News Flash - Three Items You Need to Know About

First is that the sneaks in Washington have included a provision in the "omnibus" budget package to significantly erode access to legal abortions.

The abortion language would bar federal, state and local agencies from withholding taxpayer money from health care providers that refuse to provide or pay for abortions or refuse to offer abortion counseling or referrals. Current federal law, aimed at protecting Roman Catholic doctors, provides such "conscience protection'' to doctors who do not want to undergo abortion training. The new language would expand that protection to all health care providers, including hospitals, doctors, clinics and insurers.

The second bit of not-so-broadcast news is that the US has another possible (likely) case of "Mad Cow" disease. You can read another take on this from the Independent/UK - US tries to prevent panic over BSE scare.

Last and not least is Indian tribes 'fleeced in $66m lobbying scandal'. This was also covered at length on the 11/19/04 edition of NOW and a synopsis is available at Investigating the Indian Gaming Scandal. The short version is that the Tigua tribe (in Texas) and other tribes across the country, utilized Jack Abramoff (a highly connected lobbyist - read Tom DeLay among others) and a PR consultant Michael Scanlon (former aid to DeLay), deliberately stole over $4 million from the Tigua. The Tigua had retained Abramoff to lobby on behalf of their casino. Abramoff said he would do it "pro-bono." However, he was already working to get the Tigua casino closed. There have been committee hearings all week over this debacle where Abramoff and Scanlon stole $66 million from six tribes while lining the coffers of the Republican National Committee, Texas legislators, and other candidates election coffers.

The Abramoff fiasco is a great case study into how corrupt the entire political process has become, and not surprisingly "The Hammer" is in it up to his elbows.

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