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Until today, hospital death rates were closely guarded secrets, discussed in board rooms but beyond the reach of patients whose lives are on the line. That changed (Wednesday) morning when USA Today posted on its Web site the government's best estimates of heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia death rates for every U.S. hospital for two years.
Now anyone with access to a computer can directly compare a local hospital with the one across town to see how it stacks up against the biggest medical institutions nationwide.
Death rates from heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia are widely viewed as yardsticks of a hospital's overall performance.
"We're in an era of change at last," says Donald Berwick, president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a non-profit in Cambridge, Mass., that works with hospitals to improve care and eliminate errors.
Compare hospitals
Last year, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a broad comparison of death rates for heart attacks and heart failure, noting how hospitals compared with the national average -- better, worse or no different -- without releasing the death rates themselves.
This year the agency decided to disclose them to consumers.
The agency shared the information in advance with USA Today to reach the widest possible audience. The agency also posted its new mortality estimates on a government Web site (hospitalcompare.hhs.gov), along with more than two dozen other measures of how well hospitals meet patients' needs.
Founded in 1998, the Center for Individual Freedom is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with the mission to protect and defend individual freedoms and individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
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It was less than two months ago that a bare majority of the Supreme Court ruled that enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay naval base could proceed with lawsuits challenging their detention in our federal courts.
Boy, what a mess the highest court in the land can create.
It was less than two months ago that a bare majority of the Supreme Court ruled that enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay naval base could proceed with lawsuits challenging their detention in our federal courts. In those seven weeks, not only has the entire legal landscape changed, but so has the real possibility that these suspected terrorists will be released -- back to battlefields abroad, or worse into our midst here at home.
All of this should have sparked massive outrage and prompted immediate action since things have turned around so quickly and dramatically. But most of America hasn’t been following just what the detainees and their lawyers have been seeking, and how the judges have been responding, in the aftermath of the High Court’s decision.
On June 11, the day before five justices ruled for the foreign detainees in Boumediene v. Bush, No. 06-1195, and Al Odah v. United States, No. 06-1196, the suspected terrorists held in Guantanamo had few legal options and even fewer realistic chances that they or their lawyers could end their detention and secure their release through the legal process.
Under laws passed by Congress and signed by the President, military judges initially determined if the suspected terrorists could continue to be detained, and military tribunals then tried those enemy combatants on any charges brought or crimes alleged by military prosecutors -- all with only minimal oversight, after-the-fact, by the federal courts.
But on June 12, the Court not only decided that the suspected terrorists had a legal right to have their detentions fully reviewed in federal court, but also that such a result was mandated by the U.S. Constitution -- specifically because of habeas corpus and due process. Essentially, five justices ruled that the federal courts had to be an integral part of the legal process for each and every detainee.
In and of itself, the ruling might not have changed too much in the short term. After all, litigation is notoriously slow, and just because the Supreme Court says you possess a right in theory doesn’t mean you get to exercise that right in practice in the days and weeks immediately after the decision.
Indeed, the detainees and their lawyers had learned that lesson in the months and years after the Supreme Court ruled in their favor on previous occasions. For them, those were pyrrhic victories, after which the enemy combatants remained detained at Guantanamo, and their litigation languished in the courts.
Nevertheless, for the vast majority of Americans, the fact that legal theory as announced by the Supreme Court was very different from practical reality as experienced by the detainees and their lawyers didn’t matter much, and probably was a good thing in the end. Quite frankly, Main Street USA neither believed suspected terrorists should be nor wanted them to be released.
However, when the Supreme Court ruled for the detainees this last time, the five justices made it clear that the enemy combatants’ practical reality needed to change and improve quickly to reflect the Court’s legal theory. As Justice Kennedy brusquely and bluntly instructed in the decisions: “[T]he costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody. The detainees … are entitled to a prompt habeas corpus hearing.” Not only did the detainees and their lawyers receiving those instructions hear them loud and clear, so did the judges presiding over those cases.
Even though the news has been generally overwhelmed by election year coverage, it is not an exaggeration to say that the continuing legal assault mounted by the detainees and their lawyers could fairly be described as their D-Day. Not only are the detainees and their lawyers pressing for action in all of their hundreds of cases pending before different judges in multiple courts, but they’re demanding that action now, not later.
What’s more, the judges are indicating that they will act extremely quickly -- some might even say recklessly. Judge Thomas F. Hogan, who is coordinating hundreds of detainee cases, told an overflowing courtroom in early July that he “was going to move these cases forward, and not in the usual course of business… The government has to set every other case aside … and get these [enemy combatant] cases moving first.”
Two days later, Judge Richard L. Leon, who retained another set of detainee cases, emphatically vowed that those cases would be “resolved this year!” In fact, according to long-time Supreme Court reporter Lyle Denniston, Judge Leon even “promised to make … rulings swiftly from the bench, without writing opinions ‘tied up with bows and ribbons’” in order to meet his own self-imposed deadline.
