Free Republic

Any health insurer providing coverage in Connecticut will now have to include sex-change surgery and hormone therapy in their plans, as ordered by the state insurance department. The Hartford Courant reported that the state agency sent out a notice to insurance companies, ordering that “individuals with gender dysphoria … are not denied access to medically necessary care because of the individuals’ gender identity or gender expression.” Now state officials are advancing on that notice with active campaigns. Deputy insurance commissioner Anne Melissa Dowling told the Courant that the state wanted to “go out and affirmatively make [the policy] very clear.”...

The end of 2013 brought a measure of closure to a long-running Milwaukee police scandal, though some say the officer — and his cohorts — who repeatedly and illegally shoved his fingers up black male suspects’ anal cavities got off with a light sentence considering the flagrant nature of his abuses. The ringleader was identified as officer Michael Vagnini, a white man who routinely targeted black males as young as fifteen for sadistic — and blatantly illegal — anal searches. One victim said that another officer put a gun to his head while Vagnini administered a choke hold, touched his...

A group representing 5,000 U.S. professors has endorsed an academic boycott of Israeli colleges and universities. The American Studies Association says it voted for the boycott "as an ethical stance." "It represents a principle of solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom and an aspiration to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians," a Dec. 4 statement said. According to The New York Times, which reported the boycott Monday, the action — the first time the group has called for an academic boycott of any nation's universities — makes the group the largest of its kind to...

CNSNews.com) - The fiscal conservatives at Americans for Tax Reform have crunched the Obamacare numbers released by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and here's the bottom line. American taxpayers have paid $14,196 for each Obamacare enrollee so far. In her testimony to Congress Wednesday, Sebelius said taxpayers have spent $677 million on the flawed healthcare.gov website through the end of October.* On top of that, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has spent $4.5 billion to promote Obamacare at the state level. Sebelius told Congress that 364,682 people had "selected a plan" as of Nov. 30...

OAKLAND, Calif. — The weekly meetings of Mouthing Off!, a group for students at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, always start the same way. Members take turns going around the room saying their names and the personal pronouns they want others to use when referring to them — she, he or something else. It’s an exercise that might seem superfluous given that Mills, a small and leafy liberal arts school historically referred to as the Vassar of the West, only admits women as undergraduates. Yet increasingly, the “shes” and “hers” that dominate...

Just a few dozen stations now carry liberal talkers, as key affiliates in cities with active left-wing politics are falling like dominoes, going dark or switching formats. Detroit’s progressive outlet shut down in January, along with Seattle’s liberal talk station, which changed to sports. And after last year’s election, Portland’s progressive talk station ended its political programming. With the political battlegrounds of 2014 and 2016 on the horizon, reducing the whopping imbalance between conservative radio, with its huge fan base, and the left has become more important than ever, according to those in the progressive media world. POLITICO spoke with...

Some drivers along a busy Fort Worth street on Friday were stopped at police roadblock and directed into a parking lot, where they were asked by federal contractors for samples of their breath, saliva and even blood. It was part of a government research study aimed at determining the number of drunken or drug-impaired drivers. "It just doesn't seem right that you can be forced off the road when you're not doing anything wrong," said Kim Cope, who said she was on her lunch break when she was forced to pull over at the roadblock on Beach Street in North...

The documents surfaced last week in a U.S. Court of Federal Claims lawsuit stemming from a dispute over a more than $5 million contract to provide library and seminar services to detainees at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Thanks to a multimillion-dollar federal contract, Guantanamo Bay prisoners can enroll in seminars to learn all about basic landscaping and pruning, calligraphy and Microsoft PowerPoint while the U.S. figures out what to do with them. “At a minimum, the art seminar shall include water color painting, charcoal sketching, Arabic calligraphy, acrylic painting and pastel painting,” contract records reviewed by The Washington...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wants President Barack Obama to know that he should “take his broken promises tour elsewhere,” according to a statement his office released Wednesday, just hours before Obama is supposed to speak in the Lone Star State. “President Obama’s trip to Texas brings nothing with it but broken promises,” the freshman Republican senator said in the statement. “He promised that Americans could keep their health care plans. We were told premiums would go down, that jobs would be created. And we now know these are all false promises.” Cruz’s comments come as the president visits Dallas to...

