Washington passes stimulus bill. The long-debated economic stimulus bill has passed. Legislators in Washington agreed Friday on a plan of well over $700 billion dollars that is designed to turn around the American financial crisis. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill into law next week. The passage of the plan marks Obama’s biggest successful initiative since he took office last month. The president went round after round with Republicans who argued that earlier versions of the proposal involved unnecessary spending that would only make things worse. Obama consistently argued that action was necessary sooner than later.Bill would reform police procedures. A man whose rape conviction was reversed years after he died in prison is having an impact from beyond the grave. Tim Cole was recently exonerated of sexual assault by a Texas judge for the first time in the state’s history that a conviction was reversed post mortem. Now Texas Sen. Rodney Ellis has introduced reform bills that will keep cops from wrongly influencing witnesses in identifying suspects. Cole rejected plea deals he was offered to serve a lighter sentence in the 1985 rape of a college student. He said he wouldn’t plead guilty to a crime he didn’t commit. The woman identified him as her attacker, but a different man later confessed to the crime and was proven guilty through DNA tests. But Cole died of an asthma attack while picking cotton on a prison farm before the evidence surfaced.

TAGS: Bill, obama, police, reform, stimulus, Texas

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