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Reuters) - The Obama administration has delayed a step crucial to the launch of the new healthcare law, the signing of final agreements with insurance plans to be sold on federal health insurance exchanges starting October 1. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified insurance companies on Tuesday that it would not sign final agreements with the plans between September 5 and 9, as originally anticipated, but would wait until mid-September instead, according to insurance industry sources. Nevertheless, Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for HHS, said the department remains "on track to open" the marketplaces on time on...

All of us in the conservative movement know that Obama should have been impeached long ago for his arrogance and trampling on our Constitution, but until now, we haven't had a broad enough consensus in the country to go forward. Now we do. The upcoming war on Syria is wildly unpopular, with less than 10% of Americans supporting it, and for the first time I can recall, even Democrats and Indies despise Obama as much as we do. While our neighborhood is solidly conservative, the US sites where our import-export business operates have lots of Democrats and liberals. For this...

The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency's activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian. The technology companies, which the NSA says includes Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, incurred the costs to meet new certification demands in the wake of the ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court. The October 2011 judgment, which was declassified on Wednesday by the Obama administration, found that the NSA's inability to separate purely domestic communications from...

What's the NSA to say when they illegally and unconstitutionally snarf up emails they have no business looking at? Ooops: For several years, the National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-revised collection method, according to a 2011 secret court opinion. The redacted 85-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, states that, based on NSA estimates, the spy agency may have been collecting as many as 56,000 "wholly domestic" communications each year. "For the first time, the government has now advised the court...

Just when you think the progressive liberal power grab can't get more blatant, another ugly example rears its head. It appears that under the umbrella of Obamacare, the government will now send agents into your very home to inspect it and you. Yes, you now have someone else to worry about other than the IRS. David Catron reports in The American Spectator that the federal government will "authorize state agencies throughout the nation to send government inspectors to your house if a 'home visit' is deemed appropriate pursuant to HHS guidelines ostensibly meant to 'create social and physical environments that...

Janet Napolitano’s TSA agents won’t keep their blue, latex-covered paws to themselves. The TSA is now expanding its grope to rodeos, sports stadiums, music festivals and train stations. The TSA’s signature move is like the signature move of a guy who “accidently” brushes his hand against a woman’s buttocks or chest—a woman he’s not dating; married to; or, even a friend to. Except the TSA pulls the creeper move on men and women alike, plus grandmothers and toddlers. Between 2010 and 2012, TSA misconduct increased by 26 percent, according to a report released this summer from the Government Accountability Office....

President Obama has only occasionally used his bully pulpit to confront racial inequality in America, even if race inherently has been a backdrop of his tenure as the first black president. He has, however, made fighting economic inequality a central goal of his presidency, delivering forceful speeches and advocating policies aimed at shrinking the income gap and increasing social mobility. When he speaks later this month on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Obama will be at the confluence of efforts to reduce racial and economic divisions. As the president addresses a crowd from...

The Obama administration announced last month via blog post that the president was unilaterally suspending ObamaCare's employer mandate—notwithstanding the clear command of the law. President Obama's comments about it on Aug. 9—claiming that "the normal thing [he] would prefer to do" is seek a "change to the law"—then added insult to constitutional injury. It also offers a sharp contrast with a different president who also suspended the law. As for Republican congressmen who had the temerity to question his authority, Mr. Obama said only: "I'm not concerned about their opinions—very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less...

As a reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, many federal drug laws carry strict mandatory sentences. This has stirred unease in Congress and sparked a bipartisan effort to revise and relax some of the more draconian laws. Traditionally — meaning before Barack Obama — that’s how laws were changed: We have a problem, we hold hearings, we find some new arrangement ratified by Congress and signed by the president. That was then. On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder, a liberal in a hurry, ordered all U.S. attorneys to simply stop charging nonviolent, non-gang-related drug defendants with crimes that,...

The Republican Party is spending its summer engaged in traditional, old-timey fun, like this massive tug-of-war between congressional leadership and conservative members and activists over Obamacare. The leadership is diligently trying to pull the party toward an intricate legislative solution to the dispute, while the base is organizing all of its friends over to yank everyone off a cliff. That's a little strong, but perhaps not too much. There's a to-hell-with-it feel to the Republican base's opposition to Obamacare. If Democrats in the Senate or the White House won't vote to kill the program, a program central to conservative critique...

