Free Republic

Finding a doctor who takes Obamacare coverage could be just as frustrating for Californians in 2015 as the health-law expansion enters its second year. The state's largest health insurers are sticking with their often-criticized narrow networks of doctors, and in some cases they are cutting the number of physicians even more, according to a Times analysis of company data. And the state's insurance exchange, Covered California, still has no comprehensive directory to help consumers match doctors with health plans. This comes as insurers prepare to enroll hundreds of thousands of new patients this fall and get 1.2 million Californians to...

An op-ed from Matt Chen of the Broward Republican Executive Committee: Early voting will begin next week. By Election Day one would presume the demonized homophobic and racist Rick Scott will end up with 95% of the substantial South Florida Gay vote going to Democrat Charlie Crist. Not so, my friends. Sure that's hard to understand when the Florida Agenda perpetually portrays the GOP as virulently and violently homophobic. But Gay Democrats have routinely been stunned to find out that 25-35% of Gay voters routinely vote Republican, according to exit polling.

The Vaughan Foods officer who used his gun to stop a beheading attack by a fired employee is protected by a controversial law affirming the right to bring firearms to work. Twenty-two states have followed Oklahoma’s lead. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Vaughan Foods Chief Operating Officer Mark Vaughan, a reserve sheriff's deputy, used his personal handgun that he brings to work to stop a beheading attack by recently converted Muslim Alton Nolen on Friday in Oklahoma. While police in Moore, Okla., have called Mr. Vaughan’s actions heroic, it’s also true that in some parts of the US he could have faced employer sanctions for...

A drug case involving an arrest made by the Ferguson police officer who killed an unarmed 18-year-old in a separate incident is on hold while a grand jury reviews the shooting. A judge approved a request by prosecutors Monday to send the drug case involving the arrest by officer Darren Wilson to a St. Louis County grand jury. But a spokesman for Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch later said that the case is "on hold" until Wilson's status is resolved. Spokesman Ed Magee called the move standard procedure in cases where police officers are not immediately available to testify in court....

Self-described 'dissident feminist' Camille Paglia has written an op-ed piece for Time Magazine arguing that female college students are naive and careless about the true nature of men as sexual predators. Paglia, 67, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, penned the column this week in reaction to the recent abduction of University of Virginia sophomore Hannah Graham, 18, who was last seen two weeks ago in the company of a 32-year-old nursing assistant. Jesse Matthew was captured in Texas last week and charged with abduction with intent to defile, but so far there is no sign...

IMPORTANT: This information should not be downloaded using government equipment, read during duty time, sent to others using government equipment, or sent to anyone while in a government building because it involves election related activityAs the old adage goes, all politics is local. For federal employees, that means electing men and women at the local level who will fight for you in Washington.These past few years have seen unprecedented attacks on government employees – our pay, benefits, retirement security, and even our jobs have been targeted by certain factions within Congress.We need to get back to a time when public...

Governor Palin wrote some wise words via her Facebook page. Obama’s Praise Betrays UsAs I told a Washington, DC audience this weekend, "We can survive the Error of Obama; it’s almost over, and we can survive this President. The question is, can we survive the people who voted for him a second time?" Barack Obama’s praise this week for the Muslim cleric who advocated killing our U.S. soldiers is one of the most appalling stunts we’ve seen. He’s been enabled by the low information voters who gave him a second term to express his true beliefs in a perversely refreshing way...

Boeing on Monday said it would move most of its defense services and support work out of Washington state to other U.S. cities, affecting the jobs of about 2,000 of its 5,200 defense employees in the Puget Sound region. The changes are part of ongoing efforts by Boeing to streamline its defense business, and will not affect its P-8A spy plane or KC-46 aerial refueling tanker programs. Both of those programs are based on commercial jetliners made in the area. The transition could take three years to complete. Boeing would shift as many affected workers as possible to the company's...

Anti-gay baker Melissa Klein openly cried at the Values Voter Summit last week over the forced closing of her business due to backlash stemming from her refusal to make a cake for a lesbian couple's wedding. In January 2013, Sweet Cakes By Melissa refused service to a lesbian couple looking for a wedding cake. The subsequent fallout included national media attention and a state investigation for anti-gay discrimination -- perpetuated by the Kleins' continued actions, such as baking cakes for an "ex-gay" group. The couple is now reportedly fighting a $150,000 lawsuit from the state, a reality that made Klein...

