As he did last year, President Obama has again demonstrated that he may be one of the brightest minds in basketball since Dr. James Naismith by selecting Kansas to win it all. The President correctly noted “I’m picking Kansas, just because I think they’re deeper…I think that Kansas has more firepower [than Ohio State].” You can check out his full bracket here.

It’s officially the most snow in the District of Columbia since they started counting. That’s 126 years. If you’re counting, Chester A. Aurthur was president and on November 4, 1884, “Democrat Grover Cleveland defeats Republican James G. Blaine in a very close contest to win the first of his non-consecutive terms.”

Via – DCist

As the snow totals have been steadily piling up, we’ve all been thinking that we can’t remember ever seeing this much snow in D.C. before. Well, now it’s official: no one has seen this much snow in D.C., at least not since Pat Collins‘ great-great-granddad started sticking yardsticks in area snowpacks back in 1884. As of 2:00 this afternoon, the National Weather Service is reporting that this is indeed the snowiest winter in recorded history for D.C., Baltimore, and Dulles.

Via – Capital Weather Gang

The District has a new record for snowfall in a year, at least since they started counting:

Reagan National Airport (DCA) reported 1″ of snow last hour, upping its storm total (unofficially) to 9.7″. By our math, it now has received 54.8″ this year, exceeding the 54.4″ of 1898-1899. We’ll update when we have confirmation.

Via – City Desk

Via The AP. Kansas (20-1) back on top after tough win at K-State.

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Via – Think Progress

On the eve of Veterans Day, a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School has released a study finding that an estimated 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they did not have health insurance. That “translates to six preventable deaths per day” and more than twice the number killed in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.

Being uninsured raises a person’s odds of dying by 40 percent. The researchers found that 1.46 million veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 lacked insurance in 2008. While most veterans are eligible to receive excellent care from the Veterans Administration, those who were not injured in combat and whose income is above a certain threshold are often ineligible. Others are assigned low priorities, providing them with less consistent and more expensive access to care:

“Like other uninsured Americans, most uninsured vets are working people – too poor to afford private coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor at Harvard Medical School. [...]

Dr. David Himmelstein, the co-author of the analysis and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, commented, “On this Veterans Day we should not only honor the nearly 500 soldiers who have died this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the more than 2,200 veterans who were killed by our broken health insurance system. That’s six preventable deaths a day.”

Unfortunately, health insurance is just one of many serious problems vets face. Up to one-in-five veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, while male vets face suicide rates double the national average. And, as the VA under President Obama recognized, veterans still account for up to a quarter of all homeless.

The fact that even veterans cannot receive adequate health care demonstrates that the current system is broken and in need of dramatic overhaul. A robust public option will guarantee that vets and all working-class Americans will be able to afford quality health insurance. Still, the study’s authors warn that the health care legislation “would do virtually nothing for the uninsured until 2013” and would “leave at least 17 million uninsured over the long run when reform kicks in,” leaving many veterans without care.

AP via The Brownsville Herald

For the second time in its storied basketball history, Kansas is No. 1 in The Associated Press’ preseason Top 25.

The Jayhawks were a runaway choice Thursday, receiving 55 first-place votes from the 65-member national media panel to easily outdistance Michigan State, which was No. 1 on five ballots.