Another victory for Big Government Meddling in health insurance:

McDonald’s Corp may cut health insurance for its nearly 30,000 hourly workers unless U.S. regulators waive a requirement of new health care legislation championed by President Barack Obama, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a company memo.

The restaurant chain is at odds over the new law’s stipulation that so-called “mini-med” insurance plans spend at least 80 percent of premium revenue on medical care, the newspaper said on its website on Wednesday.

McDonald’s told federal regulators in the memo that it would be “economically prohibitive” for its insurance carrier to continue to cover hourly workers unless it receives a waiver to the 80 percent minimum requirement, the Journal reported.

Federal officials say there is no guarantee a waiver will be granted, it said.

The linked story says McDonald’s has told Reuters they won’t be dropping the coverage. I find that internal memos are generally far less accurate than statements to the press, don’t you?

Between that and Barack Obama’s assurance that nobody will lose their health insurance because of ObamaCare, McDonald’s workers can rest easy.

The tidbit about Castle appears in this AP article about the LinkedIn profile that had erroneous claims about her educational background.

Since O’Donnell says the LinkedIn page was not created by her, or anyone acting at her direction, it’s time we uncovered the imposter.  Someone has gone to great lengths to build a lengthy, mostly accurate profile of Ms. O’Donnell, which included subtle puffery about her educational background.  Assuming this person is not Ms. O’Donnell, this is a clever plot, as it feeds into the narrative that she has previously fibbed about her education. If we take Ms. O’Donnell at her word, then whoever perpetrated this travesty is likely an identity thief out to destroy Ms. O’Donnell’s reputation. I assume we all agree that this person must be exposed.

How the imposter got O’Donnell’s spokespeople to initially react as though the profile was hers, I’m not sure. It just goes to show that his or her access to Ms. O’Donnell may be more intimate than anyone imagines.

Meanwhile, O’Donnell’s imposter had 84 connections on her LinkedIn page (which has now been deleted — but don’t worry, there are screengrabs all over the Internet and the cache is still alive here). Perhaps one of those people managed to communicate with the imposter. These communications might reveal something about the imposter’s identity.

LinkedIn should cooperate with authorities and release the information that would identify the perpetrator (such as the e-mail address used).

This all assumes, of course, that O’Donnell will be proactive in helping to expose the wrongdoer. And why wouldn’t she be? If they will do this to her, why stop with this?

I assume O’Donnell has filed or will file a police report alleging some form of identity theft. Let me know when you hear that has happened.

Allahpundit has the rundown, keeping track of the details so I don’t have to.

This is why people hate politicians.

Well, this plus the whole ruining our country thing.

As I noted last night, a Clinton-appointed judge named Jeremy Fogel has granted a stay of execution in the case of a man convicted of raping and killing a 15-year-old child in 1980.  There is no denying he is guilty.  Yet his execution will be held up until at least next year so that the judge can “conduct an orderly review” of a new execution protocol that the judge admits has not been shown to be deficient — and that the judge admits is superior in several demonstrable ways to a Kentucky protocol found constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision points up the need to have different methods of execution available to a condemned man in California, so that illusory deficiencies in one method will not hold up the execution of a clearly guilty man who has committed a monstrous crime.

As I see it, realistic possibilities include:

• Firing squad.  To my knowledge, the firing squad has never been held unconstitutional anywhere.  Several bullets to the head should produce a rapid and certain death.

• Gas chamber retrofitted with carbon monoxide.  As far as I know, California’s gas chamber, which formerly used cyanide, is still around and functioning.  Death by cyanide was improbably ruled unconstitutional by Carter appointee Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in the 1990s.  Her decision was affirmed by the Ninth Circus in a decision written by Carter appointee Harry Pregerson, and not appealed. But there is absolutely no reason we can’t retofit the chamber to use a non-painful gas such as carbon monoxide.

• Overdose of barbiturates.  Even our friend the liberal judge Fogel claims that this would be constitutional. Of course, there are issues: there is currently a nationwide shortage of the drug we used to sedate prisoners, and it could be discontinued almost entirely. Furthermore, the method found hunky-dory today will be declared horribly cruel tomorrow. Best to have several alternatives on the table.

This will have to be done by initiative.  Our Democrat legislature will not vote to authorize new methods of capital punishment.  Nor would any any such law be signed by Jerry Brown if were to be elected Governor.  (I will have more to say about the conduct of the Attorney General in this case in a future post.  Suffice it to say that he has not defended capital punishment in California as he claims he has.)

What we need is someone to bankroll an initiative authorizing these alternatives. Commenter Dana notes that a poll conducted this summer (.pdf) found that 7 in 10 Californians continue to support capital punishment. Citizens don’t want to see it used in every case, but they want it available for the worst of the worst. Over 700 such people currently sit on Death Row. If we don’t fix the situation they will all die of old age.

Albert Greenwood Brown raped 15-year-old Susan Jordan and strangled her to death with one of her shoelaces. The courts say he can’t suffer too much pain when he dies. That’s outrageous enough — but letting him live is more ridiculous. Let’s do what it takes to dispatch this fellow to the fate he deserves.