Here's an interesting example of government-run health care losing a sense of fiscal common sense. From Channel 2 in Buffalo comes the story of Scott Graham, a man with sickle-cell anemia that causes him stabbing pain.

Graham doesn't have a job, insurance or car. So, when he feels bad, he doesn't call a cab. He calls 911 to have an ambulance drive him to the hospital.

A 2 On Your Side investigation found that from January 2006 to May of this year, Rural Metro Ambulance picked him up 603 times.

Medicaid picked up the tab for each ride, costing taxpayers at least $118,158.

How does the federal government explain this kind of waste in the federal health system? Apparently, the bureaucrats were more interested in finding out who blew the whistle:

2 On Your Side contacted Medicaid to have them look into the number of times Graham used an ambulance. Medicaid appeared more interested in how we got the information, rather than how much it cost taxpayers to pick him up.

Medicaid fraud and abuse costs $60 billion each year nationwide.

It's enlightening to see what topics New York Times editors find disturbing and newsworthy and which ones they shrug off or ignore.

New York's new senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, is a Democrat who is nonetheless under strong suspicions at the liberal Times for her support of gun rights and her previous representation of a white conservative district. On Friday's front page, she came under fire via a stash of old ammo in a story by Raymond Hernandez and David Kocieniewski. "As New Lawyer, Senator Defended Big Tobacco." Gillibrand is in trouble for defending Big Tobacco as a lawyer representing Philip Morris back in 1996.

The Philip Morris Company did not like to talk about what went on inside its lab in Cologne, Germany, where researchers secretly conducted experiments exploring the effects of cigarette smoking.

So when the Justice Department tried to get its hands on that research in 1996 to prove that tobacco industry executives had lied about the dangers of smoking, the company moved to fend off the effort with the help of a highly regarded young lawyer named Kirsten Rutnik.

Ms. Rutnik, who now goes by her married name, Gillibrand, threw herself into the work. She traveled to Germany at least twice, interviewing the lab's top scientists, whose research showed a connection between smoking and cancer but was kept far from public view.

Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand is the new senator from New York, replacing Hillary Clinton, who resigned her Senate seat to become Secretary of State in the Obama administration. But the New York Times hasn't exactly rolled out the welcome mat. So far the paper has done little but nag Gillibrand for being insufficiently liberal, pushing her to back away from her stands against amnesty for illegal immigrants and her support of gun rights.

A Metro section story by Kirk Semple on Wednesday, "Drawing Fire on Immigration, Gillibrand Reaches Out," argued that Gillibrand must adapt by moving to the left to appease her diverse and apparently angry vast new constituency.

During her one term in the House of Representatives, from a largely rural, traditionally Republican district, Kirsten E. Gillibrand was on safe political ground adopting a tough stance against illegal immigration.

Ms. Gillibrand, a Democrat, opposed any sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants, supported deputizing local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws, spoke out against Gov. Eliot Spitzer's proposal to allow illegal immigrants to have driver's licenses and sought to make English the official language of the United States.

But since her appointment by Gov. David A. Paterson last week to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ms. Gillibrand has found herself besieged by immigrant advocates and Democratic colleagues who have cast her as out of step with a majority of the state, with its big cities and sprawling immigrant enclaves.

The decision by New York Governor David Paterson to name a somewhat conservative replacement (by that state's democrat standards), Kirsten Gillibrand, to Hillary Clinton's U.S. Senate seat has already sent some liberals into a tizzy. They are upset over Gillibrand's support for the National Rifle Association as well as for extending the Bush tax cuts among the issues that disturb them. So when will the mainstream media begin labeling Gillibrand as a "Maverick Democrat?" Or is the "maverick" label applied by the MSM only to Republicans who are liberals or "moderates" (really meaning liberal)?