Iraq death toll

CHILD HEALTHCARE

Governors seek aid for child health care

"We can come to a consensus that children should be the first priority," said Gov. Sonny Perdue, R-Ga.

State leaders met privately to discuss the State Children's Health Insurance Program at their annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association.

"This is one area where I think people stand entirely together," said Gov. Jon Corzine, D-N.J.

Georgia and New Jersey are two of 14 states that are expected to run out of money for the program before the next budget year begins in October; in Georgia, it could be as soon as March.
The governors want two things:

_Enough money to keep the program float through October. That is estimated at $745 million.

_Changes to President Bush's budget. Analysts say his spending plan would shortchange the health program even if the number of people served did not grow. This figure is put at $10 billion to $15 billion over the next five years.

Administration officials have said that the president's plan offered a solution to the immediate shortfall by forcing states with surpluses in their program to surrender unspent money more quickly and help states with deficits.

At their private session Sunday, governors said there was bipartisan support for help on the immediate needs and a long-term commitment to the current program.

Napolitano, who heads the NGA, said the issue would come up Monday when governments meet with members of Bush's Cabinet. A bipartisan group of 13 governors has written congressional leaders asking them to cover the money shortfall before the budget year ends.
"We built all that up. We don't want to pull the rug out," said Gov. Don Carcieri, R-R.I. With aggressive enrollment, his state had enrolled 94 percent of children before administrative hurdles and other problems had lowered that number, he said.
Gov. Martin O'Malley, D-Md., said that in their private lunch, many governors were "visibly frustrated" at the administration's approach. In public, several governors said they were confident they could work out a compromise.
Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa., unrolled a plan this year to extend coverage to nearly all his state's citizens. He said the administration had been helpful to his efforts and just last week approved a waiver allowing the state to raise its eligibility for the program to 350 percent of federal poverty.

"This covers about our last 180,000 children who aren't covered," Rendell said. "I want to give the administration high praise."

Amid all the discussion about dollars and percentages, the real cost is being ignored, some governors said.
"I think more about what it means to be a parent, a parent who can't go to sleep at night without worrying that if my kid gets ill tomorrow or gets in an accident, he won't have adequate coverage," said Gov. Tim Kaine, D-Va. "I can't imagine more anxiety."

THURMOND OWNED SHARPTON

Slavery ties Sharpton to Thurmond

"It was probably the most shocking thing in my life," Sharpton said at a news conference Sunday, the same day the tabloid revealed the story.

Some of Thurmond's relatives said the nexus also came as a surprise to them. Doris Strom Costner, a distant cousin who said she knew the late senator all her life, said Sunday she "never heard of such a thing."
"My momma never would talk to me about nothing like that," Costner said of ancestors who owned slaves. "She only talked to me about good things."
The revelations surfaced after Ancestry.com contacted a Daily News reporter who agreed to have his own family tree done. The intrigued reporter then turned around and asked Sharpton if he wanted to participate. Sharpton said he told the paper, "Go for it."

The genealogists, who were not paid by the newspaper, uncovered the ancestral ties using a variety of documents that included census, marriage and death records.

Sharpton, who ran for president in 2004 on a ticket of racial justice, said he met Thurmond only once in 1991 when he visited Washington, D.C., with the late soul singer James Brown, who knew Thurmond. Sharpton said the meeting was "awkward."

"I was not happy to meet him because what he had done all his life," Sharpton said.

Thurmond was seen as softening his segregation stance later in his life. He died in 2003, at 100. The long-serving senator was originally a Democrat but became a Republican in 1964.

Thurmond's children have acknowledged that Thurmond fathered a biracial daughter. Essie Mae Washington-Williams' mother was a housekeeper in the home of Thurmond's parents.
Telephone message left by The Associated Press on Sunday for Strom Thurmond Jr. and an attorney who once represented Thurmond's biracial daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, were not returned.