Free Republic

The chief of an Army medical center has been relieved of his command because of problems with patient care, and the Pentagon has ordered a review of its health care system, defense officials said. The commander was replaced Tuesday at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and three deputies were suspended, the Army said in a statement. The shake-up comes after two deaths this month of patients in their 20s and problems with infection control at the facility that were pointed out in March by a hospital accreditation group, according to two defense officials. They spoke on...

Church officials say they will “combat evil” by hosting a positive worship service to counter a Harvard group’s Satanic mass planned for Monday evening. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston will host a Eucharistic procession from MIT to a nearby church for an hour of prayer, The Boston Globe reports. The religious procession will end up at St. Paul’s Parish in Harvard Square, just a 10-minutes walk from the Queen’s Head Pub in Memorial Hall the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club is set to hold a “black mass.” A black mass is a ritual performed as a parody of the...

Israeli officials denounced on Tuesday evening a report in Newsweek which said that American intelligence officials have linked the U.S. visa crisis to Israeli espionage. The report cited these American officials as saying in closed conversations that "Israel crosses the line for espionage in the United States." In response, Israeli officials told Kol Yisrael radio’s diplomatic affairs correspondent Chico Menashe that the report “smelled of anti-Semitism.” "The allegations of espionage in the U.S. are false. Israel is not spying there. The report in Newsweek smells of anti-Semitism, we are portrayed as an enemy country,” one official told Kol Yisrael. Another...

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Thursday again went after the Obama administration on Benghazi, calling White House officials “scumbags” that “lied about” the September 2012 attacks. “Our Democratic friends, for the most part, have been in the tank over Benghazi. They think it’s to get me reelected,” the South Carolina Republican said on The Mike Gallagher Show on Thursday morning. “Some guy said this about me yesterday on the left: The only reason I cared about this was because I have six tea party opponents. Well, if that’s true, I’m the biggest scumbag in America. I don’t think that’s true. I...

Though officials at the World Health Organization are feverishly working to stop the spread of the Ebola virus in what is now seven African nations, their efforts may be for naught. In Guinea, a hot spot for the deadly contagion, government health officials have said that the outbreak is nearly under control. Yet, Reuters reports that the government “planned to stop publicly releasing the death toll to avoid causing unnecessary panic.” But panic may be in order. Despite the best efforts of emergency health workers it appears that virus may have crossed out of Africa into Europe.

The IRS’s new proposal to crack down on nonprofits was in the works a year before the tea party targeting scandal broke, according to a Treasury Department official who told congressional investigators it was spurred by pressure from outside parties. The revelation follows earlier testimony from former IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, who told investigators that they started “brainstorming” ways to crack down on nonprofits while under pressure from a senior Democratic senator who was “complaining bitterly to us” about the way groups were engaging in politics while organized as social welfare nonprofits. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and subcommittee...

Thousands of San Francisco Bay Area residents may have been exposed to measles last week when an unvaccinated student at the Unversity of California, Berkeley, attended classes and rode the area's BART transit system. Public health officials in Contra Costa County, outside of San Francisco, said anyone riding BART from Feb. 4 to Feb. 7 during the morning or late evening commutes could have been exposed to the highly contagious respiratory virus. The young man in his 20s lives in the county and was confirmed to have measles on Wednesday. He was likely infected while traveling recently in Asia, health...

On Jan. 1, 2014, tens of thousands of defiant gun owners seemingly made the choice not to register their semi-automatic rifles with the state of Connecticut as required by a hastily-passed gun control law. By possessing unregistered so-called “assault rifles,” they all technically became guilty of committing Class D felonies overnight. Police had received 47,916 applications for “assault weapons certificates” and 21,000 incomplete applications as of Dec. 31, Lt. Paul Vance told The Courant. At roughly 50,000 applications, officials estimate that as little as 15 percent of the covered semi-automatic rifles have actually been registered with the state. “No one...

Bayonne officials are planning to have several health officials on hand and local emergency services available tomorrow when a Royal Caribbean cruise ship which recently cut its trip short due to a gastrointestinal breakout overseas arrives at the Cape Liberty Cruise Port in Bayonne.

The U.S. military has deployed a small number of uniformed trainers and advisers to the failed state of Somalia for the first time since 1993, when two helicopters were shot down and 18 Americans were killed in the failed “Black Hawk Down” operation. A cell of U.S. military personnel has been stationed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu since last fall to advise and coordinate operations with African troops fighting to wrest control of the country from the al-Shabab militia, an Islamist group whose leaders have professed loyalty to al-Qaeda, according to three U.S. military officials. The previously undisclosed deployment...

