Msg NOT!, no mercy, no excuses

The Legislature prohibited minors, as of July 1, from text-messaging or using hand-held phones while driving. But lawmakers omitted text-messaging from the hand-held phone ban for adults. Actually, law enforcement officers could still write tickets for driving while distracted or driving recklessly to idiots who won't hold a phone to their ear but will take their hands and eyes off the road to send a text message. To be on the safe side, however, the author of the hand-held cell-phone ban, Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, proposed legislation this week to ban adults from text-messaging while driving. Y not?

Susan Atkins, a member of the Manson “family” who personally slit Sharon Tate's throat in that August 1969 night of horror, was sentenced to death. Because a state Supreme Court ruling essentially suspended the death penalty three years later, Atkins has been in state prison for 37 years. Because she is now dying of brain cancer, she has requested a compassionate release. Tate, 8½ months pregnant, asked for mercy, too. She got none. Neither should Atkins.

According to the Government Accountability Office, 27,000 health care providers – owners of hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities – who are paid by Medicare owe the federal government $2 billion in back taxes. Nearly $1 billion of the total is payroll and Medicare taxes withheld from employees. So why doesn't the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid withhold Medicare payments from those facilities? An IRS program allows the seizure each year of up to 15 percent of federal payments – including Medicare reimbursements to doctors, hospitals, etc. – until the tax debt is paid. Technical difficulties, pleads the agency. Taxpayers' plea: Withhold reimbursements until withholding taxes come in.