Several states are dumping their prison population’s healthcare onto Obamacare.
At least six states and counties fromMaryland to Oregon’s Multnomah are getting inmates coverage under Obamacare and its expansion of Medicaid, the federal and state health-care program for the poor. The fledgling movement would shift to the federal government some of the more than $6.5 billion in annual state costs for treating prisoners. Proponents say it also will make recidivism rarer, because inmates released with coverage are more likely to get treatment for mental illness, substance abuse and other conditions that can lead them to crime.
“When someone gets discharged from the jail and they don’t have insurance and they don’t have a plan, we can pretty much set our watch to when we’re going see them again,” said Ben Breit, a spokesman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
Murderers and rapists won’t suffer from jail-lock anymore. Yay!
This next story isn’t strictly related to the previous one, but it kind of is, in spirit. It takes a certain contempt of taxpayers to put felons on Obamacare, where they’re probably being included in the administration’s rolling tally of the number of enrollees. It takes a certain contempt of the rule of law to put an infamous cop killer’s attorney into an important position in the Department of Justice.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, in a 10-8 vote along party lines, approved Debo Adegbile to lead the Civil Rights Division. The nomination now goes to the full Senate for final approval.
The nominee has faced criticism for his role, as acting director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in getting Mumia Abu-Jamal’s death sentence overturned.
Abu-Jamal was convicted in the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.
Supporters, including Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Adegbile has been unfairly criticized for his involvement in that case. But Republican opponents, and the widow of the fallen officer, voiced serious concerns about his judgment.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Adegbile took up a “cause” based on the notion that the country’s “most notorious cop-killer … was a victim.”
The officer’s widow, Maureen Faulkner, wanted to testify on Thursday but Leahy did not allow it.
It seems every day the Democrats currently in power find a new way to express sneering contempt for everyone who disagrees with them for any reason. Democrat Leahy did not allow the widow of slain police officer Daniel Faulkner to testify as to why the attorney who represented her husband’s murderer should not be confirmed to head DoJ’s Civil Rights Division. Why did he deny her her right to speak? A technicality. And because he could. It would have been inconvenient to the Obama administration for Congress to have heard directly from Abu Jamal’s surviving victim.
What Mr. Adegbile did was use a technicality to get Mumia Abu Jamal, cop killer turned leftist cause celeb, out of the death penalty that a jury and judge had handed him. While everyone in our legal system deserves representation, the choices attorneys make as to which cases they will and will not take should be used in weighing that attorney’s fitness for a government job. The fact is, Adegbile saved the life of a man who murdered a police officer not out of any nobility or justice, but on a technicality. He should have had to face Mrs. Faulkner and explain himself. Obama and Holder should have to face off against her too and explain why, out of all of the lawyers in this country, a cop killer’s attorney is most fit for this important job.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member