Federal judge blocks key parts of Tex. anti-abortion law Monday

A federal judge in Texas blocked two key parts of the state’s controversial antiabortion law Monday, ruling that one part is unconstitutional while another provision imposes an undue burden on women in some instances.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel represents a legal victory for abortion rights providers, who had challenged new requirements that abortion doctors must have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic and that all abortions must take place in surgical centers, rather than allowing women to take abortion drugs at home.

Texas attorney general Greg Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean said the state immediately appealed the ruling.

Eleven abortion clinics and three doctors filed a federal lawsuit last month saying that the requirements, which were due to take effect Oct. 29, would end abortion services in more than a third of the state’s licensed facilities and would eliminate services altogether in Fort Worth and five other major cities. Abbott had argued the new restrictions, adopted this summer, were aimed at providing better medical protections for both women and their fetuses.

READ MORE HERE

Americans Think Everyone's Doing A Terrible Job Handling Health Care

While Americans largely disapprove of how President Barack Obama is handling health care, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, they have even more negative opinions of how Republicans in Congress are handling the issue.

According to the new poll, Americans disapprove of Obama's handling of health care by a 56 percent to 39 percent margin. The survey also finds that 47 percent want to see the Affordable Care Act, Obama's signature health care law, repealed, while 25 percent want to see it expanded and 15 percent think it should be kept the same.

But few view Republicans in Congress as saviors -- by a 63 percent to 27 percent margin, most disapprove of their handling of the issue. Congressional Democrats fared slightly better, though a majority still viewed them negatively, with 34 percent approving and 53 percent disapproving of their handling of health care.

And if forced to choose, more Americans trust Obama to handle health care than Republicans in Congress, 42 percent to 33 percent. Twenty-five percent said they weren't sure.

READ MORE HERE

McAuliffe opens up double-digit lead over Cuccinelli in Virginia governor’s race

Democrat Terry McAuliffe has opened a double-digit lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli II in the race for Virginia governor, in a new poll capturing increasing dissatisfaction among voters with Cuccinelli’s party and his conservative views.

According to a new Washington Post/Abt SRBI poll, McAuliffe tops Cuccinelli 51 percent to 39 percent among likely voters in the Nov. 5 election. McAuliffe led by eight percentage points in a poll taken last month. Libertarian Robert Sarvis, who has capitalized on voter unrest with the two major-party candidates, is at 8 percent, according to the new poll.

The margin between the two major-party candidates is driven by a huge gender gap. Among men, the two candidates are running even, with Cuccinelli at 45 percent and McAuliffe at 44 percent. But among women, Cuccinelli trails by 24 points — 58 percent to 34 percent.

McAuliffe’s substantial lead puts him in a position to break a long pattern in Virginia gubernatorial races. In the nine most recent elections, the party holding the White House has lost the governor’s race. Cuccinelli’s weaknesses, more than McAuliffe’s strengths, put that streak in jeopardy, according to one question in the poll.

READ MORE HERE

Food stamps will get cut by $5 billion this week — and more cuts could follow

The U.S. food-stamp program is set to shrink in the months ahead. The only real question is by how much.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) currently costs about $80 billion per year and provides food aid to 14 percent of all U.S. households — some 47 million people. Those numbers swelled dramatically during the recession.

But the food-stamp program is now set to downsize in the weeks ahead. There's a big automatic cut scheduled for Nov. 1, as a temporary boost from the 2009 stimulus bill expires. That change will trim about $5 billion from federal food-stamp spending over the coming year.

And that's not all: The number of Americans on food stamps could drop even further in the months ahead, as Congress and various states contemplate further changes to the program. Here's a rundown:

READ MORE HERE

Hobby Lobby Asks Supreme Court To Take Up Case Against Contraception Mandate

OKLAHOMA CITY -- OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Lawyers for Hobby Lobby asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to take up the company's lawsuit against the federal health care law's requirement that coverage include access to the morning-after pill.

Lawyers for the Oklahoma City-based craft store chain and its sister company, Mardel Christian bookstore, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case because of what they say are conflicting decisions by other courts regarding religious freedom.

"As the federal government embarks on an unprecedented foray into health care replete with multiple overlapping mandates, few issues are more important than the extent to which the government must recognize and accommodate the religious exercise of those it regulates ... Thus, Respondents agree with the government that this Court should grant the petition," lawyers wrote in the 51-page filing.

