Free Republic

One was a gourmet food broker who landed work as an $85,000-a-year financial analyst at the Port Authority. Another got a $90,000 job to check maintenance contracts. An author and actor was hired as the employment publications editor — a three-day-a-week gig that pays $50,000 and provides full benefits. What they had in common — like dozens of others hired by the bi-state agency over the past two years — were ties to Governor Christie's administration, which has recommended 50 people for positions at the agency since it took control of Trenton in 2010, records show. Together, the jobs pay...

Mama Grizzly warned us this would happen. Under Obamacare, the sick and weak and old would stand before death panels of bureaucrats to be granted life or death. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was laughed out of town for making four years ago what we now know is a prescient prediction. Perhaps she is one of the few who actually read the health care bill before it passed. “And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course,” she wrote on her Facebook page in 2009. “The America I know and

LETTER: Obama, not Ted Cruz, is to blame Published: Wednesday, November 06, 2013 To the Editor: To the two gentlemen from Wyndmoor and Oreland who have elevated Ted Cruz to an emperor who single-handedly closed down the government: You give him way too much credit. Truth be known, it was the president who shut down the government and informed the agencies to make it as painful as possible. This was a quote from one of the park rangers who set up barricades outside the WWII memorial. This was to prevent anyone from entering an outside memorial which never had barricades...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today acknowledged that long-awaited enrollment figures for the rocky first month of Obamacare will be “very low.” … The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also announced the abrupt retirement of the chief information officer—the first high-level departure since the botched HealthCare.gov launch on Oct 1. CIO Tony Trenkle is leaving Nov. 15 for a job in the private sector, CMS said. His deputy, Henry Chao, has been identified as a liaison to key contractors who built HealthCare.gov as well as the official who briefed the White House monthly on implementation. The CMS...

The number of poor people in America is 3 million higher than the official count, encompassing 1 in 6 residents due to out-of-pocket medical costs and work-related expenses, according to a revised census measure released Wednesday. The new measure is aimed at providing a fuller picture of poverty, but does not replace the official government numbers. Put in place two years ago by the Obama administration, it generally is considered more reliable by social scientists because it factors in living expenses as well as the effects of government aid, such as food stamps and tax credits.

Germany on Tuesday asked the British ambassador to come to the foreign ministry to discuss a newspaper report that a covert spying station was operating in Berlin with hi-tech equipment mounted on the embassy roof. Documents leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden show that Britain’s surveillance agency is operating a network of “electronic spy posts” from within a stone’s throw of the Bundestag and German chancellor’s office, the Independent reported. …

In a televised speech before Congress on September 09, 2009, President Obama said the following: "Here are the details that every American needs to know about this plan: First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have." Wow, this sounds pretty good huh? Who could've possibly been against Obama's proposal given...

Poor Jay Carney. As the official Press Tap-Dancer for the Obama Administration, it is his job to make the lies of his boss sound a little less nefarious. (Of course, I’m paraphrasing the job description.) And like many liberals who allow their utopian promises to paint them into an intellectual corner, Carney is resorting to verbal abuse, condescension, and arrogance. Yesterday’s exchange between Jon Karl and the White House Press Jester is the latest example of Carney’s habitual harassment of reporters who dare to ask hard questions. Maybe the White House has become so accustomed to the beltway media...

Ok All beware of Drudge, He MAY try to PUSH Krispy(NJ) on us like he did Rommney.

Weeks after denying labor’s request to give union members access to health-law subsidies, the Obama administration is signaling it intends to exempt some union plans from one of the law’s substantial taxes. Buried in rules issued last week is the disclosure that the administration will propose exempting “certain self-insured, self-administered plans” from the law’s temporary reinsurance fee in 2015 and 2016. That’s a description that applies to many Taft-Hartley union plans acting as their own insurance company and claims processor, said Edward Fensholt, a senior vice president at Lockton Cos., a large insurance broker. Insurance companies and self-insured employers that...

