Free Republic

CORPUS CHRISTI - The city of Corpus Christi on Tuesday announced it can not come up with all of the money needed to repay the federal government for a failed, public housing project. The news comes on the heels of a KRIS-6 Investigation into the League of United Latin American Citizens - Apartment of the Village project, a low-income housing unit for disabled veterans. But the project derailed and the money, disappeared. After years of delay, the city sued the league to recover the $400,000 block grant which city leaders approved, in 2008. That is because the city, not L.U.L.A.C.,...

Wednesday, 'Wheel of Fortune' had a very inspirational contestant in Trent Girone. The 21-year-old Peoria, Ariz., resident is a self-described "Wheel of Fortune" fanatic, but more important, he's the first special needs contestant ever to compete on the show.Girone has had nine brain surgeries and has both Asperger's and Tourette's syndromes, but that didn't stop him from taking early control of the wheel by successfully guessing the first puzzle, "a smashing success." Girone ultimately didn't win the game -- he hit the dreaded Bankrupt slot -- but he won viewer hearts from coast-to-coast.  WATCH:

Washington, DC (LiveActionNews) — Bristol Palin spotlighted the amazing and heartbreaking story of Sophia Kyla Dennis, daughter of Lindsey and Kevin. At 20 weeks pregnant, Lindsey and Kevin were given the devastating news that their daughter had a brain disorder that was 100% fatal. Rather than having an abortion, they gave birth to their beautiful baby, and got to enjoy 10 hours with her. “The 10 best hours of my life,” is how Lindsey Dennis describes her short time with Sophia Kyla, born last fall. Lindsey and husband Kevin found out at the 20th week of her pregnancy that Sophia...

A bill pending in the Oklahoma legislature would provide support for pregnant moms facing pressure to have an abortion when confronted with ultrasound scans showing their baby has severe disabilities. Whether it’s from doctors, family or society, parents of unborn children with very severe physical disabilities that could claim their lives shortly after birth often face pressure to have an abortion. The pro-life Perinatal Hospice Bill, HB 2685, was approved by the Health Committee to address that. clodaghAs Oklahomans for Life tells LifeNews.com, “The bill addresses the rare but tragic circumstance where a pregnant woman is told that her unborn...

No one wants to have an abortion. That’s what they say, right? Abortion activists insist that no woman ever wants to have an abortion — they just end up in circumstances which necessitate one. But then you get people like RH Reality Check writer Valerie Tarico, who writes about abortion in glowing terms. According to Tarico, having an abortion is taking the moral high ground. To Tarico, abortion is a sacred gift. My friend Patricia offers a single reason for her passionate defense of reproductive care that includes abortion: Every baby should have its toes kissed. If life is precious...

Another ridiculous regulation coming down from the Obama administration, basically telling federal contractors if they want to keep getting federal contracts then they must ensure that 7% of their workforce have a disability, which means these companies will be required to ask about this when hiring. WSJ – U.S. regulations are coming into effect next week that will require federal contractors to ask their employees if they have a disability, the WSJ reports. A group of employers that includes Boeing Co., Dell Inc. and AT&T Inc., among some 40,000 others, will be compelled to ask about employees’ disabilities for the...

Nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce will soon have to answer a personal question from the boss: Are you disabled? U.S. regulations going into effect next week require for the first time that federal contractors—a group that includes Boeing Co., Dell Inc. and AT&T Inc., T among some 40,000 others—ask their employees if they have a disability. Those that don't employ a minimum of 7% disabled workers, or can't prove they are taking steps to achieve that goal, could face penalties and, in the most extreme cases, the loss of their contracts, according to a government official. The target...

Recent revelations about the abuse of disabled workers has me thinking: Do we fear God? I’ll explain. Last May, an Iowa jury awarded $240 million—later reduced to $6 million—to 32 mentally-disabled men who, over the course of three decades, were systematically cheated, exploited and abused by their employer. disabled2It’s a sad reminder of how vulnerable those with disabilities are and why any church worthy of the name should be at the forefront in protecting them. The story is, as the New York Times put it, “Dickensian” in its details. Over three decades, hundreds of intellectually-disabled men were shipped from Texas...

Congress has rushed to protect the medically retired and survivor benefit recipients from the cap on annual cost-of-living adjustments it approved only a few weeks ago for all “working age” military retirees. The quick “COLA fix,” part of a massive “omnibus” funding bill for 12 federal departments, still leaves most military retirees under age 62 with future COLAs trimmed by one percent below the annual inflation rate, an erosion of retirement value set to begin in January 2016. The fix also creates a disparity in COLA protection between separate groups of disabled retirees, critics contend. It won’t affect retirees with...

