Free Republic

After being without health insurance for two years, Miranda Childe of Hallandale Beach found a plan she could afford with financial aid from the government using the Affordable Care Act’s exchange. Childe, 60, bought an HMO plan from Humana, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, and received a membership card in time for her coverage to kick in on May 1st. But instead of being able to pick a primary care physician to coordinate her healthcare, Childe says she repeatedly ran into closed doors from South Florida doctors who are listed in her plan’s provider network but refused...

If Nouri al-Maliki wanted to dissolve the Iraqi union purposefully, he could hardly be doing a better job. While Kurds fight ISIS in the north — and more effectively than Maliki’s politically purged army has — Maliki accused them of being in league with the extremists even as Kurds mull over whether to just go on their own. Now they want Maliki out, or they’ll be leaving for good: Iraq’s Kurds said Thursday Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was “hysterical” and not fit to run the country, further dimming the prospect of a new leadership uniting to face jihadist fighters.The...

In June Senator Thad Cochran won the GOP primary runoff election over conservative challenger Chris McDaniel after 25,000-35,000 Democrats helped push him to victory. Cochran and the Republican establishment also were behind the racist anti-Tea Party ads that ran in Mississippi prior to the runoff election. Thad Cochran won the election over Chris McDaniel by 6,880 votes in the June 24 runoff.

<p>Russia is warning Ukraine of “irreversible consequences” after cross-border shelling from the battle-worn east struck Russian territory Sunday, reportedly killing one Russian citizen and injuring two others.</p> <p>“This incident highlights the extremely dangerous escalation of tensions in the Russian-Ukrainian border and may have irreversible consequences, the responsibility for which lies on the Ukrainian side,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Sunday, calling the incident an “aggressive action.”</p>

Administration efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform, for example, have failed. Asked about calls by Sarah Palin to impeach Obama over the administration’s immigration policies, Holder said: “She wasn’t a particularly good vice presidential candidate. She’s an even worse judge of who ought to be impeached and why.”

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) said that President Barack Obama told him in March to bring him a "menu" of potential executive actions to grant more amnesty and ease deportations if Congress did not pass a comprehensive amnesty bill. Gutierrez said he and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus plan to do so when they hopefully meet with Obama around July 24th. On this weekend's Political Capital with Al Hunt on Bloomberg TV, Gutierrez said that Obama told him last March, "Luis, come back at the end of July. I want you to bring your menu at the end of the July. And...

Pres. Obama is asking Congress for $3.7 billion - $67,912.28 per child - to deal with 57,000 minors illegally entering the U.S., Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) tweeted today. But, the problem is more than money, Rep. Gohmert tells MRCTV, since Obama's threats and imperial actions are sending "the message that America has become lawless": "His lawlessly announcing his one-man legislation allowing people to come illegally and stay illegally sent the message that America had become lawless and would not be enforcing our own border or laws. Now, demanding money or else he'll allow even more devastation to our health, education...

FULL TITLE: EXCLUSIVE: HHS Bankrolled Catholic and Baptist Church from 2010 to 2013 to Prepare for Obama’s 2014 Invasion!//// A month or two ago news broke that Obama’s HHS was calling for private contractors to help transport illegal aliens throughout the interior United States. What made this already big news even bigger is the fact that the original call for proposals came out in January, long before the bulk of the illegal alien surge began. The breaking news you’re about to read is ten times bigger, because the following proves the Obama administration was bankrolling America’s churches back in 2010....

Illegal aliens are being allowed to fly on commercial airliners without valid identification, according to the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC). “The aliens who are getting released on their own recognizance are being allowed to board and travel commercial airliners by simply showing their Notice to Appear forms,” NBPC’s Local 2455 Spokesman, Hector Garza, told Breitbart Texas.

After back-to-back potentially serious laboratory accidents, federal health officials announced on Friday that they had closed the flu and anthrax laboratories of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and have halted shipments of all infectious agents from the agency’s highest-security labs. The accidents, and the C.D.C.'s emphatic response to them, could have important implications for other laboratories around the world engaged in research into dangerous viruses and bacteria. If the C.D.C — which the agency’s director, Dr. Thomas Frieden, called “the reference laboratory to the world” — had multiple accidents that could have, in theory, killed not just laboratory...

