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WASHINGTON – The former director of Phoenix veterans hospitals who was at the center of a 2014 wait-time scandal scored a major legal win this week, shooting down sections of a law allowing the Department of Veterans Affairs to quickly fire misbehaving employees. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Tuesday that the law fast-tracking firings is unconstitutional because VA employees cannot appeal a final decision by an administrative judge. Lynch and President Barack Obama’s administration have sided with Sharon Helman, who is suing in federal court over her 2014 termination from the VA for accepting a trip to Disneyland and...

Top Republican lawmakers blasted Attorney General Loretta Lynch Wednesday for clearing a legal path for a former Veterans Affairs official at the heart of the waiting time scandal to get her job back. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the decision by Ms. Lynch not to defend in court a portion of the 2014 VA reform law could result in Sharon Helman, former head of the Phoenix, Arizona VA office, going back to work. “This decision by the Obama administration puts our veterans at further risk,” said Mr. McCarthy, California Republican. “We cannot entrust veterans’ health care to people unwilling...

Government watchdogs at the Department of Veterans Affairs wrongly closed a years-long investigation into failures at a Wisconsin VA hospital and attempted to prevent a report about the probe from going public, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has concluded. The alleged cover-up was detailed in a report released Tuesday by the committee, which has looked into allegations of veteran mistreatment at the Tomah, Wis., VA hospital for the past 16 months. Committee investigators detailed a pattern of stonewalling and evasion from the VA's inspector general, which declined to provide documents and answer questions about aspects of the Tomah probe despite...

In his Sunday remarks, the New York billionaire promised to improve veterans health care, called for rebuilding the American military, and condemned Clinton for remarks she made last year downplaying problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs. “She thinks the VA is doing good,” Trump said.

Some 4,000 U.S. military veterans and their families stopped receiving benefits over the past five years after they were wrongly declared dead, the newest in a string of problems to emerge from the Department of Veterans Affairs...... ust in 2015, benefits were incorrectly terminated for 1,025 veterans. The mistakes were largely due to employee error or wrongly interpreted data by the department's computers

Yesterday, VA Secretary, Robert MacDonald set off a firestorm in the media when he compared long lines at Disneyland to the wait times veterans experience for health care, an analogy that riled veterans groups and lawmakers alike. MacDonald of all people should know better. He is a graduate of West Point and served with the famous All-American Division, the 82nd Airborne, before out-processing to greener pastures, namely Procter and Gamble, where he rose to CEO of the company before retiring from the private sector. Apparently, it doesn’t take too long to go from a free enterprise rainmaker to a federal...

The secretary of veterans affairs, Bob McDonald, refused to apologize for comparing VA wait times to Disneyland wait times earlier today on MSNBC. "Wait times are important but it is not the only measure of veterans experience. That's what veterans are telling us. We talked to a lot of veterans. It is important and if I were misunderstood or said the wrong thing, I am glad i have to correct it," said McDonald.

(CNSNews.com) - House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday stopped short of calling for Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald to resign over his comments comparing wait times at VA clinics to wait times at amusement parks. A reporter told Ryan that Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) is calling on McDonald to resign. "Do you think it goes to that level, that he should resign?" the reporter asked Ryan. "I don't know if he should resign. He should clarify his comments," Ryan said. "He should show some empathy for our veterans that he's supposed to serve. This really is just beyond the pale,...

Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald on Monday compared the length of time veterans wait to receive health care at the VA to the length of time people wait for rides at Disneyland, and said his agency shouldn´t use wait times as a measure of success because Disney doesn´t either. "When you got to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? Or what´s important? What´s important is, what´s your satisfaction with the experience?" McDonald said Monday during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters. "And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind

The avid proponent of American liberty and individualism, Sen. Rand Paul took the stage at the NRA-ILA forum and spoke of our natural right to own and bear arms. "We must always remember that the Second Amendment can only properly be defended when we defend the rest of the bill of rights. You can't defend the second Amendment unless you defend the First amendment," Paul said. He went on to warn the audience of the trampling of the Fourth Amendment and how important it is for governing bodies to acquire search warrants before investigating individual citizens. He also mentioned new...

