The Filter: Where's the Cornhusker Kickback?

(March 19) -- With so many news aggregators out there, who can keep up? AOL News filters the filters to steer you to the headlines that really matter.

Skip Those, Read This: Pending legislation is the news of the day. The Huffington Post leads with an Associated Press story that sums up the 153 pages of changes that Democrats have introduced into the health care reform bill. They've taken out the controversial $100 billion in Medicaid funds that were slated to go to Nebraska (the so-called "Cornhusker Kickback"), but there are still special incentives for several other states. Meanwhile, The Daily Beast picks up a Politico story announcing that two Democratic representatives have switched their positions and will now vote for the bill, now that the Congressional Budget Office has announced that the reforms will save the government $138 billion over the next decade. There's still a few votes to get to 216 -- the magic number -- but the momentum is now on Democrats' side, Politico reports. The place to go for the details is Jonathan Cohn's blog over at The New Republic.

College Aid: Democrats also announced Thursday legislation that would provide an additional $36 billion in Pell grants over the next decade, The New York Times reports in The Slatest's lead story. "Congress would pay for the larger grants by ending subsidies to private banks that make student loans and shifting to direct federal lending," the Times reports. The legislation is tied to health care reform, with $9 billion in the educational grant savings going to offset health care costs -- a procedural tweak to allow the complex budget-reconciliation process to go forward. But with more people going to school in these difficult economic times, the Obama administration had hoped to allocate more money to grants.

Team of Rivals: Speaking of reconciliation, The Daily Beast's lead story is a New York Times report about how President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who pulled few punches in their presidential primary battle, are now getting along swimmingly. As evidence, the Times points to a call Clinton got last month that her husband was in the hospital and needed an emergency heart procedure, but she nonetheless kept a scheduled appointment with Obama. But a cynic could say this says less about the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama relationship and more about the strains of her marriage to former President Bill Clinton.

Catch of the Day: The Daily Beast picks up a CNN report on the claims of a former top general that the Dutch policy of allowing gays to serve openly in the military was partly to blame for the massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. "That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war," John Sheehan, former supreme allied commander-Atlantic, told Congress on Thursday. "The case in point that I'm referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs. The battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off and executed them." Sheehan opposes the Obama administration's pledge to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that prevents open gays to serve in the military. Meanwhile, the Dutch ambassador to the U.S. took exception to his claims, saying, "The military mission of Dutch U.N. soldiers at Srebrenica has been exhaustively studied and evaluated, nationally and internationally. There is nothing in these reports that suggests any relationship between gays serving in the military and the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims."

Million-Dollar Woman: Former Alaska governor and tea party darling Sarah Palin has been shopping a reality show and wants at least $1 million per episode, reports The Hollywood Reporter (via The Slatest). Mark Burnett of "Survivor" would produce the series featuring Palin touring Alaska. Several networks have expressed interest.