Free Republic

Federal authorities have charged more than 90 people in one of the largest Medicare fraud schemes ever uncovered, they revealed Thursday. The scheme defrauded the national healthcare scheme for the elderly of some $432 million, CNBC reported. "Those charged today not only broke the law -- but also violated their professional obligations and sacred oaths as medical practitioners," Attorney General Eric Holder said, as he announced the result of the crackdown. Holder said one doctor is accused of writing 30,000 prescriptions for 2,000 patients, leading to $100 million in fraud. The accused include "doctors, nurses and other medical professionals," Reuters...

The CEO of IBM offered the Obama administration a free software program that would have cut Medicare and Medicaid fraud by almost a trillion dollars, but he was turned down – twice. "We could have improved the quality and reduced the cost of the healthcare system by $900 billion...I said we would do it for free to prove that it works. They turned us down, "IBM chairman and CEO Samuel Palmisano said during a Sept. 14, 2010 taping of the Wall Street Journal’s Viewpoints program. FOX News confirmed that a second meeting between Palmisano and Obama administration officials yielded the...

Watching the raft of newly elected GOP lawmakers converge on Washington, I couldn't help thinking about an issue I hope our party will better address. I call on my fellow Republicans to open their minds to rethinking what has largely become our party's line: denying that climate change and global warming are occurring and that they are largely due to human activities. National Journal reported last month that 19 of the 20 serious GOP Senate challengers declared that the science of climate change is either inconclusive or flat-out wrong.

Barack Obama's overseas trip this past week proved “he's not a left-wing ideologue” or a “dove” and, “if anything, he's center, even center-right, on foreign policy issues,” Bloomberg News world affairs columnist Fred Kempe, a veteran of the Wall Street Journal, declared on this weekend's Political Capital show which airs several times Friday night and Saturday on Bloomberg TV. Host Al Hunt, formerly Executive Washington Editor of the Wall Street Journal, opened the segment with Kempe by showing video of Obama shooting a basketball as he enthused, “You might call it the shot heard 'round the world: Barack Obama, at...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — Democrat Barack Obama warned Wednesday about the danger of "fighting the last war" as he pledged to focus on emerging nuclear, biological and cyber threats if elected president. Two goals of his administration would be to secure all loose nuclear material during his first term and to rid the world of nuclear weapons, Obama told an audience before a roundtable discussion at Purdue University. Obama said adhering to nonproliferation treaties would put pressure on nations such as North Korea and Iran. North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon and Iran has an energy program the...

LOS ANGELES (AP)—Bryant Gumbel has given up his role as an NFL Network play-by-play announcer after two seasons. The NFL Network said Friday it was looking for a new play-by-play announcer to work with Cris Collinsworth on the network’s Thursday and Saturday night games. “I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to call NFL Network games the past two years, which was a new experience for me,” Gumbel said in a statement. “But we’ve agreed that we’d all be better served going in different directions.”

(2008-03-27) — Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrat presidential front runner, today reiterated his intention to stand by his controversial pastor despite his presidential rival’s remarks that she would have left the church where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached racially-charged, anti-American messages. “I could no more disown my hateful, racist, self-aggrandizing, crazy uncle of a pastor,” said Sen. Obama, “than Hillary Clinton could quit her deceitful, adulterous, self-aggrandizing husband. But if a purging must happen to unite this divided party, I say to my esteemed opponent, ‘You first, Hillary. You first.’” Sen. Clinton said this week that she would have quit...

CHICAGO (CBS) ― U.S. Rep. Danny Davis (D-7th District) said Wednesday he was the victim of racial profiling. CBS 2's Mike Parker reports, the congressman insists the only reason he was pulled over by Chicago police is because he is black. "I hope that this was some kind of isolated instance, but I know in my heart of hearts, I know that it's not," Davis said. The congressman said he was driving three friends home early Monday morning when two white Chicago police officers pulled him over and said he had swerved over the center line before making a left...

Two Senate Democratic leaders who failed to attend Thursday’s Pentagon teleconference with Gen. David Petraeus said they were unaware that they had been invited and questioned the White House’s use of faxes to notify senators of the high-profile briefing. Both Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Democratic Caucus Secretary Patty Murray (Wash.) indicated they would have made room in their schedules to speak with Petraeus, the chief commander in Baghdad, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, if the White House had informed them more urgently. Durbin said the White House’s communication about upcoming Iraq briefings is “usually very reliable,”...

