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A division of the Department of Veterans Affairs tasked with fixing up the VA's broken veteran suicide hotline has dropped roughly 1.4 million phone calls from veterans since fiscal year 2015, a VA whistleblower told the Washington Examiner. That high number of abandoned calls is raising questions about whether the VA is doing all it can to fix up the suicide hotline, which has been criticized as the latest part of the VA that is failing veterans. Scott Davis, a whistleblower and program specialist at the VA's Health Eligibility Center in Atlanta, noted that the VA's Health Resource Center is...

Homeless U.S. military veterans stand in line for free services at a "Stand Down" event hosted by the Department of Veterans Affairs on November 3, 2011 in Denver, Colorado. A week ahead of Veterans Day, more than 500 homeless veterans were expected to attend the event, where they received free medical care, winter clothing, employment assistance and were able to see a judge to resolve legal issues. Organizers say the homeless veterans population has surged in recent years with the high national unemployment rate. Stand Down is a military term that means a temporary stop of offensive military action. (Photo...

It looks like Rubio carried the state’s wealthy northern suburbs, and Trump took the rest. (SNIP) Rubio’s strongholds overlapped heavily with those that lifted Barack Obama to his second straight win in the state in his 2012 reelection race.

The long hours and grueling pace of the presidential campaign may be finally catching up with a rapidly aging Bill Clinton. During an appearance in Bluffton, South Carolina on Friday, a former Marine interrupted Clinton’s speech and asked him to address what Hillary was going to do about the VA. “What do you think should be done with the VA?” Clinton said in a raspy voice, turning the question back on him and yielding the floor. “The thing is, we had four lives in Benghazi killed and your wife tried to cover it up,” the Marine responded, eliciting boos and...

I am one of the vets in this story. This is me in this story. I had a CT scan July 2014 and they confirmed the hernia I went to see them for, but they also found a cyst in my liver the size of a jawbreaker and found my spine was fusing between L2 and L3. I requested to see a surgeon for the hernia but they refused. I requested to see a hepatologist for my liver and they refused. I requested to see a spinal surgeon for the fusion and they refused. I only got care when I...

I am one of the veterans who was interviewed for this show tomorrow night

Rep. Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said Wednesday an Obama administration proposal to increase accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs by raising pay for senior executives does not address the agency's deepest problems. The proposal involves switching the classification of top VA officials from Title 5 to Title 38 of the Senior Executive Service, which would lift caps on how much the agency is allowed to pay certain employees. But the move would also prevent those employees from delaying disciplinary action by appealing their punishments to the Merit Systems Protection Board. Officials accused of wrongdoing...

Join us this week as we rally for Hillary Clinton in Virginia! THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2016 11:45 am – 1:00 pm At the Verizon Auditorium in the Occoquan Building. George Mason University Science And Technology Campus 1900 University Boulevard Manassas, VA 20110 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 11:45 am – 1:00 pm At the Waddell Theater, first floor of the Waddell Building. Northern Virginia Community College Loudoun Campus 21200 Campus Drive Sterling, VA 20164 Co-sponsors for both events are: Feminist Majority National Organization for Women (NOW) Virginia NOW Prince William NOW Robin Browder, President, Northern VA Chapter of National Coalition of...

Department of Veterans Affairs leaders have shuffled nearly 100 hospital administrators to three or more cities each in the last eight years, often to deal with underperforming directors whom they could not fire, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis. The list of VA employees with unusual workplace moving patterns includes infamous names like Diana Rubens, who was a D.C. based administrator until she created a job for herself with less work and the same $181,000 salary near her family in Philadelphia. Then she billed VA for nearly $300,000 in relocation costs. It also provides a roadmap for a...

Veterans' calls to VA suicide hotline went into voicemail or put on hold SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Some veterans' calls to the VA's suicide prevention hotline in Canandaigua went into voicemail or were put on hold, according to an investigation. The Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General found more than 20 calls were routed to voicemail at a backup call center where staffers were unaware of the voicemail system and did not return the calls. The Veterans Crisis Line, operated by the Canandaigua VA Medical Center, has answered more than 1.86 million calls since it was started in 2007...

A new poll has been released for the State of Virginia, and it confirms a lot of the conventional wisdom about how the race is shaping up. Virginia is a Super Tuesday state and is probably a pretty good representation of how many of the Southern Super Tuesday states are thinking right now. On the Democrat side, Hillary leads Bernie Sanders, but by less than you would expect, at 52%-40%. You would think that, of the Southern states, Virginia might be especially friendly territory to Hillary, given that one of her stooges is Governor and given the increasingly high number...