Uh oh. So NOBODY cares. Bad news, outrage peddlers. We’ve known for some time that nobody really cares about your efforts to make America clamor for the end of the racist monstrosity known as the “Washington Redskins.” It’s been a non-issue for most people since day one. However, if you hate that ugly football team, things just took a turn for the worse. Not only is the majority ambivalent, but a new Washington Post poll has been released and, according to the data, Social Justice Warriors have failed to convince Native Americans that they should care either.

When Congress rushed in two years ago to fix a chronic delay problem at the Veterans Health Administration, one of the key reforms was a new, $10 billion program called Veterans Choice. The goal was to give vets an option of going to a private doctor if they weren’t able to get a timely appointment with a government-paid VHA doctor.

The Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General went “hunting for bugs” in the middle of the night at two VA kitchens Tuesday after a Conservative Review investigation revealed allegations of an infestation so severe that cockroaches were served in patients’ meals. The inspectors descended upon Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital in suburban Chicago at 3 a.m. to “conduct an impromptu walk-through of the kitchens,” according to an internal VA email sent to union leaders at 7:24 a.m. “They were hunting for bugs, I believe that’s what they were doing at 3 o’clock in the morning,” said dietician Kelvin Gilkey, who...

The popular gunshop NOVA Armory opened in Arlington, VA on March 26th.  The store was filled with customers, in spite of opposition from a small group of anti-rights activists.  The bullying activists were joined with several members of the local government who attempted to force the gunshop to close.  One landlord had already broken a lease under pressure from the local disarmists.  NOVA had warned the politicians that they would sue if the harrassment continued.  From NOVA Armory: March 4, 2016, ARLINGTON, VA — The gun shop planning to open in Arlington, Virginia this month has responded to a...

Almost immediately after Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate #11109-017 completed a 14-month sentence for using sensitive credit card data on his previous employer’s computer system to steal $70,000, he was hired by the Department of Veterans Affairs in a position that ultimately led to his present job — running an office racked with credit card fraud and bribery problems. Braxton Linton is prosthetics service chief at the Caribbean Veterans Affairs hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Service chiefs are the top officials in each department in VA hospitals. VA prosthetics offices procure all assistive devices and use government credit cards...

The popular gunshop NOVA Armory opened in Arlington, VA on March 26th.  The store was filled with customers, in spite of opposition from a small group of anti-rights activists.  The bullying activists were joined with several members of the local government who attempted to force the gunshop to close.  One landlord had already broken a lease under pressure from the local disarmists.  NOVA had warned the politicians that the would sue if the harrassment continued.  From NOVA Armory: March 4, 2016, ARLINGTON, VA — The gun shop planning to open in Arlington, Virginia this month has responded to a...

A vermin infestation has overrun the kitchen of a suburban Chicago Veterans Affairs hospital and is reportedly so severe that cockroaches routinely crawl across countertops as cooks prepare meals. The insects have even found their way into patients’ food, employees say. The bug invasion has attracted the attention of a U.S. senator who is demanding to know how the VA is fixing the problem. It’s just the latest scandal at an agency rocked by allegations of abuse, incompetence and the needless deaths of veterans who wait years for medical appointments.

One of Trump’s most enduring and arguably most endearing campaign lines has been his promise to treat American vets better. When Trump dropped out of a Fox News debate in January he held a separate event at which he raised money for veterans. But three months later, Trump’s campaign adviser for veterans, Al Baldasaro, doesn’t seem too concerned about it. He told the Daily Beast, “I’m not concerned about it, because I know [Trump is] an honorable, honest guy… you guys just want to say, ‘gotcha.’”To be fair, Baldasaro is not a Trump staffer. The real problem is that...

Health Care: In the summer of 2014, President Obama promised swift changes to resolve chronic delays and cover-ups at the Veterans Health Administration. Today, veterans are still waiting months to see doctors and the VHA is still doctoring wait times, an audit finds.

Department of Veterans Affairs Under Secretary David J. Shulkin gave false information to Congress Tuesday, claiming that a Daily Caller News Foundation post was wrong, only to have department officials be forced to admit shortly afterwards that the story was accurate. TheDCNF exclusively reported in March that Elizabeth Rivera was reinstated to her VA job, thanks to union rules after she got out of jail on an armed robbery charge and subsequent criminal conviction. TheDCNF asked department officials about the situation prior to publication and even got a written statement saying that Rivera’s behavior was not sufficient grounds for termination...