Free Republic

Responding to the ever-widening "secret death list" Veterans Affairs (VA) scandal, on of the Senate's leading liberals has not only blocked legislation aimed at fixing fundamental problems within the VA's health care system, he's also let little doubt to exactly how he feels of the accusation that scores of vets have died due to administrative cover-ups that have resulted in medical care being needlessly withheld. As reported by The Washington Free Beacon on May 22, 2014, Vermont's junior US Senator, Bernard "Bernie" Sanders, has effectively frozen in committee the Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act (VAMAA), which was aimed at giving...

The Obama administration appears to have a terrorist “hands off” list that permits individuals with extremist ties to enter the country, according to internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents obtained by a United States Senator.

D’Andre Berghardt was a young black man walking alone down a highway on his way to a new life. He was killed on Valentines Day of this year, not too far from where the Bundy ranch is. Mr. Derghardt’s senseless murder was filmed. He was shot by BLM officers who are funded by the very ‘fees’ Mr. Bundy stopped paying, and our tax dollars. Its a tragic but perfect example of why Mr. Bundy stopped paying BLM fees – he realized the branch of government set up to help him and collect those fees was ultimately using the money (fees)...

The Duke lacrosse case was a spectacular scandal – a cause célèbre that had the country abuzz about race, class and gender. Three wealthy Duke students, all of them white, were charged with raping a poor black woman during a spring break party at a scruffy rental house in Durham. Then the whole mess imploded in real time, in the national media, due to prosecutorial misconduct. North Carolina, of all places in America, was perhaps the most fertile soil for a case that ended with the state attorney general declaring the three players innocent and state regulators disbarring the prosecutor,...

The Department of Health and Human Services is proposing a rule that would, if implemented, guarantee that even more Americans who like their health insurance plans cannot keep them. Fixed indemnity plans, which pay insured customers a set amount towards medical expenses and are often cost-effective relative to more comprehensive health insurance, are popular forms of coverage, and potentially becoming more popular in the wake of Obamacare. Health insurance industry representatives say that fixed indemnity plans have been attracting more interest as many Americans look for a way to mitigate against the high deductibles applicable to many insurance policies available...

Hopefully your Saturday night and Palm Sunday morning activities have given you enough perspective to join me for a brief recap of the attempted federal land grab at the Bundy Ranch and the showdown at the NV Corral. You’ve undoubtedly heard the story by now of how the Bureau of Land Management attempted to evict Clive Bundy and his cows from the family’s centennial ranch (two second argument: tortoise trumps cows; because we said so). And now they’ve backed down, with an agreement that results in the slaughter of Bundy’s cows, for which he will receive half the proceeds. That’s,...

Barack Obama has finally managed to drive Vladimir Putin from the front pages and BREAKING NEWS alerts by deploying armed US federal rangers from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in order to deal with “illegal cattle grazing” on the ranch of Cliven Bundy in Nevada.

So I'm watching this whole "Firefox" uninstall effort going on, with some amusement. Y'all should understand that Google and Firefox have ways of winning even if you uninstall Firefox. I'll cover that in the body of my thread below

The Los Angeles Times greeted the Obamacare enrollment data on Monday with a striking headline, claiming that "at least 9.5 million previously uninsured people have gained coverage," which is 3 million people more than the Obama administration itself claimed last week (a number that was itself highly questionable, since it did not exclude those who had not paid for their new insurance). The Times' analysis, however, is laughable. The data reported by Noam. N. Levey are not actual counts of enrollees, but a hodgepodge of "state and federal enrollment reports, surveys and interviews with insurance executives and government officials nationwide."...

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) may soon be telling you what you should eat to reduce your “carbon footprint.” In order to—ostensibly—prevent global warming and reduce our national carbon footprint, Washington is already telling Americans what light bulbs they can buy, and what buildings in which they should want to live and work. Now, food could be the next frontier. Currently, the USDA and HHS are drafting their 2015 Dietary Guidelines. Every five years, the USDA and HHS issue recommendations for Americans on what constitutes a healthy diet. As Dr. Barbara...

