Free Republic

Updated 2:30 p.m. | Unsure whether they have the votes to pass a trillion-dollar federal spending package, House GOP leaders on Thursday afternoon delayed a final vote on the “cromnibus.” They did so with mere hours to go until the government is set to run out of funding, and just before the House was scheduled to vote. GOP leaders called a recess to floor proceedings, with a GOP leadership aide confirming “no conference meeting [is] planned at this time.” The aide said “leadership teams are still talking to their respective members,” and noted, “We still plan to vote this afternoon.”...

Up to 30,000 missing emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner have been recovered by the IRS inspector general, five months after they were deemed lost forever. The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the emails were found among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system. “They just said it took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes,” a congressional aide told the Washington Examiner.

SpaceX has delayed the launch of its latest Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket – tasked with lofting the ASIASAT-6 satellite into orbit – for at least several days. The call was made by CEO Elon Musk shortly after the rocket had been erected at her Space Launch Complex -40 (SLC-40) pad, with the rationale based on giving the team more time to evaluate the health of the launch vehicle. Falcon 9 Delay: No specific reasons have been provided as to why the call was made, although engineers had been working on a helium leak throughout the past 24 hours or so,...

You wish you could call the police. But the neighbor who is robbing your house at gunpoint is the police. You are stupefied, so inconceivable does it seem to you that the man sworn to uphold the law could be an outlaw. Yet, the architects who designed your house not only conceived of that danger, they took precautions. As a result, you not only have your own arsenal of emergency firepower; you’re also in charge of all the ammunition. See, the architects hoped we’d always have good, honorable police, but they didn’t make your life depend on it. They knew...

A Texas court ruled Thursday to overturn the conviction of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who was found guilty of money laundering in 2010. According to KHOU 11 and the Associated Press, the Third Court of Appeals in Austin said the case's evidence was "legally insufficient to sustain DeLay's convictions," formally acquitting the former congressman on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

This week it was announced that Kathleen Sebelius will be leaving her post as Secretary of Health and Human Services. President Obama thanked her for “her courageous and tireless efforts to ensure that every American has health insurance.” Afterward, those in attendance gave her a standing ovation. “Secretary Sebelius has had to face hostility every step of the way toward this monumental achievement,” the President declared. “Critics in Congress said the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t be affordable. Consumers complained that the policies offered under the ACA cover less than their old plans and cost more. Others were too inept to...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. administration has not determined whether it has legal authority to delay Obamacare's individual mandate, which requires most Americans to enroll in health insurance or pay a tax penalty, a senior Treasury official said on Tuesday. Mark Iwry, senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, told U.S. lawmakers the administration sees no reason for delay given that the law allows for exemptions and provides financial assistance for those unable to afford health coverage on their own. He said the provision also underpins reforms that protect sick people from discriminatory market practices. "If we don't believe that...

Democrats fought back Sunday against claims from a former Obama aide that the White House might delay Obamacare’s employer mandate. House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi called the mandate, which requires businesses with between 50 and 100 employees to provide health insurance for workers or face a penalty, “integral.” “Of all the things I want to say about the Affordable Care Act, Robert Gibbs' opinion, I don't know who his clients are or what his perspective is, but we are celebrating the fact that we have over 7 million who have signed up,” the California Democrat said on CNN’s “State...

The White House will not delay the “individual mandate” at the core of Obamacare, a top Administration official said Sunday. “That will not happen,” top White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, amid Republican calls for a delay of the requirement that Americans have health insurance by March 31 or incur a fine assessed with their 2013 tax return. The original deadline, Feb. 15, was extended amid the disastrous rollout of the administrations website for policy shopping, healthcare.gov. The administration has already delayed the law’s employer coverage requirements.

President Obama is planning to break the law, once again, in an effort to protect vulnerable Democrats in the Senate. According to news reports, “the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet Obamacare’s minimum coverage requirements.” In the absence of this “directive,” health insurance companies would have to cancel millions of health policies just a few weeks before November’s congressional elections. Obama’s edict would theoretically forestall, until after those crucial midterms, a tsunami of voter outrage that would inevitably drown the reelection prospects of many Democrats. It’s not clear,...

