Limbaugh Has "Zero" Chance Of Owning NFL Team, Says Media Matters Official

By Ravi Bhatia, Talk Radio News Service

Senior Fellow for Media Matters Eric Boehlert said that Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show radio host, has virtually no chance of the National Football League accepting his bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams, citing the league’s efforts to avoid controversy and Limbaugh’s “incredibly long track record” of “hateful, inflammatory rhetoric about African-Americans.”

“The comments this week from the commissioner, some of the owners, the players, the union reps... make it pretty clear that Limbaugh’s chances are basically zero at this point,” Boehlert said.

In 2003, Limbaugh tendered his resignation from ESPN’S Sunday NFL Countdown pregame show for saying NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb was not as the good as the media made him seem. “The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well,” he said in the pre-game show.

“Every couple of years [Limbaugh] sort of ventures out of his protective right-wing radio bubble into the mainstream culture, and the reaction is immediate and unambiguous,” Boehlert said. “Mainstream pop culture, in this case sports, does not want anything to do with Rush Limbaugh.”

Boehlert added that he was unsure if politics and sports can co-exist.

“Having an owner who spends his day talking about the president as a communist or a racist or hates white people ... doesn’t go over well in a professional sports community,” he said. “Larger sports culture ... has no patience whatsoever with mixing politics and sports. Sports fans don’t want anything to do with politics, they want to leave that stuff outside.”

Ditching Medicare Part A May Have Financial Reprucussions, Warns Lawyer

By Ravi Bhatia, Talk Radio News Service

Kent Masterson Brown, lead attorney for plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the Department of Health and Human Services, warned Tuesday that seniors who attempt to leave their Medicare policies may face financial repercussions.

“[The three internal rules of the Social Security Administration] allow you to get out of Medicare Part A, but if you do, you lose all your social security retirement benefits, and you are required to repay every benefit that had been paid to you,” Brown said. “They won’t let you out until all the money has been collected.”

The lawsuit, Hall V. Sebelius, seeks to prohibit the Social Security Administration and the Dept. of Health and Human Services from requiring seniors to take part Medicare A through policies which Masterson contends were improperly implemented.

“The frightening thing about a case like this is an agency that’s just doing anything it wants,” Brown said. “Keeping agencies in tow, making them do only what Congress has dictated is fundamentally essential to the republic.”

Government lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case in May on the grounds that the plaintiffs have not been harmed by the policies and hence have no standing to sue. In addition, the lawyers argued that the plaintiffs have not exhausted all of the administrative remedies available to them before suing.

Supreme Court Hears Case Of Animal Cruelty And Free Speech

By Ravi Bhatia-Talk Radio News Service

Animal cruelty clashed with first amendment rights today in the U.S. Supreme Court case of United States v. Stevens, which also marked Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s second day sitting as an Associate Justice in the Court’s new term. 

In 2004, Robert Stevens was indicted and charged with selling three dogfighting videos to undercover law enforcement agents. Congress enacted the statute in 1999, which deemed that whoever sells depictions of animal cruelty would be fined and/or imprisoned for up to five years. 

Steven’s 37-month sentence was 14 months longer than NFL quarterback Michael Vick’s, who had participated firsthand in a dogfighting venture. Although dogfighting is illegal in all 50 states, the practice is legal in Japan, where much of the footage in Stevens’ videos came from. 

According to Neal Katyal, the government lawyer defending the law, a “robust market” in animal cruelty exists. Upholding the statute would dry up the market for such material, he argued. It would also add to the precedent set in New York v. Ferber in 1982, when the Court ruled that the First Amendment right to free speech did not forbid states from banning the sale of child pornography.

The Ferber case was the last time that the question of whether or not material was too obscene to receive first amendment protection was addressed.

Patricia Millett argued on behalf of Stevens, suggesting that the statute was drafted too broadly and that it applied to legally protected activity.

Congress had enacted Article 48 in order to outlaw “crush videos,” which depicted close-ups of women inflicting torture on animals such as hamsters, puppies and kittens with their bare feet or while wearing high-heeled shoes.

The Supreme Court will release their decision on the case later this year, although the tone of the hearing implies that the justices are leaning towards affirming the decision of the Court of Appeals in overturning the law.

Hispanic Advocacy Group President Says "Merits and Facts" Of Public Option Strong Enough Without Racial Argument

By Ravi Bhatia, Talk Radio News Service


Racial arguments should not be a part of the healthcare reform debate, according to Janet Murguia, President and CEO of the Hispanic advocacy group called National Council of La Raza.