My apologies for the vanity, but I could use some advice from experienced Freepers. Yesterday, I got notification from our County's election bureau that I was elected to both JUDGE OF ELECTION and MINORITY INSPECTOR of ELECTION in our precinct.I didn't run for the office, but I have suspicions that a few of my neighbors wrote me in during the November 5 election.I am curious to know why I am getting notified only now, almost two months later. I'd also like some advice as to what these positions actually do and whether I should decline the lower office as they...

Administration officials were concerned that once users were able to view the available policies for purchase on HealthCare.gov, they could be disappointed with the cost and options available. The concerns were expressed in meeting notes from the ObamaCare "war room" obtained by CNN. "In some cases, there will be fewer options than would be desired to promote consumer choice and an ideal shopping experience," the meeting notes read. "Additionally, in some cases there will be relatively high cost plans." The discussion last week among officials at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight appeared to reveal a behind-the-scenes concern...

A former NSA director isn't the only person to have some issues with being overheard on a train. Note to reporters with some gumption: Ride the Acela, you'll get scoops. Note to highly recognizable, but private, former government officials: Avoid the Acela. Thursday afternoon, Tom Matzzie, a clean-energy entrepreneur (per LinkedIn), and sometime Huffington Post blogger sat behind former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden. The spy was talking to a journalist, who remains unknown, and requested anonymity as he supposedly bashed the Obama administration—which, even for the onetime head of the world's most cloistered agency, is a lot easier...

Canadian provincial health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange websites, the Washington Examiner has learned. CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by an Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s flagship online medical registry. The online registry was supposed to be up and running by June 2011. Officials at the U.S. government's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded six technology contracts worth $87 million to CGI Federal for...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Southern California doctors and health officials will be on the lookout for Muslim pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia with flu-like symptoms in the wake of a reported outbreak of a SARS-like virus in the Middle East, according to a report. L.A. County Department of Public Health Director Dr. Jonathan Fielding told the Los Angeles Times severe coughs or other similar symptoms could signal the arrival of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, to the Southland. While MERS-CoV has so far only been reported in the Mideast and Europe, doctors and emergency departments will be...

JERUSALEM—The red line drawn by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding Iran’s nuclear program has been rendered obsolete by technology, according to Israeli officials who are pushing for a concerted new effort to block Iran’s possible acquisition of nuclear weapons. Netanyahu warned in his address to the United Nations General Assembly last year that if Iran enriches 250 kilograms of uranium to a level of 20 percent it would be in position to make a secret dash for nuclear weapon production before the international community could stop it. Netanyahu then hinted at Israeli military action if Iran tried it. Although...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — U.S. officials for nearly three years accessed data on thousands of domestic phone numbers they shouldn't have and then misrepresented their actions to a secret spy court to reauthorize the government's surveillance program, documents released Tuesday show. The government's explanation points to an enormous surveillance infrastructure with such incredible power that even the National Security Agency doesn't fully know how to properly use it: Officials told a judge in 2009 that the system is so large and complicated that "there was no single person who had a complete technical understanding" of it. The documents, which the...

The director of Delaware’s tax-collection office said Friday that his agency accessed the federal tax records in 2010 of an unnamed taxpayer, believed to be former GOP Senate candidate Christine O´Donnell. Patrick Carter, director of the state’s division of revenue, would not identify Ms. O´Donnell as the taxpayer but said he approved the inquiry “for routine purposes.” “A state Division of Revenue investigator accessed records on or after March 20, 2010 following information that came to the attention of the division,” Mr. Carter said in a statement. “The record access led the state revenue investigator

The Obama Administration held talks with Sheik Abdullah Bin Bayyah, the vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, in the White House. The Investigative Project reported: Radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi is considered so radical that the United States bans him from entering the country. Qaradawi, considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, has called for the killing of Jews and Americans. That history makes the June 13 White House meeting with Sheik Abdullah Bin Bayyah all the more inexplicable. Bin Bayyah is vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a group founded...

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency sweeps up data on millions of cellphones and Internet communications under secret court orders. But as it mounts a rigorous defense of its surveillance, the agency has disclosed new details that portray its efforts as tightly controlled and limited in scope, while successful in thwarting potential plots. On Sunday, officials said that though the NSA is authorized to collect "geolocational" information that can pinpoint the location of callers, it chooses not to. A secret court order that was made public earlier