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WASHINGTON -- The St. Tammany Parish school district is getting $67.8 million in disaster loans and accumulated interest for Hurricane Katrina forgiven by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Sen. Mary Landrieu's office announced Monday. The announcement follows FEMA's earlier decision to cancel a $9.9 million loan for the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office and a $14.5 million loan to the St. Tammany Parish government. The loan forgiveness is a response to a provision Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, added to a 2013 Homeland Security Appropriations that changed the criteria for loan forgiveness affecting some $211 million in Katrina-related loans.

SHREVEPORT, LA (KSLA) - Social media backlash was seen by Senator Mary Landrieu when she took to Facebook to complain about some political ads that criticize her support for President Obama's Affordable Care Act. Landrieu wrote in her post that right wing groups have spent millions attacking her, and she asked for her constituents to join her and fight back. Most of the 600 comments on that Facebook post were negative, and some suggested that they'd gladly vote against the three- term Senator from Louisiana, and they would do so because of her support of ACA.

Gov. Martin O'Malley said Monday that 42,589 people had signed up for insurance through the state's health exchange as of Dec. 21—a jump of almost 13,000 people in a week—but the faster clip of sign-ups was temporarily stymied by more troubles with the website.Users on the site were met midday Monday with a "service unavailable" message, and by afternoon a new message said: "We are currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience."The site came back online by 4 p.m.,and an exchange spokeswoman said there were two separate problems that may have been related to...

Pope Francis urged anti-austerity protesters who attended his weekly Angelus blessing to use dialogue and not violence to press their demands. Addressing a group of protesters among the pilgrims gathered Sunday in St. Peter's Square, the pope appealed for `'a constructive contribution, rejecting the temptation for conflict and violence and following always the path of dialogue." The pope read aloud one of their banners: `'The poor cannot wait." He urged everyone from charities to Italian authorities `'to do everything possible so that every family can have a house" this holiday season.

A terrorist prisoner who went on a hunger strike in order to pressure Israel to release him was released on Monday from an Israeli prison. According to The Associated Press (AP), Samer Issawi returned home to a joyous welcome from friends and family. Issawi’s on and off hunger strike lasted for more than eight months, until he agreed to a deal with Israel last April. Issawi agreed to serve eight months for violating bail conditions and then be freed to his Jerusalem home. On Monday evening, he underwent a medical exam in an ambulance parked outside the prison in northern...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will ask US President Barack Obama to commute the life sentence of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard at a critical stage of the diplomatic talks with the Palestinian Authority, Channel 2 diplomatic correspondent Udi Segal reported Monday night. Netanyahu had tied Pollard’s release to talks with the Palestinians in the past. He reached a deal with former US president Bill Clinton to commute Pollard’s sentence in 1998 as part of the Wye River Accord, but Clinton reneged on the deal after then-CIA director George Tenet threatened to quit. The prime minister reportedly asked the US for...

Some experts are concerned that the Obama Administration is poised to begin forcing Americans to stock their retirement accounts with low-return government bonds. Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Board, told Bloomberg News that his new regulatory agency was mulling a move to control the $20 trillion that Americans have invested for retirement. He specifically mentioned 401(k) plans and IRAs. “That’s one of the things we’ve been exploring,” Cordray told Bloomberg reporter Carter Dougherty in January. Cordray’s seemingly stray comment was largely ignored by mainstream and financial media, but won the attention of fund managers and economists. SNIP...

    ~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Fort Rucker, AlabamaFort Rucker is a U.S. Army post located mostly in Dale County, Alabama, United States. It was named for a Civil War officer, Confederate General Edmund Rucker. The post is the primary flight training base for Army Aviation and is home to the United States Army Aviation Center of Excellence (USAACE) and the United States Army Aviation Museum. Small sections of the post also lie in Coffee, Geneva, and Houston counties. The main post has entrances from three bordering cities, Daleville, Ozark and Enterprise. In the years before the...

Bill de Blasio is standing by his flack – for now at least. The mayor-elect on Monday praised his spokeswoman Lis Smith despite revelations in The Post that she is shacking up with her married former boss — disgraced-ex Gov. Eliot Spitzer. “I respect Lis as a professional but I also respect her right to privacy. So I’m not going to get any further into it,” de Blasio said during a news conference in Brooklyn to announce two new appointments to his administration.

Obama Throws Pajama Boy Under the Bus December 23, 2013 by Daniel Greenfield I never liked you anywayAlas poor Pajama Boy, dedicated OFA volunteer, there’s no one that Obama won’t throw under the bus. Including you. They seem to have just thought of this in the past 24 hours — see, they didn’t really think Pajamaboy was cool or anything. They actually intended Pajamaboy to be a negative image, like “This is what people who don’t sign up with Obamacare look like.”So they’re now claiming — like, two weeks too late for this to be plausible — that Pajamaboy was...

