Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) -- President Barack Obama’s home state of Hawaii is shutting down its state-based health care exchange, the Hawaii Health Connector (HHC), due to incurring debts and the unwillingness of state legislators to put more taxpayer money into the struggling operation, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Saturday.Established in 2011, the non-profit organization is Hawaii’s state-based health exchange for the President’s Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. There are currently about 37,000 Hawaiians enrolled in health care plans through the exchange, far short of the roughly 70,000 needed to raise enough money to sustain it, the article reports.Officials with the exchange released a report to its...

In Austin, Texas, this SXSWedu session’s description sums up the matter: “What if job performance was measured by a year-end test aiming to boil all of our work down to a single score? As meaningless as that would be, that’s how our education system works, with the majority of instruction and student evaluation driven toward a single, year-end test.” LEGO Education’s Stephan Turnipseed proclaims that employers want creativity, which is the number-one thing they are not getting. “We need to drive creativity.” The task ahead “is not about learning creativity, but about unlearning it.” Creative workers are desired in America,...

The number of jobs in manufacturing has declined by 7,231,000—or 37 percent—since employment in manufacturing peaked in the United States in 1979, according to data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The real median household income of Americans who have completed high school—but have not attained a higher degree—also peaked in the 1970s and has declined since then. In fact, according to the Census Bureau (Tables H-13 and H-14), the real median household income of an American householder who has completed four years of high school peaked in 1973 at $56,395 in constant 2013 dollars. By 2013, it was...

RUSH: Well, the NFL came down hard on Tom Brady yesterday. Four-game suspension, million-dollar fine for the club and the loss of two draft choices. Well, yeah, it's hard. It's fascinating to me to watch all the response to this. We have a slew of sound bites about this, folks, from all kinds of people all over the sporting and media worlds reacting to the suspension that Brady got, four games. You ought to hear the theories that people are coming up with to explain this. Last week I was e-mailing back and forth with Drudge about this, and he...

The Union Carbide Hunting and Fishing Lodge campground on Blue Creek is facing extinction soon, after decades of being a choice, close-by, back-to-nature getaway location for generations of Union Carbide employees, their families and friends. Those who still maintain campsites on the Elk River-area property have been given notice to vacate the premises no later than mid-August. Jack Lesher of Clendenin is the treasurer for the Carbide Recreation Club, which has maintained the campground for approximately 25 years. He recounted the history of the facility and the recent notification of its impending closure. “Back when Union Carbide ran a chemical...

Part of an exciting patriarchal strategy that ensures only men feel welcome on university and college campuses.

Ladies and Gentlemen, a little history is appropriate for those of you who have not been following the tragic murder of my son at Bumrungrad International Hospital in 2006. A three year investigation led me back to the United States where I was amazed to see what a tangled web the corporate medical mafia has spun at the expense of the people who, at the start of our democracy, delegated rights to the government to protect and preserve liberty, freedom and justice. It was a republic—which has now mostly been bought and sold into oblivion—and is still called a democracy...

~snip~ On a 100-point ratings system for their conservative voting records, there are essentially no Democrats in House or Senate who breeched the 40th percentile. Over 30 Democrats had a score of 0 percent this year, including Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. “We can only conclude that the former Democratic National Committee Chairman plans to serve one-term representing the Commonwealth of Virginia before he returns to lead the fringe portion of the liberal activist base,” Mr. Schlapp observes. A slim few Republicans were rated between 40 and 49 percent on the scale, with the majority of them scoring 60 percent...

A Connecticut serial killer linked to the remains of three women found dumped behind a suburban Hartford strip mall in 2007 killed at least four others discovered last month during new search of the site, authorities said. Law enforcement agents confirmed the stunning news on Monday, telling reporters they're "confident" one person is responsible for all seven deaths. "We said we're confident, and we're confident," Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane said at a news conference. Investigators have identified one of the four newly discovered sets of remains as Melanie Ruth Camilini, a mother of two who would have celebrated her...

Evangelical activist Anita Fuentes and her family ran into this DHS vehicle with its windows covered late at night at a gas stop in California. They filmed their encounter.The attendant said the bus included Somalis and Africans caught at the border and that they were being transported.

Do you have a recommendation for a good book on Texas history?

