60s insurance over travel

MiamiHerald.com: Opinion

• Duncan perfect for education
  A couple of weeks ago, a senior advisor to Barack Obama dismissed the argument raging at the time over the choice the president-elect faced in naming a secretary of education.
• Bush bailout steps into Congress' realm
  A new Capitol Visitor Center recently opened, just in time for the transformation of the Capitol building into a tomb for the antiquated idea that the legislative branch matters. The center is supposed to enhance the experience of visitors to Congress, although why there are visitors is a mystery.
• Students see the possibilities
  The world has bigger problems than the media's current miseries, so you may have missed these reports from two days last week: Macmillan Publishing eliminating 64 jobs, New York magazine announcing its first layoffs, top-level execs getting the ax at CBS, a 10 percent staff reduction at the New York financial newsweekly The Deal, Crain Communications dumping 6 percent of its workforce, a pay freeze at The New York Times, eco-themed magazines succumbing to slumping advertising, National Public Radio...
• Real heroes are in Castro's prisons
  Raúl Castro calls his offer to swap political dissidents held in Cuban prisons for Cuban spies held in this country a ''gesture for a gesture.'' Sounds fair -- but it isn't. Actually, it's more like a ransom demand, and one that should be seen by the next U.S. administration -- to whom the offer was addressed -- as a brazen, contemptible attempt by Cuban leaders to profit from their decades-long practice of suppressing political rights on the island.
• Don't let 'shoot first' mentality take hold
  The ''shoot first'' mentality is invading South Florida, say law enforcers and prosecutors. It is a chilling, deadly phenomenon that must be rigorously fought with all the tools at our disposal.
• How could regulators miss scam of epic proportions?
  Apparently, it took a gigantic swindle like the pyramid scheme allegedly run by Bernard Madoff to get SEC Chairman Christopher Cox to admit that the Securities and Exchange Commission has fallen down on the job. Trouble is, Mr. Cox himself has been instrumental in turning Wall Street's watchdog into a meek lapdog.
• Local perspectives
  Call it the battle of dueling architects and planners, with some of each on both sides. In one corner is Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., head of the team behind Miami 21, an ambitious rewrite of the city's zoning code. In the other corner, Bernard Horovitz, president of American Institute of Architects Miami, and like-minded professionals.
• Opinion: Is there really a bailout plan?
  Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren seems like an eminently sensible person. ''I don't buy a winter coat without a plan,'' she says. That's why she's troubled that the Treasury Department won't be more forthcoming about its own plan to spend $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue the country's banks.
• A costly exercise in democracy
  The dismal turnout for Tuesday's runoff election for Miami-Dade County's property appraiser probably could have been predicted, but even so, it was still disappointing. The ballot question of whether to switch to an elected from an appointed property appraiser was overwhelmingly approved last January. It's obvious Miami-Dade residents thought the office important enough to warrant their right to choose who would hold it.
• A hard line on fraud
  From the nation's capital of Medicare fraud, there came a resounding message from U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno Tuesday. He sentenced Miami physician Ana Alvarez-Jacinto to 30 years in prison for writing phony prescriptions for HIV patients as part of an $11 million scam of federal Medicare health insurance.
• Lost chance for justice
  The disappearance of 6-year-old Adam Walsh from a Hollywood Sears store on July 27, 1981, began a frantic quest. Haunting photos of a grinning boy, gap-toothed, wearing a baseball uniform, were everywhere. The search for Adam was intense. But it ended in the worst of tragedies. On Aug. 10 two fishermen found the boy's severed head in a canal near Vero Beach. Now, after all this time, the Hollywood Police and Broward state attorney say they have closed the case by naming Ottis Toole as the killer...
• About those shoes . . .
  When Muntadhar al Zeidi hurled his shoes at President George W. Bush during a Baghdad news conference, he could hardly have been thinking that he was helping the U.S. president make a point about Iraqi democracy. Yet that's exactly what he accomplished. In today's Iraq, a dissenter can insult a visiting head of state in front of the whole nation and live to tell the story.
• Hard truths about detainee treatment
  More than four years after the outrageous pictures of detainee mistreatment at Abu Ghraib surfaced, a report by an authoritative source has finally put the blame squarely where it belongs -- on former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other senior Bush administration officials.
• IDB helps, ICE hurts Haiti
  The Inter American Development Bank's decision to offer Haiti an additional $50 million in aid next year may be the best news that beleaguered Caribbean country has received in a long time.
• Sansom offers bruising ride for taxpayers
  It's been barely a month since Ray Sansom was sworn in as Florida's new speaker of the House, and the Destin Republican is already in trouble.
• Questions still darken Iraq's future
  BAGHDAD -- As soon as I arrived here, I went to visit the neighborhood of Hay Salaam, my bellwether as to the city's condition and prospects.
• Donor list offers some surprises
  It's far-fetched to think that Hillary Clinton's performance of her duties as secretary of state would be influenced in any way by foreign donations to her husband's charitable foundation. But it is naive to think that the exhaustive list of donors released Thursday by the William J. Clinton Foundation won't provoke suspicion and give rise to conspiracy theories in parts of the world where transparency is seen as nothing more than an illusion.
• One 'bonus' we don't need
  Once again this year my December paycheck is a few hundred dollars fatter than those of previous months. That's because December is when my gross annual income hits the ceiling for Social Security taxes. The government collects 6.2 cents from every dollar I earn up to $102,000. Then it stops, and I begin receiving what I call a ``prosperity bonus.''
• Ready to be part of healthcare solution
  As medical students at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, we have seen the healthcare crisis in America envelop our professors, our peers and our patients. Between 2001 and 2007, health insurance premiums have increased by 78 percent, far out-pacing a cumulative wage growth of only 19 percent over the same period.
• A fine senator in the making
  In 1962, a young Massachusetts man who had barely passed the constitutional age barrier decided to run for the Senate. At the time, one of his brothers was president of the United States; the other brother was attorney general.
• Abuse of detainees started at the top
  Below are excerpts from the Dec. 11 statement of Sen. Carl Levin on the Senate Armed Services Committee's report on the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.
• Nuclear Iran poses tough challenge for Obama
  How does Barack Obama sleep at night? The number of crucial issue