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Washington (CNN) – There is no daylight between his vote against raising the debt ceiling as a senator in 2006 and his call for Congress to increase the limit in the next 10 days, President Barack Obama said Wednesday. “Nothing has changed,” Obama told WFLA in an interview. “I voted against a debt ceiling increase at the time because I had some concerns about what President (George W.) Bush was doing.” The president said he has “no problem” if members of Congress choose to vote against raising the legal borrowing limit now, but took issue with House Speaker John Boehner’s...

President Obama vowed Tuesday that he would pursue an immigration reform vote in the House the "day after" Congress reached an agreement to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. "Once that’s done, you know, the day after -- I’m going to be pushing to say, call a vote on immigration reform," Obama told Univision's Los Angeles affiliate. "And if I have to join with other advocates and continue to speak out on that, and keep pushing, I’m going to do so because I think it’s really important for the country. And now is the time to do it."

The New York Times’ recent 6,000-word major opus, “Children and Guns: The Hidden Toll ,” is the latest installment in the paper’s self-described series on “the gun industry’s influence and the wide availability of firearms in America.” In this article, it took the authors 75 paragraphs before they acknowledged that federal statistics, in fact, show a dramatic 30-year downward trend in accidental deaths involving firearms. But that’s not the impression that the Times wanted to leave with its readers. The article focused dramatically on case vignettes involving the accidental deaths of children from firearms, which we all agree are tragic...

CHARLESTON, SC — The Republican Liberty Caucus today announced its endorsement of Sen. Lee Bright (R-Spartanburg, SC) for US Senate in the seat currently held by US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). This marks the first significant national endorsement in this particular race. “Sen. Lee Bright is a friend of liberty who knows the issues that South Carolinians care about. As a businessman who understands all too well the difficult economic times, Lee Bright stands for economic liberty,” said RLC-SC Chairman Scott Pearson. “As a man of faith, he stands for religious liberty; and as a man of great personal...

Spring Hill TN—Michael Patrick Leahy, co-founder of BEAT LAMAR, announced the ten locations across the state of Tennessee where BEAT LAMAR volunteers will be meeting simultaneously this Saturday, October 19 at 9 am to kick off a day of door-to-door canvassing to encourage Republicans to vote for Joe Carr, the group’s endorsed candidate to beat incumbent Senator Lamar Alexander in the August 2014 primary. BEAT LAMAR Regional coordinators will provide training on the use of Ipads, smartphones, and old fashioned pencil and paper from 9 am to 11 am. Volunteers will be encouraged to walk door-to-door in their own neighborhoods...

When a liberal reporter asked Steve Lonegan if “Sarah Palin was too far-right for New Jersey,” Lonegan did what Republican candidates for Senate have not done in recent memory: He went on offense. “I don’t think it’s far right to support small business owners and to support taxpayers who are struggling,” he shot back. “Sarah Palin is a wonderful mother. She was also a wonderful governor and an excellent role model for women.” That’s not how Republicans coming out of the Northeast typically respond when they encounter a hostile reporter. And if you ask Amy Kremer, chair of the Tea...

In a much-discussed post titled "Five Thoughts on the ObamaCare Disaster," the Washington Post's Ezra Klein manages to cycle through the first three of Elisabeth Kübler Ross's five stages of grief: • Denial. "In the weeks leading up to the launch I heard some very ugly things about how the system was performing when transferring data to insurers--a necessary step if people are actually going to get insurance. I tried hard to pin the rumors down, but I could never quite nail the story, and there was a wall of official denials from the Obama administration. It was just testing,...

Amidst all the blather about Republicans going over the cliff and taking the world with them, a tantalizing bit of truth was spoken on today's Morning Joe. Doomsaying notwithstanding, the GOP is actually positioned to do OK in 2014. Making the comment particularly surprising was its source: Barack Obama's former senior adviser himself—David Axelrod. View the video here.

This is it folks, the New Jersey special election for U.S. Senate, today, Wednesday, Oct. 16th. After months of campaigning, it all comes down to voter turnout. In response to Booker's plunging poll numbers 2 days before the election, President Obama came out with a video asking voters to turn out for Cory Obama., I meant to say Cory Booker. Although, with his eagerness to follow in his idol's footsteps, many are calling Booker, Obama's clone. In case you haven't noticed, there's a political perfect storm a brewin'; unforeseen events all working together, ushering in a resurgence of Conservatism, while...