General Motors recently recalled close to a million vehicles for a deadly problem that resulted in six deaths. The models involved were Chevy Cobalts and Pontiac G5s from the 2005 through 2007 model years. The question is, why did NHTSA and GM wait so long to recall vehicles with a dangerous defect when the problems surfaced years ago? Scouring the internet reveals many reported stalling incidents for the models in question. My particular Google search went back to 2009 and unearthed disturbing evidence that GM did not properly address issues with faulty vehicles. While the vehicles were manufactured by...

Given the number and frequency of the Obama administration’s delays of Obamacare — more than a dozen, by some counts — it’s clear that the White House believes the law is as malleable as it needs it to be and that almost any alteration of it falls within the purview of executive authority. But as Michael Tanner, Yuval Levin, Avik Roy, and others have pointed out, the statutory text of the Affordable Care Act doesn’t appear to allow for these rolling, ad hoc delays. Not only does the law dictate that the employer mandate take effect January 1, 2014, but...

UPS dumped a load of coal in Christmas stockings across America on Wednesday, blaming bad weather and high volume for failing to deliver packages in time for the holiday. "The volume of air packages in our system exceeded the capacity in our network as demand was much greater than the forecast," UPS spokeswoman Natalie Godwin said Tuesday in a statement. "As a result a small percentage of packages was delayed and will not be delivered today, Tuesday, Christmas Eve." Godwin said the company expects a majority of the packages to be delivered on the day after Christmas. It is unclear...

Americans remain unhappy with the health care law: Majorities say they wish it had never passed, would vote to repeal it if they could, and think implementation should be delayed until the kinks are worked out. At the same time, a shrinking majority believes the law will survive. That’s according to a year-end Fox News poll released Wednesday. **SNIP** Those favoring a delay also now include a majority of Democrats: 54 percent support delaying implementation. That’s up 10 points from 44 percent last month.

WASHINGTON - President Obama will allow insurance companies to continue offering individual health plans that do not meet the standards of the Affordable Care Act through next year, according to a Democratic source on Capitol Hill familiar with the plans. The plan, which the president will announce Thursday morning, is intended to placate millions of consumers who have received cancellation notices from insurers in recent weeks. Obama had repeatedly promised that consumers would be able to keep plans that they liked. The president was under intense pressure from Democrats on Capitol Hill to find a fix. House Democrats have increasingly...

See: Rubio Seeks Obama's Support for Delay of Individual Mandate "Sen. Marco Rubio is urging President Barack Obama to support his bill that would delay Obamacare’s individual mandate until six months after the program’s malfunctioning website is working normally." What I would like to ask Senator Rubio is: Under what provision of our Constitution is Congress authorized to impose a fine upon a citizen who exercises a fundamental right to purchase health insurance to meet their personal medical and health care needs and refuses “federally approved” health insurance? Does the Senator from the great State of Florida disagree with what...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House will host a meeting of aides to Senate committee leaders on Thursday seeking to persuade lawmakers to hold off on a package of tough new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, a senior Senate aide said. The White House will press for another delay on a sanctions bill that had been expected to come to a vote in the Senate Banking Committee last month, but was held back after appeals from President Barack Obama's administration to let negotiations on Iran's nuclear program get under way. The aide said Republicans would resist further delay,...

**SNIP** Theoretically, someone who chooses to be uninsured owes the government money, but the government is prohibited by the ACA from trying to collect it. What kind of a debt is it that can’t be collected? **SNIP** As I understand it, the only way the IRS can possibly collect the penalty is by withholding your tax refund. No problem: if you arrange your taxes so that you don’t overpay, the penalty can never be collected from you. Which is to say that there is no penalty for failing to comply with the Obamacare “mandate.” Many commentators have pointed this out,...

Amid mounting criticism, the White House said Wednesday that it plans to soften the deadline for when Americans are required to purchase health insurance. The date by when Americans would be penalized for not having signed up for health insurance could be “slid” back by as much as six weeks, administration officials told NBC News. But it was not immediately clear Wednesday whether the adjustment to a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act would need to be approved by Congress or could be done by the Department of Health and Human Services administratively. As the law stands now, individuals are...

Shaheen posted an open letter to President Obama Tuesday urging him to extend the enrollment period for Americans to sign up for health care under the Affordable Care Act. Dear Mr. President: The Affordable Care Act has already positively impacted the lives of millions of Americans and once fully implemented, this law has great promise. However, I am concerned about the problems that people are experiencing with the Affordable Care Act’s website, healthcare.gov. As website glitches persist, we are losing valuable time to educate and enroll people in insurance plans. I also fear that people that have tried, and failed,...