Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan has gotten as much attention as anything in this election.

Her past, of course, is the reason. Who has forgotten her first stab at univeral health care and the disaster that was?

Her new plan is nowhere near as ambitious as the one she tried 14 years ago but it calls for universal health care. Everyone would be required to have health care, and to buy it if necessary. Federal assistance would help with the costs.

What’s striking is how much things have changed since Clinton first took on health care. More people are uninsured. Massachusetts enacted a law last year that required all adults to buy some kind of insurance by this past July or face a fine. Then Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, now a presidential candidate, said the bill was modeled on the state’s policy of requiring auto insurance.

“We insist that everybody who drives a car has insurance,” Romney told The Washington Post last year. “And cars are a lot less expensive than people.”

Following Massachusetts lead, California’s Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed making health insurance mandatory for everyone through payroll taxes of businesses with 10 or more employees.

Clinton opponents are already lining up and it was Romney who called her plan socialized medicine in a press appearance outside St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City.

He says he favors incentives to encourage state’s to expand coverage over a federal plan.

But an article today in the Boston Globe said key elements of her plan were strikingly similar to the one implemented in Massachusetts. More “here.”:http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/09/18/in_ways_clinton_healthcare_plan_resembles_romneys_mass_solution/

Did you know there was a hotline for journalists with ethics questions?

It was apparently created six years ago by the Chicago chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and Loyola University’s Center for Ethics.

Some people will undoubtedly scoff. The more than 60 percent of Americans I wrote about today, for example, who think the media make up stories. Fewer than half believe what they read.

There’s more “here.”:http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/hottype/070914

An interesting article in the German magazine “Der Spiegel”:http://www.spiegel.de:80/international/world/0,1518,druck-505573,00.html
on Muslim immigrants to the United States and how they seem to make a place for themselves in society more easily here than in Europe.

I’m sure there is discrimination, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But here’s one point that the article makes, appropriate today on Constitution Day.

“The United States, the land of religious refugees, is more open to religion than secular Europe. Debates over headscarves or mosques are less likely to ruffle feathers in the United States. And while America has 250 Islamic schools, Great Britain has less than half as many, France has only three and Germany has none at all.”

PHOTO: Sara Said Alkhulaidi, originally from Yemen and now living in Brooklyn, holds a sign as Rabbi Michael Feinberg, executive director of the Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition, speaks during a demonstration in support of the Khalil Gibran International Academy on Monday, Aug. 20 in New York. The New York city public school opened this month and offers instruction in Arabic and Arab culture. (AP Photo/Tina Fineberg)

If it weren’t so serious, you’d have to laugh. Or maybe you’re laughing anyway.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has rejected the new $15 million emergency sirens at Indian Point as inadequate.

The sirens will not be approved without major changes, the agency has told the plant’s owner, Entergy Nuclear.

If the company can’t do this right, why should the residents of the Lower Hudson Valley have any confidence in it.

( Peter Carr / The Journal News )

Now maybe critics of the evacuation plans are correct and it would be very difficult to get clear of the area should there be an emergency. But you’d like a chance.

“We don’t take the fatalistic view,” C.J. Miller, the spokeswoman for the Rockland County executive told my colleague, Greg Clary. “A warning system needs to be in place so that people know they need to relocate or take protective action.”

She’s correct. The new warning system needs to be in place. As U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said, we’ve been waiting two years for the company to get this right.

In his speech Thursday night President Bush thanked the 36 nations who had troops in Iraq and the many others who were helping the young democracy.

But the overwhelming majority of course are from the United States—168,000.

The Associated Press took what it called a look at the facts behind Bush’s speech and reported that Albania had 120 soliders in Iraq, Bulgaria, 150 non-combat troops.

And the liberal blog, Talking Points Memo, says Iceland has a lone soldier, whom it is pulling out next month.

You hear this often: Criticizing the placement of New York’s emergency command center — Rudy Giuliani’s bunker — is easy in hindsight. New York’s former police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, repeats the argument on the Huffington Post this week.

But it’s not just hindsight. The World Trade Center had been attacked in 1993, the so-called bunker was up on the 23rd floor of Building 7 and people noticed.

This is from the 9/11 Commission’s final report:

“The OEM’s headquarters was located at 7 WTC. Some questioned locating it both so close to a previous terrorist target and on the 23rd floor of a building (difficult to access should elevators become inoperable). There was no backup.”

Here’s an update of Norman Hsu, the disgraced Democratic fundraiser with ties to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton who turned out to be on the lam from California.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Hsu had sent a suicide letter to the Innocence Project, the legal group that tries to prove prisoners’ innocence through DNA testing, and several other acquaintances and charitable organiztions.

The Innocence Project tried to get in touch with Hsu and his lawyer and it faxed a copy to California officials, its spokesman, Eric Ferrero, told the Associated Press.