In a move that portends a labor firestorm, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and four other city leaders filed papers on Tuesday aiming to put a public pension measure on the November 2014 statewide ballot. If approved, the measure would change the California Constitution to give state and local government authority to lower current employees’ pension and retiree health benefits prospectively.

Nothing is more important for a startup burning through cash than winning customers and revenue. So problems with the Affordable Care Act’s online marketplaces, also known as exchanges, aren’t just an inconvenience. They’re a threat. Nobody is pushing the panic button. March 31, the end of enrollment, is several months away. Co-ops are well financed with federal loans. Evergreen holds enough capital to be in good shape even if it doesn’t reach what Beilenson calls “self-sustaining” membership of 15,000 or 20,000 in the first year, he said. But with few confirmed customers so far and no revenue, Evergreen and its...

As Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., mulls retirement, a local lawmaker is considering a mounting a primary challenge against him in the Magnolia State. State Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Republican aligned with the tea party, confirmed to CQ Roll Call this week that he’s considering challenging the six-term senator. “We are keeping all of our options open because we want to do the right thing for the conservative movement,” McDaniel said in a Wednesday phone interview. “No firm decision has been made one way or the other.” Many Mississippi Republican emphasized their support for Cochran to seek a seventh term, underscoring...

We’ve written extensively of late regarding the widening divide between fiscally conservative Republicans and the “neoconservative” fiscally liberal wing of the party – led by U.S. Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn. For our latest on this subject, click here. This week, Republicans in Mississippi (well, Marshall County Mississippi) have taken action against one of their fiscally liberal lawmakers – U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran. In fact according to the website Mississippi PEP, they’ve censured him. For those of you unfamiliar with this aging RINO, Cochran is one of several Southern “Republicans” who habitually caves to U.S. President Barack...

Liberal U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (RINO-S.C.) is getting another challenger … but it’s not one of the big name fiscal conservatives being courted by national limited government groups. Orangeburg, S.C. attorney Bill Connor – who ran for lieutenant governor in 2010 and SCGOP chairman in 2011 (unsuccessfully on both occasions) – is reportedly jumping into the race in the next few days. We’ve written previously on the speculation surrounding Connor’s bid, but multiple grassroots sources tell FITS he is getting ready to pull the trigger. Connor’s prospective candidacy received a major kiss on the lips from The South Carolina Conservative,...

Many people criticize President Obama for spending too much time campaigning, traveling or on the golf course. They are wrong. He spends too much time in a far more removed and unique place: Wonderland. Indeed, he seemingly lives in Wonderland. The problem is that the rest of us live in the real world. Over the last five years it has becoming increasingly clear that Barack Obama and his crew of handpicked officials see America and the rest of the world in ways at variance with reality.

After claiming his innocence for over two decades, William Happ finally confessed to murder as he was put to death by lethal injection in the US state of Florida. News reports said Happ took over 15 minutes to die, as his body repeatedly made convulsive movements, as the state corrections system used a new lethal chemical for the first time. Happ, 51, had spent 24 years on death row for the murder of a young woman named Angela Crowley in 1986. Happ, who had drug and alcohol problems, met Crowley in a parking lot. The woman was strangled and raped,...

Implementation of the Affordable Care Act eventually could cost the Aiken County School District from $300,000 to $400,000 a year, District Comptroller Tray Traxler told School Board members on Tuesday. Those costs are rough estimates based on the number of employees who may or could average 30 hours of service every week. Each employee formally added to the program could cost the District $3,000 to $6,000 annually as its contribution, depending on whether the employee has a child who qualifies. Probably the biggest headache for Traxler's department is the requirement that the District must provide continuous monitoring of such employees'...

Businesses across the nation, including the Pinellas County school district, are adjusting their health care plans to comply with the Affordable Health Care Act, but one variable may end up costing the school district millions: substitute teachers. By 2015, the act requires the school district to provide health care benefits to all employees who work at least 30 hours a week. Last school year, there were 1,798 part time employees, including substitute teachers, working in instructional and administrative positions, according to the school district. “We have substitutes that work on a regular basis and over a certain period of time...

As the realities of Obamacare continue to sink in, more and more people are getting letters from their health insurance providers telling them that their plans no longer comply with federal requirements under Obamacare. We just brought you the story of “Trick Shot Titus” and his family facing significant increases in the cost of their health care plans. Now, a community blogger on the far-left Daily Kos website has penned a blog post complaining that both he and his wife are facing a nearly 100 percent increase in their monthly premiums. He claims he is canceling his insurance and refuses to pay any “f***ing...