In July, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton granted Hobby Lobby Mardel Christian bookstore a temporary exemption from a requirement that it provide insurance coverage for morning-after pills, similar emergency birth control methods and intrauterine devices. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in September filed a notice in federal court saying it would appeal that decision.

Heaton had initially rejected the request to block the birth-control mandate but reconsidered his decision after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the companies were likely to prevail in the case. Heaton ruled in June that the company would not be subject to fines of up to $1.3 million a day for not offering the birth control methods.

READ MORE HERE

JPMorgan Reaches Tentative $13 Billion Settlement With Justice Department: WSJ

News of the deal comes just a day after a JPMorgan was reported to have reached atentative $4 billion settlement with the Federal Housing Finance Agency over claims it sold bad mortgages to government agencies ahead of the financial crisis

At $13 billion, the potential settlement with the Justice Department exceeds estimates in September that JPMorgan would end up paying as much as $11 billion over the allegations. If finalized, the settlement would be the largest the U.S. government has ever made with a single company, according to WSJ.

READ MORE HERE

Obama Frustrated Over Health Care Website Issues

WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — Last week, President Barack Obama gathered some of his top advisers in the Oval Office to discuss the problem-plagued rollout of his health care legislation. He told his team the administration had to own up to the fact that there were no excuses for not having the health care website ready to operate on Day One.

The admonition from a frustrated president came amid the embarrassing start to sign-ups for the health care insurance exchanges. The president is expected to address the cascade of computer problems Monday during an event at the White House.

Administration officials say more than 476,000 health insurance applications have been filed through federal and state exchanges. The figures mark the most detailed measure yet of the problem-plagued rollout of the insurance market place.

However, the officials continue to refuse to say how many people have actually enrolled in the insurance markets. And without enrollment figures, it's unclear whether the program is on track to reach the 7 million people projected by the Congressional Budget Office to gain coverage during the six-month sign-up period.

The first three weeks of sign-ups have been marred by a cascade of computer problems, which the administration says it is working around the clock to correct. The rough rollout has been a black eye for Obama, who invested significant time and political capital in getting the law passed during his first term.

The officials said technology experts from inside and outside the government are being brought in to work on the glitches, though they did not say how many workers were being added.

Officials did say staffing has been increased at call centers by about 50 percent. As problems persist on the federally run website, the administration is encouraging more people to sign up for insurance over the phone.

The officials would not discuss the health insurance rollout by name and were granted anonymity.

Despite the widespread problems, the White House has yet to fully explain what went wrong with the online system consumers were supposed to use to sign up for coverage.

READ MORE HERE

Why Democrats Might Cave On Social Security Cuts

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Sunday opened the door to Social Security cuts as part of a budget deal with congressional Republicans. But Durbin pushed back against GOP calls for entitlement cuts as the negotiating price to curb or extinguish the economically damaging sequester cuts.

"If this is the bargain that the Republicans are now pushing for, that we have to cut Medicare to avoid cuts at the Department of Defense, they need to take a step back," Durbin said on "Fox News Sunday."

Congress is currently negotiating a new budget, with a December deadline. The talks were mandated by last week's deal to raise the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown.

Also speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) explicitly offered up trading some of the short-term cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act, known as the sequester, for long-term Social Security and Medicare cuts. He argued that Republicans had the tactical advantage on such an exchange.

"If you're in a divided government and you're arguing against the law, you're at a disadvantage," Blunt said, noting the failed GOP effort to defund Obamacare that resulted in a government shutdown. "The Budget Control Act is the only thing we've found that actually controls spending."

Blunt said that if Democrats aren't willing to negotiate over "entitlement savings versus some additional spending," to ease the sequester, then Democrats will have to live with the sequester cuts.

 READ MORE HERE

President calls for new approach after shutdown

Washington (CNN) -- The way business is done in Washington has to change to make a positive difference in the economy, President Barack Obama said Thursday as the federal government reopened for business and discussions began in Congress to reach a longer-term budget deal.

The partial government shutdown and standoff over the debt ceiling ended late Wednesday night when Congress voted on a temporary funding bill that also raised the nation's borrowing limit.

