Free Republic

<p>White House health care adviser Phil Schiliro said Tuesday that a goal of seven million people signing up for health insurance by the end of March was “never our target number,” attempting to downplay a figure that has been circulated for months.</p>

The two drugs have been declared equivalently miraculous. Tested side by side in six major trials, both prevent blindness in a common old-age affliction. Biologically, they are cousins. They’re even made by the same company...

The Obama administration has been accused of cronyism after it was revealed the First Lady's Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company contracted to build the beleaguered Obamacare enrollment website. Toni Townes-Whitley is senior vice president at CGI Federal, the U.S. arm of a Canadian company, which won the no-bid contract for the problem-plagued website. Townes-Whitley, from the Princeton class of ’85, and Michelle Obama are members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni, according to The Daily Caller.

In mid-October The Washington Examiner reported that Federal Officials only considered one firm to build the epic fail now known as healthcare.gov. When that story broke you had to suspect that someone probably had a kickback coming. Richard Pollock reported on October 13th: Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct. 1 debut. Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI...

Police in two north Louisiana cities won't investigate fraudulent food stamp purchases made at local Wal-Marts this weekend unless asked by the retailer, law enforcement representatives said Tuesday. But it is unclear whether the world's largest retailer would ask local police to intervene, after a company representative said Wal-Mart believed it made the right decision this weekend and would keep customers' best interests at heart in the issue going forward.The fraudulent purchases were made at the Springhill and Mansfield locations during a massive system-wide outage on Saturday (Oct. 12). Wal-Mart spokeswoman Kayla Whaling said the retailer instructed cashiers at the...

After the Department of Energy announced this week ithad given up on not-bankrupt-but-should-be Fisker Automotive, and will auction off its loan for a pittance, you’d think (and hope) Congress would have had enough of this kind of thing. Senator John Thune certainly has. “The Obama administration has gotten into the business of picking winners and losers at a significant cost to taxpayers,” said the South Dakota Republican yesterday. “I’m calling for the Senate to consider my amendment to eliminate the wasteful ATVM loan program and for my colleagues to join me in protecting taxpayer dollars from any future risky green...

A Super Yellow Cab driver was shot in the back early Tuesday in a robbery, according to early reports....

Walking to their car, three men armed with three guns robbed two tourists on Collins Avenue. One of them had an iPod taken.... "It's called apple picking where the subjects will look when people are talking on their iPhone or not paying attention, in this case with a firearm, and will take the phone right out of their hand and take off," Hernandez said. Police have made eight arrests –all men, ranging from 18 years old to 21. All men are charged with at least one count of armed robbery. And two of them are facing two counts of armed...

Ex-congressman Jackson is eligible to receive $8,700 dollars per month in disability pay due to his bipolar condition and could receive a partial federal pension of $45,000 per year once he reaches 65. While on the city council, Sandi Jackson had automatic pension contributions of more than $50,000 withdrawn from her pay, even though she chose not to be a member of the city pension fund.

Tarboro, N.C. — Princeville Mayor Priscilla Everette-Oates has been indicted on 17 counts of embezzlement by a public official, authorities said Tuesday. The charges come four months after a state audit found that Everette-Oates charged $8,115 to a town credit card between August 2010 and last July without any receipts to back up the spending. Charges included $1,255 to Madison Steak and Seafood and $222 to Bed Bath & Beyond. State auditors began looking into Princeville's finances last summer after the state Local Government Commission took control of the town's books. At the time, Princeville was 9 percent over budget...

Two high-ranking IRS employees may have traveled more days than they worked over the past two years, according to a Treasury inspector's report released Tuesday. And at least 15 executives traveled to another office -- typically Washington -- for more than half of their workdays, raising questions about whether they should have been assigned to IRS headquarters in the first place, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said. The inspectors are looking into whether the tax agency may have itself evaded taxes by failing to disclose the benefit of the travel on withholding statements for those employees. Under...

The conviction and jailing of Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny has led to widespread criticism. Navalny was imprisoned for five years for embezzlement from a timber firm. He had denied the charges, saying the trial was politically motivated. The EU said the verdict posed "serious questions" about Russian law, while the US said it was "deeply disappointed". Later, police detained dozens of protesters following scuffles in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities. Thousands took to the streets for protests which continued late into the evening. In Kirov, where the trial was held, at least two Navalny supporters were arrested after...

