Free Republic

A federal judge struck down Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage today, an historic ruling with especial resonance on Valentine's Day. Except the history of the historic ruling isn't exactly up to par: Judge Arenda Wright Allen claimed the Constitution declares that "all men are created equal," which is, instead, the first line of the Declaration of Independence. "Our Constitution declares that 'all men' are created equal. Surely this means all of us," Judge Allen wrote on the first page of her opinion. That line opens the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence and appears nowhere in the Constitution. The...

During the February 13 broadcast of CBS This Morning, host Charlie Rose and his guest turned to the topic of this year's harsh winter, calling the extreme cold an example of global warming. Guest Michio Kaku, a physics professor from New York City College--not a climatologist, but a physicist--claimed that the "wacky weather" could get "even wackier" and its all because of global warming. "What we're seeing is that the jet stream and the polar vortex are becoming unstable. Instability of historic proportions. We think it's because of the gradual heating up of the North Pole. The North Pole is...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) - Police say a woman fired a shot into a Michigan restaurant’s drive-thru window after workers got her burger order wrong a second time.

Many consumers faced hurdles signing up for Covered California health plans. Now they're having trouble finding in-network doctors. After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get Obamacare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor's office. A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business. Experts have warned for months that the logjam was inevitable. But the extent of the problems is taking by surprise...

Visitors to the Sochi Winter Olympics can expect for their computers and mobile devices to be hacked, NBC’s Richard Engel reported Tuesday evening on NBC Nightly News. Engel conducted multiple experiments with the help of an American based security expert in which the NBC reporter logged onto various public WIFI networks around Moscow. Almost immediately, all of Engel’s devices were exposed to malicious malware. Analysis revealed some of Engel’s devices were transmitting personal data stored on his computer to a server based in Russia. The best way for travelers to avoid these issues, Engel said, is to avoid public WIFI...

U.S. intelligence agencies last week urged the Obama administration to check its new healthcare network for malicious software after learning that developers linked to the Belarus government helped produce the website, raising fresh concerns that private data posted by millions of Americans will be compromised ... [snip] Specifically, officials warned that programmers in Belarus, a former Soviet republic closely allied with Russia, were suspected of inserting malicious code that could be used for cyber attacks, according to U.S. officials familiar with the concerns.

While the administration publicly expresses full confidence in its health care law, privately it fears one part of the system is so flawed it could bankrupt insurance companies and cripple ObamaCare itself. "Week after week, month after month," says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, "the Obama administration kept telling us everything's working fine, there's no problem and then they turn on a dime and fire their contractor." To justify a no-bid contract with Accenture after firing CGI as the lead contractor, the administration released documents from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Center...

The Navy divers knew it was a risky operation. The Aberdeen “super pond” was deep enough to hold a 14-story building. Its water was black and cold. And the bottom was a tangle of muck and debris. An Army diver had died there a month earlier. And now, with some crucial equipment broken, James E. Reyher said Ryan Harris had to make the dive with scuba gear, and little margin for error. Even for a quick “bounce” dive, scuba tanks would give them only about 11 minutes of air to go down 150 feet and get back up. It was...

After a year of seeing President Obama’s approval ratings plummet, the president’s pollster is offering a strikingly candid and pessimistic New Year’s resolution. Reporters should go the next “year without reporting any public polling data,” Joel Benenson, president and CEO of Benenson Strategy Group, said. His comments were made to reporter Mike Allen, who published them in his daily “Politico Playbook” morning newsletter on Tuesday.

WEST READING, Pa. (AP) — A terminally ill girl who received support from thousands of Christmas carolers outside her home over the weekend died early on Christmas morning, her family said.

NBC News boss Deborah Turness is spending the last few days of the year eyeing cuts — moves that could include axing some senior on-air talent, The Post has learned. Turness, brought on in August to shake up the moribund news division — where “Meet the Press” and “Today” had stumbled — is in the midst of a host of end-of -year buyouts and cost reductions, sources said. The current moves are not the first time Turness has irked journalists under her command. NBC veterans have complained privately that Turness is not serious enough, sources said. “Instead of getting better,...

On Sunday night, the Philadelphia Eagles will honor one of their own, a former cheerleader who has served two tours in Afghanistan as an Army intelligence officer. Rachel Washburn, age 25, hasn't had a typical career path, to put it mildly. She joined the Eagles' cheerleading squad from 2007 to 2009 while a student at Drexel University. After graduation, she joined the Army and participated in paratrooper training while ultimately following a path into military intelligence.

CNSNews.com) - Reaching out to "moms" on Wednesday, President and Mrs. Obama urged them to encourage others to enroll in Obamacare. "And we urge people to reach out. And if they signed up their child, then signed up -- sign up their friends," Mrs. Obama said. "You know, if you've got grandkids, make it a Christmas treat around the table to talk about a little health care. You know, ring in the new year with a -- new coverage."

Top 100 wasteful gov't projects. This is the link to the PDF file: http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=0cc34c92-b901-425d-a131-d3151d7216ef

Another Looming Disaster: Few Exchange Signups Have Paid for Their Insurance So Far We’ve been warning that Obamacare would be a train wreck for a long time. Now the boxcars full of dynamite reach the impact point. Pardon the ALL CAPS, but this seems like a fairly huge point: ALMOST NO ONE HAS PAID FOR THEIR INSURANCE YET!

The nation’s new health-care law says insurers can’t turn anyone away, even people who are sick. But some companies, patient advocates say, have found a way to discourage the chronically ill from enrolling in their plans: offer drug coverage too skimpy for those with expensive conditions. Some plans sold on the online insurance exchanges, for instance, don’t cover key medications for HIV, or they require patients to pay as much as 50 percent of the cost per prescription in co-insurance — sometimes more than $1,000 a month. “The fear is that they are putting discriminatory plan designs into place to...

... In a tongue-in-cheek fashion, I was merely carrying on a long-standing tradition over centuries of false automata, mechanical devices that appear to act with skill and intelligence but that, in fact, are actually being operated by humans behind the scenes. The most famous of these is the Turk (pictured above), a device built in the late 1700s that appeared to play a very good game of chess against humans. In truth, a human chess player was ensconced within the device’s cabinet with the ability to perceive the current state of the board. Note that the Turk himself was a...

Norah O'Donnell's 20-second news brief on Monday's CBS This Morning is the sole Big Three network mention so far of the Wall Street Journal's Sunday report about a "troubling element" of ObamaCare – exorbitant deductibles with the no-frills plans available on the health care exchanges. O'Donnell zeroed in on the item by reporters Leslie Scism and Timothy W. Martin, who cited a new report that found that "the average individual deductible for...a bronze plan on the exchange...is $5,081 a year":

Multiple state-run health-care exchanges are vulnerable to a type of Wi-Fi attack that can allow hackers to intercept usernames and passwords, KSTP, a Minnesota ABC affiliate, reports. According to Mark Lanterman, the CEO and chief technology officer of Computer Forensic Services who ran the simulated attack for KSTP, state-run exchanges in Minnesota, Hawaii, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, New York, Maryland, and the District of Columbia are vulnerable to it.

The fight for Christmas took a hit this week when politics bigfooted a troupe of adorable little ballet dancers performing “The Nutcracker.” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews is scheduled to interview President Obama on Thursday night at American University as part of the “Hardball College Tour.” MSNBC approached AU to host the chat, and officials jumped at the chance for a free, hour-long commercial for the university and its students. But the interview, announced Tuesday morning, abruptly kicked the Ballet Petite’s rehearsals of”The Nutcracker” out of AU’s Greenberg Theatre. That didn’t sit well with the ballet school’s staff, teachers and parents who...