All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

The antiviral medication Tamiflu is the most commonly prescribed anti-flu medicine, and, as with the H1N1 vaccine, there may not be enough to go around.

In an effort to address anticipated shortages, federal officials released the last of their stockpile of children's Tamiflu at the end of last month, as the New York Times reported; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has ordered new shipments of the drug, but they're not scheduled to arrive until January. (The CDC still has millions of doses of adult Tamiflu in its stockpile.)

Tamiflu is manufactured by a Swiss company called Roche Holdings, and the company has a patent on the medicine in the United States through 2016. Kristina Becker, a spokesperson for Roche, said in an interview Tuesday that the company is "confident" that it has the resources to meet demand for the drug.

She said that while supplies of liquid Tamiflu have been spotty in some areas, there are ample supplies of the capsule form of the medication, which can be opened up and effectively turned into liquid medicine through dilution with syrup. She also said there would be more shipments of the liquid version next month.

Roche "ramped up making the capsules at the start of the pandemic because we can make enough medicine for 25 times the number children in the same time it takes to make the liquid for one person," Becker said. "We wanted to be able to make enough medicine for as many people as possible."

Deciding how much Tamiflu is no easy task for Roche; the company says it takes about six to eight months to make Tamiflu.

Enter Dr. Yusuf Hamied, the chairman of a Mumbai-based drug company called Cipla. Cipla has developed a reputation for copying drugs and selling them at cheaper prices, perhaps most notably the AIDS drugs it has sold in Africa.

Earlier this year, Cipla won a court battle in India to produce a generic version of Tamiflu, called Antiflu. The company subsequently got certification from the World Health Organization that Antiflu was as effective as Tamiflu. It began selling it in India and Mexico at a discount from the cost of Tamiflu.

Now the CDC is reportedly signaling it is open to the possibility of importing Antiflu to the United States. (Representatives for the CDC have not yet responded to a request for confirmation.) Doing so would be controversial, since patent rules prohibit a Tamiflu generic coming onto the U.S. market for years.

Read full post…

Voters in Washington state will decide today on a referendum that could effectively roll back legislation passed in May to extend domestic partnership rights and responsibilities to gay and lesbian couples similar to those granted married heterosexual couples.

In addition to the fierce battle over the referendum itself, there has been another bitter fight: One over whether the names of the more than 120,000 people who signed a petition to get the referendum on the ballot should be made public.

On one side of the debate is Larry Stickney, the campaign manager of Protect Marriage Washington and one of the main people who got the referendum, known as Referendum 71, on the ballot. Stickney opposes releasing the names, arguing that doing so opens signatories up to intimidation and harassment.

In an interview, Stickney said he has been hit with "numerous death threats," threatening phone calls in the middle of the night, and "obscene, vile emails" for being the public face of his cause.

"We've feared for our children's lives," he said.

Stickney characterized the people who signed the petition are "a bunch of little old ladies and nice people who go to church," and said that "obviously we want to protect them from this kind of thing."

He added that efforts to release the names amounted to a modern-day version of voter intimidation.

"This is no different than the Klan standing outside of voter booths in Alabama when blacks would dare to go vote," he said.

On the other side is Tom Lang, director of KnowThyNeighbor.org, a Web site that has published the names of signatories on similar measures in states around the country. Lang rejected the claims of intimidation – "it doesn't happen," he said – and says he is interested in starting a conversation between neighbors, coworkers and family members.

"This is about meaningful dialogue between those that are going to have their rights stripped from them and the people that are doing it," he said.

Lang said he isn't afraid to publicly back his position, noting that he puts his name and photo prominently on his Web site. Asked if he considers it cowardly to sign Referendum 71 but keep the decision to do so private, he said yes.

Read full post…

Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the once crusader against Wall Street greed who resigned from office in disgrace after being identified in a prostitution scandal, said the system that led to last year's economic disaster hasn't been changed and that President Obama needs to push for a larger reform effort in his speech Monday.

Maggie Rodriguez, co-anchor of CBS' "The Early Show," interviewed Spitzer on the one-year anniversary of investment baking giant Lehman Brothers' declaration of bankruptcy. Mr. Obama is expected to give a speech Monday afternoon from Federal Hall near the New York Stock Exchange calling on Congress to pass more financial regulatory reforms.

Spitzer gave a blunt assessment of the financial system one year after the collapse of Lehman.

"We are not doing well," Spitzer said. "We have not reformed the system. We still have a system based upon institutions that are too big to fail, institutions that have received billions — indeed one could argue trillions — of taxpayer dollars and are not investing that money back this to the system to create jobs for the future."

Read full post…

Since entering the White House in January, the Obama administration has made use of a myriad of social networking and Internet communications tools, such as blogs YouTube and Twitter, to interact with the public. Come Saturday morning, add an appearance on a virtual world to the list.

Read full post…

Two weeks ago, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Nevada Sen. John Ensign were rising stars in the Republican Party, a pair of politicians believed to be contenders for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

Today – at least according to the conventional wisdom – those prospects, and quite possibly their political careers, have been diminished.

The reason, of course, is sex. Sanford's surreal disclosure of an affair with a woman from Argentina and Ensign's admission of an affair with a staffer were the latest headline fodder for a nation that has been fed a steady diet of political sex scandals in the past few years.

Here's a far-from-incomplete list of some other recent offenders: Bill Clinton. Rudy Giuliani. Jim McGreevey. Mark Foley. Newt Gingrich. Gavin Newsom. David Vitter. Larry Craig. Eliot Spitzer. John Edwards.

