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Gov. Tom Wolf said Wednesday he expects COVID-19 to surge again in Pennsylvania this fall. But he said preparations and lessons learned during months when the state was shut down may enable us to weather it without a repeat of the shut down. The advantages if faced with a second wave include increased hospital preparedness and capacity, expanded testing and expanding contact tracing to find and isolate people who have been exposed. Wolf said Pennsylvania now has capacity for 16,000 tests per day -- more than the total tested in March -- and has nearly 600 contact tracers, with plans...

President Obama failed to consult Congress, as promised, before carving out exceptions to the omnibus spending bill he signed into law — breaking his own signing-statement rules two days after issuing them — and raised questions among lawmakers and committees who say the president's objections are unclear at best and a power grab at worst. In at least one case, lawmakers charge, Mr. Obama used his first signing statement, on the catch-all $410 billion spending bill, to go beyond the Bush and Clinton administrations in swatting away Congress' attempt to protect whistleblowers. "Not only is your signing statement contrary to...

Posted on Sun, Feb. 03, 2008 Clinton's '35 years of change' omits most of her career Matt Stearns | McClatchy Newspapers last updated: February 03, 2008 11:09:08 PM WASHINGTON — To hear Hillary Clinton talk, she's spent her entire career putting her Yale Law School degree to work for the common good. She routinely tells voters that she's "been working to bring positive change to people's lives for 35 years." She told a voter in New Hampshire: "I've spent so much of my life in the nonprofit sector." Speaking in South Carolina, Bill Clinton said his wife "could have taken...

"Senator Kennedy's endorsement of Hillary Clinton's opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard..." Oh, really? That was a direct quote taken from an official statement issued by the New York state chapter of the National Organization for Women, after Ted Kennedy’s grand endorsement of the Barack Obama presidential candidacy last week. The news of this Kennedy rebuke was widely reported, but, because of some confusing headlines, some were left with the impression that N.O.W.’s national leadership issued the reprimand. This prompted N.O.W. President Kim Gandy to issue her own statement, assuring the world that N.O.W....

Outfitted as she was in her eye-grabbing hot pink (or was it orange?) pantsuit, it was difficult for restaurant patrons of Cafe Milano in Georgetown not to gaze upon Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York as she celebrated her 58th birthday Wednesday night with two of her closest friends. "There's the birthday girl," Terry McAuliffe said when a smiling Mrs. Clinton, born Oct. 26, 1947, arrived by her lonesome self just after 9 p.m., joining the former Democratic National Committee chairman and his wife, Dorothy, at a surprisingly accessible aisle table barely feet from the boisterous bar crowd. Mrs....

US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said today in Baghdad that a string of attacks killing more than 50 Iraqis in two days were failed attempts to sow sectarian strife and destablize the country.Clinton and Sen. John McCain were part of a 5 member congressional delegation that met with US officials and members of Iraq's interim government.Both Senators Clinton and McCain have historically been strident critics of the Pentagon's planning and management of the war in Iraq. But Clinton said Saturday that the Sunni Muslim insurgents were failing in their efforts to destabilize Iraq through sectarian violence.Her comments came as numerous...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, initially expected to headline the Democratic response to the Republican convention, are both missing in action this week -- leaving the job to lesser-known lawmakers. The low-key Democratic response at the GOP convention is a sharp contrast from the Republican counterattack in Boston, where party luminaries included Rudy Giuliani.

Okay, this is second-hand information, so I'm trying to get confirmation, because if true, this could really hurt the Democrats if the word is spread. I just got an email from a friend unlucky enough to work in an office where she can only pick up two AM stations. At 3:00 in the afternoon, that means she has only two choices: Sean Hannity or Blowhard Ed Schultz. What she usually does is listen to Hannity and then flip over during Hannity's spot breaks to get a quick laugh from the liberals. Today, however, she says she got something much worse....

Clinton Calls Impeachment Battle 'Badge of Honor' NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) called his fight against impeachment a "badge of honor" and his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky "morally indefensible" in a CBS television interview. In the hourlong interview on CBS "60 Minutes" this Sunday, two days before publication of his memoir "My Life," Clinton said he was proud of his successful fight against impeachment, the network said in excerpts released on Wednesday. "I didn't quit, I never thought of resigning and I stood up to it and beat it back,"...

<p>Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday said she will turn down the vice presidential candidate slot if it's offered to her by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry. Mrs. Clinton was asked in an NBC "Today" show interview what she would do if Mr. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, asks her to be his running mate. "Well, I don't think that will happen," Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in the interview, taped earlier this week and aired yesterday. "I've made it clear I don't want that to happen, and that my answer will be no if it does happen. I'm not ... I'm not prepared to do that." Political strategists had varying opinions of what her remarks mean. "People are looking for hidden motives every time she opens her mouth," complained Democratic analyst Donna Brazile, who said the remarks are consistent with Mrs. Clinton's stated goal of running for another Senate term. "[T]hat's where she's going to keep her focus," Ms. Brazile said. Others said Mrs. Clinton, who was elected in 2000 as the junior senator from New York, has her sights set on the presidency, and her remarks yesterday back that up. "My sense is that she doesn't like to play second fiddle to anyone and you're seeing that in this decision," said Republican strategist David Winston. "She's a pretty ambitious, focused person. I'm not sure that vice president is what she views as her goal." Mr. Winston said he assumes Mrs. Clinton, "would identify the best situation for her [to run for president] is an open-seat presidency, and therefore she's looking at 2008." Under this scenario, Mr. Kerry would lose this year's election and Mr. Bush would be leaving a two-term presidency in 2008, so there'd be two new candidates vying for the office — a more favorable environment for a challenger than facing a sitting president, he said. "I'm not implying that she wants Kerry to lose ... but in terms of the most favorable for her, that's the most favorable," he said. Mr. Winston said turning down an opportunity to be vice president means Mrs. Clinton runs the risk Mr. Kerry will win, thereby complicating her potential plans to seek the presidency in 2008. On the other hand, if she were to be Mr. Kerry's running mate this year and they lose, that also could hurt such plans, he said. Democrats strongly dismissed all this speculation. Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, said it's "far-fetched and silly" to say Mrs. Clinton's statements on the "Today" show indicate some "grand strategy" of a presidential run in 2008. "If she was strategizing about how to be the [presidential] nominee for the future, she should do everything she could to be vice president," he said. He said a vice presidential slot is a good jumping-off point for a presidential run, plus keeping her name in the mix as a potential vice president would give her much-coveted national attention over the next months.</p>