After recent press reports about his 1991 grand theft case—Hsu pleaded no contest but disappeared before sentencing—Hsu had returned California. But once again he disappeared after failing to show up for a court date.

He was later found in a Colorado hospital, where he was brought after becoming ill on an Amtrak train. On Wednesday he was moved to a jail cell.

Law enforcement authorities said the FBI is investigating whether Hsu paid donors to contribute to politicians, a charge his lawyer denies.

Clinton is returning $850,000 in contributions linked to Hsu, who was a major money bundler for her. Her campaign has said it will now conduct background checks on donors.

But any questions about donations are poison for Clinton.

In case you missed it, here’s today’s cartoon from The Journal News’ Matt Davies.

A last thought on the Sept. 11 remembrances.

MSNBC re-broadcast the orginal Today show for that morning and at one point NBC’s Pentagon correspondent, Jim Miklaszewski, said he had just heard a rumble coming from the other side of the building.

“I don’t want to alarm anybody right now, but apparently it felt just a few moments ago like there was an explosion here at the Pentagon,” he said. He didn’t know yet that American Airlines Flight 77 had crashed.

I was struck by one exchange about whether the U.S. military had scrambled jets and what those jets would be able to do.
How could the Air Force shoot down a civilian plane with so many people aboard?

Listening six years later you realize many more people would accept just that. Once the Twin Towers fell and thousands died the calculation became different. And what if one of those planes reached the White House or the Capitol? Whose lives are worth more?

Some photographs from the ceremonies in Manhattan:

A man, with a tattoo of a loved one who was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, attends a ceremony marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2007, in New York. (AP Photo/Justin Lane, Pool)

A woman and child hold a flag and flowers as they proceed down the ramp while attending the commemoration marking the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2007, in New York. (AP Photo/Paul Martinka, Pool)

A man takes a picture of the American flag at the World Trade Center site, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2007 on the sixth anniversary of the terror attack in New York. (AP Photo/Dima Gavrysh)

The first model out wore what was described as a silver snowflake trench with gold swirl and a slate check mini shift.

It was the Custo Barcelona spring 2008 collection at New York Fashion Week and you can get a sense of the clothes by the descriptions offered by the designer.

Gold/navy snowflake peacoat and matching bandeau maillot.
Purple/red/grey space dye geometric print suit.
Or how about purple/red/grey space dye geometric print sweater jacket and matching bandeau bikini top and high waist boy leg bottom?

The clothes were colorful, and the line of models moved fluidly along the runway. The walk by the way is hips thrust forward.

Fashion Week ended today and again, New York saw that odd juxtaposition of frenetic fashion and solemn ceremonies commemorating the Sept. 11 attacks. A city this big accommodates both.

So outside the white tents at Bryant Park, photographers, spectators and New York 1’s George Whipple gathered. The curious watched the SUVs arrive to see whom they would recognize and no one seemed to pay any attention to a woman at the top of the steps who looked like Jordan’s Queen Noor and who was waiting for her car.

Custo Barcelona was founded by Custodio and David Dalmau, Spanish brothers who took a trip around the world in the 1980s. They were especially impressed with California and when they returned to Spain they started designing t-shirts.

A few other observations:

If you don’t get to your seat quickly enough, the swag will be gone. Just before the Custo Barcelona show began, some seats were still empty — of people and the scarf that was given away. They had all gotten scooped up.
(The scarf later made one woman sneeze and the seats were eventually filled by the crowd waiting along the wall.)

The models are just as tall and thin as you would think and they have names like Tatiana and Zuzana. You can find this out by going back stage afterward. There was a sheet of stark snapshots near the makeup tables identifying everyone.

Though the models don’t smile, presumably so as not to draw attention away from the clothes, celebrities attending the show do. They stop, pose for the photographers and smile often.

The show that followed Custo Barcelona last night was the one really in demand. It was Zac Posen’s, there was a long line of people waiting to go in and an equally long line of people hoping to get in. According to AP, here were some of the celebrities sitting in the front row: Martha Stewart, Sean “Diddyâ€? Combs, Serena Williams and Lucy Liu. A pair of tickets reportedly was going for $1,500.

For the first time since the terrorist attacks, I did not attend any events commemorating Sept. 11 this year.

Most other years, I covered the ceremony at Ground Zero, but not this time.

For Monday, I wrote instead about a couple, Stephen and Elizabeth Alderman, who have created a foundation in memory of their son Peter. He was 25 and was killed at Windows on the World.

Their goal is to help people traumatized by civil war, genocide or ethnic cleansing and their enthusiasm for their work is inspiring.

The foundation was born of the tragedy on 9/11, Stephen Alderman said, but “We outgrew it somehow when the world became a more dangerous place.”