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TANF UI: "The stated goal of welfare reform was to get people off welfare and into work. While employment rates did rise substantially among those leaving welfare in the late 1990s, many former welfare recipients who have lost their jobs in the current labor market downturn remain ineligible for UI. In the late 1990s, nearly one-half (49.1 percent) of women who left welfare failed to meet the monetary requirements for unemployment insurance, compared to only one-of-five (20.7 percent) women who were employed but had not been on welfare. In spite of increased employment rates, and rising wages in the late nineties boom, former welfare recipients were actually less likely to qualify for UI in the late 1990s, than in the period prior welfare reform."

ABC30.com: Healthy Families Freeze: "A group of children's organizations wants to take Schwarzenegger on. One is Healthy Families, the agency that provides low cost health insurance for children. Schwarzenegger's proposal is to freeze enrollment in healthy families and put children on a waiting list. "

TIME - Mitch Frank - Alabama's Most Courageous PoliticianAlabama’s Republican Governor Bob Riley is either politically suicidal or the bravest chief executive in the country. He could be both. Riley campaigned in 2002 by appealing to the state’s upper- and middle-class, white suburbanites, while his opponent lobbied for support from blacks and poor, rural whites. Riley’s strategy worked — he defeated incumbent Democrat Don Siegelman by just 3,120 votes. Now the Governor seems bent on ticking off all the people who supported him.

Smart Tax Laws Would Put More Money in California's Pocket: "In his first act as governor, Schwarzenegger repealed the Davis administration's increase in the vehicle license fee, which was slated to bring in $23 billion over the next five years. What the new governor didn't mention, however, was that the fee was deductible for federal income tax purposes. That means that Californians who file a Schedule A with their federal tax returns could have reduced their federal taxable income by the full amount of the vehicle fee paid to the state."

TOMPAINE.com - Beat The ClockIt is hard to think of another American election—perhaps 1860—where the consequences were more momentous and the outcome more dependent on luck and timing.

Israel Shares Blame on Iraq Intelligence, Report Says (washingtonpost.com): "Israel was a 'full partner' in U.S. and British intelligence failures that exaggerated former president Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a report by an Israeli military research center has charged. "

In the End, Bush Was Pressed: "The Bush administration's bold foray into steel protectionism ended prematurely Thursday, the apparent victim of two major miscalculations: a worse-than-anticipated backlash by steel consumers, and a faster-than-expected retaliation by the rest of the world."