An open carrier in Virgina is reported to have had his handgun stolen in Newport News, on January 29th, 2016.  The location is listed as on the 6000 block of Jefferson Avenue, and is said to have happened about 8 p.m.  From dailypress.com: The victim, a 37-year-old Hampton man, told police he was robbed as he walked across Jefferson Avenue to the lot at the Windsor House after visiting a friend at the Travelers Inn. He was wearing his handgun in a holster, open carry, on his hip, Eley said.The man said he was approached from behind by two...

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead of apparent natural causes Saturday on a luxury resort in West Texas, federal officials said. Scalia, 79, was a guest at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort in the Big Bend region south of Marfa. According to a report, Scalia arrived at the ranch on Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people. When he did not appear for breakfast, a person associated with the ranch went to his room and found a body. U.S. District Judge Fred Biery said he was among those notified about Scalia's death. "I was told...

As we have reported several times in the past (including here and here), the Veterans Administration (VA) has been reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) the identities of its beneficiaries who have been assigned a "fiduciary" to manage their benefits. The VA claims that such determinations constitute an "adjudication of mental defectiveness" under federal law, thereby prohibiting the beneficiary (presumptively for life) from acquiring or possessing firearms. The NRA has for several years been supporting legislation to correct this unjustified infringement on Second Amendment rights, including the Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act (H.R. 2001, Rep. Jeff...

(CNN)Sen. Bernie Sanders touted his record on veterans' issues during Tuesday's debate, citing his position as the former chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs when Congress provided billions of extra dollars to boost healthcare for veterans last year. "We went further in than any time in recent history in improving health care to the men and women of this country who put their lives on the line to defend us," Sanders said Tuesday, referring to $15 billion given to the Department of Veterans Affairs to decrease wait times and reform the troubled agency. Yet some veterans groups and...

The conventional wisdom is that Hillary Clinton is the candidate with the honesty problem. But on at least one important issue, Bernie Sanders isn't shooting straight. Sanders falsely claims he's been leading the fight to save veterans from the corruption and deadly medical care delays at the Veterans Affairs Department - a message intended to resonate with New Hampshire's large vet population. The truth is, as chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Sanders sabotaged VA reform. Sanders' allegiance is to public-sector unions, and to serve them, he betrayed vets. You wouldn't know that from his campaign-trail boasts. The next...

RICHMOND — A package of bills in the gun deal Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) struck with Republican lawmakers advanced Friday, putting the agreement on a path to final passage next week despite a continued outcry from gun control advocates. The deal would expand the rights of concealed carry handgun permit holders in Virginia and around the country in exchange for tighter restrictions on domestic abusers and voluntary background checks at gun shows. A House panel joined the full Senate in passing all three bills as of Friday. A floor vote in the House could come as early as Tuesday.

A high-ranking Department of Veterans Affairs official on Tuesday defended the VA's failure to discipline two employees accused of misconduct, and blamed the outrage over their lenient treatment on "considerable external pressure" by the media and Congress to punish personnel who may not have done anything wrong. Sloan Gibson, deputy VA secretary, praised a judge's recent decision in personnel cases that stopped the demotions of Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, two VA officials accused of together stealing more than $400,000 in benefits from the government. ... According to the inspector general, Graves had pressured a colleague to leave his job...

January 31, 2016 FoxNews.com The Wounded Warrior Project, the charity for wounded veterans, has been placed on Charity Navigator’s watch list over accusations of using donor money toward excessive spending on conferences and parties instead of on recovery programs, according to CBS News. According to the charity’s tax forms, obtained by CBS News, spending on conferences and meetings increased from $1.7 million in 2010, to $26 million in 2014, which is the same amount the group spends on combat stress recovery. Charity Navigator is a watchdog organization that evaluates charities in the U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Erick Millette, who returned...

This rendering provided by the Georgetown Business Improvement District shows what the Potomac River would look like if an aerial cable car system were installed alongside the Key Bridge. (Courtesy Georgetown Business Improvement District) WASHINGTON - It sounds like a wild idea - a Gondola carrying area residents and tourists over the Potomac River from Rosslyn to Georgetown and back again - but it could soon become reality. The hope is that it would ease congestion on the Key Bridge, especially since, according to the Washington Post, some 50,000 vehicles cross the bridge every day. Today the project is one...