New America in the News: 2007

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is in the United States right now. He's going to be meeting with President Bush tomorrow. Both the United States and Israel are now lining up behind Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the new emergency government that he has swore in after Hamas took control of Gaza...

June 18, 2007 issue - Michael Moore is a uniquely American hybrid: the profit-making, anti-establishment agitator. In that line of work, your instincts have to be sharp. His are. In films that mix brave journalism and brazen agitprop, he has been ahead of the curve on the demise of heavy industry; the deadly blend of teenage rage and the gun culture, and the shaky reasoning behind, and execution of, the Iraq War. In person, he is a friendly bear of a guy—until the tape is rolling. Then the populist piranha pops out. I watched him working the lobby of one of his Washington premieres.

JERUSALEM, June 16 — With the two Palestinian territories increasingly isolated from each other by a week of brutal warfare between rival factions, Israel and the United States seem agreed on a policy to treat them as separate entities to support Fatah in the West Bank and squeeze Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Growing sentiment that the nation's health care system is broken beyond repair is moving the once radical idea of universal health coverage closer to the political mainstream...

Few would argue with the goal. More than a few would question whether it's realistic...

The three proposals - the Wisconsin Health Security Act, the Wisconsin Health Care Partnership Plan and the Wisconsin Health Plan - have each been introduced at least once in previous legislative sessions.

New America's Len Nichols appeared on CNBC on June 15 to discuss employers' role in health care reform. A video clip is available at right, while a key excerpt from the transcript follows:

BECKY QUICK: Rising health care costs. It is one of the biggest problems facing corporate america and now one group representing more than one hundred of the nation's largest employers is offering a solution that it says would take health care benefits out of the hands of corporations.

The violent confrontation between warring Palestinian factions unfolding in Gaza is far more than a civil war. It's a coup d'etat accompanied by a civil war. And it's also the most serious, most nefarious chapter in the short history of the Palestinian Authority.

The United States Thursday defended plans to overhaul its sea-based nuclear arsenal with a new generation of warheads, arguing the program did not pose any extra threat to nations like Russia.

The administration wants to replace much of its Cold War stockpile with a new "Reliable Replacement Warhead" (RRW) that it argues would be safer and cheaper to maintain over the coming decades.

WASHINGTON, June 13 — For two years, the United States has tried to choke off Hamas, the militant Islamic group that has been ascendant in Gaza and the West Bank, while throwing limited aid and support to Fatah, its more moderate Palestinian rival. Now, with Fatah, the party of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on the verge of collapse in Gaza, Washington is facing a shrinking menu of alternatives...

Consumer groups endorsed CEA's 2-way plug-and-play proposal over cable's, asking FCC Chmn. Martin to open a rulemaking to solicit comments on the proposal, as he's expected to do (CD June 11 p1). The letter, sent by Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press, Knowledge Ecology International, Media Access Project, New America Foundation, Public Knowledge and U.S.