A massive spending bill taking shape on Capitol Hill is likely to repeal a recently enacted pension cut for disabled veterans. Capitol Hill aides said Wednesday that the $1 trillion-plus omnibus spending bill measure will reverse a 1 percentage point cut to annual cost-of-living increases that was inadvertently applied to more than 63,000 veterans who have left the military due to injury or disability. But the controversial pension cut included in last month's budget agreement would continue to apply to other military retirees. It would save about $6 billion over the coming decade, money that's being used to ease cuts...

National Right to Life News Today has posted a number of stories about the documentary “After Tiller,” hailed by the usual culprits as a successful effort to “humanize” the four remaining abortionists in the United States who perform third trimester abortions. (See, for example “A brief for third-trimester abortions: the documentary ‘After Tiller’”) One of the more remarkable statements to which I have not paid sufficient attention was that at least one of these abortionists went out of her way to accommodate those women who wished to name the nearly-full term babies they had aborted and/or hold them. You don’t...

What would we call them?Handicapped? Disabled? Both words apply perfectly here.How about Liberty Challenged?Whatever it is, this would be their symbol...

Last week the House passed the Ryan-Murray budget deal that inadvertently changed the benefits for service members who retired due to a disability or a service-related injury. This is not acceptable and was not the intention of either Chairman Ryan or Chairwoman Murray. I do not support changing the retirement benefits for disabled veterans, and today, I introduced a bill with House Veterans Affairs Chairman Jeff Miller (FL-01) that will ensure this COLA reduction does not impact service members who retired because of disability or a service-related injury. The bill I introduced will exempt: - All veterans who medically...

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Sunday defended cuts to military retiree benefits, noting that Congress would change a provision for individuals who were “medically retired” or received “survivor’s benefits.” In a USA Today op-ed published on Sunday, the Republican budget guru, who spent weeks crafting a two-year bipartisan budget deal with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.), noted that the budget chiefs “have agreed to amend the law … well before the reform takes effect in December 2015.” “Many raised concerns that these reforms would affect the retired pay of service members who are medically retired and those...

The battle over military retirement benefits in the budget deal was the first skirmish in a larger compensation war, and next year's outcome could determine the fate of long-protected military compensation programs. Budget experts and veterans groups say the retirement benefits fight will serve as a test case to see what appetite there is on Capitol Hill to actually cut military compensation costs — and how much blowback will come from those efforts. “There’s no doubt that this is a little bit of a weather vane, a litmus test as to what the veterans and military communities’ tolerance is going...

The Ryan budget deal keeps getting better and better. And by “better,” I mean much worse. When I wrote about the cut for military retirees, I mentioned the possibility that this might be the only income some of them have. The original sequestration had wonderful priorities in exempting personnel. Ryan is sacrificing those who have already served for the sake of more war power abroad. We already have a military that spends as the next ten nations combined. Why take away from military retirees (some of whom are completely dependent on that income exclusively) to feed an institution that...

For Florida’s nearly 200,000 military retirees — more than any state except Texas — a budget deal moving through the U.S. Senate Wednesday is projected to shave $20 billion dollars from the country’s deficit in ways that have many veterans organizations outraged. The legislation struck by House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray has a provision that drops the cost of living allowance for military retirees and disabled veterans to 1 percentage point below inflation. That is, if inflation for a given year is 3 percent, cost of living adjustments will rise only 2...

(CNN) – Sen. Patty Murray, co-crafter of the bipartisan budget agreement and member of the veterans affair committee, said Wednesday cuts to pension benefits for some military veterans under the spending plan was a part of a compromise to avoid billions in cuts to the defense industry. "We had to look at how we could find compromises. There are things in this I like and there are things in this I don't like," the Senate Budget Committee chair and Democrat from Washington State said in an interview on CNN's "New Day." "But at the end of the day, if we...

Sarah Palin may have launched a book tour promoting Good Tidings and Great Joy this Christmas season, but more importantly, she is promoting what she calls, “the greatest joy” – children with special needs. As she meets with ordinary Americans all across the heartland, Palin makes a point to connect with families who have children with special needs. It has been five years since Palin promised those families on national television, “I pledge to you that…you have a friend, an advocate, in the White House.” Well, she may not be in the White House, but she has certainly reached out...

Above: Illegal aliens made out like banditos thanks to Harry Reid and Senate Democrats. Disabled vets? Not so much.- They actually did it. They are on the record. Senate Democrats, led by their filibuster-slaying dictator Harry Reid, actually put the interests of illegal aliens above those of our disabled military veterans.Let that sink in for a moment. Now the details: The two-year budget deal brokered by Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, would cut military pensions by $6 billion over ten years. Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, joined by several others in his party, tried...