Dan Pfeiffer’s fingerprints are all over the White House’s strategy of not negotiating with congressional Republicans over the government shutdown and debt ceiling. The senior adviser to President Obama has been plotting the White House’s every move, and is described by some within the administration as the “relentless guardian” of Obama’s no-negotiations stance. “He’s been the most ferocious on that principle,” one senior administration official said. “He was quite adamant and relentless about this. And on the face of it, it’s not an easy argument to make.” Even before the shutdown began on Oct. 1, Republicans had turned their fire...

Good morning Free Republic and good morning to the GREAT STATE of NEW JERSEY! Get up and go to you polling place!! VOTE FOR STEVE LONEGAN TODAY!! And with that -- I am off to do my civic duty and to make America proud!! (hope this isn't a repeat thread!)

".......A day that was supposed to bring Washington to the edge of resolving the fiscal showdown instead seemed to bring chaos and retrenching. And a bitter fight that had begun over stripping money from the president’s signature health care law had essentially descended in the House into one over whether lawmakers and their staff members would pay the full cost of their health insurance premiums, unlike most workers at American companies, and how to restrict the administration from using flexibility to extend the debt limit beyond a fixed deadline.............."

video 1:16:09 Interesting debate in which the conservatives are now trying to convince UKIP and Nigel Farage to take a dive in the next election while dangling the carrot of alliance later on. Nigel will have none of it. Great response from him. Tea Party is in a similar (yet not as strong) position as UKIP. We should study what is happening with UKIP very closely.

Over the course of the week, the BizTimes editorial team attempted to log on to the website to learn more information about the new marketplaces. After running into several error messages on various attempts, we were eventually able to create an account, but were not able to fully log in to the online marketplace. Stephanie Smiley, communications director for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS), said that she said she did not know of a single Wisconsin resident who had been able to sign up for health insurance at healthcare.gov. "So far, folks are getting caught up in the...

SAN FRANCISCO - One reason the Republicans are so adamantly against Obamacare, is that it's driving individual insurance premiums up. And with the law now kicking in, the bills are coming due. In looking into this, we talked to health insurance companies, and representatives of Covered California, agency implementing the Affordable Care Act in California. What they told us may be a bitter pill to swallow, for those who will pay more. Cynthia Jaynes thought her family would benefit from the Affordable Care Act. The author of several young adult books says her family will see a minimum 11 percent...

“The Health Insurance Marketplace is Open!” the home page on the Health Care.gov website breezily announces, but for most of the 14.6 million people who have tried to log in over the last two weeks, that promise proved a chimera. Computer problems caused by a perfect storm of complexity, inadequacy, and opposition have plagued the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. It’s not as if there were no forecasts of impending disaster. The New York Times reported that “deadline after deadline was missed.” Over the last 10 months, while HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius continued insisting that all was well, senior...

Is the Affordable Health Care Act making health care unaffordable for some people? Some customers of Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield, one of Oregon’s largest insurance providers, say that's exactly what's happening. They say they are finding their health care plans are dramatically changing under the Affordable Care Act. “Policy holders are seeing almost double their monthly premiums,” said a KATU viewer named Larry in an email. He said his wife’s premium will increase by $300 under the Affordable Care Act. The issue, according to Regence spokesman Jared Ishkanian, is you’ll have to pay for those benefits even if you...

Obtaining health care is no laughing matter. Yet the only way to cope with practical implications of the Democrat-sponsored Affordable Care Act is comic relief. Would Democrats rather commit political suicide than try to fix massive flaws in a bungled rollout of a mangled law? Forget about delaying Obamacare for a year, perhaps we should delay it until Democrats can pass a critically scored sanity check. A divisive law, that few read, and that a thin majority shoved down our throats deserves the date it will eventually get with the electoral version of “death panels”. It is a monstrosity which...

"The big Kerry arm." That's how some of his Senate staff used to describe John Kerry's approach to negotiation. It's reminiscent of what Lyndon Baines Johnson used to do to his Senate colleagues: a little light physical pressure to drive home a point. You can bet that at some point over the weekend the six-foot-four Kerry, who landed in Kabul on an unannounced visit Friday, applied that big arm to the shoulders of the diminutive Hamid Karzai, the often combative and erratic president of Afghanistan, whom Kerry knows well and with whom no one else in the U.S. government seems...

