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In filling in for Rush Limbaugh on his Friday show, conservative commentator Mark Steyn scoffed at the notion Republicans would handle impeachment well enough to even attempt. The author of “The Undocumented Mark Steyn” responded a caller’s question about impeachment and acknowledge that Obama penalizes the lawful, while incentivizing the lawless, but was skeptical congressional Republicans would do anything about it. As it pertained to impeachment, he pointed to the impeachment proceedings against former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s and explained that based upon the Republican Senate leadership’s handling of impeachment at the time, there is no reason to...

The Obama administration is facing a slew of healthcare challenges as the winter holidays approach. While this fall has been a far cry from last year, when HealthCare.gov was melting down, 2014 has brought wholly unexpected problems to the fore for federal health officials and the White House. Take the conflict surrounding Jonathan Gruber, the ObamaCare consultant whose suggestion that a "lack of transparency" and voters' "stupidity" helped the law pass, went viral. Though Democrats have sought to distance themselves from Gruber, his remarks have become a new flashpoint in debate over healthcare reform, invigorating GOP critics as the party...

MADISON, Wis. — The “architect” of Obamacare who suggested the “stupidity of the American voter” helped pass President Obama’s signature health-care reform law hauled in $200,000 from Wisconsin taxpayers for his analysis of the potential costs and impacts of the Affordable Care Act on the Badger State, according to the state Department of Health Services. In total, taxpayers spent $443,718 for MIT economist Jonathan Gruber and a firm to analyze the actuarial and economic impacts of the Affordable Care Act on Wisconsin health insurance markets, according to records obtained by Wisconsin Reporter. The remaining $243,718 went to Gorman Actuarial LLC,...

Sen. Chuck Schumer upbraided his own party Tuesday for pushing the Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2010. While Schumer emphasized during a speech at the National Press Club that he supports the law and that its policies "are and will continue to be positive changes," he argued that the Democrats acted wrongly in using their new mandate after the 2008 election to focus on the issue rather than the economy at the height of a terrible recession.(snip) The third-ranking Senate Democrat noted that just about 5 percent of registered voters in the United States lacked health insurance before the...

Thanks to the FDA’s calorie labeling regulations announced Tuesday, major changes will soon be coming to the food and restaurant industries. The regulation itself is nothing new; it became law in 2010 as a provision attached to the Affordable Care Act, but final rules were delayed for the past few years, thanks in large part to heavy opposition from grocery stores, pizza chains, vending machines, convenience stores, and movie theaters. Although some concessions were made, none of these industries were fully spared. By November 2015, these establishments will be forced to post calorie information on menus and menu boards, which...

Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-New York) comments on Wednesday about Democrats’ misguided focus on health care in President Barack Obama’s first term prompted backlash from top Democrats and left-leaning groups, who accused him of being politically craven. At a speech before the National Press Club in Washington on Tuesday, Schumer said Democrats made a mistake by entering into a fight over health care after they passed the 2009 economic stimulus. His reasoning: Democrats were targeting the uninsured, a population that he said makes up only about 5 percent of registered voters. Only about one-third of the uninsured, he said, are registered...

Democrats made a strategic mistake by passing the Affordable Care Act, Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third-ranking member of the Senate Democratic leadership, said Tuesday. Schumer says Democrats “blew the opportunity the American people gave them” in the 2008 elections, a Democratic landslide, by focusing on healthcare reform instead of legislation to boost the middle class. “After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus,” he said. He said the plight of uninsured Americans caused by “unfair insurance company practices” needed not be addressed but it wasn’t...

While President Obama campaigned on a promise that his universal health care plan would lower premiums, his controversial adviser and plan architect was privately warning the state of Wisconsin that Obamacare was poised to massively increase insurance costs for average residents, internal documents show...... [MIT economist Jonathan] Gruber’s study predicted about 90 percent of individuals without employer-sponsored or public insurance would see their premiums spike by an average of 41 percent. Once tax subsidies were factored in, about 60 percent of those in the individual market were projected to see their premiums go up 31 percent, according to his analysis.......

CASEY MULLIGAN, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1993. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University and Clemson University, and is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research, the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, and the Population Research Center. He has written for the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and is the author of three books, including Side Effects: The Economic Consequences of the Health Reform....