The standoff "inflicted completely unnecessary damage (to) our economy," Obama said Thursday morning at the White House. He said it slowed the economy's growth and set back employers' plans to hire. "Just the threat of default ... increased our borrowing costs, which adds to our deficit," he said.

We'll bounce back from this," he said of what he called the damage to the economy that the impasse caused. "America is the bedrock of the global economy for a reason ... because we keep our word and we (meet) our obligations."

He then called on Congress to pass a budget, approve changes to the nation's immigration laws and pass a farm bill.

Before Obama spoke, federal employees returned to work early Thursday to mini coffee cakes from the Vice President, hugs from colleagues, along with eye-rolls about their "vacation" due to the partial government shutdown.

The workers streamed into government offices in Washington, turned on lights and opened national landmarks such as St. Louis' Gateway Arch that had been closed during the 16-day shutdown.

The protracted brinksmanship flirted with a possible U.S. default before ending when Republicans caved to the insistence of Obama and Democrats that legislation funding the government and raising the federal borrowing limit should be free -- or at least mostly free -- from partisan issues and tactics.

READ MORE HERE

As U.S. approaches debt ceiling, fears of global recession increase

SEOUL — For global leaders, the political crisis that has shut down Washington represents the most vexing kind of problem, one that they have virtually no means to stem but that could soon wreak economic havoc on their own shores.

If a divided Congress does not raise the federal debt ceiling in the coming weeks, the U.S. government — the world’s largest borrower — would suddenly be unable to pay its bills, a failure that would stagger markets from Tokyo to London and potentially drive the global economy into recession.Some in Europe and Asia say they are stunned at the quixotic partisan fervor shaking global economic pillar.

U.S. decision to cut aid comes three months after military coup to oust democratically elected president.

Secretary apologizes for Obama’s absence at ASEAN’s annual session, meets with Chinese premier.

That default scenario is bringing increasingly urgent pleas from foreign leaders, some who describe their grave concern, others who chide the United States about the risks of political brinksmanship, beg its leaders to act responsibly and wonder whether the world’s superpower is showing some cracks.

“This is highly important for all of us,” Russian President Vladi­mir Putin said this week. “I am hopeful that all the political forces in the United States will be able to resolve this crisis as quickly as possible.”

Although the mood from afar hasn’t turned to panic, some in Europe and Asia say they are utterly stunned by the quixotic partisan fervor shaking the pillar of the global economy.

READ MORE HERE

GOP dropping Obamacare in shutdown debate?

Washington (CNN) -- Forgive President Barack Obama and Democrats if they are getting confused by the tactics of House Speaker John Boehner and his Republican caucus.

After prompting a partial government shutdown by trying to undermine Obama's signature health care reforms, GOP leaders now are focused on spending cuts elsewhere in their demands for agreeing to fund the government and raise the federal borrowing limit.

Boehner, who earlier this year told his GOP colleagues that he was finished negotiating one-on-one with the president, now pleads for Obama to sit down for what he calls a "conversation" on how to reopen the government and prevent what would be the first-ever U.S. default as soon as next week.

But when Obama invited the entire House Republican caucus to the White House as part of a series of meetings with legislators, Boehner's office responded that only the GOP leadership and committee chairmen would attend the Thursday gathering.

"It is our hope that this will be a constructive meeting and that the president finally recognizes Americans expect their leaders to be able to sit down and resolve their differences," said a statement by a Boehner aide.

Obama's invitation was intended to demonstrate outreach to Republicans on the ninth day of the partial shutdown and just eight days from when the Treasury says Congress must increase the federal debt ceiling or risk default.

READ MORE HERE

Votes are there to break shutdown, but not the will

Washington (CNN) – There appeared to be enough votes in the House on Wednesday to approve legislation to reopen the federal government, according to an ongoing CNN survey of House members.

CNN's vote count

All 200 Democrats and 19 Republicans support passing a continuing resolution with no additional legislative strings attached that would reopen the federal government, which has been partially closed for a week over a bitter policy dispute between Republicans and Democrats on health care. With three vacancies in 435 member House, 217 votes are currently the minimum needed for the measure to win approval in the House.

CNN's vote count appears to bear out what President Barack Obama said on Monday.

