Disability claim can take three plus years. Deliberate delays as described in the link are a travesty.

A voice of logic and reason on Social Security: Enough with the Social Security scare tactics. What I want to know is who is spreading the scare tactics -- aside from the obvious Rick Perry references -- and who stands to gain by bad-mouthing this program?

Math doesn’t work on privatizing Social Security: "It’s just an idea that they [Republicans] throw out there, with no evidence of serious thought."

The Palestinians Want Peace --- Just Not With a Jewish State. Just in case you thought there had been any movement from the palestinean arab point of view in the past 60+ years, think again:

Earlier this month in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority, I interviewed Ghassan Khatib, director of government media for the Palestinian Authority and the spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. I asked him the same question: Do the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state?

He was more direct than the Palestinians students at Stanford.

His long answer amounted to: "No."

They don't even recognize that there is a Jewish people. Did you know that Abbas, in his U.N. speech, refused even to use the words "Jew" or "Jewish?" In referring to Israel, he spoke of "the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him)...." I guess no Jews have ever lived in "the Holy Land." Ridiculous, except no one is paying attention to the continuing intransigence of the Arabs. For instance:

Two Israeli peace proposals, in 2000 and 2008 … met virtually all of the Palestinians' demands for a sovereign state in the areas won by Israel in the 1967 war — in the West Bank, Gaza and even East Jerusalem. But Palestinian President Yasser Arafat rejected the first offer and Abbas ignored the second, for the very same reason their predecessors spurned the 1947 Partition Plan.

Each time, accepting a Palestinian State meant accepting the Jewish State, a concession the Palestinians were unwilling to make.

Finally we get down to it. The issue is not settlements, or land concessions, or the right of return. The issue is as it always has been: they want the Jews dead and/or gone. The only peace the palestinean arabs are interested in is a Jew/Israeli-free peace.

By the way, I find it amusing that the media is wringing its hands at this latest "crisis." The palestinean arabs have been taking these very same positions since before 1948. It's nothing new. It takes two to tango, and the palestinean arabs have refused ever to dance with Israel.

Legislature gives nursing homes a break: Like they operated sooo well before, that they have earned lighter (read: no) regulation? Honestly, I wonder how some of these people sleep at night.

Social Security: If Ronald Reagan could fix it 30 years ago, so can we fix it now.

OK, this borders on the ridiculous: F-16s Scrambled Due to Inappropriate Bathroom Use. Or, as Kevin Underhill quipped in the caption below an F-16 photo, "Hi there! Just here to kill you if necessary. That guy still pooping?"

Seriously, though, Kevin says the following, which makes a lot of sense:

According to security expert Bruce Schneier, "[e]xactly two things have made airplane travel safer since 9/11: reinforcing the cockpit door, and convincing passengers they need to fight back. Everything else has been a waste of money." After all, the 9/11 strategy stopped working on 9/11, as soon as passengers learned what was going on. (Ask the shoe and underwear bombers where all those bruises came from.) And yet we are still so terrified of a strategy that worked for less than one day that, ten years later, we scramble fighters in response to a slap-fight or long toilet stay.

Read the Schneier link, too. I think he's right.

Noteworthy Court Orders: I wish our judges has a sense of humor -- at least on paper -- like these guys. Here's my favorite, apparently directed to bickering litigants:

Greetings and Salutations!
You are invited to a kindergarten party on THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2011, at 10:00
a.m. in Courtroom 2 of the United States Courthouse, 200 W. Eighth Street, Austin, Texas.

The party will feature many exciting and informative lessons, including:

• How to telephone and communicate with a lawyer

• How to enter into reasonable agreements about deposition dates

• How to limit depositions to reasonable subject matter

• Why it is neither cute nor clever to attempt to quash a subpoena for technical failures of service when notice is reasonably given; and

• An advanced seminar on not wasting the time of a busy federal judge and his staff because you are unable to practice law at the level of a first year law student.

Invitation to this exclusive event is not RSVP. Please remember to bring a sack lunch! The United States Marshals have beds available if necessary, so you may wish to bring a toothbrush in case the party runs late.

Hee hee.

Lowering the Bar got on this first, but it's worth a re-post. Let's just for the sake of argument say that I'm OK with nine federally-mandated medical insurance codes for injuries caused by turtles (yeah, you read that right). Now what I don't get are the thirteen codes assoiated with, ahem, "unspecified spacecraft" causing injury.

It gets better, that is, more absurd. Not only do they have a code for "Forced landing of spacecraft injuring occupant; initial encounter," they also have "Forced landing of spacecraft injuring occupant; subsequent encounter. I don't know about you all, but I very seldom have more than one encounter as an occupant on a spacecraft. But two?

Have I missed something? Is Lost in Space's Jupiter II for real (anybody ever wonder what happened to the Jupiter I? Or is that just me)? And where was I when they were handing out all these spacecraft for people like us to be occupants?

Shucks. I miss everything.

Justices Scalia and Ginsburg confronting the hundred pound elephant in the room.

Perry’s monstrous lies about Social Security: "Not only is Perry shooting wildly from the hip on these statements — a strategy cynically designed to attract angry, younger independent voters — he’s spewing some layered falsehoods that need to be addressed."

The takeaway: "Behind Social Security is an appallingly simple truth: We can put more money into it by asking higher-salaried employees to pay more, and by including immigrants and public-sector employees. I know that doesn’t have much political sizzle to it, but this kind of math doesn’t lie."

Well, this is a truly bad idea: Mandatory E-Verify Would Overwhelm Social Security Administration, Increase Disability Backlog.

Guess whose idea it is: The Republican House of Representatives.

Man charged with DUI after towing boat, trailer upside down: "Eric A. Willis, 40, of Avondale, was charged with DUI, reckless driving, resisting arrest and resisting arrest with violence, disregarding a police officer's signal, leaving the scene of a property accident, driving at an unreasonable speed, driving on the wrong side of the highway and two counts of failure to signal intention, said state Fish & Wildlife Enforcement Sgt. Gregory Rhodes."

What I want to know is whether the two counts of failure to signal intention occurred before or after he started driving on the wrong side of the highway.

This congressman has yet another plan to "save" Social Security, by converting it to an investment plan. It also creates a new federal cureaucracy to administer it. Here's the fundamental problem: Social Security is insurance, which pays out upon disability or upon reaching a certain age. By turning it into an investment plan, you fundamentally change the nature of the program. Oh, and by the way, what happens if the market tanks? Answer: "the above investment scenarios will undoubtedly have some down years where the portfolios would have a negative return...."

It might be worth thinking about if you could guarantee at least the benefit recipients currently get. But that's the problem with market-driven investments: return on investment cannot be either predicted or guraranteed.