James Carville joining Fox News as contributor

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville has been hired as a Fox News contributor. 
The former Bill Clinton adviser will join the network to provide political commentary. Bill Shine, executive vice president of programming, announced the move on Thursday. 
"James' successful and storied career in politics over several decades is an enormous asset to Fox News," Shine said. "We are privileged to have him lend his breadth of experience, wit and dynamic perspective on the network." 
Carville helped lead Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign; he continued to serve as a senior political adviser in the Clinton White House. 
Carville went on to work as a consultant, and also as a political contributor at CNN. 
Carville is currently a political science professor at Tulane University. He has written several books, including with his wife, GOP strategist Mary Matalin.

WaPost: Obamacare Computers Not Yet Equipped to Fix Errors

The HealthCare.gov website is not yet equipped to handle appeals by thousands of people seeking to correct errors the system made when they were signing up for the new federal healthcare law, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
The newspaper, citing sources familiar with the situation, said appeals by about 22,000 people were sitting untouched in a government computer.
"And an unknown number of consumers who are trying to get help through less formal means — by calling the health-care marketplace directly — are told that HealthCare.gov's computer system is not yet allowing federal workers to go into enrollment records and change them," according to the Post.
It added that the Obama administration had not made public the problem with the appeals system.
Despite efforts by legal advocates to press the White House on the situation, "there is no indication that infrastructure . . . necessary for conducting informal reviews and fair hearings has even been created, let alone become operational," attorneys for the National Health Law Program were quoted as saying in a December letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, which oversees HealthCare.gov.
The Post quoted two knowledgeable people as saying it was unclear when the appeals process would become available.
The system is designed to allow people filing appeals to do so by computer, phone or mail. But only mail is currently available, the newspaper said.
Asked to comment, a CMS spokesman said: "As we work to fully implement the appeals system, CMS is working directly with consumers to address concerns they have raised through this process.
"We have found that the appeals filed are largely related to previous system errors, most of which have since been fixed. We are inviting those consumers back to healthcare.gov where they can reset and successfully finish their applications without needing to complete the appeals process," Aaron Albright said in an email.
"We are also working to ensure that consumers who wish to continue with their appeal are able to do so," he said.
The healthcare law, known as Obamacare, is designed to provide health coverage to millions of uninsured people in the United States, but was plagued by a botched rollout in October.
The Obama administration said in late January that enrollment soared in recent weeks to about 3 million.
Addie Wilson, 27, of Fairmont, W.Va., said she is paying $100 more a month than she should for her insurance. "It is definitely frustrating and not fair," she said.
In December, Wilson found herself in a bind. Her old insurance was running out and she needed surgery. The healthcare.gov site was not capable of calculating the federal subsidy due to her and Wilson did not want her coverage to lapse.
She asked a navigator at a federal call center what to do and was advised to sign up, pay the full price, and appeal later. Now, she has discovered there is no system in place to process her appeal.

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House GOP bill aims to end ‘secret science’ in EPA rulemaking

Republican lawmakers in the House are pushing legislation that would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from proposing new regulations based on science that is not transparent or not reproducible.
The Secret Science Reform Act, introduced Thursday by Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., would bar the agency from proposing or finalizing rules without first disclosing all "scientific and technical information" relied on to support its proposed action.
"Public policy should come from public data, not based on the whims of far-left environmental groups,” Schweikert said in a statement. “For far too long, the EPA has approved regulations that have placed a crippling financial burden on economic growth in this country with no public evidence to justify their actions.”
Several of Schweikert’s fellow House Science Committee members have signed onto the bill as co-sponsors, including Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas., Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., and Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas.
In December, members of the House Science Committee accused agency of disregarding ignoring dissenting voices on its independent science advisory review board in its push to impose carbon dioxide limits on new power plants.  
Smith said the proposal “prohibits EPA from using secret science to justify new regulations."
"The American people foot the bill for EPA's costly regulations, and they have a right to see the underlying science. Costly environmental regulations should be based upon publicly available data so that independent scientists can verify the EPA's claims,” Smith said in a statement.
Meanwhile, some states are considering legislation aimed at banning or curtailing future environmental regulations that would be costly to local energy industries.
In Idaho, Rep. Paul Shepherd, a conservative legislator, has introduced a proposal to declare restrictions handed down by the EPA unconstitutional, touting the bill as a way for Idaho to call the shots while disregarding federal regulations on air and water pollution.
In particular, his bill would help dredge miners whose work was being impeded by what they say is unnecessarily restrictive pollution rules.
Although the House State Affairs Committee voted Thursday to send the proposal to a full hearing, it was met with deep skepticism from lawmakers who questioned its legality.
The Idaho Legislature has a history of using largely symbolic legislation as a gesture of defiance against what they view as oppressive government controls.
In Indiana, the Republican-controlled Indiana House approved a bill that would bar state environmental regulators “from adopting a rule or standard that is more stringent than” corresponding federal rules or standards.
If the bill passes the Legislature, it could reportedly have numerous ramifications, including limiting what rules the Indiana Department of Environmental Management could propose to address the large amounts of manure produced by the state’s big livestock farms.