The House Oversight Committee wants to find out why the Park Service behaved so bizarrely. ... Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a former prosecutor, almost drove National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis into incoherence with his relentless questioning. Gowdy wanted to know why Jarvis had allowed “pot-smoking” Occupy Wall Street protesters to camp overnight illegally in Washington’s McPherson Square park for 100 days, yet put up barricades to keep veterans out of war memorials on the first day of the shutdown. By not issuing a single citation to the Occupy campers, Gowdy argued, the Park Service was treating them...

The U.S. government has shut down. Sadly, so have most of its websites. No astronomy picture of the day at NASA.gov. No food pyramid guide at USDA.gov. No scanned images of old-timey baseball cards at LOC.gov. That's the bad news. Now here's the good news: There are two easy methods to try accessing shut-down government sites. Your first option is Google's (or some other search engine's) "Cached" feature. Enter your keywords, hit search, then look for a tiny green arrow next to the URL of the government-hosted search result that you're interested in. Click the arrow to open a menu,...

On Thursday, Ken Shepherd at NewsBusters noted that Kansas University journalism professor David Guth, in the wake of Monday's Navy Yard murders, tweeted, "The blood is on the hands of the #NRA. Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters. Shame on you. May God damn you." In an update which now also includes a defense of Guth by a former student, Ken noted that he has placed on administrative leave. Yesterday, I noted that the headline at the Associated Press's national site after Guth's suspension ("KU Professor Takes Heat Over Twitter Comment") avoided mentioning KU's discliplinary action against...

Tucked within a release naming its new president and CEO, NPR announced today that it would seek to reduce its staff by 10 percent through a voluntary buyout plan. (The Washington-based organization employed 840 people in 2012.) NPR's board of directors just approved a budget for fiscal year 2014, which includes a deficit of $6.1 million, or 3.1 percent of its $178.1 million in revenue. The buyouts are intended to help plug the spending gap and, according to the release, will be offered "broadly across the organization." The board named Paul G. Haaga, Jr. as acting president and CEO effective...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The federal government has dismissed allegations that three University of California campuses failed to effectively respond to claims of anti-Semitism that arose out of pro-Palestinian events at the schools. The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights said in letters sent last week to leaders at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and UC Irvine that the protests, teach-ins, lectures, graffiti and heated confrontations that gave rise to the claims didn't constitute harassment of Jewish students. In its Aug. 19 letters to the universities, the Education Department said in most cases the activities at issue were...

Normally when the police show up it means the party's over. But police officers in Seattle will be adding to the fun this weekend by providing snacks at an marijuana festival. Seattle Police Department's spokesman, Sergeant Sean Whitcomb, said the department intends to use the opportunity to spread the word about new marijuana laws, by attaching a summarized version to bags of Doritos. The law came into effect in 2012, and allows anyone to legally possess up to an ounce of recreational marijuana. But police are worried people still aren't clear enough on the rules. So, with the help of...

Bo, the president's Portuguese Water Dog, arrived separately on one of two MV-22 Ospreys, a hybrid aircraft which takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane.

The trial of George Zimmerman cost Seminole County government about $91,000, officials said in a statement Friday. Zimmerman's high-profile second-degree-murder trial in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin began June 10 and concluded July 13 with a not-guilty verdict. During the trial, Seminole County handled the "coordination of resources and planning," through its Emergency Operations Center, county spokesman Alan Harris said. According to Harris, the EOC's role included "public information, safety, liaison, logistics, planning, intelligence" and other operations. Its efforts were spearheaded by a team of fire-rescue, facility management, information technology, utilities, economic development and public works staff, as...

HACKENSACK -- The attorney representing a woman who videotaped an NJ Transit bus driver masturbating while behind the wheel of a bus carrying passengers has released the video with the hope it will spare others from having to witness such an act.

Same-sex couples are seeing the benefits of the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling even faster than anticipated (much to the chagrin of conservatives). On Friday, as same-sex marriages resumed in California, Julian Marsh, an American, and his husband Traian Popov, a Bulgarian immigrant, got the news that they are the first gay couple to have their marriage-based green card petition approved. The New York Times reports that the visa agency had said it would hold off on approving applications until this week, but apparently immigration officers got excited and decided to jump the gun.