Domestic goings on dominated the news this Leap Year Day in 1996.

President Clinton was hosting a Media Summit on the subject of Sex & Violence on TV with much political hay being harvested in the way of the proposed Telecommunications Reform Bill. The topic was a popular one with everyone agreeing things were getting just a bit out of hand.

Elsewhere, FBI Regulators decided not to sue First Lady Hillary Clinton over the alleged Whitewater affair. Meanwhile, the House narrowly refused Government subsidies to expire for Sugar and Peanuts, but did vote to end Dairy subsidies.

On the GOP Primary front - Steve Forbes was making news on this day. He was given the okay to appear on the New York Primary ballot while some in the GOP accused Forbes of "buying" his Arizona Primary win. The Candidates were heading South this day, to get ready for the next batch of Primaries and the final debate being held in Columbia South Carolina later on in the day.

40 people were arrested and 4 gangs were said to be involved in a rash of warehouse robberies and the kidnapping of High-Tech industry executives in California's Silicone Valley. the robberies were said to net a low-ball figure of $500,000 per heist and a high-ball figure of $10 million per. Nothing to sneeze at. And drug-trafficking was muddled in there too.

The Cuban exile group "Brothers To The Rescue" were discovered to be aligned with not only the Cuban Government but also the FBI, playing both ends of the equation.

A judge refused to throw out Assisted Suicide charges against Dr. Jack Kevorkian - again.

And singer Alanis Morissette scored huge at the Grammy's, winning for her multi-multi-platinum Jagged Little Pill debut. Quick: Name a tune.

And that's how it went for February 29, 1996 as told to the curious among us by The CBS World News Roundup.

Continuing the backward look at Presidential elections past, we're taking a stop at the 1984 Democratic Primaries and this interview by Leslie Stahl with Democratic Presidential hopefuls Alan Cranston and Gary Hart on the eve of the New Hampshire Primary.

This broadcast of Face The Nation from February 27, 1984 covers a number of subjects, among them; Cranston's age (69 at the time), Jesse Jackson's slips-of-tongue, Gary Hart's 16% showing in Iowa and his surge in the polls before New Hampshire, Foreign Policy, Republicans in general - who will be left standing after Tuesday in particular.

Politics in 1984. 28 years and another planet later . . .

(Claude Pepper - D-Florida - Governor Harold Stassen - R-Minnesota - The relentless jangle of The Bogey Man)

Note: This is a repost from November in case you missed it the first time.)

The never ending debate in a National Health plan and another dig in the archives for some perspective. Seems the one thing the debates had in common (the ones I've come up with from 1947, 1949, 1951, 1961) is the fear factor, trotted out almost verbatim by spokespeople for the AMA - all following the dreaded bogey man. It seems this overriding fear was the biggest factor in sinking any useful legislation in health care. And always the fear card is played by the Republicans. This debate features Senator Claude Pepper (D-Florida) and former Governor Harold Stassen (R-Minn.) from the program "American Forum Of The Air" on January 29, 1950.

Harold Stassen: (regarding the British National Healthcare system) “Please tell our friends in America, never, never, never adopt this program.”

It's interesting to note that one of the arguments made against the British system of Health care was the reported "dramatic rise in gravesites" after it was enacted in 1943, eluding to the notion that British National Health care became inept. Trouble was, there was that little thing called World War 2 that seemed to escape the radar and that all this sudden rise in dead people came not from a flawed health system, but rather bullets and shrapnel.

In the argument against a decent National Health care plan - reality doesn't seem to play much of a role.