Eye on the 5th

By Daniel Smith

After months of politics and campaigning, the decisions finally fall to the voters in the Fifth Congressional District in the Primary Election.

June 26 is the date the electorate gets its say after what arguably has been a unique election cycle this time around. And, for a first time, unaffiliated voters can participate in either political party’s choices.

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Making Sense of the Affordable Care Act

By Elizabeth Ritchie, RN

The entire conversation of health care reform starts with the consensus that in the United States the health care status quo cannot be sustained. Reining in health care costs and putting health care back in the hands of individuals rather than insurance companies has been attempted by presidents since Teddy Roosevelt’s administration. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the single greatest deficit-reduction package since President Clinton’s budget of 1993. It is the single biggest legislative action of President Obama and the most significant ruling by the Supreme Court in decades.

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Who’s in Charge of Immigration?

By Ed Quillen

Sometimes I feel derelict in my duties as a citizen. For instance, I avoided paying much attention to the recent arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court about the Affordable Care Act. Like everyone else, I have only so much attention, and I’d rather focus it on things I might be able to do something about. It’s not as though you can write to a Supreme Court justice the way you can write to your congressman (although our congressman has never paid any attention to anything I’ve written).

Further, often it’s easy to predict how the U.S. Supreme Court will rule: 5-4 in favor of Money. This goes back some years. Colorado used to have a law that banned paid petition circulators. It made sense to me; if the state has the power to forbid the buying and selling of votes, why not the power to forbid the buying and selling of petition signatures?

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