Free Republic

An internal Veterans Affairs Department report states that about one-third of the veterans waiting to receive medical care from the agency have already died. ... as of April, 847,822 veterans were awaiting healthcare and that of those, 238,647 were already deceased. The report was handed over by Scott Davis, a program specialist at the VA's Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta He also sent copies to the House and Senate VA panels and to the White House. ... VA wants you to believe, by virtue of people being able to get health care elsewhere, it's not a big deal. But VA...

Attorneys for Ingmar Guandique, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who murdered Washington intern Chandra Levy in 2001, will likely ask for Guandique to be released from jail while he awaits a retrial of his 2010 conviction. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Gunadique’s attorneys requested a new trial, asserting that evidence from a key witness against Guandique was false or misleading and claiming that a new trial would serve the “interests of justice.” In May, prosecutors agreed to a new trial despite the fact that they thought that Guandique’s conviction was justified. In June, a judge ruled that a...

There is a lot of talk in political circles about a third presidential campaign for Vice President Joe Biden, but it is coming from outside his office for now.

Cocaine, it's a hell of a drug. Obama just set this guy free. And a whole bunch of his friends. Cocaine, it's a hell of a drug. And Obama, who wrote of using it in the past, still seems to have a soft spot for its dealers even though he no longer imbibes. His "pardons" mainly focus on cocaine dealers. Of his 46 pardons, 41 involved cocaine. Despite the lefty obsession with racial inequality in crack cocaine sentencing, only a minority of the pardons involved crack cocaine. Crack was not Obama's drug of choice. But just to be fair, he...

Yasser Arafat was notorious for his double speech: Nice and peaceful in English, harsh and extremist in Arabic.The tactic came to mind Friday, when the Washington Post published an opinion piece written by Labib Al Nahass, the head of the foreign bureau of Ahrar Al Sham, a group founded in Syria with the help of al-Qaida leader Ayman Al Zawahiri.Al Nahass portrays Ahrar al Sham in a moderate light and fails to detail the group's nefarious agenda. He claims that his group was founded by Syrians and fights on their behalf. "We believe that Syria needs a national unifying project...

The U.S. government ran a budget surplus in June, leaving the budget deficit so far this year running under last year’s level. The Treasury Department says the surplus in June totaled $51.8 billion, compared to a surplus of $70.5 billion a year ago. However, the larger 2014 monthly surplus was heavily influenced by a timing quirk that had moved June benefit payments into May last year because June 1 fell on a Saturday.For the current budget year, the government is running a deficit of $313.4 billion, a 14.3 percent reduction from the imbalance over the first nine months of the...

As we all remember, the media completely freaked out after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United in favor of free speech. Taking aim primarily at the right-leaning Koch Brothers, the media posed as defenders of democracy against the corrupting influence of outside money in politics. As usual, the facts prove that the media are big fat liars. Although legions of left-wing corporations like NBC News, Politico, MSNBC, CNN, CBS News, ABC News, The Washington Post, LA Times, NPR, PBS, Univision, Comedy Central, MTV, HBO, and ESPN spend billions of dollars pushing a political agenda 24/7, the left-wing media want a...

Ha! Just what you'd expect.The American news media is feeling a bit confused by two conservative Republican Lateeeeeen-ohs running for president.Here's their dilemma: How are they to cover such an aberration?If they emphasize their ethnicity, they might actually win them some votes among those hot-blooded irrational Lateeeeeen-ohs. Better not to mention it.Ah, but if they fail to emphasize their ethnicity, some of their more sensitive politically-correct listeners and reders might start to think that there is some politically-incorrect bias involved. Better to make a big deal about it.So, take a look at these two reports from yesterday.First, examine this...

Aetna Life Insurance has been sending some unfriendly letters to residents in Washington, D.C. In their mailbox are notes informing them that they may be losing the plans they purchased through the D.C. Health Link. Individuals seeking PPO plans will now have only one choice. Oh, and they can expect to reach further in their pockets for that limited option. The company’s decision will leave the region’s dominant insurance carrier, CareFirst, as the only one offering PPO plans. CareFirst has proposed rate increases for those plans ranging from less than 3 percent to more than 17 percent. Industry analysts characterized those...

On Fox News Channel’s “MediaBuzz,” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank attacked Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a “rotten pig,” a “fraud,” and a “Sarah Palin phenomenon.” “I love writing about him. Yeah, the man is a rotten pig but good for our business, and yes, it is a guilty pleasure,” Milbank said. He added, “This is a perfectly legitimate story for media to be covering. It’s justified by the polls and what is this man doing but holding up a mirror to our political system? He knows how to work the media. He knows how to work the Republican...