As the jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) capture territory and establish a caliphate stretching across the now-eradicated Syria-Iraq border, hard-won gains secured with American blood and treasure are being lost. We are watching the rise of potentially the gravest threat to our national security in a generation, one that surpasses even the threat we faced on 9/11. Against this backdrop, as we debate what our response should be, it has become fashionable in some quarters to say, “Let’s not relitigate Iraq.” It’s not politically expedient, this line of argument goes, to discuss why we invaded...

Extreme Islamist group ISIS have seized 90lb (40kg) of radioactive uranium in Iraq which could be used to make a dirty bomb. The Times reports that the militants seized the material after overrunning a university in the city of Mosul, which they captured last month. Iraq's ambassador to the UN has now appealed to the international community for help to "stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq and abroad." This is believed to be the first time that an Islamist terror group has been able to obtain such a large quantity of radioactive material, and security...

A militia has set up a command center south of San Antonio to prepare for what they say is a mission to protect the United States from the influx of illegal immigrants. The militia, operating via the website PatriotsInformationHotline.com, founded by Barbie Rogers, said members at the command center in Von Ormy will deploy to Laredo first and spread to other parts of the border, a local ABC affiliate reported.

League City in Texas has banned the processing and detention of illegal unaccompanied minors in their community. Heidi Thiess, League City Councilwoman, told CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield that they don’t believe the federal government is following its own laws and the resolution they passed is aimed at the overall problem of illegal immigration and human trafficking. When Thiess was asked if she understood the criticism that they are turning their backs on these people who just need help, she disagreed pointing out that the unaccompanied children are only 18% of those in detention right now and if the federal government were...

The Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI) has uncovered a tweet containing a photo of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl standing and smiling with a Taliban commander. Bergdahl became the center of intense media scrutiny when stories of his desertion and sympathy for the Taliban dominated news that Obama had traded five Gitmo prisoners for his release on May 31. According to Fox News, the photo MEMRI found is "an undated photo" showing "an apparently happy Bergdahl posing with Taliban Commander Badruddin Haqqani."

A federal judge has ordered the IRS to explain "under oath" how the agency lost a trove of emails from the official at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan gave the tax agency 30 days to file a declaration by an "appropriate official" to address the computer issues with ex-official Lois Lerner. The decision came Thursday as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which along with GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill has questioned how the IRS lost the emails and, in some cases, had...

Federal Reserve officials agreed at June's policy meeting to end their bond-buying program in October, putting an explicit end date on the experiment for the first time and closing a controversial chapter in central-banking annals with results still the subject of immense debate.

July 1 might go down in history as the beginning of the end of the comprehensive, progressive income tax. A progressive income tax, in which the government attempts to tax all labor income and capital income, such as interest, dividends and capital gains more than once, cannot help becoming so complex that it eventually dies of its own weight. This is particularly true when the government attempts to tax the worldwide income of its “tax persons” rather than the income located in its own territory. The complexity is caused by the never-ending attempt to define what income is and what...

France foiled an Islamist terrorist plot to target the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and even a nuclear power plant, it emerged on Wednesday, as the country unveiled new, tougher anti-terror rules. French police stumbled on the plans after decrypting coded messages between a 29-year-old Algerian butcher living in the Vaucluse, southern France, known only as Ali M, and one of the highest-ranking members in al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. According to Le Parisien newspaper, in April last year, the married father of two who went by the pseudonym Abu Jaji was asked by his AQIM contact, whose web...

Insurgents in Iraq have seized nuclear materials used for scientific research at a university in the country's north, Iraq told the United Nations in a letter appealing for help to "stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad." Nearly 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of uranium compounds were kept at Mosul University, Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the July 8 letter obtained by Reuters on Wednesday. "Terrorist groups have seized control of nuclear material at the sites that came out of the control of the state," Alhakim wrote, adding...