Lawmakers may let government shutdown last days or weeks
Lawmakers may let government shutdown last days or weeks
WASHINGTON — The government shutdown could last for many days or even weeks because politically safe lawmakers in both parties feel little pressure to compromise.
Heavily gerrymandered districts make many House Democrats and Republicans virtual shoo-ins for re-election, insulating them from everything but the views in their slice of the country.
That means some lawmakers can be greeted as heroes back home even if nationally the budget standoff comes to be viewed with scorn.
For decades, lawmakers have redrawn congressional boundaries to pack districts with like-minded people and ensure easy re-election for incumbents.
But election results and lawmakers’ voting patterns show that the House is more sharply divided along party lines than perhaps at any other point in modern times.
“After every census and reapportionment, the blue districts get bluer and the red districts get redder,” said former Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, using the colorful terms for liberal and conservative districts. “It’s against their electoral interests,” he said, for lawmakers from such districts to move toward the center rather than feed “red meat” to their most ideological constituents.
Many House Republicans insist that President Barack Obama curtail all or part of his landmark health care law, which they call “Obamacare.”
But Democrats, who control the Senate, say it’s preposterous to yield ground on a major accomplishment that survived a Supreme Court challenge and Obama’s 2012 re-election.
California to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants
LOS ANGELES — California on Thursday joined the growing list of states that allow immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally to obtain driver’s licenses — a measure supported not only by Latino activists but by police chiefs and insurance authorities.
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill in front of a cheering crowd of immigrants and their supporters, predicting other parts of the country will follow the example set by the nation’s most populous state.
The licenses, which are expected to become available no later than January 2015, will carry a special designation on the front and a notice stating that the document is not official federal identification and cannot be used to prove eligibility for employment or public benefits.
“This is only the first step,” Brown said outside City Hall in Los Angeles. “When a million people without their documents drive legally and with respect in the state of California, the rest of this country will have to stand up and take notice. No longer are undocumented people in the shadows.”
Ten other states have enacted measures to give driver’s licenses to immigrants in the country illegally, many of them in the past year, according to the National Immigration Law Center.
Woman who killed her 3 children to ask judge for share of estate
MINEOLA, N.Y. — A mentally disturbed woman who drowned her three young children in a bathtub is going to court to ask a judge for a cut of their $350,000 estate.
Leatrice Brewer will be taken from an upstate psychiatric facility to testify about her request next month, Nassau County Surrogate’s Court Judge Edward McCarty ruled Thursday.
Brewer, 33, was found not guilty because of mental disease or defect in the deaths of her children, ages 1, 5 and 6, so her attorneys say she shouldn’t be subject to laws that bar convicts from profiting from their crimes.
Brewer admitted she drowned the children in the bathtub of her apartment in New Cassel, on Long Island about 20 miles east of New York City, in February 2008.
By wire sources