Free Republic

Move over, War on Women, there's a new war in town. On the August 18 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, contributor Michelle Bernard warned there is a "war on black men" in the United States, as evidence both by the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and persistent criticism of President Barack Obama from Republicans. What's more, Bernard insisted, there would be a "genocide" of young black men unless the problem were seriously addressed to her satisfaction.

Kevin McCarthy of Thousand Oaks, California, was surprised last spring, when he learned his family doctor of 14 years could not accept the Blue Shield insurance he'd purchased under Obamacare. He said he was "outraged" because when he was shopping for his policy, Blue Shield confirmed his doctor was covered. "We were duped," McCarthy said. "Hoodwinked is another good term." Here's what happened. Insurance companies -- to save money -- are quietly selling what are called "narrow networks." They sharply restrict the number of doctors and hospitals people can see. In some cases, people may be limited to 30 percent...

Vote on legality of executive action scheduled for 9:00 p.m. EST.

Jonathan Gruber’s health care forecasting is failing in Colorado as Vermont’s Gov. Peter Shumlin prepares to use the economist’s math for single-payer health care. As Vermonters anxiously await a Gruber-modeled financing plan for Green Mountain Care, modeling done for Colorado’s health exchange by Jonathan Gruber Associates has proven wildly erroneous. In 2011, following Colorado’s decision to set up a state health exchange for Obamacare, the state hired Gruber to forecast enrollment trends from which the state and federal government could estimate costs. According to a presentation delivered to the Colorado Health Benefit Exchange Board on Sept. 16, 2011, and provided...

Friday, December 12, 2014 Leftist Lynch Mobs from Ferguson to Rolling Stone Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Did you bury a teenage girl alive after shooting her? Are you on death row after a string of crimes too gruesome to describe? Or you just a member of Al Qaeda dedicated to destroying America?  If so progressives will fight for you. Just dial 1-800-IAM-VICTIM and the left waiting to take your call will insist on your presumption of innocence. Its activists, reporters and lawyers will exploit every pretext to get you off the hook and they will...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Welcome back. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network. Grab audio sound bite number one. The Drive-By Media is comparing Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz, but they're doing it the following way. Elizabeth Warren is wonderful. Ted Cruz is mean and nasty and a threat to the republic. It's about 25 seconds, and again, just a media montage to give you a flavor here. ED HENERY: Elizabeth Warren saying she may hold all of this up and do a reverse of what Ted Cruz did. TAMARA KEITH: She's sort of pulling a Ted Cruz. JOE...

The last time Hillary declared that she was running for President was on January 20, 2007. Will she toss her broom into the ring as early as she did last time if she decides to run?

Returning Obamacare enrollees have until next Monday to decide whether they want to keep or switch insurance policies for next year. If they do nothing, they will be renewed automatically in their old plans. In addition to getting hit by higher premiums, auto-enrolling in health exchange plans next year could hit consumers’ wallets in another way. Because of the complicated way federal subsidies are calculated, some subsidy-eligible consumers could be surprised with a lower tax credit than last year - further driving up the total cost of their health insurance. Here’s how it works: Subsidies or tax credits are calculated...

After grabbing a Slurpee and hot dog, 7-Eleven patrons may pick up some government-sponsored healthcare messages, too. The Administration just announced a partnership that allows them to promote ObamaCare on sales receipts. Building on partnerships with shopping malls and other hot spots for the young and uninsured, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a partnership with PayNearMe, an electronic payment processing system that allows businesses to process cash payments for those who don’t have access to banks. 7-Eleven is one such store that will now allow PayNearMe receipts to include a plug for healthcare.gov at the bottom of...

Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, who recently questioned ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber about a paper he wrote which discussed how the government had saved billions of dollars by targeting abortion to the poor, is calling the paper creepy and based in eugenics. Thomas Massie Gruber Nemesis In a December 9, 2014 hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, about enrollment issues with the Affordable Care Act, Jonathan Gruber, a former consultant and adviser during the lawÂ’s creation, apologized for comments he made in which he called voters stupid and said the controversial law was passed because voters did not...