Barack Obama’s presidency will come to an end. The legacy of pain he will leave behind will not -- at least for years to come. He and his fellow Democrats plan to keep their grip on the levers of power-even if they lose control of Congress and the White House. And they will do so with “invisible hands” gone but not forgotten. Every first-term president has a single compelling desire: to win a second term. But for Obama and his liberal allies to accomplish a second major goal, to “fundamentally transform America,” requires more than two terms. Their agenda depends...

In an interview with the Daily Beast, living legend and Oscar-winner Robert Duvall blasted the Civil Rights film "The Butler" as "very inaccurate." The 83 year-old star added, "JFK had one of the worst Civil Rights voting records," and "All the atrocities in the South were committed by the Democratic Party."

President Barack Obama would veto a GOP-drafted bill that would allow legislators to take agency officials to court if they don’t enforce laws, according to a White House statement. The GOP is pushing the bill through the House because Obama has repeatedly declined to enforce laws he doesn’t like, say GOP legislators.

Mr. Dershowitz thinks the federal campaign fraud charges against the conservative filmmaker and author are an example of “selective prosecution.” Weighing in on the case Friday in an interview with Law Blog, Mr. Dershowitz was withering in his opinion of the Manhattan U.S. attorney office’s prosecution of Mr. D’Souza, who pleaded not guilty last week to making illegal campaign contributions to a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in 2012. “The idea of charging him with a felony for this doesn’t sound like a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “I can’t help but think that [D'Souza's] politics have something...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell promised a ballroom full of activists Thursday that he would fight “tooth and nail” for a conservative agenda if he takes the helm of a Republican majority next year. That, of course, will require Republicans to pick up six Senate seats in November and McConnell to win his own re-election in Kentucky. The five-term incumbent faces a GOP primary challenger who regularly attacks him as an insufficient conservative leader. McConnell walked on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference to applause, thanks in part to a large rifle he held over his head before handing...

Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects behind Obamacare, is now claiming that “insurance companies as we know them are about to die.” Critics of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law have long alleged that one of the real goals of law was to put private insurance companies out of business.

Government wants ‘social media analytic tool’ for ‘ongoing monitoring’The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is seeking a “social media analytic tool” that will give the government access to “full Twitter historical data,” according to a solicitation released on Tuesday. The agency is seeking feedback for a “possible future acquisition to provide near real time social media analysis.” HHS said it wants to use the tool for “ongoing monitoring” of public health issues. HHS provides a long list of requirements, including “access to real-time social media posts,” and “access to full Twitter firehose.” The agency requires an archive that...

Bloombergism is alive and well in California as another front is declared in the War on Soda. Apparently black people can’t be trusted to decide what they want to eat or drink on their own. They must be protected from their food choices by the nanny state. A bill introduced in the California senate would require warning labels for soda and give state bureaucrats the authority to inspect businesses to ensure compliance. Sen. Bill Monning (D.) introduced the “Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Safety Warning Act”

The Obama administration is engaged in a “final coordinated push” to enroll blacks in ObamaCare, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said Friday. Jarrett said blacks have a “disproportionately low rate of coverage,” and called enrolling them the administration’s “top priority.” “We still have a long way to go and we want to make sure we take advantage of every opportunity for outreach,” she said in a Friday conference call with reporters and three mayors that preside over large black communities: Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, Calif., Michael Nutter of Philadelphia and A.C. Wharton of Memphis, Tenn. An estimated 6.8 million...

I mentioned Saturday that Obama took a long fossil fueled plane trip all the way to Fresno, California to complain about “climate change” and announce a $1 billion “climate change” slush fund. Part of the trip was to whine about the drought in California. His “science” adviser, John Holdren ( a believer in Malthusian prophesy), even went so far as to say that it wasn’t about reservoirs (which some were calling to be built), but about the lack of water to fill the reservoirs. Actually, he’s half right, and there’s a reason for that