It didn't matter that the 13 Marines on their way home from Afghanistan had been fighting in a war that no longer dominates the news or that they were stopping only for a short time in Chicago before flying to San Diego. When USO volunteer John Colas heard with just an hour's notice that the Marines' plane was bearing down on Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, he and others scrambled to make sure they got a hero's welcome.

BETHLEHEM - US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Israel on Wednesday to limit settlement building, an issue that is weighing on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Friction over the talks has risen this past week on the back of Israeli plans, announced in tandem with its release of 26 Palestinian prisoners, for some 3,500 new homes for settlers in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. "Let me emphasize at this point the position of the United States of America on the settlements is that we consider them... to be illegitimate," Kerry said after discussions with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

A mother has demanded "justice" for her son who died at a hospital which could face a police investigation after allegedy falsifying data about cancer patients. Danielle Uren believes four-year-old Mackenzie Cackett, who suffered a brain tumour, could have still been alive had it not been for mistakes in his diagnosis and treatment at Colchester General Hospital, Essex. He allegedly endured a series of lengthy delays and blunders before dying in May last year. Miss Uren, from Halstead in Essex, said: "It has been such a difficult time. We knew there was something wrong but we were ignored and that...

My little Eskie girl, Mia, is at VREC to have an MRI this afternoon. It was supposed to be for an issue with her back, but the neurologist is concerned she may have a brain tumor. Mia is blind from birth & the most amazing creature I've ever met. She is my hero. She's been right next to me for 7 years & I am just freakin out. I don't know what I would do without her.

Brilliant!!!Sent to me by someone who follows my Facebook page... 

Ken Cuccinelli lost the governor's race in Virginia, but here's the thing — he didn't lose by that much. Only 3 points. Because the race came so close, far right Republicans blame the GOP establishment for not doing more to give Cuccinelli a boost. The Republican National Committee put $9 million into Gov. Bob McDonnell's campaign in 2009. This year, Cuccinelli got $3 million. Cuccinelli "was betrayed by his own party," Rush Limbaugh told listeners on Wednesday afternoon, but the betrayal was not a surprise. Limbaugh said: "In Virginia the GOP simply didn't want a Tea Party candidate winning there....

If we learned one thing from Election Day 2013, it's that we learned nothing at all. The most-watched races of the day left in their wake a myriad of mixed messages and differing priorities that demonstrate no clear trend and no unified direction driving America forward.

The new mayor of New York City is a Red Sox fan. According to the rules of the New York I grew up in, I'd expect to see the Hudson turn into a river of blood and Zabar's to close due to a locust infestation before that happened. But if De Blasio's remarkable rise proves anything, it's that the rules can change. A liberal's crazy liberal, De Blasio still waxes nostalgic about the noble struggle of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, for whom he raised money in the 1980s. He violated the ban on travel to Cuba for his honeymoon with his...

One of the Democratic Party’s most accomplished operatives and ally of Hillary Clinton beat conservative Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia, ushering in two new post-election certainties. First, we will hear from Democrats how this means the repudiation of the anti-Obamacare efforts by Republicans and the endorsement of the President’s “stay the course” message. Second, the victory of Democrat Terry McAuliffe means that Republicans had better nominate candidates far more moderate in the 2014 election season, now begun. To be more specific. We conservatives – and this writer is certainly one – made two major mistakes and we had better learn our...

When the right-to-work legislation passed in December, Saginaw Arthur Hill High School teacher Jason LaPorte said he received numerous emails explaining how to pay his union dues electronically. But the social studies teacher said he didn't get anything about how to leave the union when it became possible. "I do feel taken advantage of," LaPorte said. "I think once right-to-work legislation passed, the union should have been more informative with the procedures of all union functions going forward that were affected by right-to-work." The Michigan Education Association only allows its members to leave in August, but LaPorte and other teachers...