An interview with the former Czech president, possibly the West’s last truly outspoken leader ___ Václav Klaus has made a habit of saying things others shy away from saying, but it doesn’t seem to have done him much harm in the popularity stakes. Quite the opposite: the 73-year-old ardently Eurosceptic free-marketeer has legitimate claims to be regarded as the most successful ‘true blue’ conservative politician in Europe over the past 25 years. He was, after all, prime minister of the Czech Republic from 1992 to 1998 and then his country’s president for a further ten years, from 2003 to 2013....

Pot is one thing, but three ounces is a lot for a casual user and is usually reserved for dealers. Wait…. You weren’t selling that weed were you, Mark? And, then, amphetamines? Really? It’s no secret in Colorado that Sen. Mark Udall has some problems telling the truth. It’s probably also relatively well-known that Mark Udall admitted to The Rocky Mountain News (RIP) that he was arrested for possession of marijuana. But, here’s Sen. Udall’s dirty little secret – it wasn’t just marijuana and it was a little more complicated than he shrugged off in the Rocky. ... The punishment...

Any pretense that President Obama would let justice take its course in Ferguson, MO without his use of the bully pulpit of the presidency to influence or sway events on the ground has been completely thrown out the window. Saturday night, Obama firmly "took sides" in the Michael Brown case during a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Obama called the shooting an event that exposed the racial divide in America and "scars the hearts of our children."Fox News reports on Obama's speech and quotes the President using language that could easily be part of an Al Sharpton monologue...

Top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett was given a cameo role in the latest episode of CBS's The Good Wife. The airing of the episode comes after a busy week for President Obama -- which included bombing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a series of meetings at the United Nations, and various international crises. Jarrett appears to play herself: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO The scene features Jarrett on the phone with Julianna Margulies (who is the star of The Good Wife and who plays Alicia Florrick), being coached by Alan Cumming (who is playing a political...

Despite promises to the contrary by members of Congress and even the president, Americans now know that Obamacare is entangling tax dollars with coverage of elective abortion.Last week, the Government Accountability Office released a report confirming that more than 1,000 Obamacare exchange plans cover elective abortion but remain eligible for taxpayer subsidies.But that’s not the full story on how Obamacare funds the abortion industry.In addition to sending taxpayer money to plans that cover abortion, the massive health care law has created new avenues of public funding for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.Just a few weeks ago, the Department...

Speaking at the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver on July 3rd, Colorado Education Association (CEA) President Kerrie Dallman referred to the school district of Jefferson County (JeffCo) – where teachers have staged a “sick-out” and students left classes to protest throughout last week – as one of three in her state in which the teachers’ union was “working against hostile school boards.” “I also want to say thank you to the staff and leaders from the 18 states around the country who were sending in 48 staff under the NEA shared staffing...

President Obama insulted many Americans last week when he raised events in Ferguson, Missouri, during his United Nations speech. They chafed at the implied moral equivalence of a shooting still in legal dispute with the many lethal foreign threats besieging the world. While such rhetoric is divisive at home, there is another problem. The president does not seem to understand that most of the world is completely unmoved by such apologies. Most of the world does not see an earnest moralist struggling with America’s complicated past or a humble man admitting his own foibles. Instead, they see a weak leader...

Brigitte Jackson is nabbed by cops in elaborate sting. She gets caught when she tries to cash fake state check for $94,323,148.

A national security staffer in the Obama administration said the president has been seeing 'highly accurate predictions' about the rise of the ISIS terror army since 'before the 2012 election' Obama insisted in his campaign speeches that year that America was safe and al-Qaeda was 'on the run' The president said during Sunday's '60 Minutes' program that his Director of National Intelligence had conceded he underestimated ISIS But the administration aide insisted that Obama's advisers gave him actionable information that sat and gathered dust for more than a year 'He knew what was at stake,' the aide said of the...

Members of Minnesota's large Somali community gathered Sunday to condemn the recruitment of youth by terrorist groups and urge collaboration to find solutions to address the problem. About 100 people attended a town hall meeting to denounce groups such as the Islamic State and al-Shabab, which together have recruited more than two dozen fighters from Minnesota since 2007. U.S. Attorney Andy Luger told the crowd he's working hard to bring more resources to the community to address the root causes of the problem. "I have two children and if somebody was recruiting my children to go overseas and die, I...

The Obama administration looks set to go weak in the knees in life-or-death negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. From the start, the United States and its allies have pressed the mullahs to disable all but about 1,500 of their centrifuges. The logic: With that many machines in operation, should Tehran flip the switch to begin enriching weapons-grade nuclear material, the process of amassing enough uranium for an atom bomb would take a year. Cold comfort, but better than nothing. All the while, Iran has insisted that it needs all 9,400 of its spinning centrifuges, which, of course, ha ha, it...