"The truth of the matter is, there are enough Republican and Democratic votes in the House of Representatives right now to end this shutdown immediately with no partisan strings attached," Obama said.

But this does not mean a vote will happen any time soon, given that these Republicans have not indicated a willingness to try to force Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to bring a continuing resolution with no strings attached to the floor for a vote. After a meeting with Republicans on Tuesday, Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma told CNN that the speaker told members there would not be a House vote on a "clean" government funding bill.

READ MORE HERE

Dow drops sharply and closes below 15,000

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

A sell-off in stocks accelerated Thursday, as major indexes fell 1% while Washington remains paralyzed and the nation approaches the deadline for raising the U.S. debt ceiling.

The Dow ended below 15,000, a psychologically important level, for the first time in almost a month. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 also declined sharply.

Meetings at the White House between congressional leaders and President Obama have failed to produce a breakthrough. Thursday marked Day 3 of the government shutdown, and Washington gave no sign of preventing a fourth. It's making investors jittery.CNNMoney's Fear & Greed index even briefly slid into Extreme Fear mode.

Thursday's losses also meant the Dow and S&P 500 have dropped for nine of the past 11 trading days,

"I think probably at the beginning of the week people didn't think it would take so long to sort out," said David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Markets in London. "The fact that it's dragged on is making people a little bit nervous."

Doug DePietro, an equity trader at investment bank Evercore, noted that the S&P 500 also broke below its 50-day moving average, a key technical level that triggered additional selling by institutional investors.

READ MORE HERE

Inside Obama's Game Plan For The Debt Limit

WASHINGTON -- Three senior Obama administration officials have made it abundantly clear that the president has no interest in budging from his position on the government shutdown or the looming debt ceiling fight.

The officials met with a handful of columnists and reporters on Thursday morning on condition that they not be named or quoted. They said President Barack Obama feels as strongly about this issue as he has about anything else during his time in office, including passing health care reform.

The meeting came the day after congressional leaders and the president met in the White House in hopes of finding a path forward on the dual budget fights. That meeting ended without an agreement. And the fact that both sides continued a media blitz the morning after suggests that a resolution remains far off.

What's driving the president, his aides stressed, is a belief that he needs to reorient the balance of powers within the federal government. The three officials repeatedly argued that the losing party in a national election couldn't be allowed to essentially nullify the results of that election through budget sabotage.

And so lines have to be drawn -- not just to affect the policy outcomes of the next few weeks, but to set a precedent for future negotiations.

All of which raises the question: How does the current standoff end? If House Republicans won't pass a deal to end the shutdown or raise the debt limit without concessions, and the president refuses to give in, is default inevitable? Will the government ever reopen?

READ MORE HERE

Wild car chase ends with suspect shot to death near U.S. Capitol

Washington (CNN) -- She had a 1-year-old child inside and apparently was unarmed.

Instead, the motorist's black Infiniti, according to authorities, itself became a weapon Thursday afternoon, first striking a security barrier and U.S. Secret Service officer near the White House before hurtling down some of the capital's most famous streets, police cruisers in pursuit.

Dramatic video taken minutes later near the U.S. Capitol showed the vehicle backing into a police vehicle before the chase resumed. Gunshots rang through the traffic circle. The motorist was shot by police just a few blocks away.

The woman died. The child was safe and in protective custody. Two officers were injured. Police vehicles were damaged.

And a city heretofore fixated on a partial government shutdown was left with unanswered questions.

Why did this happen? Why did the woman drive away from the White House and toward Capitol Hill?

While U.S. Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine said there appeared to be no evidence of terrorism, Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier said, "This does not appear to be in any way an accident."

Officials, who called it an "isolated incident," were tight-lipped about the suspect and did not name her at an evening briefing.

The early hours of the investigation turned northward Thursday night.

A task force prepared to execute a search warrant at the woman's Stamford, Connecticut, residence, law enforcement sources said. Police and bomb squad units surrounded an apartment complex.

Authorities wanted to speak with the suspect's relatives in Brooklyn, New York, but were turned away, federal law enforcement sources told CNN.

The chase created a chaotic scene of blaring sirens, locked-down lawmakers and bystanders hitting the dirt.

House and Senate sessions were immediately suspended, with legislators ordered to take cover and keep away from windows. Police also closed Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.