A U.S. Marine helicopter supporting earthquake relief in Nepal was declared missing Tuesday with eight people on board, a military spokesman said. The UH-1Y Huey with two Nepalese soldiers and six U.S. Marines on board disappeared over Charikot, Nepal, at about 10 p.m. local time (12:15 p.m. ET), said U.S. Pacific Command spokesman Army Maj. Dave Eastburn. Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said the U.S. military is hopeful that the missing helicopter landed and is out of communication. A military official told NBC News there is "no indication that there was a crash" but "it is dark," so they could...

Little Rock journalist Suzi Parker, author of “Sex in the South: Unbuckling the Bible Belt" and a former contributor to Salon, The Washington Post, The Dallas Morning News and other outlets, recently self-published her first novel, "Echo Ellis: Adventures of a Girl Reporter," about "a Southern reporter living in Bill Clinton's Arkansas who often finds herself in dangerous yet thrilling situations." As Parker put it in a recent interview, "Echo is my alter ego. She has many adventures that I may or may not have had in my life." Check out the noir book trailer above, in which she describes...

With less than one month to go until the Supreme Court issues a ruling in King v. Burwell -- the case that could dismantle Obamacare -- some states are preparing contingency plans to avert a disaster if the court strikes down access to federally subsidized health care for their residents. If the Court rules against the administration and says that language in the Affordable Care Act only provides subsidies to people enrolled in coverage in states that set up their own marketplaces, some 7.5 million people in the 34 states relying on the federal exchange would lose their subsidized coverage...

Reflections on the origin of opportunities, on the opening of UI Labs' new research center in Chicago… UI Labs’ Digital Manufacturing Center opened today at Goose Island in Chicago – on 94,000 square feet of a property that was once the Republic Windows and Doors factory – and you will celebrate. It’s an important facility – everybody says so, particularly the people who made it possible, and they should know. It’s going to remake American manufacturing, by figuring out how to modernize the American manufacturing floor. You should thank Rahm Emanuel (D, Chicago) and Bruce Rauner (R, Wall Street) and...

The daughter of America’s most famous evangelist, Billy Graham, says God is “clearly warning that His judgment is coming on America, and it’s going to be ugly.” So, Ann Graham Lotz is calling on Americans to participate in a “Mayday” time of prayer and intercession May 15-23. She hopes to “delay or soften God’s judgment that is coming on America and our world” and urge the Holy Spirit to “compel the church to repent of sin and our nation to return to faith in the living God.” Lotz’s warnings are startlingly specific. In a recent message on her website, she...

The United States owes Bloomberg columnist Mark Halperin a debt of gratitude. For a rare and fleeting moment, Americans of all political persuasions, religious affiliations, and ethnic backgrounds were united in revulsion over the spectacle of his attempt to interview Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Halperin’s ham-fisted, chauvinistic effort to force Cruz to prove the authenticity of his heritage by riffing extemporaneously on Cuban culture and to speak en Español were both embarrassing and insulting. Halperin’s motives were transparent. He set out to demonstrate in some small way that Cruz was Cuban in name only — a CINO, if you will....

Chris Rock was interviewed by Hadley Freeman at The Guardian last week, where he spoke on everything from his divorce, to new Daily Show host Trevor Noah, and of course, racism. Rock seems to think that police violence is just a part of everyday life for young black men, and that “white kids” are never victims of police brutality: “It’s not that it’s gotten worse, it’s just that it’s part of the 24-hour news cycle. What’s weird is that it never happens to white kids. There’s no evidence that white youngsters are any less belligerent, you know? We can go

In a stunning slap at her team, liberal pundit Kirsten Powers is charging in a new book that the left is so intolerant of alternative views that it will use sexist and even racist language to shout down women and blacks who don't champion Democratic causes. Kirsten Powers, a USA Today and Daily Beast columnist and designated "liberal" on Fox, confessed in her new book that the left aggressively tries to "silence people" who don't fall into the liberal line. In The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, she calls out the lefty tactics, especially how they belittle...

You know you are in for a wild ride when a GetReligion reader sends you a URL from The New York Post (or The New York Daily News, for that matter) with one of those, "Yeah, consider the source, BUT" notes that basically is warning you to duck and cover. Incoming. So here is the headline on this one: "The Catholic Church will now forgive your abortion." The loyal reader noted: "The title is bad, but it gets worse from there. Wouldn't have wasted your time with it, but it is such awful dreck that it seemed to me...