Demands on the NHS tend to increase during the colder months because of illnesses like flu and norovirus. But with winter just getting under way, pressures are already reaching record levels. Extra money is being invested in each nation, but the four-hour A&E waiting time target is still being missed everywhere. The mounting problems come as the BBC launches its NHS Winter project, which tracks how the health service is performing down to individual hospital trust level. In England weekly figures are released. The latest, for the first week of December, show 91.8% of patients were seen in four hours...

If you happen to run into U.S. Sen. Eddie Markey at Whole Foods in Chevy Chase -- as in Maryland -- ask him if he still feels good about giving us Obamacare. Of the thousands of votes he has cast in his 38 years as a member of Congress, first in the U.S. House and now in the Senate, he is "proudest" of his vote in favor of the health-care plan. "It is my proudest vote," Markey said repeatedly in the House, and then again as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2014. The question is relevant in the...

What would happen if the Supreme Court rules that ObamaCare doesn't allow subsidies through the federal exchange? There's plenty of speculation, ranging from no big deal to absolute, total catastrophe. An article published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine tries to answer the question with a little bit more precision. It's conclusion, however, is that disallowing those subsidies would be a devastating blow to ObamaCare.

ObamaCare ads will now appear on 7-Eleven receipts at more than 7,000 stores nationwide as government health officials expand their outreach in the second year of healthcare sign-ups. Information about ObamaCare sign-ups will appear on the bottom of receipts for anyone using an mobile payment company called PayNearMe, which allows bank-less customers to pay in stores like 7-Eleven and Family Dollar. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced the new partnership with the tech start-up PayNearMe on Thursday at a store in Washington, D.C.

For 36 years, Jim Garlow didn’t know his first adopted child was the result of a rape. But after his wife Carol lost a six-year battle with cancer last year, their daughter, Janie, went in search of her birth mother. In succeeding, Janie also discovered the horrific circumstances of her own conception. The story spurs Jim Garlow, a pastor in California, to fight a state mandate that his church’s employee health plan pay for elective abortions. When Janie’s birth mother was a freshman in high school, two senior boys asked her to go to the movies. Instead, they took her...

Don't be lulled into complacency by their stupidity--they can be vicious and crazy as well. I would no sooner turn my back on a liberal than a rabid dog Seeing as how liberal stupidity is a given, the question becomes one of degree—just how stupid are liberals? Are they off-the-charts stupid, or simply low-wattage-dim-bulb stupid? Please don’t mistake my question for being merely some snarky ad hominem attack. You have only to look at the recent questioning of John Gruber by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) in order to see the truth of things. When Gruber called the American voters stupid...

What is going on in the House right now betrays every American citizen who voted for a change in irresponsible governing The 2014 Midterm Election was a historical rejection of President Barack Obama, and the policies of the Democrat Party. The strategies of the Republican Party always seems to be to vote away any leverage they may have in future debates, by giving in to too many of the liberal left Democrat Party’s demands, and voting for bills or resolutions that are a longer term than they should be in regards to their best interests, while trying to give us...

Instead of using this space to pretend the newly released CIA "torture" report confirms that the United States is the most evil nation in the history of the universe, I'm going to address Jonathan Gruber's confirmation that he believes we're all stupid. Assuming you are not under any rocks or haven't been in an underground bunker without access to media, you will have heard that Gruber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the principal architect of Obamacare, made some unflattering comments about his fellow Americans. At a panel event last year, discussing how the administration was able...

House Speaker John Boehner claims that next year Republicans will take the fight over executive amnesty to President Obama. “We’ve also made clear that early on we’ll make a direct challenge to the president’s unilateral actions on immigration,” the Ohio Republican told reporters Thursday in arguing the case for the House’s must-pass government spending bill. “You can expect that challenge to the president to include real action on border security.” He noted that the House is already working on the matter, and will pick it back up in January. “We’ll take this fight to the president on the strongest possible...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent her colleagues a letter Thursday afternoon saying it’s "clear" that House Republicans do not have the votes to pass a $1.1 trillion spending package. Shortly after coming out against the package in a speech on the House floor, the California Democrat thanked her troops for giving Democrats “leverage” to demand changes. "This increases our leverage to get two offensive provisions of the bill removed: the bank bailout and big money for campaigns provision," Pelosi wrote, referring to the two Republican amendments that have fueled the Democrats' revolt. "However you decide to vote in the...