Anthony Weiner aka Carlos Danger aka Mr. Abedin has a well deserved reputation for, uh, flashing. However, his most significant flash of all came in the form of a Business Insider op-ed in which the husband of Hillary Clinton's closest personal aide, Huma Abedin, flashed their campaign plan to deligitimize the candidacy of Bernie Sanders for the Democrat presidential nomination and, if necessary, his delegates at the convention. Your humble correspondent has suspected for weeks that the Hillary campaign would ultimately try to toss out many if not most of the Sanders delegates at the Democrat convention next year due to the fact that Sanders...

The last time the White House hosted its once-per-decade Conference on Aging, at least 1,200 advocates and policymakers attended. Among them was a single delegate representing older lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. On Monday, President Obama is expected to host a smaller affair, with perhaps 200 delegates. But there will be four people officially representing the interests of older LGBT people, including Michael Adams, executive director of Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders (SAGE). Two of the LGBT representatives are octogenarians. One of them is transgender. “There’s a story there from the LGBT angle about...

A top insurer is dropping from Washington, D.C.’s Obamacare exchange in 2016, leaving customers with fewer options than ever in the nation’s capital. Aetna Life Insurance will no longer offer individual plans on D.C. Health Link, Washington’s own Obamacare exchange, in 2016, The Washington Post reports. Aetna is sending letters to customers notifying them that their plans will be canceled at the end of this year. The company says it has “determined we can no longer meet the needs of our customers while remaining competitive in the market.” That will leave just one company on the exchange, CareFirst, that provides Preferred Provider Organization...

After Four Months, Why Are 20 Chaldean Iraqi Christians Who Fled ISIS Still Detained by Immigration Officials? [ Full title ]. ... Despite having family members to sponsor them, a group of 20 Chaldean Christians who fled ISIS have been detained for over four months at the Otay Detention Facility in San Diego. The large Chaldean community in Southern California are unhappy with the unexplained delays and are demanding their release. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claim they are undermanned and face a backlog of cases but have offered little to the media about the prolonged detention of the...

D.C. police have arrested two people in connection with a sex trafficking ring authorities say involved several underage girls who were forced to work out of an apartment in Southeast Washington.The arrests came after the mother of a 14-year-old girl went to police in May. Police said in a court affidavit that up to seven girls, many of them under the age of 18, were prostituting out of an apartment in the 3800 block of South Capitol Street SE.Police said they enlisted the help of the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force and uncovered several advertisements placed on a Web site...

During a discussion on Thursday’s “The Kelly File” about the murder of Kate Steinle in San Francisco by an illegal alien, host Megyn Kelly asked left-leaning radio talk show host Richard Fowler why resident Obama has ignored the killing; after having spoken out on the deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and others. When Fowler wouldn’t answer the question, Kelly was all over him. She began by referring to the death of Brown: “His funeral saw three Obama officials in attendance,” she noted. “His death drew comments from resident Obama personally, and the administration sent in the DoJ and 40...

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R.-Tenn.) said on the Senate floor on Wednesday that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D.-Mass) set a wonderful example for other senators. “He set a wonderful example for us, and it is nice to be reminded of him,” said Sen. Alexander. Alexander’s remarks came while the Senate was discussing his proposal to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Act that imposes federal regulations and sends federal money to local public schools. The initial No Child Left Behind Act was co-sponsored by Kennedy and Rep. John Boehner (R.-Ohio) and signed into law in 2002 by President George W....

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), along with about 70 other House Democrats, introduced a bill in Congress on Wednesday that would provide taxpayer-funded abortion coverage to all women who are covered by an insurance plan through the federal government—including federal workers, military members, women incarcerated in federal prisons, and low-income women covered by Medicaid. The Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Coverage Act, or EACH Woman Act, states that “The Federal Government shall (1) ensure coverage for abortion care in public health insurance programs, including Medicaid, Medicare and the Children’s Health Insurance Program” and “in its role as an employer...

House Democrats today prominently featured the confederate flag during their floor speeches, displaying an image of the flag on a large placard and then denouncing it.

Sanders is drawing massive crowds, just like Obama, and there is another common thread between Sanders and Obama — their socialist philosophy of governance. Now, I have to give it to Senator Sanders, he is man enough to admit what he is: he has “come out” as a Democratic Socialist. Obama .. rhetoric and writings proved he was, but if you dared to utter the words that he was a socialist, you were immediately branded racist. Even after comments such as “I think it’s better for everyone if we spread the wealth around” and “if you have a business, you...