Free Republic

The number of Minnesotans struggling to pay their medical bills is rising sharply, despite an increase in the number of residents who have health insurance. In the past year, Minnesota’s main hospital and clinic groups filed nearly 9,000 lawsuits against people with large or long-standing medical debts — a sharp increase since 2005, according to a Star Tribune analysis of court records. Once a leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States, medical debt was widely expected to decline as more Americans got health insurance following federal health reform. Instead, shifts in the insurance market are pushing more people...

NEW YORK--The U.S. Navy is investigating a complaint that seeks the evacuation of civilian and military lawyers from parts of the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following reports of cancer cases among personnel working on the trials of detainees there. At least seven civilians and military members who worked on detainee trials at Guantanamo Bay have been diagnosed with cancer, according to the complaint, which was filed with the U.S. Defense Department’s Office of the Inspector General. The complaint calls on American military officials to remove personnel from court facilities on the base and test them and the base...

Last year a retired Border Patrol Officer by the name of Zach Taylor went on camera to explain the driving force behind the unprecedented surge in illegal immigration happening on our southern border. Taylor went on to note that what was happening at our border was not due to a spur of the moment event, or “a humanitarian crisis”, but asymmetrical warfare. The surge we saw at the border was a part of a larger, more chilling event that served one purpose and one purpose only, to show our enemies that our southern border had been compromised and the government...

ADDIS ABABA, (CAJ News) – UNITED States President Barack Obama’s visit has been met with contempt by the majority in the continent owing to his country’s recent endorsement of same-sex marriages. The leader of the most powerful nation in the globe will only make a low-key appearance at the African Union (AU) Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in a continent where such marriages are taboo. He will meet mostly Western diplomats and representatives. “How can we celebrate a man who advocates a man to marry another man? If it was the president of China, maybe, we would attend because they...

President Obama and Jeb Bush have drawn the ire of Sen. Ted Cruz after they attacked Gov. Mike Huckabee for his comments about the Iran nuclear deal. Huckabee said the president’s Iran policy would “take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.” The president bristled at what he called a “ridiculous” comment. “The particular comments of Mr. Huckabee are just part of a general pattern we’ve seen that would be considered ridiculous if it weren’t so sad,” he said. “We’ve had a sitting senator call John Kerry Pontius Pilate. We’ve had a sitting senator, who also...

  Barack Obama is a liar of biblical proportions. That's not new, but every now and then he spouts something that makes you want to scream "Are you effing kidding me?" And he's done it again. His Weekly Address yesterday was a beauty. He starts by patting himself on the back as usual: Hi, everybody. It’s been seven years since the worst financial crisis in generations spread from Wall Street to Main Street – a crisis that cost millions of Americans their jobs, their homes, their life savings. It was a crisis that cost all of us. It was a reminder that...

Ignorance of the Russian language put a French MP into a very confusing situation. When in the Crimea, the French MP bought a T-shirt with a notorious slogan "Obama, you're a douchebag" written in Russian on it (pic of the shirt here). The MP did not even think that there could be obscene language used on the shirt with an image of Russian and US presidents. "It was the photo of Putin and Obama that attracted my attention, and I could not even assume that there was an offensive word used on it. I learned about it only an hour...

Presidential candidate Donald Trump is now taking on one-time Obama "car czar" Steve Rattner.On Monday, Trump fired off a tweet telling Rattner: "I think you should have gone to prison for what you did, I guess Obama saved you." He ended the tweet telling Rattner to watch: "I will win!" It was unclear what activity Trump was referring to that should have landed Rattner in jail. Trump did not respond to CNNMoney's request for comment. In 2010, Rattner did pay $10 million in fines when he settled with the New York state attorney general for his alleged involvement in a...

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States totaled 11.3 million in 2014, outnumbering the 9.6 million Americans who were unemployed in the same year, according to data from Pew Research Center and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). “An estimated 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the U.S. in 2014,” says a Pew report. “The new unauthorized immigrant total includes people who cross the border illegally as well as those who arrive with legal visas and remain in the U.S. after their visas expire.” Of those 11.3 illegal immigrants, 8.1 million are participating in the labor force. “Unauthorized...