“I don’t think we have to resort to race issues to get a common sense and sound of health care reform,” she said. “I think that there are people who want to take it in that direction...but the reality is if we just look at the merits and the facts we could make a strong case for inclusion and comprehensive health care reform.”

Murguia spoke during a panel discussion today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The panel, which included her and ranking officials from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Campaign for Community Change discussed the benefits of a public option in the health care reform plan. The United States Student Assn. and PowerPAC.org, while part of the alliance to support a public option and a voice for people of color in the health care reform debate, were not represented by the panel.

According to the panel, a public option would enable the U.S government to provide health insurance options to U.S. citizens, which would theoretically provide a competitive alternative to the options offered by private insurers. However, a poll conducted by the Washington Post showed that without a public option, opposition to the overall health care reform plan fell by six points.

The organizations also advocate coverage to all U.S residents regardless of pre-existing conditions or employment status, making comprehensive health care affordable and emphasizing high quality care for everyone.

More than 880,000 African American deaths would have been averted from 1991 to 2000 had health care reform been implemented, according to an analysis of mortality data in 2004 by the American Journal of Public Health.

“Thus far, the economic interests of the insurance [companies] , and those who have particular constituency interests that are not the interests of the American people, have largely dominated the [health insurance] debate,” said LCCR President and CEO Wade Henderson. “Once the American people become informed by the nature of health care reform, they support the public option. Most Americans regardless of age, for example, support Medicare.”

The organizations in the panel pooled together to create television advertisements in English and Spanish that support their public option cause. The ads, scheduled to be aired in select states in the coming weeks, are intended to attract senators who could push for their cause and push citizens of color to mobilize and actively pursue health care reform.

“There are many other constituencies that are part of a broad coalition in support of comprehensive healthcare reform,” Henderson said. “It’s in the economic and the political self interests of the American people to ensure that this kind of comprehensive reform is taken seriously and moves effectively. We’re really only the tip of a more progressive, larger coalition of interests that will be working in a concerted effort to achieve the kind of reform we’ve talked about. ”

Sec. of State Clinton Previews U.S. Agenda For U.N. General Assembly

By Ravi Bhatia, Talk Radio News Service

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed Friday the U.S agenda for the upcoming United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), touching on issues such as the Obama administration’s missile defense strategy, the conflict in the Middle East, nuclear proliferation and the threat posed by Iran.

While she read her speech at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., she discussed the “ambitious” intentions of the Obama administration at next week’s UNGA in New York, and alluded to a long term goal of a world “with no nuclear weapons.” While fielding questions, she reflected on the state of American foreign policy today.

“For many years, [the U.S] outsourced our policy and concerns about the nuclear program to others to try to intervene with and persuade Iran to change course,” she said. “So we were on the sidelines...we were just trying to figure out how to get other people to go on the field and deal with this problem and look where we are today. We’re really nowhere.”

Clinton also discussed the Obama administration’s missile defense strategy, which was retooled to focus on defending the United States and its allies in Europe from short and mid-range missile attacks. The strategy rejects the Bush administration's plan to station interceptors in the Czech Republic and Poland that were intended to stop long-range missiles that the current administration believes Iran does not have. Since Poland and the Czech Republic will no longer have land-based interceptors, the new plan eases pressure on Russia, displeasing some Republican members of Congress upon Obama’s announcement of the strategy on Thursday.

“This decision was not about Russia,” she said. “It was about Iran and the threat its ballistic missile program poses. Because of this position, we believe we will be in a far stronger position to deal with that threat and to do so with technology that works and a higher degree of confidence that what we pledge to do we can actually deliver.”

She later discussed Iran and the repercussions the country must face for not revealing its intentions to the international community for nuclear technology.

“Our concern is not Iran’s right to develop peaceful nuclear energy, but its responsibility to demonstrate that it’s program is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes,” she said. “This is not hard to do. The Iranian government seeks a sense of justice in the world, but stands in the way of the justice it seeks.”

In response to a question from Brookings Institute President Strobe Talbott, Clinton also discussed the U.S. government’s strategy for restructuring the country’s health care policy.

“It’s interesting that what we are proposing is fundamentally so conservative compared with so many of our friends and allies around the world, who do a much better job then we do in covering everybody and keeping costs down,” Clinton said. “And yet some of the political opposition is so overheated. We have to calm down here, take two aspirin, go to bed, think about it in the morning. But I’m optimistic.”