Support The Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008

Via Valtin, the Physicians for Human Rights organization is launching a campaign to support the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008 on its website. SR 3005 and HR 5950, sponsored by Senator Robert Menedez (D-NJ) and Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), will reverse the alarming inhumane treatment of immigrant detainees. The letter [...]

Human Rights Violators: DIHS Nurses

[UPDATE: From the online Q&A with Priest and Goldstein today, I am including the sections where they addressed my specific questions and am pasting them here. The entire Q&A is beneficial to develop a more comprehensive understanding about the issues.]
Boston: Are Public Health Service personnel staffing the medical units of local and [...]

Legal Aspects Of Practicing Nursing As A Federal Government Employee

Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein are presenting an enormous four part investigative series called Careless Detention in the Washington Post, in which they take a hard look at how detainees have and continue to be treated in negligent and harmful ways by healthcare providers and prison personnel.
Throughout the reports, they include case after case after [...]

Iraq War Illegal Propaganda-Gate Links Fest

The links list about the illegal Iraq War propaganda campaign will be updated as I discover new stories and evidence. Please add your own gems in the comments, and I’ll get them inserted into the post pronto. Thanks.
All The News That Isn’t - Network Television’s Propaganda In Uniform
Glenn Greenwald is developing David Barstow’s [...]

What They Were Saying: Gifts Of Links From The Commenters At Unclaimed Territory

I try to read Glenn Greenwald’s Unclaimed Territory blog posts on Salon.com immediately followed by the comments. The regular commenters there include a poet/historian/philosopher/veteran/patriot, scholars wearing the robes of various disciplines, rabble rousers with literary elan and the occasional Bush dead ender, pot stirring with a resounding thud.
Yesterday the commenters to this post [...]

What They Were Saying: Journalism’s Codes Of Ethics

Ben Franklin mused about virtue in the reading and reporting of history. What does the public trust demand and what is the social contract that ethical journalism strives to uphold?
The Society of Professional Journalists published Code of Ethics:
Preamble
Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and [...]

Daily Constitutional: Spring Divertissements, Torture and Illegal Propaganda

[UPDATE] The links list about the illegal Iraq War propaganda campaign will be updated as I discover new stories and evidence. Please add your own gems in the comments, and I’ll get them inserted into the post pronto. Thanks.
I’ve neglected the Constitution, instead lured by the scents, sounds and sights of Spring [...]

Bill Moyers Addresses Universal Healthcare and Nurses

I write about professional nursing, patient safety and advocacy and healthcare policy, and so I am particularly grateful that universal healthcare and nursing were both addressed by Bill Moyers Journal. I am also appreciative of the thoughtful comments there.
The public has been confused about the differences between universal health insurance coverage and universal health CARE.  [...]

Healthcare-Associated Infections And Nursing

I greatly admire Representative Henry Waxman, the Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He asks direct questions to uncover problems, abuses and negligence by government and civilian agencies, organizations and individuals. Today, he issued a letter to each of the 50 states’ hospital association chairs, requesting data on the incidence [...]

Where’s Nursing?

The Washington Independent’s Mike Lillis wrote an interesting piece about how legislators are dancing around the edge of healthcare policy, not wanting to commit themselves to anything that possibly might unsettle the corpulent stomachs of the industry’s heavy hitters’ bottom lines. But once again, do a search for the terms nurse and nursing. Come [...]

Hospital Surge Capacity Myth Busters

The Washington Post’s Spencer Hsu presented a two part series (parts one and two) about the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s hearings on Emergency Department Surge Capacity and Medicaid funding cuts. I posted about the stark picture behind the experts’ testimony a couple of days ago. Today, I’d like to elaborate a [...]

When Bad Is Good: The Dow(n) Is Up World of the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal just loves misery. Here’s the latest celebration of it with a nursing twist. Its related blog post echoed its story sentiment.

The ailing economy is helping to ease the nursing shortage.
With house prices falling and the cost of gasoline and food rising, many nurses are going back to work, in some [...]

Emergency Department Surge Capacity: There Ain’t None

[UPDATE 05-07-2008 Day Two of the Hearing is today with Michael Leavitt, Sec DHHS  and Michael Chertoff, Sec DHS testifying. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee added their testimony and that of Dean Conway-Welch, and the links are at their names.
What comes through loud and clear is the BushCo loyalism of Chertoff: "not my [...]

Nurses Week 2008: “There Were No Nurses”

I wrote this post over a year ago, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. The first week in May - to be more precise, May 6-12 - has been designated - mostly by hospital and nursing employers’ marketing departments - as Nurses Week. It’s usually filled with [...]

Fringe Kooks

Frank Rich writes about race and the free ride that McCain is receiving from the corporate media. He understands some of the issue, but he still dances rings around that elephant.
Mr. Hagee is not a fringe kook but the pastor of a Texas megachurch.
Hagee and his Elmer Gantry brethren are indeed fringe kooks of [...]