Some of these men (and you'll note they're all men) have survived their scandals. Clinton emerged bruised but not broken from his impeachment proceedings. Vitter looks likely to be reelected to the Senate despite being outed as a client of the D.C. Madam. Newsom, who as San Francisco mayor had an affair with a top aide, is gearing up for a run for California governor. Gingrich's 2007 admission of an extramarital affair in the 1990s was quickly all-but-forgotten.

And some did not. Spitzer resigned from the New York governorship in disgrace. Then-New Jersey governor McGreevey resigned as well, though he salvaged some respectability with his "gay American" speech. A scandal involving instant messages and male teenage pages ended Foley's career. Larry Craig managed to stick it out in the Senate after his arrest for lewd conduct in a men's airport restroom, but did not run for reelection.

A sex scandal, then, is not an automatic career ender. But it is also not something that can be simply shrugged off, as is the case in many countries in Europe and elsewhere. French President Nicolas Sarkozy's active personal life did not diminish his election prospects; Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is presently weathering a mini-storm over an alleged inappropriate relationship with a teenage girl, the sort of scandal that would have been almost impossible for an American politician to survive.

But what, exactly, is it that Americans really care about? Is it the sex? The unfaithfulness? The hypocrisy? Or something else?

Read full post…

The Senate on Thursday passed long-in-the-works legislation that will give the Food And Drug Administration power to regulate the sale, manufacture and marketing of tobacco products.

The bill, which the president plans to sign into law, will mean that regulators can do the following: limit the nicotine and tar levels in cigarettes; ban certain sorts of flavored tobacco that appeal to young people; force more prominent warning labels; ban words like "light" or "mild" in cigarette packaging; and give states the power to dictate how and where cigarettes are sold.

The legislation has been heralded by anti-smoking advocates, who say it will reduce smoking-related deaths and health care costs. Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids, told the Associated Press it "represents the strongest action Congress has ever taken to reduce tobacco use."

Although there appears to be widespread support for the bill – 79 senators voted for it, and even Philip Morris backs it (though perhaps for less than altruistic reasons) – there are also those who object to the government taking a stronger regulatory role. Among them is Patrick Basham, an adjunct scholar at the Libertarian-leaning CATO Institute, who tells Hotsheet that aggressive regulation and high taxes on products like alcohol and tobacco (so called "sin taxes") puts "the government in the position of imposing values on people's purchases of legal products."

Read full post…

In Saudi Arabia, where President Obama arrived Wednesday morning, the legal system is based on Sharia, or Islamic law. It is illegal to spend time alone with someone of the opposite sex to whom you are not related, to drink, to smoke, or to engage in other behaviors deemed immoral. There is little freedom of expression and no freedom of religion. The media is state-controlled. The State Department has reported that religious police "intimidate, abuse, and detain citizens and foreigners" and has also reported on the "denial of public trials and lack of due process in the judicial system." Men have extensive power over women, who cannot drive vehicles or work without permission. Abuse of migrant workers is common, and torture is "widespread and committed with impunity," according to Amnesty International. One possible punishment for theft is amputation. Homosexuality, blasphemy, "witchcraft" and some other non-violent offenses are punishable by death.

In Egypt, where the president speaks Thursday, Emergency Law was recently extended. According to Human Rights Watch, that means authorities can "detain persons arbitrarily and try them in special security courts that do not meet international fair trial standards." Freedom of expression, religion and assembly are limited. Last year, according to the State Department, "security forces used unwarranted lethal force and tortured and abused prisoners and detainees," largely without consequences. During President Hosni Mubarak's 28 years in power, dissidents have been harassed and imprisoned. Student political groups are prohibited at the university where Mr. Obama plans to speak, and deans are chosen by the administration; one student blogger was recently jailed for two months for "public agitation."

When he arrived in Saudi Arabia, President Obama did not publicly discuss human rights issues. Of the country's head of state, King Abdullah, he said this: "I've been struck by his wisdom and his graciousness." The White House said following a private meeting that the two men discussed "a wide range of issues," including energy and Middle East peace, but human rights abuses was not listed among them.

Read full post…

There are no simple solutions to the question of what the Obama administration should do with the roughly 240 detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, which the president vowed to close within a year of taking office.

Some of the less threatening detainees can be and have been approved for released to other countries, though that requires more than just putting them on an airplane – the United States, after all, does not want released suspects either to (a) undertake anti-American activities upon their release or (b) be tortured by foreign governments upon their being shipped overseas.

And as complex as those cases can be, they pale in comparison to questions about what to do with the most dangerous detainees. Consider the case of self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Faced with a self-imposed deadline for closing Guantanamo Bay, the president is now reportedly set to announce that he will revive military commission trials for suspects like Mohammed – despite criticizing such trials as a candidate and suspending them upon taking office.

Why? Because there are really only two choices – military or federal criminal trials – for a president seeking to end the de facto policy of indefinite detention without trial that existed for many detainees under the Bush administration. And federal trials are an exceedingly undesirable option. As former Air Force judge advocate Scott L. Silliman noted Thursday, "because the detainees would be entitled to full due process rights [in federal trials], their lengthy pretrial detention at Guantanamo Bay and the specific coercive conditions of that detention could pose significant legal challenges for the prosecution."

In other words, because Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other detainees were subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding, much of the evidence against them could potentially be thrown out in federal court.

Read full post…

Richard Cohen's Washington Post column raises a provocative question-one that has been a source of sharp disagreement between left and right: Does torture work?

Read full post…

Well, don't say it came as a proverbial bolt from the blue.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, who last week crossed parties to become a Democrat, said on Tuesday that he hoped Republican Norm Coleman would be declard the winner win Minnesota's dragged-out senate race.

In a question-and-answer interview with the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Times reporter Deborah Solomon wanted to know whether he cared that there now would be no more Jewish Republicans left in the United States Senate.

"I sure do. There’s still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner," Specter said.

Read full post…