THE HUMAN & CIVIL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION OF NEW JERSEY is hosting a panel discussion of great concern to the citizens of Plainfield and all citizens of New Jersey. As you are aware, there have been several hospital closings and more are planned. In- addition to the hospital closings there are other serious issues that need to be addressed. These issues have also contributed to the closings of hospitals. According to Mr. Kevin Slavin, President and CEO of East Orange General Hospital, the State is planning to cut funds that hospitals receive to care for patients without health insurance by $...   Read More >>

Reviewed by Barry Schwartz

Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page BW08

CONSUMED

How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole

By Benjamin R. Barber Norton. 406 pp. $26.95

THE REAL TOY STORY

Inside the Ruthless Battle for America's Youngest Consumers By Eric Clark Free Press. 259 pp. $26

Immediately after 9/11, President Bush addressed the nation. Here was a chance to bring a grieving people together -- to articulate shared purposes and ask for shared sacrifice. Instead, all the president asked of...   Read More >>

DCF's Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) is focusing on a special initiative to recruit adoptive homes for the 100 children who have been in the foster care system the longest amount of time awaiting a forever adoptive family.

Five adoption recruiters from across the state were reassigned to the DYFS central office in Trenton to work exclusively on finding homes for these children. The vast majority of these children are adolescents and some who want to be adopted with their siblings.

DYFS and the Heart Gallery of New Jersey (HGNJ) has recently launched a new set of portraits focused on the100 longest waiting children that will be displayed in a series of public exhibits throughout 2008 as well as on the Web. HGNJ coordinates the volunteer efforts of dozens of professional photographers and...   Read More >>

TRENTON - Governor Jon S. Corzine today signed an historic family leave insurance bill, propelling New Jersey to become only the third state in the nation to enact a family leave program for workers caring for sick family members, newborn and newly-adopted children. The state of California implemented its program in 2004 while the state of Washington passed legislation last year.

"This family leave insurance bill is personally significant to me," said Governor Corzine. "When I was in the hospital after my accident last spring, it was the strong support from my family that kept me going. I was fortunate my family members had the flexibility to be there for me, day-in and day-out. But not everyone has that luxury.

"I believe the daily reality of the lives of New Jersey families makes this...   Read More >>

NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Edward Brooke declined to comment Friday about whether he had an affair with Barbara Walters in the 1970s

"I have had a lifetime policy and practice of not discussing my personal and private life, or the personal and private lives of others, with the notable exception of what I wrote in my recently published autobiography, `Bridging the Divide: My Life,'" he told The Associated Press in a phone interview from Miami.

A relationship with Walters wasn't mentioned in his book, the 88-year-old former senator from Massachuse...   Read More >>

AP Photo

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. -- Bill Clinton, who called himself the "comeback kid" during his first presidential run, is pulling out all the stops for Hillary Clinton's comeback.

His relentless approach to battling Barack Obama -- on the trail and inside the campaign -- is becoming key to Sen. Clinton's newfound success, as she has won four of the last six primaries. She still faces long odds in her quest to overtake Sen. Obama on the road to the Democratic Party's nomination.

Dubbed the "Billification" of Sen. Clinton's campaign by some insi...   Read More >>

newser) – Hillary Clinton is riding high from her Keystone State win. After lagging in Gallup polls much of this month, she tied Barack Obama in the latest tracking poll at 47%. She also leads John McCain by 3 points, while Obama is even with the GOP nominee at 45%. The two Democratic hopefuls had been roughly tied with McCain since Gallup started polling election preferences last month.

Make no mistake: if you've not experienced bloggingheads.tv...you're missing a real winner! Below is a description of this creative, interactive conversational format. Bloggingheads.tv gives busy, intellectuals an opportunity to spend 2-6 minutes with known and not-so-known individuals as they pontificate on issues that actually interest us.

"Bloggingheads.tv was started in the fall of 2005 by Robert Wright, Mickey Kaus, and Greg Dingle. Wright and Kaus, both journalists, had long been attracted to the idea of pontificating on TV, but so far few if any TV producers had seen merit in this aspiration. Wright and Kaus wondered whether the new economics of the Internet—which had already turned thousands of not-very-good writers into print pundits—could turn two not-very-telegenic people into video pundits.  Read More >>

AP Photo

(Newser) – Barack Obama today picked up endorsements from three Democratic Party bigwigs: Robert Reich, a longtime Clinton friend and ex-Labor Secretary, and two ex-senators with foreign policy clout—Sam Nunn of Georgia and David Boren of Oklahoma. Reich said he decided to endorse because he was "appalled" by Hillary Clinton's negative ads in the wake of Obama's comments about low-income voters, New York reports.

"Those ads are nothing but Republicanism," he said. Boren and Nunn, meanwhile, said in a joint statement that "we need...   Read More >>

Virginia Call's family is certain she's 114 years old. Call, who wears a beatific smile and a head wrap, has no birth records. But members of her family, who dote on her, say they are sure of the birth date they have long celebrated. To scientists studying the process of aging and life spans, her true age is of considerable interest. Investigators have studied Call, and their best estimate is that the Chicago woman is 110. But here's the wrinkle: The older someone claims to be, the more evidence needed to prove it; and yet the older someone is, the less likely it is that there is go...   Read More >>