By Ann Twomey

When focusing on getting better, the last thing patients or their family should be worried about is how to pay the medical bills. 

By PHILIP SELLINGER With Washington seemingly paralyzed by deficit and budget problems, it’s time to take another look at Simpson-Bowles, the bi-partisan proposal to cut spending, raise revenues, and get our spiraling budget deficit under control. It’s an evenhanded and rational solution to a looming budget disaster.

By Assemblyman Timothy Eustace (D-38), Bergen/Passaic

Our federal and state economies are just now beginning on the long, slow road to recovery.  Unfortunately, New Jersey continues to lag behind the rest of the nation in rebounding and rising prices at the pump and in other petroleum products, like home heating oil, are not helping our residents’ pocketbooks. 

BY KEVIN O'TOOLE As a proud member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I firmly believe the New Jersey Constitution empowers the Governor, “with the advice and consent of the Senate” to nominate qualified attorneys to the Supreme Court of New Jersey.  In seeking to create an independent judiciary not subject to political whims, the drafters of the Constitution and people of New Jersey presumed that the Senate would conduct itself with dignity and statesmanship while professionally probing a nominees’ qualifications, intellect, demeanor, and judicial philosophy.  And, for the first 65 years of our modern Constitution, that presumption bore true, as the Senate has carefully scrutinized the qualifications of all judicial nominees.