WASHINGTON, December 20, 2013 — Federal employees are wondering whether the President will close the government on Christmas Eve. The order to close the government for Christmas Eve 2012 came on December 21, 2012. According to Government Executive, “Obama gave federal employees a half day on Christmas Eve in 2009, when it fell on a Thursday and Christmas on a Friday. He did not order any extra holiday time in 2010 or 2011.” **SNIP** As of the publication of this article, the White House has not given any indication about Christmas Eve closures.

Judicial Watch has filed a motion to intervene as defendants in the Justice Department’s challenge to photo voter identification requirements. Here is the memorandum supporting intervention. It is worth a read to understand some of the legal issues at play in the DOJ’s attack on voter integrity laws nationwide. Bob Popper, formerly a colleague of mine at the DOJ Voting Section, is on the brief. The most interesting aspect of the brief is how Judicial Watch uncovered collusion between radical leftist groups and the administration to attack voter integrity laws around the nation. Indeed, the brief notes: On July 29,...

People hoping to gain health insurance through the new health care law by Jan. 1 now have an extra 24 hours to enroll, due to a quiet move by the Obama administration. Government officials and contractors tweaked some software to make sure that anyone who enrolled by 11:59 p.m. on Christmas Eve still would still obtain coverage by the dawn of the new year, and insisted the deadline — at least on paper — is still today. “We recognize that many have chosen to make their final decisions on today’s deadline and we are committed to making sure they can...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Monday she’ll push for a vote for more unemployment benefits and said the additional $25 billion cost should be tacked onto the deficit rather than paid for by cuts elsewhere. On a conference call with fellow House Democratic women, the California lawmaker said Republicans acted “cruelly” when they went home for a three-week vacation earlier this month without approving more weeks of unemployment payments for the long-term jobless. As many as 1.3 million people will lose benefits on Saturday, when enhanced benefits expire. Republicans have said they would consider taking up a bill, but...

CGI Federal, the company responsible for building the problem-plagued Web site for the Affordable Care Act, won the job because of what federal officials deemed a “technically superior” proposal, according to government documents and people familiar with the decision. Not considered in the 2011 selection process was the history of numerous executives at CGI Federal, who had come from another company that had mishandled at least 20 other government ­information technology projects more than a decade ago. But federal officials were not required to examine that long-term track record, which included a highly publicized failure to automate retirement benefits for...

National Security Advisor Susan Rice expressed no regrets over her interviews following the assault on the American consolate in Benghazi, Libya, saying she does not have time to think about an issue blown out of proportion. [WATCH VIDEO] “I don’t have time to think about a false controversy,” Rice said in an interview that aired Sunday night on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “In the midst of all of the swirl about things like talking points, the administration’s been working very, very hard across the globe to review our security of our embassies and our facilities. That’s what we ought to be...

In his recent address to the authorities, the Chaldean Patriarch had asked for an official recognition of the holy day. Mar Sako said that "Jesus did not come just for Christians, but for everyone"; he also emphasises the "special respect" Muslims have for Jesus. The recognition is a new and important step for a long-persecuted minority. Baghdad (AsiaNews) - In a new and important step towards the Christian minority, the Iraqi government accepted a request by the Chaldean Patriarchate to recognise 25 December as an official day of celebration and a national holiday for all of the country's citizens. In...

"...Increasingly, experts in health insurance are becoming concerned that many of these first-time buyers will be in for a shock when they get medical care next year and discover they're on the hook for most of the initial cost.... ...Hospitals are worried that those who rack up uncovered medical bills next year won't be able to pay them, perpetuating one of the problems the new health care system is supposed to solve..... ..."The real big surprise was how much out-of-pocket would be required for our family," said David Winebrenner, 46, a financial adviser in Lebanon, Ky., whose deductible topped $12,000...

The base chapel at the home of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and the Green Berets is opening to same-sex ceremonies. Maj. Daniel Toven and Johnathan Taylor celebrated their marriage Saturday in the 1930s-era Main Post Chapel on Fort Bragg with more than 100 family members and friends. The pair married in Washington, D.C., in August. North Carolina law bars gay marriage. The service is believed to be the first for a same-sex couple at Fort Bragg since the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy in 2011. "For me, it was my hope that someday before I...

**SNIP** In Kalamazoo, in GOP-heavy western Michigan, perceptions of the health care law and its impact on the Senate race depend on who you ask. "These issues can be fixed," said Lucy Bland, director of a food co-op kitchen. "It going to set us all back for a long time," countered Kevin McLeod, with the area Chamber of Commerce. Democratic National Committee leaders say publicly they welcome election-year attacks on the health care law, and plan to respond by pointing to the October shutdown. By next fall, they contend, the contour of the Michigan and Colorado Senate races will look...