(CNSNews.com) – The IRS is looking to hire a “diversity and inclusion” specialist, with a minimum salary of $123,758 a year. The opening for a full-time “Supervisory Diversity and Inclusion Specialist” at the agency’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C. was announced on June 11 and is open until June 24. The Diversity Specialist will “serve as a change agent to provide strategies, solutions, training, tools, resources and thought leadership on diversity and foster inclusion” across the workplace and “build internal awareness” for diversity and inclusion throughout the agency. Among the day-to-day job duties: Hear and resolve complaints from employees; "effect...

Harvey Whittemore, with his wife, Annette, on his right, jokes with his lead defense attorney, Dominic Gentile, during a news conference in Reno, Nev., on Wednesday, May 29, 2013, shortly after he was convicted of three federal counts of breaking campaign contribution laws by funneling nearly $150,000 to U.S. Sen. Reid, D-Nev., in 2007. Photo: Scott Sonner RENO, Nev. (AP) —Harvey Whittemore's lawyer says despite his client's illegal campaign fundraising conviction, the man prosecutors called "King of the Hill" in Nevada politics is a long way from prison.Whittemore, former head of a billion dollar development company, was convicted recently of...

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday proposed a new bipartisan “Gang of Eight” to draft a bill to create guidelines for future investigations of media leaks by the government. “I proposed along with [Sen.] Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.], we’ll be announcing that we have four Democrats, four Republicans, another Gang of Eight,” said Schumer on CBS’s Face the Nation. “I love these gangs of eight I guess.” Schumer said the bipartisan group will “introduce “legislation that sets up rules where… if the government wants to go to a member of the press and say you have to divulge your sources and...

The Next Bank Meltdown Won't Be An "Accident" By Shah Gilani, Capital Wave Strategist, Money Morning April 22, 2013Big banks turned in a pretty stellar first quarter. All but one beat profits expectations. But as I told you last week, I'm now out of these stocks completely. Do you want the truth about what shape banks are in right now? Sure you can handle it? I'm sorry; I can't tell you the truth. Regulators can't tell you the truth. And the Federal Reserve won't tell you the truth. No one can tell you the truth. That's because banks don't tell...

U.S. Government Investigation Of Gold Price Manipulation Commodities / Gold and Silver 2013March 15, 2013 - 04:16 PM GMT By: Midas Letter Yesterday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the regulator who ostensibly regulates the banks and major financial institutions who participate in the futures and commodities trading business, announced they were going to examine whether prices are being manipulated in the “world’s largest gold market”, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal. For long time observers of the gold price and the fundamental and not-so-fundamental influences on its price movements, the announcement might have elicited a gasp of...

Google on Tuesday acknowledged to state officials that it had violated people's privacy during its Street View mapping project when it casually scooped up passwords, e-mail and other personal information from unsuspecting computer users. In agreeing to settle a case brought by 38 states involving the project, the search company for the first time is required to aggressively police its own employees on privacy issues and to explicitly tell the public how to fend off privacy violations like this one. While the settlement also included a tiny - for Google - fine of $7 million, privacy advocates and Google critics...

An International Man lives and does business wherever he finds conditions most advantageous, regardless of arbitrary borders. He's diversified globally, with passports from multiple countries, assets in several jurisdictions and his residence in yet another. He doesn't depend absolutely on any country and regards all of them as competitors for his capital and expertise. Living as an international man used to be just an interesting possibility. But few Americans opted for it, since the US used to reward those who settled in and put down roots. In fact, it rewarded them better than any other country in the world, so...

Republic of Korea: For the record. Pak Ku'n-hye (Park Geun-hye) of the New Frontier Party won South Korea's presidential election on 19 December, media reported. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee and the first woman elected to be president of the Republic of Korea. That should confound the North! North Korea-Iran: According to a Japanese news service, an Iranian lawmaker told the service that North Korea informed Iran in October of its plan to launch a satellite. The head of an Iranian parliamentary delegation to North Korea, Hamid Reza Taraghi, revealed talks took place mid-October with the North's delegates...