The government is desperately scrambling to handle the onslaught, which has gotten out of control, telling the judges that the Justice Department is trying to hire dozens of lawyers for the detainee cases. For their part, the detainees and their lawyers are trying to open up new legal fronts, and have become even more aggressive in those already open, to keep the pressure on and clinch victory.
Perhaps the best example of this new aggression came last week, when lawyers for a Chinese Muslim detainee held in Guantanamo, Huzaifa Parhat, asked a federal judge to release him immediately -- not back to his homeland, but into ours here in the area of Washington, D.C., USA! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, with the detainees and their lawyers making numerous demands, including that they be privy to classified national security information to make their cases.
Even though both Attorney General Michel B. Mukasey and President George W. Bush have asked, even pleaded, for Congress to intervene and enact a revised and streamlined legal process for the detainees, everyone agrees that is unlikely. What is becoming more and more likely is that federal judges may decide that at least some detainees have finally won, and are entitled to be released. So it may really be America that is someday soon left with the mess the Supreme Court has created and the detainees and their lawyers are exploiting. God save the United States, indeed.
Barack Obama, the senatorial candidate of 2004, might have a bone to pick with Barack Obama, the presidential candidate of 2008.
Videotapes of debates and speeches that were obtained by The Washington Times show Mr. Obama took positions during his Senate campaign on nearly a half dozen issues, ranging from the Cuba embargo to health care for illegal immigrants, that conflict with statements he has made during his run for the White House.
The current Executive Director of The Elders is Dr. Robert A. Pastor (surprised?), who is also known as the “father of the North American Union” because of his tireless work to unite Mexico, Canada and the United States into a common block similar to the European Union.
Pastor has a very long association with Jimmy Carter dating back to the 1970’s, and with other members of the 
Trilateral Commission. For instance, he was the executive director of the infamous Linowitz Commission that produced the policy blueprint for Carter to give away the U.S.-owned Panama Canal during Carter’s presidency.
The Linowitz Commission consisted of eight members, seven of which were members of the Trilateral Commission. The temporary ambassador/negotiator to Panama was Commissioner Sol Linowitz.
Despite humanity's dark history of corruption and war, Elder Desmond Tutu not only disagrees but also believes that he is held in such high regard so as to qualify himself for global eldership...
“Despite all the ghastliness that is around, human beings are made for goodness. The ones who ought to be held in high regard are not the ones who are militarily powerful, nor even economically prosperous. They are the ones who have a commitment to try and make the world a better place. We - The Elders – will endeavor to support those people and do our best for humanity.” – [Desmond Tutu, http://theelders.org website]
In case you are thinking this is a spoof, forget it. Go to their website and check it out for yourself!
The Elders apparently assume that most, if not all, of the world they serve will be under Marxist control because their members are decidedly pro-Marxist.
When a pro-Marxist group tells you that they are going to do what’s good for humanity, that’s reason enough for you to fortify your home and build a perimeter. After all, well over 100 million people died in the last century because they didn’t go along with what their Marxist leaders conjured up for them.
Indeed, Jimmy Carter and Robert Pastor both show their true colors by their association with The Elders. Globalist ego seems to know no bounds.
Ed Note: If you study the picture above, you will see Robert Pastor squatting at the center of the front row. Jimmy Carter is seen in the back row over Pastor's left shoulder.
Picture courtesy of www.TheElders.org website| Make English the official language of the United States Urge your Congressman to support H.R. 997 | |
Senator Barack Obama recently said that instead of worrying about immigrants learning English, Americans "need to make sure your child speaks Spanish."
We disagree. While it is clearly an advantage to learn to speak a foreign language in today’s world, Americans have good reason to be worried about the growing numbers of immigrants who refuse to learn English.
One of the reasons why they refuse to learn English is that – without the consent of the American people – our government has completely changed its policy to one of providing more and more services in foreign languages. This eliminates one of the biggest incentives immigrants have to learn English.
Congressman Steve King of
*Requires the federal government to communicate officially in English, including informational materials and forms.
*Creates a uniform rule for testing the English proficiency of candidates for naturalization.
*Requires that naturalization ceremonies be conducted in English.
H.R. 997 also repeals Executive Order 13166, which tries to force state and local governments to provide translations and interpreters for non-English speaking immigrants in their native language.
Throughout our history, Americans have expected immigrants to assimilate, and the key to assimilation is learning English. This is the American melting pot. Generations of immigrants have worked hard to learn our common language, English, and become full-fledged Americans. But today official multilingualism threatens to destroy the great “Melting Pot” crucible that enabled us to forge one nation out of millions of immigrants from all over the world.
The
Yet Congress still has not acted to make English the official language of the
