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Stimulus program to incentivize using electronic health records 'vulnerable to abuse' An Obama administration program to encourage the use of electronic health records made over $729 million in erroneous payments, according to a new audit. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also paid dead doctors for enrolling in its program, the audit, released by the agency's inspector general Monday, revealed. "From May 2011 through June 2014, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services paid an estimated $729 million in Medicare electronic health record incentive payments to eligible professionals who did not comply with Federal requirements," the inspector general said....

I get this error when I try to donate to FreeRepublic. Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

Raleigh, N.C. — In a formal complaint to the Durham County Board of Elections, Thomas Stark, the attorney for the North Carolina Republican Party on Saturday demanded a recount of votes cast on and before Election Day, citing a counting error involving 90,000 ballots. Thomas Stark, general counsel for the GOP and a Durham County voter, filed the protest with the Durham County Board of Elections, alleging malfeasance in regard to the accuracy of the count. In the complaint, Stark says the county used data from potentially corrupt tabulation machines from five early voting sites and one general election precinct....

Early voting in Illinois got off to a rocky start Monday, as votes being cast for Republican candidates were transformed into votes for Democrats. Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to vote Monday at the Schaumburg Public Library. “I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Moynihan said. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.” He notified the election judge at his polling place and...

Analysis Nov. 12, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - A Dominican friar, Fr. Adriano Oliva, has celebrated the 800th anniversary of his religious order with a book about “the Church, the divorced and remarried, and homosexual couples.” Amours (“Loves”) is a study of St Thomas Aquinas’ definition of love and aims to show that the “Angelic Doctor” recognized the “natural” character of homosexuality. In the wake of the Synod on the family, Oliva pleads for new ways of welcoming divorced and remarried and homosexual couples into the Church and of recognizing their unions in civil law. His editor, the “editions du Cerf” publishing...

The thought that most frequently pops into my head when I read diatribes by militant atheists is "Why won't you read a book?" Of course, put thus, the thought is implausible. The militant atheists who get interviewed in newspapers presumably have read books. Christopher Hitchens had certainly read a lot of books. But there are good books and there are bad books, and then there are necessary books. And, clearly, they haven't read any of the books that should, in a cultured society, be presumed necessary for participation in public debate. Take the theoretical physicist and public speaker Lawrence Krauss....

Google says it is "appalled" that its new Photos app mistakenly labelled a black couple as being "gorillas". Its product automatically tags uploaded pictures using its own artificial intelligence software. The error was brought to its attention by a New York-based software developer who was one of the people pictured in the photos involved. Google was later criticised on social media because of the label's racist connotations. "This is 100% not OK," acknowledged Google executive Yonatan Zunger after being contacted by Jacky Alcine via Twitter. "[It was] high on my list of bugs you 'never' want to see happen."

This is why I use the word “attempted” in describing the pope’s desire to eradicate capital punishment: because he lacks the authority to make such a change. Shocking, I know, but I said it before and I’ll repeat it again: the teaching on this matter is settled. In order to advance this position, Pope Francis would have to declare several of his predecessors as well as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas More (who prosecuted heretics in an England where that was a capital offense), a papal decree, an apostolic constitution, and also St. Paul’s own divinely-inspired writing in...

People need to examine whether the faith they claim is really Biblical.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is apologizing for a “publishing error” in its regulations that suggested the agency had already banned AR-15 “green tip” ammo well before officials publicly announced a proposal to outlaw the armor-piercing bullets last month. “ATF has not rescinded any armor piercing ammunition exemption, and the fact they are not listed in the 2014 online edition of the regulations was an error which has no legal impact,” the agency said in a statement. “ATF apologizes for any confusion caused by this publishing error.” In January, the ATF published an online regulations guide that

The Church Fathers, A Door to Rome Nov/14/12 07:15 Many people have walked into the Roman Catholic Church through the broad door of the “church fathers,” and this is a loud warning today when there is a widespread attraction to the “church fathers” within evangelicalism. The Catholic apologetic ministries use the “church fathers” to prove that Rome’s doctrines go back to the earliest centuries. In the book Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic, David Currie continually uses the church fathers to support his position. He says, “The other group of authors whom Evangelicals should read ... is the early Fathers of...

John MacArthur's Position on the Lordship of Christ   Dr. John MacArthur is the Pastor of the Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California. According to a statement made on the cover of one of his books, “his Bible teaching and tape ministries reach millions across the globe.” He is the author of many books (most of which are published by Moody Press) including several full length commentaries on certain New Testament books. His local church is large, but his influence goes far beyond his local church because of his published writings and public tapes which are distributed widely....

It is no secret that Martin Luther eliminated all works as having anything to do with our justification/salvation. In what most call his “greatest work,” The Bondage of the Will, Luther commented on St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: The assertion that justification is free to all that are justified leaves none to work, merit or prepare themselves… For if we are justified without works, all works are condemned, whether small or great; Paul exempts none, but thunders impartially against all. Paul’s point in saying justification is a free gift was not to eliminate works as necessary for salvation in...

Before the tryptophan in the turkey induces somnolence, give thanks for living in such an entertaining country. This year, for example, we learned that California’s legislature includes 93 persons who seem never to have had sex. They enacted the “affirmative consent” law directing college administrators to tell students that sexual consent cannot be silence but must be “affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement” and “ongoing throughout a sexual activity.” Claremont McKenna College requires “all” — not “both,” which would discriminate against groups — participants in a sexual engagement to understand that withdrawal of consent can be any behavior conveying “that an...

CHICAGO — Early voting in Illinois got off to a rocky start Monday, as votes being cast for Republican candidates were transformed into votes for Democrats. Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to vote Monday at the Schaumburg Public Library. “I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Moynihan said. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.” The conservative website Illinois Review reported that “While...

Stardust got in their eyes. In the spring a group of astronomers who go by the name of BICEP announced they had detected ripples in the sky, gravitational waves that were the opening notes of the Big Bang. The finding was heralded as potentially the greatest discovery of the admittedly young century, but some outside astronomers said the group had underestimated the extent to which interstellar dust could have contaminated the results - a possibility that the group conceded in its official report in June. Now a long-awaited report by astronomers using data from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite...

The Thousand Year Reign of Christ on Earth: Is it Biblical? This is the passage in question: "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished....

Does the Earth Abide Forever, Like the Bible Says? Many Christian doctrines take the following passage literally: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea." (Rev 21:1 KJV) Some even believe there will literally be no seas/oceans in the "new earth!" But there are many other verses that seem to contradict Rev 21:1, as follows: "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever." (Eccl 1:4 KJV) "Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my...

Sen. Patty Murray said a "technical error" in the bipartisan budget deal accidentally would cut pension benefits for retired disabled military veterans, but vowed the problem will be fixed immediately. The Washington state Democrat, who brokered the deal with Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., took to the Senate floor Wednesday and promised the "unintended inclusion" would be remedied before the chamber votes on the bill and that benefits for disabled military pensioners wouldn't be cut. "All of us know that our disabled veterans have made tremendous sacrifices for our nation and deserve the peace of mind that their benefits will not...

The 35-year-old man police were aiming for was acting erratically around the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd St. and 8th Ave., sources say. Witnesses heard four shots, and two women, ages 54 and 35, were struck.