Not quite parody but dangerously close. How can she be so disgustingly pro-American, he wonders, and yet so stridently anti-Islamic? Doesn’t she see that Islamists and “Christianists” are two sides of the same coin? Things pick up towards the end but she never retreats. Just one of the many reasons she has my vote for the vice presidency next year. Click the image to watch.

WASHINGTON — A Democratic love-fest came to a screeching halt Friday after a high-ranking Hispanic party official abruptly resigned amid allegations he used a racial slur during a heated argument with a black aide to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. Alvaro Cifuentes was chairman of the DNC's Hispanic Caucus and is well-known in national Hispanic Democratic circles. Cifuentes was attending the DNC's winter meeting in Washington, D.C., on Friday when he and the aide got into an argument. It's not clear what started the fight, but sources said Cifuentes called the aide, who is black, "boy" twice during the...

He may not know who the leader of Iran is, but he knows his country classics. I like how his voice turns a little “black” at the very end, too. Not as black as, say, Al Gore’s, but it’s the racial-pandering thought that counts.

NEW YORK (AP) - Parents still seem to do the prompting when it comes to "please" and "thank you," but maybe they're too well mannered to chastise children for talking too loudly in the movie theatre. And maybe it's because they have food in their mouths - and know better not to talk - that they don't tell the kids not to chat and chew. Of course, it also could be that the grown-ups have forgotten their own childhood etiquette lessons - and that they're committing many of the same sins themselves. Don't worry. Whoopi is coming to the rescue....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. senator compared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler and made fun of his name on Tuesday during a congressional hearing on the U.S. strategy to end Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program. "Ahmadinejad -- I call him Ahmad-in-a-head -- I think he's a Hitler type of person," Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. "He has made it clear that he wants to destroy Israel. He has made it clear he doesn't believe in the Holocaust. He's a, he's a -- we all know what he is," the senator added....

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Ohioans who take their private political preferences to the voting booth in November for the first time must also present public information -- identification proving who they are. The final version of an election reform bill that Gov. Bob Taft signed into law Tuesday requires voters to provide a driver's license, utility bill or other identification before casting a ballot. Current law, effective through the May primary, calls for a voter to say name and address and sign the poll book next to an image of his or her signature.

Some surprisingly high-profile Democrats have signed a petition to pressure California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant clemency to serial killing-Crips-founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams, who is set to die in San Quentin's death house next Tuesday. According to FrontPageMagazine.com, Tookie's supporters include former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin and "Baghdad" Jim McDermott. The Weekly Standard reports that Hollywood is also turning out for Tookie - in droves. The man who brutally gunned down four people in 1979 has now garnered the support of Ed Asner, Russell Crowe, Ted Danson, Richard Dreyfuss, Mike Farrell, Laurence Fishbourne, Danny Glover,...

Media mogul Ted Turner wants to turn the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas into a peace park and a U.N.-protected World Heritage Site to honor the thousands of young men who died during the Korean War. Turner first raised the idea of a peace park during a visit to the two Koreas this summer, and urged both sides to sign a peace treaty as a first step. North and South Korea technically remain at war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a cease-fire instead of a peace treaty. But the CNN founder went further at a dinner Thursday...

By ALLEN G. BREED Associated Press Writer OCALA, Fla. (AP) -- For nearly four years, Chuckie Claxton lived anonymously amid the gated horse pastures and moss-draped oaks of the Florida Orange Groves subdivision. Then the crimes of others drew new attention to his own. In the statewide outrage over the arrests of sex offenders in the separate killings of two young girls, somebody in the Groves went to the state police Web site to see if any sex offenders were living in the neighborhood. That person - authorities don't know who - found an entry about Claxton's molestation of a...

CLEVELAND - Federal agents arrested a one-time congressional candidate on a charge of plotting to have her husband killed - a scheme that was never carried out.

LOS ANGELES, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Beating such established Hollywood hunks as Colin Farrell and Vin Diesel, U.S. President George W. Bush won the Golden Raspberry Award on Saturday for worst actor of the year for his appearance in Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11." Bush, two members of his administration, Britney Spears and the storybook about a goat that the president was reading to children as the Sept. 11 attacks were taking place all took top honors at the "Razzie" awards, now in their 25th year. "Catwoman," starring 2002 best actress Oscar winner Halle Berry, tied with "Fahrenheit 9/11" by...