An effort by the Trump administration to roll back an obscure Medicare rule has provoked a loud, and unexpected, backlash according to multiple reports in The Hill, a newspaper that specializes in covering the federal government in general and Congress in particular. The paper reports in June an obscure regulatory…
An almost off-hand remark by President Trump during an address to police officers last week was swiftly denounced by police officials in red and blue states alike. As the Washington Post reports, “some police leaders worried that three sentences uttered by the president… could up-end nearly three decades of fence-mending.”…
A groundbreaking study published last week by the New York Times has reverberated through the sports world. “A neuropathologist has examined the brains of 111 NFL players – and 110 were found to have CTE, the degenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head,” the paper writes. A few…
The Associated Press reported earlier this month on a boy who died “after falling off a parade float on his seventh birthday.” The tragic event took place during the Miner’s Jubilee Parade in Baker City. The news agency says the boy “was struck by the rear wheels of a commercial…
An important thing to understand about the US Supreme Court is that its rulings can often seem narrow and technical even as they have sweeping repercussions for every American. That was the case with two rulings that were issued late last month, just as the court’s annual term came to…
The news last week that a 3-year-old Beaverton girl was in critical condition after falling from a 2nd floor window is the most tragic sort of reminder of the importance of window safety. As I have written on several previous occasions, when children die or are injured in window falls…
On Wednesday the US House of Representatives passed the misleadingly-named “Protecting Access to Care Act” on a largely party-line vote of 218-210 (all of the ‘yes’ votes came from Republicans; the noes included 191 Democrats and 19 Republicans). There is no indication yet whether the Senate will take up this…
A recent article in The Oregonian details a distressingly long list of safety and oversight failures at a single daycare center in Keizer leading to a number of injuries to children. According to the newspaper the Iris Valley Learning Center “amassed one of the worst safety and health records in…
A few weeks ago I wrote about efforts to design a ‘breathalyzer for distracted driving’ – an app that law enforcement officers could use to determine whether a smartphone or other electronic device had been in use in the moments surrounding an auto accident. Now, according to a Seattle Times…
A recent article in The Oregonian documented efforts by Disability Rights Oregon to convince “the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office to transfer jail inmates undergoing mental health crises to the city’s new emergency psychiatric care center if needed.” As the article outlines, the Northeast Portland facility recently opened, offering “a long-awaited…