ORLANDO, Fla. – Jeb Bush rebuked Mike Huckabee on Monday for invoking the Holocaust in criticizing President Obama over the nuclear agreement with Iran, arguing that Republicans needed “to tone down the rhetoric” if they hoped to recapture the White House next year. “The use of that kind of language is just wrong,” Mr. Bush told reporters after a town-hall-style meeting here. “This is not the way we’re going to win elections and that’s not how we’re going to solve problems. So, unfortunate remark — not quite sure why he felt compelled to say it.” Mr. Huckabee, the former governor...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's comments that President Barack Obama is marching Israelis to "the door of the oven," sparked an immediate rebuke from Jewish groups and the President himself, but Donald Trump's special counsel Michael Cohen said he doesn't think that Trump finds those words offensive. "I don't think so," Cohen, executive president of the Trump organization, told CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day" on Monday. "I think what [Huckabee is] really trying to say is we're in a bad place," adding that he has personally lost family members in the Holocaust and does not want to see...

Having been thoroughly schooled by Iran during the P5+1 nuke negotiations on the necessity for flexibility, the Obama Administration is now even better prepared to take on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Kim learns of U.S. plans As North Korea and more recently Iran proved, sanctions are feeble devices for getting rogue nations to eliminate their nuclear weapons programs. Possibly effective in bringing such nations to the bargaining table, they tend to collapse as the negotiators come to understand the benefits their nations would realize by their elimination (the sanctions, not necessarily their nations). According to a July 26th Washington Post article titled U.S. planning to press...

...[Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.)] says they asked whether they could see those agreements. He says IAEA officials replied, “ ‘Oh no, of course not, no, you’re not going to get to see those.’ And so everybody on our side of the table asked, ‘Has Secretary Kerry seen these?’ ‘No, Secretary Kerry hasn’t seen them. No American is ever going to get to see them.’ ” It turns out that only the two parties — the IAEA and Iran — get to see the actual agreements (though you can see a picture of Iranian and IAEA officials holding up what appear...

Fresh from forging a controversial deal with Iran, which critics have blasted as a capitulation to Tehran’s demands, the Obama administration is willing to be just as “flexible” with North Korea, a US government envoy has said. Sydney Seiler, US special envoy for now-defunct six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, told Reuters Monday he hoped Pyongyang would take note of the Iran deal and return to the negotiating table. “The Iran deal demonstrates the value and possibilities that negotiation bring,” Seiler said. …

President Obama said he’s of his Kenyan heritage during his trip to that country, pointedly described himself as “the first Kenyan-American to be president” of the United States during a speech. During an interview with Kenyan radio, the host asked Obama if he was worried about the reaction to his statement after he was “forced” to release his birth certificate. “I wasn’t actually forced,” Obama interrupted. “I just wanted to end silly conversations – there weren’t any serious speculation, this was just sort of a side circus that sometimes happens in the United States.” Obama released his birth certificate in...

President Barack Obama delivered withering criticism of the 2016 presidential debate Monday, saying its tone was not worthy of voters. Obama zeroed in on comments by Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee to decry attention-grabbing "outrageous attacks that have become all too commonplace" in American politics. Obama described Huckabee's suggestion that a historic nuclear deal between Iran and world powers earlier this month was marching Israelis to the "door of the oven," as part of a "general pattern" that would be "considered ridiculous if it weren't so sad". Obama also took issue with Trump's "outrageous" comments about the...

By lying and withholding information about the agreement, he gives aid and comfort to America’s enemy. The president “must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate.” One can imagine hearing such counsel from a contemporary United States senator on the receiving end of President Obama’s “full disclosure” of the nuclear deal with Iran. But the admonition actually came from James Iredell, a champion of the Constitution’s ratification, who was later appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Washington.

The maxim that “personnel is policy” transcends partisan affiliations and political labels. Every president, including President Barack Obama, has the authority to staff federal agencies with loyal political appointees.

Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) is attacking former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for comments he made in an interview on Breitbart News Saturday hosted by Breitbart editor-in-chief Alexander Marlow on the SiriusXM Patriot channel 125.