Obama & Democrats fight to Fast Track Health Care

President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are poised to trample Republican opposition to his health care bill with a controversial legislative tactic known as reconciliation.

The fast-track process would protect Obama's ambitious plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system from a potential GOP filibuster and limit the Republicans' ability to get concessions. It also would give Democrats far more control over the specifics of the health care legislation.

Under typical Senate rules, 60 votes are needed to advance a bill, but reconciliation would enable Democrats to enact the health care plan with just a simple majority and only 20 hours of debate.

Democrats hold 56 seats in the Senate, and two independents typically vote with the party. Republicans have 41 seats, and there is one vacancy.

Republicans have complained furiously about the prospect of health care reform passing under fast-track rules. But they're not planning to go down without a fight. - FOX News Story

Severe Weather Outbreak Sunday

Widespread thunderstorms, a few of them severe, will break out over a lengthy corridor spanning the nation's heartland Sunday into Sunday night. The area under threat of severe local weather will reach from southwestern and west-central Texas northeastward into southern Wisconsin and northwestern Illinois.

With this rash of thunderstorms, severe weather factors will be excessive flooding rainfall and damaging winds. There will also be local large hail, as well as the possibility of a few tornadoes.

Story by AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Jim Andrews.

Majority Opposed to More Investigations on Torture

President Obama and Senate Democratic leaders are opposed to more investigations of how the Bush administration treated terrorism suspects, and 58% of U.S. voters agree with them. A number of congressional Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are pushing for a wider probe.

Just 28% think the Obama administration should do further investigating of how suspected terrorists were questioned during the Bush years, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure. - Rasmussen Story

Reporters Give Gibbs / Obama Mixed Reviews

Robert Gibbs gave White House reporters a "strong A" Friday for their work over the first 100 days of the new administration.

Their report card on him is more mixed.

Although White House reporters praise some aspects of Obama's press shop, there’s grumbling about Gibbs' handling of the daily press briefings, where a handful of television correspondents dominate; griping about press management on the president's European trip; and complaints about Gibbs' tendency not to return e-mail messages.

And for a team that rode to Washington on a lot of talk about "transparency," reporters said in interviews with POLITICO this week that the Obama White House has been awfully opaque.

"I guess it depends what your definition of the word 'transparent' is," said Chuck Todd, chief White House correspondent for NBC News.

Adds Wall Street Journal White House reporter Jonathan Weisman: "I think by the press' definition, they have not been transparent at all." - Politico Story

Obama Administration uses Fuzzy Math to layout Deficit Reductions

Critics say the president's claim to have found "two trillion dollars in deficit reductions" is a bit misleading.

Despite the president's proclamation that his budget avoids the gimmickry his predecessor embraced by, say, not fully budgeting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq within his budget proposals, some say the president is embracing some gimmickry of his own.

The way President Obama's numbers-crunchers find 3/4ths of this $2 trillion savings is by creating a "baseline" wherein the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are fully budgeted for 10 years. They then claim that since they're not going to spend that much over the next ten years, they're saving $1.5 trillion. - ABC News Story

Obama Policies Failing with North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has restarted its nuclear facilities to harvest weapons-grade plutonium, an official said Saturday, just hours after the U.N. imposed new sanctions on the communist state for its recent rocket launch.

The move is a key step away from a 2007 disarmament deal — signed after a 2006 nuclear test — that called for North Korea to disable its nuclear facilities in exchange for much-needed energy aid and other concessions.

"The reprocessing of spent fuel rods from the pilot atomic power plant has begun," the North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in comments carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Harvesting weapons-grade plutonium "will contribute to bolstering the nuclear deterrence for self-defense in every way to cope with the increasing military threats from the hostile forces," he said. - FOX News Story

Debt Day - Sunday April 26th - Government runs out of Money

Debt Day comes early this year. Unfortunately, it's nothing to celebrate.

The symbolic "holiday," which falls on Sunday, marks the point in the fiscal year when government spending exceeds revenue.

In other words, the government will stop making money and start borrowing on Sunday.

And it's coming earlier than ever, according to House Minority Leader John Boehner, who's pointing to Debt Day as yet another symptom of a government he says is spending too much, borrowing too much and taxing too much. Last year's Debt Day fell more than three months later, on Aug. 5.

"All the revenue for this fiscal year will be spent as of Sunday," Boehner, R-Ohio, said. With the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, he said, "everything that happens after Sunday through ... the balance of this fiscal year is going to have to be borrowed from our kids and grandkids."

Boehner penned a column, posted on his Web site, blaming the early Debt Day on an "arrogant culture of spending" and the Obama administration's "borrowing binge."

"In short, about halfway through Fiscal Year 2009, Washington has run out of money," he wrote. - FOX News Story

Obama Spending Spee Creating Major Concerns

In the early months of his presidency, President Obama has shown he isn't afraid to spend billions of dollars on corporate bailouts or to run up trillions of dollars in U.S. debt to battle an economic crisis.

But in doing so, he has initiated the largest expansion of federal government since World War II and set up a massive challenge for his administration -- one that officials are already warning will be fraught with peril.

During the first 100 days of his presidency, Obama has signed a $787 billion stimulus bill into law, proposed an eye-popping $3.6 trillion budget for the next fiscal year, taken over a massive $700 billion Wall Street bailout program and created other billion-dollar programs to help grease the economic wheels.

Analysts call the spending spree "unprecedented" when the nation is not in a declared war, and they say the challenges that accompany it are a logical result.

"You take any organization in the world and you double its size in 90 days, it's going to have a hard time managing that transition," said William Gale, vice president and director of the economic studies program at Brookings Institute. - FOX News Story

US Government looking to Fire another CEO

On the same day the government is set to release the results of its stress tests analyzing 19 financial firms, a report came out that the government is considering giving Citigroup (C: 3.17, -0.03, -0.94%) CEO Vikram Pandit the boot.

Citigroup, which has received or been guaranteed $50 billion of government aid through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, has been stirring up a lot of questions about its health.

According to The New York Post, citing sources, regulators are mulling taking steps to show the government is taking a strong stand on banks, which may include removing Pandit. - FOX Business Story

Democrats go after Judge in Torture Memos

Some Democrats in Congress are having a tough time convincing President Obama, as well as their colleagues, to form an independent "truth" commission to probe the evolution of interrogation tactics under the Bush administration.

So lawmakers who oppose those techniques are looking for the next best thing -- the impeachment of one of the authors of the so-called "torture memos."

Jay Bybee, one of the lawyers who wrote the opinions justifying the tactics, is now a federal judge in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

That should change, some Democrats say.

"I think someone who writes a how-to memo on how to break the law should not be a federal judge," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that gave Bybee a thumbs-up before he was confirmed by the full Senate, argues there never would have been a vote if those memos had been in the record at the time. - FOX News Story

What kind of sense does that make. We disagree with his opinion so we should fire him? How about the Treasury Secretary who runs the IRS that didn't pay his taxes? How easy it is to cast stones, but you better remember the glass house.