Free Republic

CARSON CITY — Las Vegas Assemblywoman Michele Fiore’s tax liens and problems with the IRS were cited in her second removal from Assembly leadership positions Thursday. Fiore’s removal could clear the way for moderate Republicans to control the Assembly in the 2015 session and eliminate any talk of a GOP-Democratic partnership challenge to the leadership. It could also smooth the way for Gov. Brian Sandoval to win more funding for public education. Assembly Speaker designate John Hambrick reversed course on Fiore for a second time in recent weeks and removed the controversial lawmaker as majority leader. She has also been...

December 17, 2014, 08:15 am Obamas say they're no strangers to racism By Justin Sink The president and the first lady chronicled a series experiences in People magazine that they say demonstrated some of the latent racism that blacks in America continue to face. "There's no black male my age, who's a professional, who hasn't come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn't hand them their car keys," the president said. The first lady said someone had asked her husband to get them coffee because he was wearing a tuxedo at a black-tie dinner,...

HARRISBURG - Philadelphia prosecutors plan to announce criminal charges Tuesday against two more elected officials ensnared in the undercover sting investigation that state Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane rejected as too flawed to prosecute. District Attorney Seth Williams is expected to announce charges against State Reps. Vanessa Lowery Brown and Ronald G. Waters, both Philadelphia Democrats, for allegedly accepting cash from an undercover operative, according to people familiar with the matter. Waters' attorney, Fortunato Perri Jr., said he was making arrangements for Waters to turn himself in Tuesday morning. Perri said he expects Waters will face felony charges of conflict...

CARSON CITY — Las Vegas Republican lawmaker Michele Fiore, a lightning rod in an ongoing Assembly GOP power struggle, said Tuesday she is fully in compliance with the Internal Revenue Service over more than $1 million in tax liens against her home health care businesses. In her first comments on the controversy, Fiore appeared on the Alan Stock radio show on KDWN in Las Vegas, saying her actual active liens total less than $200,000. Liens dating back to 2003 had previously been resolved, she said. Fiore said her lien problems stemmed from a dishonest bookkeeper, who she said is facing...

KITCHENER — A Kitchener anesthetist specializing in pain management has been charged with two counts of fraud after he billed the Ontario government for services he didn't provide. The Ontario Provincial Police Anti-Rackets branch arrested and charged Dr. Kulbir Singh Billing, 63, on Monday night. He will appear in Ontario Court in January. He faces two counts of fraud over $5,000. OPP Sgt. Peter Leon said the charges stem from billings to the Ontario government from 2010 to 2013. Leon said billings were made to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board for services that...

A Republican has joined Democrats in criticizing the inclusion of a partial repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law in legislation funding the government. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) signed on to a letter with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) that calls on congressional leaders to scrap portions of the $1.1 trillion "cromnibus" that relax restrictions on banks trading financial derivatives. The pair argued in the letter that there is "broad bipartisan support" for removing that particular language. Brown and Vitter, who have worked together in the past on bills to limit big banks, argued that the language was unfairly jammed into...

The federal government's funding authorization expires tonight at midnight, and the Republican plan to renew it bodes poorly for the GOP's leadership of Congress next year. ... Congress shouldn't let the government shut down, but Republicans should neither acquiesce to president Obama's unprecedented executive power grab, nor give up control over the budget for well into the 114th Congress. ... Republicans take control of both chambers in January, so they have no good reason to make a deal with the Senate Democratic leadership that sets spending levels until next October. ... There are, as speaker Boehner has pointed out, some...

"Citing Fear Of Torture, Obama’s Second Cousin Seeks Asylum In US8:31 PM 12/09/2014 ... Obama is 36 years old and has spent the last eight or nine months in the Rapphannock Regional Facility in Stafford, Va., according to his sister, as his appeal for withholding of removal sits before the Board of Immigration Appeals. Denied relief most recently on Nov. 6, Obama, who has been in the U.S. since 1997, hopes he can stay in the U.S., ... Obama initially applied for asylum, filing what’s called an I-589 form. But the application must be filed within a year of the...

Fear is building that Wisconsin’s Department of Health Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation of Planned Parenthood’s over billing of the state’s Medicaid program for services rendered may endanger the financial health of the organization. For example, Planned Parenthood has been billing the state twice the allowable amount for the abortifacient contraceptive Yaz. Beth Hartung, president of the Wisconsin Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, called the financial reimbursement rules “unreasonable. The mark-ups we attach to these drugs is what helps subsidize services that the state program doesn’t cover.” One of those uncovered programs is surgical abortions. “Squeezing the profit...

Jonathan Gruber, the man at the center of Obamacare’s troubled public image, apologized to Congress for “glib” and “thoughtless” comments about the stupidity of the American voters and how the health overhaul passed, arguing he is no political expert and shouldn’t have posed as one in speeches around the country. “It’s never appropriate to try to make oneself seem more important or smarter by demeaning others. I knew better. I know better. I’m embarrassed, and I’m sorry,” Mr. Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the House oversight committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican.

