CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 18, 2013 | By Patrick McGreevy
A Senate Republican leader has proposed eliminating limits on campaign contributions to state candidates, arguing the restrictions are ineffective. Sen. Ted Gaines, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus, introduced legislation to repeal major portions of the Proposition 34 that put a $4,100 limit on contributions by individuals to candidates for the legislature and a $27,000 limit on contributions to candidates for governor. The measure would have to be acted on by the state voters.
BUSINESS
January 25, 2013 | Los Angeles Times
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is seeking to repeal a Medicare-pricing provision in the recent "fiscal-cliff" deal in Congress that benefits Thousand Oaks biotech giant Amgen Inc. Legislation to eliminate the exemption for a class of drugs, including Amgen's Sensipar, that are used by kidney dialysis patients, was filed this week by U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.). The fiscal cliff legislation approved this month excluded these oral medications from Medicare price controls for an additional two years.
NATIONAL
January 11, 2013 | By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
SANFORD, N.C. - Ashley Broadway and Army Lt. Col. Heather Mack have been a couple for 15 years. Broadway attended every one of Mack's promotion ceremonies. The two lived together when Mack served on bases in Texas and Kansas. When Mack was deployed to South Korea, Broadway joined her there. She cared for their young son, Carson, when Mack was sent to Kuwait. On Nov. 10, the women legally married in Washington, D.C. Broadway began a new life as a military spouse, certain that with the repeal in 2011 of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that banned gays from serving openly, she would enjoy the same rights as other spouses.
NEWS
November 9, 2012 | By Jon Healey
Here's a sign of how tenuous a hold House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) has on his fellow Republicans: Seemingly every time he sounds a note of pragmatism, he has to follow up his remarks a few hours later to clarify that he's not conceding a thing. A good example comes in my colleague Lisa Mascaro's story about an interview Boehner gave ABC News' Diane Sawyer on Thursday. In addition to reiterating his opposition to higher tax rates, Boehner weighed in on the fate of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.
NATIONAL
October 28, 2012 | By Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - Jode Towe was driving his big rig across the New Mexico desert in April when he noticed an odd sensation at the back of his throat. "It was like something was growing there," he recalled. When Towe, 41, went to a clinic, he got bad news. He might have cancer. Doctors recommended a biopsy. If the results confirmed their suspicions, surgery and chemotherapy might follow. But Towe and his wife, who live in this small city near Nashville when they aren't hauling freight across the country, don't have health insurance.
OPINION
October 21, 2012 | By Juliann Garey
One in five Americans over age 18 suffers from a diagnosable mental illness in any given year. That's upward of 40 million potential voters. So why have we heard virtually nothing about mental health care from either candidate during this campaign? Just to provide a little context, according to the American Cancer Society's latest numbers, about 12 million Americans are living with some form of cancer; 400,000 Americans suffer from multiple sclerosis; 1 million from Parkinson's and 1.2 million are living with HIV/AIDS.