The Week
In other heart news: A new study shows that fish oil may increase life-threatening abnormal heartbeats in patients with defibrillators implanted to regulate them.
Will Tobacco Fines Go Up in Smoke?
Democratic lawmakers have asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to hold off settling the government's racketeering case against Big Tobacco until the Justice Department completes an internal probe into whether politics played a role in the feds' sudden move to reduce the penalty they are seeking from $130 billion to $10 billion. Internal memos obtained by the New York Times show that senior Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers running the case, ordering them to lop a whopping $120 billion off the fine being sought. At issue: the price tag for the tobacco industry to implement nationwide smoking cessation programs. A Justice Department spokesman says the stunning reversal was designed to comply with court limits on penalties sought by the government. But antismoking advocates don't buy it.
"I think this is political interference," says William Corr of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, "from the Bush administration out of concern for the financial interests of the tobacco industry."
Club Gitmo--or Hell? Ask the Lawmakers
Leading congressional Democrats are pushing for an independent investigation of allegations of detainee abuse at military-run prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. House Dems this week plan to introduce a measure that calls for creation of an independent panel a la the 9/11 commission. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans and Democrats last week clashed over the future of the lockup at Guantanamo Bay. Democrats charged the detention center is an "international embarrassment" that should be shuttered, but many Republicans pooh-poohed complaints of detainee abuse. "The inmates in Guantanamo have never eaten better. They've never been treated better, and" said Rep. Duncan Hunter at a news conference, "they've never been more comfortable in their lives . . . ."
Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy hit Republicans for portraying Gitmo as "more a Club Med than a prison."
Deep Pockets: No More Secrets
After years of keeping mum, the king of whistle-blowers, Mark Felt--aka Deep Throat--has inked a deal to tell all. Universal Pictures and Public Affairs Books have, respectively, bought the film and literary rights to Felt's life story for a movie to be developed by actor Tom Hanks's production company, Playtone. Felt, now 91, is the G-man who helped topple President Richard Nixon by feeding Washington Post reporters inside info.
So much for silence is golden.
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