The Jonathan Gruber show is coming to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, with House Republicans set to grill the former ObamaCare adviser for his controversial remarks about the “stupidity” of voters who let the law pass. The hearing is likely to be a spectacle, with cable news networks planning heavy coverage, as Gruber takes the witness stand to answer questions about his ties to the Obama administration and his consulting work for the Health and Human Services Department. “Tomorrow is all about giving him the opportunity to say something stupid,” a Republican aide said. “It’s going to be a lot of...

A D.C. resident who gained healthcare coverage under ObamaCare will sit alongside the administration’s former adviser Jonathan Gruber during Tuesday’s high-profile hearing. Democrats have picked Ari Goldmann, an independent contractor who lives in D.C., to help defend ObamaCare during a hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a Democratic aide told The Hill. Goldmann will testify alongside Gruber and Marilyn Tavenner, the head of Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS), at a hearing that the GOP hopes to use to refire attacks at the president's healthcare law. His appearance goes against the Obama administration’s request that Tavenner appear...

The UVA rape story peddled by Rolling Stone has fallen apart. This is what happens when advocacy journalism pushes narratives rather than actual news. The feminist narrative these days is that we live in a country that hates women and ignores their violent rape. In order to fight back against a society that hates women, feminists have to make up stories about rape to confront society with. One wonders why, in a nation that hates women and doesn’t care about their violent rape, the left would bother making up stories when actual stories of violent rape must be so plentiful....

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is asking lawmakers not to seat ObamaCare consultant Jonathan Gruber next to Medicare's top official when the two testify on Capitol Hill next week. HHS Assistant Secretary for Legislation Jim Esquea wrote to the House Oversight Committee with the request, stating that government witnesses are "almost always afforded an opportunity" to sit alone or with other federal officials. “The accommodation of separate panels for government witnesses reflects important comity in congressional-executive relations,” Esquea wrote. “The relatively few exceptions to this practice reinforce the seriousness of this accommodation.” The Oversight panel, led by...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Advocates for sexual-assault victims say Rolling Stone's backpedaling from an explosive account of a gang rape at the University of Virginia doesn't change the fact that rape is a problem on college campuses and must be confronted — even as some expressed concern that the magazine's apology could discourage victims from coming forward. Students, state government and education leaders, meanwhile, pledged to continue ongoing efforts to adequately respond to — and prevent — sexual assaults on campus. Rolling Stone cast doubt on its story Friday of a gang rape by a woman it identified only as...

Democrats are arguing among themselves about whether to focus on the poor, who are not reliable voters, or the middle class, who have started to turn to the Republican Party.Influential Democrats who have strongly defended Obama-Care for years are now publicly questioning whether the law was worth the political fallout. Passage of the Affordable Care Act marked the start of a political unraveling for the Democratic Party, which lost huge majorities in Congress and control of a majority of state governorships in the last four and a half years. Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third-ranking member of the Senate Democratic...

I am in the process of writing a book which argues that the Sexual Revolution has been a rich person’s hobby horse from the beginning. The rich and powerful like the idea of separating sex from child-bearing. While this idea is sometimes wrapped up in a disguise of helping woman and the poor, the fact remains that the rich and powerful pioneered and implemented these ideas, quite often at the expense of women and the poor. So I wondered, when I picked up a book, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution, celebrating...

As the dispute between the Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder and the Pueblo canvassing board over whether to certify the 2014 election results enters its third week, the Pueblo County commissioners Monday assured the lone Republican who won his election that, if it comes to it, they will appoint him to his office. Meanwhile, a representative for the Colorado Secretary of State’s office is scheduled to meet with the canvassing board Wednesday morning. And District Attorney Jeff Chostner told the commissioners that his office has begun to monitor the situation to be sure that political gamesmanship isn’t interfering with the...

Earlier this year we witnessed the victory of Chevron over the New York shakedown artists who spent several years and tens of millions of dollars trying to pick their pockets over a fraudulent case in Ecuador. (Full coverage) For many of us, that would have been enough, particularly given how often big companies pay out large checks to nuisance suits just to avoid the media blitz and the associated hassles. But apparently Chevron has decided that enough is enough and will seek to strike at the source of the corruption. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Chevron is going after...

Bill Cosby has been accused of rape by 25-30 women. The alleged rapes follow a similar storyline. These women knew Cosby, some casually dated him. Many of the women appear to have been starstruck or otherwise looking to get into show business through Cosby. Eventually most of the women claim they were drugged and then raped. In some cases women claim to have been drugged and raped repeatedly. Most of the allegations of rape stem from events that happened in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. This isn’t the first time Cosby has been accused of rape, a lawsuit was filed...