The Supreme Court's surprising decision to hear a new challenge to the Affordable Care Act once again has focused attention on Chief Justice John Roberts, who cast the deciding vote in a 2012 decision that saved ObamaCare from being declared unconstitutional. Many court watchers expect that he will once again be the swing vote in deciding a case crucial to the health-care law, this one involving questions about who qualifies for subsidies under the law. But Roberts' vote in a recent voting rights case suggests he might not step in to save the health law this time. At issue in...

How many days in and they are only mentioning his name?

Sen. Ted Cruz took to the Senate floor Thursday to deliver a slightly changed version of a very old speech as a form of protest against President Obama's planned executive action on immigration. The Texas Republican, in a four-minute address, gave a gently edited version of Cicero's first oration against Cataline. Obama was substituted for Cataline, the U.S./Mexico border was swapped in for the Palatine Hill, "women" was added to references to men, "pen and phone" made an appearance, "execution" was changed to "defeat" and the IRS scandal showed up near the end. The video is above, and the text...

The Obama administration’s much-touted enrollment figure of 7.3 million includes nearly a half-million people who have only purchased dental plans, the House Oversight Committee has found. Without the 400,000 people enrolled in dental-only plans, the total enrollment for ObamaCare drops to 6.97 million, according an investigation by the committee, which was first reported by Bloomberg News. “Instead of offering the public an accurate accounting, the administration engaged in an effort to obscure and downplay the number of dropouts,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the committee, wrote in a statement to Bloomberg. Enrollment figures have strayed from the initial 8...

America loves streaks. For our parents and grandparents, it was witnessing (via radio or the morning paper) Joe DiMaggio‘s 56-game hitting streak in 1941, a record that will likely never be broken. For later generations, it was Cal Ripken playing in 2,632 consecutive games — another record that won’t be touched. There are streaks in broadcasting as well. The most notable being broken two years ago after ABC’s Good Morning America finally beat NBC’s Today Show after an astounding 852 consecutive weeks at the top, a streak spanning over 16 years. But then there are dubious streaks as well, like...

Professor Gruber has written a textbook on public finance, and one of the standard topics that he covers is the problem of pollution externalities, along with a discussion, again standard, of tax remedies. Does Gruber recognize that he is very likely to have polluted the public view of economists and their policy pronouncements? Perhaps he will consider a self-imposed tax on his consultant earnings paid by the taxpayer.Like the never-seen "Secretary" in the "Mission: Impossible" series, President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — she was the Speaker until the voters responded to the enactment of the Patient...

<p>"....At a town hall meeting on health care on July 23, 2009 in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Obama explained that the thinking of the Cadillac tax was to target plans that spend unnecessarily and excessively, thus driving up health care costs, such as a $25,000 plan, "so one that's a lot more expensive and a lot fancier than the one that even members of Congress get."</p>

A key ObamaCare official engaged in a “cruel and uncaring march” to launch the federal health care website last year and wasn’t open to seeking a delay despite concerns, according to a newly revealed email from her former second-in-command.The damning email from Michelle Snyder, formerly the No. 2 official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, was released to FoxNews.com ahead of a Wednesday House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee hearing on the security and botched rollout of Healthcare.gov.In the September 2013 email to Todd Park, the former Chief Technology Officer of the U.S., Snyder characterized her then-boss, CMS...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As the Affordable Care Act's second open enrollment period begins, 37% of Americans say they approve of the law, one percentage point below the previous low in January. Fifty-six percent disapprove, the high in disapproval by one point.

Our own Ben Howe made this video for the folks at American Commitment that explains the entire #GruberGate kerfuffle in 2 minutes. The video is damning and really explains what ought to be page A1 material on every newspaper in the whole country. Check it out:

Members enrolled in Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania’s Affordable Care Act plans will see their premium rates rise by an average of 6.9 percent in 2015. Officials for the Wilkes-Barre-based insurer declined to specify how many members are covered by its Affordable Care Act plans. Its website shows 12 available 2014 “Blue (Affordable Care Act) Metal” plans. “The increases are necessary to meet the coverage requirements, including essential health benefits, of the (Affordable Care Act) and to keep up with the cost of care for members in our ACA products,” said Anthony Matrisciano, spokesman for Blue Cross of NEPA, which...