Tuesday Links

• After being at the center of a politically damaging storm over the emergency contraceptive "Plan B, the federal Office of Women's Health has recently had more than one-quarter of this year's $4 million operating budget quietly removed.

• While Bush tried to tell them how well the Iraq war is going, state governors pressed him to provide more money for the Children’s Health Insurance Program. In response, administration officials said states should make better use of the money they already had (that is, tough shit, we've got to give more under-the-table money to al-Qaeda sympathizers in Iraq).

• As if you didn't know that people care about helping thw working poor, research shows that ballot initiatives for increasing the minimum wage boosted voter motivation in five targeted states in 2006.

• Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) will begin oversight hearings into how Walter Reed Army Medical Center subjected wounded soldiers and Marines to bureaucratic indifference and allowed them to live in squalor. Wait, oversight? Of the Bush Adminstration? Uh oh.