(CBS News) LOS ANGELES - In about seven weeks, Americans can start buying health insurance on the new exchanges that will be part of the Affordable Care Act. Thursday, the Obama administration announced $67 million in awards to more than 100 organizations that will help people understand their options. The key to the success of what the president himself calls "Obamacare" is getting young folks to sign up. Jordan Zavaleta is what the health care industry calls a "young invincible." He's 26 and has no health insurance, largely because it's expensive to buy on his own and he rarely gets...

Former White House adviser David Axelrod said Friday that more changes to Obamacare will be coming as the program is implemented, and that’s how it should be. Axelrod was asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” whether in the wake of delays and changes to Obamacare there would be more tweaking moving forward. “I have to believe that’s going to be the case,” Axelrod said. “Any time you implement something like this, it’s new and there’s no doubt that it’s complicated, there will be changes along — there should be changes along the way.” Axelrod said the president will fix Obamacare as...

BOULDER, Colo. | EPA chief Gina McCarthy said Wednesday that the Obama administration is finished waiting for Congress to act on climate change and plans to bypass the legislative branch in developing a federal response. Ms. McCarthy, who was confirmed last month as Environmental Protection Agency administrator, cited President Obama’s June 25 speech at Georgetown University, in which he unveiled his Climate Action Plan and vowed to make combatting climate change a priority of his second term. Mr. Obama gave “what I really think is a most remarkable speech by a president of the United States,” said Ms. McCarthy in...

In a recent speech to several hundred legislators and state health officers, Secretary Sebelius categorically asserted “this is not a bait-and-switch.” She was referring to the federal government’s commitment to funding 90% of the Medicaid expansion in perpetuity. There is widespread fear among the states that Uncle Sam will renege on this promise, leaving them holding the bag for whatever amounts federal policymakers decide can no longer be afforded. As a former Kansas legislator, insurance commissioner and governor, Secretary Sebelius presumably knows that she cannot bind the hands of a future Congress—either constitutionally, legally or even morally. The members of...

ObamaCare is poised to “destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.” And that’s the president’s supporters talking. The dire warning came last month in a letter from three of the nation’s most influential union bosses to Democratic leaders in Congress. “The unintended consequences of the ACA [Affordable Care Act] are severe,” the labor leaders bemoaned. “Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios.” Specifically, they noted, “the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week, and many of them are doing so...

Full title: NSA, DEA, IRS Lie About Fact That Americans Are Routinely Spied On By Our Government: Time For A Special Prosecutor It seems that every day brings a new revelation about the scope of the NSA’s heretofore secret warrantless mass surveillance programs. And as we learn more, the picture becomes increasingly alarming. Last week we discovered that the NSA shares information with a division of the Drug Enforcement Agency called the Special Operations Division (SOD). The DEA uses the information in drug investigations. But it also gives NSA data out to other agencies – in particular, the Internal Revenue...

Barack Obama's increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency. Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and red lines is floundering. And at last week's news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality. Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable Care Act, he said: "I didn't simply choose to" ignore the statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate to provide...

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid recently made clear what conservatives have long suspected: that he and other Democrats, including the president and key officials, see ObamaCare as a stepping stone to single payer, government-controlled health care. Reid told a television interviewer, "Don't think we didn't have a tremendous number of people who wanted single payer system." But, he added, it didn't happen because "you know, we have to get the majority of the votes and we weren't able to do that." A single payer system would involve the government paying for all health care costs and abolishing the private insurance...

President Barack Obama has found a way to cater to his obsession with pre-K programs while the rest of his education agenda stalls: Skip Congress and spend the money anyway. Hundreds of millions of dollars in discretionary funding for early learning are funneling into states although Congress hasn’t seriously considered paying for President Barack Obama’s universal preschool proposal. Race to the Top early learning awards and Affordable Care Act money are helping states carry out their pre-K and early childcare plans. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is traveling the country to deliver what amounts to an early childhood stump speech, and...

President Obama liked the idea laid out in a memo from his staff: an ambitious plan to expand high-speed Internet access in schools that would allow students to use digital notebooks and teachers to customize lessons like never before. Better yet, the president would not need Congress to approve it. White House senior advisers have described the little-known proposal, announced earlier this summer under the name ConnectEd, as one of the biggest potential achievements of Obama’s second term. There’s just one little catch — the proposal costs billions of dollars, and Obama wants to pay for it by raising fees...