READ MORE HERE

Lessons For The Obamacare Rollout, Courtesy Of Massachusetts

Today marks a milestone on the nation's long march toward universal health coverage: the launch of online marketplaces, called exchanges, designed to help people find insurance they can afford.

It's an idea pioneered by Massachusetts seven years ago. People here call their program a success, and say the state's exchange was an indispensable factor.

Those involved since those working in low-wage jobs who will qualify for an expansion of MassHealth the beginning say the Massachusetts health insurance exchange, called the Connector, was the brainchild of former Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican.

Glen Shor, who once ran the Connector and is now the state's secretary of administration and finance, is confident that the nation will follow Massachusetts' lead.

"As the [federal] law begins to be implemented," Shor says, "people will see and feel its positive effects. They'll be able to see through some of the rhetoric and spin."

When the Connector opened for business in late 2006, people signed up much faster than projected. Within a year there were 367,000 newly insured citizens.

"Enrollment was fast," Shor says. "One of the clear lessons of the Massachusetts experience is that people want affordable health insurance."

Today, 97 percent of the state's 6.6 million people have it — the highest coverage rate of anywhere in America.

And Shor says Obamacare will bring another 45 000 new people into the fold —, the state's Medicaid program.

READ MORE HERE

The US healthcare paradox: we like the Affordable Care Act but fear Obamacare

President Obama's healthcare law is hated and loved by some so much that they are willing to shut down the government over it. I'm not sure I've ever seen so much passion over an issue about which so few (myself included) know as much as we should.

I wrote about this divide when Obamacare was in front of the US supreme court. Americans were opposed to "Obamacare", or the Affordable Care Act, yet they were in favor of many of its provisions. Not surprisingly, Americans lacked knowledge of what exactly the law did.

So, as the political fight has intensified, on the eve of implementation of one of the ACA's key provisions, the creation of new health insurance pools, how much has changed? Does the noisy debate on the ACA mean Americans are better-informed than before about Obamacare? Here are five ways Americans' opinions about Obamacare have and have not evolved over the past year.

READ MORE HERE

White House Dismisses GOP's Piecemeal Government Shutdown Plan

WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - The White House rejected a Republican plan to reopen portions of the U.S. government on Tuesday as the first shutdown in 17 years closed landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and threw hundreds of thousands of federal employees out of work.

The quick dismissal offered no sign that President Barack Obama and Republicans can soon end a standoff over health care that has sidelined everything from trade negotiations to medical research and raised new concerns about Congress's ability to perform its most basic duties. An even bigger battle looms in coming weeks, when Congress must raise the debt limit or risk a U.S. default that could roil global markets.

As Republicans in the House of Representatives huddled to consider their next move, Obama accused them of taking the government hostage in order to sabotage his signature health care law, the most ambitious U.S. social program in five decades.

"They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans," Obama said in the White House Rose Garden.

Republicans in the House of Representatives view the Affordable Care Act as a dangerous extension of government power and have coupled their efforts to undermine it with continued government funding. The Democratic-controlled Senate has repeatedly rejected those efforts.

Spending authority for much of the government expired at midnight on Monday (0400 GMT), but that did not prevent the Obama administration from unveiling the health-insurance exchanges that form the centerpiece of the law.

READ MORE HERE

Obama blames Republican 'ideological crusade' for shutdown

Washington (CNN) -- Republicans forced an unnecessary budget crisis in their single-minded effort to dismantle health care reforms, President Barack Obama said Tuesday as frustration spread across Washington and the country on the first day of a government shutdown.

In some of his strongest criticism so far, Obama said the shutdown intended to hinder government efforts to provide health insurance to 15% of the U.S. population that doesn't have coverage, adding it was "strange that one party would make keeping people uninsured the centerpiece of their agenda."

The stalemate in Congress that caused the shutdown continued with Senate Democrats voting for a fourth time to reject a spending plan by House Republicans that sought to undermine Obamacare.

This time, the House proposal also included a call for a conference committee to seek a compromise. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Democrats turned down the package because it amounted to extortion by Republicans to force concessions on Obama's signature health care reforms.

Reid said the Senate wants to negotiate a budget with the House, "but not with the government closed.

READ MORE HERE