Americans back health-care decision
WASHINGTON – A new poll finds that most Americans approve of the recent Supreme Court decision preserving the health-care law’s subsidized insurance premiums for people in all 50 states.
Overall, 62 percent approved, while 32 percent disapproved, said the survey released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
Opponents of the law had argued that a strict reading of President Barack Obama’s law only allowed subsidies in states that set up their own insurance markets. The court disagreed, 6-3.
The poll found overwhelming approval for the decision among Democrats and strong disapproval among Republicans. But independents mirrored the national results, approving by 61 percent to 34 percent.
Confederate symbols called ‘treason’
JACKSON, Miss. –The national president of a civil-rights group says Confederate symbols represent “treason” and should be removed from public objects, including the Mississippi state flag.
Charles Steele Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference says Confederate names should disappear from streets and structures. He says that includes the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, named for a Confederate general who became a Ku Klux Klan leader. Police attacked civil-rights marchers there in 1965.
Steele said at the Mississippi Capitol on Wednesday that the state should remove the Confederate battle emblem from its flag
Security increased at New York prison
ALBANY, N.Y. – A range of new security measures is being put in place at a maximum-security prison to close gaps exploited by two inmates who escaped last month.
The state correction department said Wednesday that includes stepped-up searches of inmates’ cells, staffing changes to ensure bed checks are more effective and installation of security gates in the facility’s tunnels.
The department also announced that 30-year correction veteran Michael Kirkpatrick will be the new superintendent of the prison, the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. He replaces Steven Racette, who was placed on paid leave Tuesday along with two of his deputies and nine other staff members, including guards, after an internal review of how convicted killers David Sweat and Richard Matt escaped June 6.
Associated Press