House Republicans on Tuesday narrowed their attack on Obamacare to the issue of fairness, insisting that President Obama and his top political appointees all have to buy their insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges as part of a new bill to end the government shutdown and extend the federal debt ceiling. GOP leaders hope to put the bill on their chamber’s floor for a vote later Tuesday, with little time to spare before the Thursday deadline the Treasury Department has set for when it will run out of maneuvering room under the current $16.7 trillion debt ceiling. The new...

This is very funny. A Daily Kos regular gets his Obamacare premium notice and is shocked to learn that as young, healthy people, he and his wife will pay twice as much! "My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don’t go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe. Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife’s rate is gong to...

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The Maryland State Police sharply rebuked Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler on Tuesday after he called a veteran police commander a “henchman” for having documented allegations that Gansler ordered troopers assigned to him to regularly speed and run red lights even to routine appointments. In a television interview, Gansler strongly denied the allegations and said the accusations were part of a campaign of “dirty politics” by Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, Gansler’s chief rival for next year’s Democratic nomination for governor. In a news release, the leadership of the state police called Gansler’s comments “unseemly and unacceptable” and said he...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are finalizing a deal to avert a debt default and reopen the government, capping a frantic day that had Washington bracing for an economic crisis of its own making. The deal is essentially done, sources say, as aides for the two leaders finish drafting the legislative language Tuesday night.

Many tea party Reps want big/immediate change in DC. But the Constitution doesn't allow for rapid/big change - unless you win elections.T Party ideas about smaller gov are good, but their ideas won't be achieved if they don't change tactics.Nominating candidates who allow Ds to keep Senate seats is bad tactic #1.Picking fights that can't be won while empowering Ds is bad tactic #2.Diverting attention away from the failures of Obamacare is bad tactic # 3.Overreach is bad tactic #4. Big gov wasn't build (sic) in a day. It will not be turned around overnight. This is a long term...

It's a new poll, but the numbers are much the same. An automated telephone survey conducted last month found 51 percent of potential West Virginia voters would pick Rep. Shelley Moore Capito over Secretary of State Natalie Tennant in the race for retiring U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller's seat. The poll found 34 percent of potential voters would support Tennant, while 15 percent are not sure who would get their vote. Pennsylvania-based Republican polling firm Harper Polling conducted the survey, which included 640 likely voters. The poll has a 3.9 percent margin of error. In a question directed only to potential...

Argument: Hillary Clinton’s security staff get into a row with a traffic warden whilst waiting for her in London. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended an event in London on Saturday. Parking her car in a bay on St. James’ Square, Clinton was required to pay the same £3.30 per hour fee that everyone else is required to pay for the privilege to park there. She did not. When the traffic warden tried to issue a parking ticket the Secret Service agents went nuts. But, waving their arms and flashing their badges didn’t impress the traffic marshal. He...

Brilliant observation by WND’s David Kupelian – The ‘gay rights’ movement is a trojan horse for totalitarianism. He explores this in the October issue of Whistleblower available here. A “Trojan Horse” is “any trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or space.” (Wiki) WND Story here. David Kupelian says, “this particular issue – this revolutionary sexual anarchy movement, which more than any other ideology, including Marxism, Islam or atheism, has the potential of permanently corrupting our nation’s core ‘operating system’ called the family – is the one issue that almost everybody...

----"Plan B" and fiscal cliff vote, redux. Having hammered out a deal to shoot back to the Senate tonight -- with most Republicans reportedly on board -- House GOP leadership has been forced to delay or cancel those votes after support among conservatives collapsed in the early evening hours. The rules committee meeting, which would have formally drawn up the bill and advanced it to the full house, has been postponed indefinitely. The reason is simple. They don't have the votes: What happened? The counter-offer's broad outline, which I've been following all day, seemed to be on track. Then the...

Heritage Action For America, an influential conservative group, on Tuesday urged House Republicans to vote against their leaders' latest bill to fund the government and raise U.S. borrowing authority. The private group said that the legislation, which was scheduled to be voted on late on Tuesday, fails to "stop Obamacare's massive new entitlements from taking root." The group is warning lawmakers that it will look at their positions on this legislation in considering whether to encourage candidates to run against them in Republican primary campaigns next year.

Above: Maria Marroquin: Illegal alien...and ObamaCare "Navigator"- by John HillStand With ArizonaAmericans were outraged after the Obama Administration denied access to the WWII memorial for veterans  - but allowed illegal aliens to hold a rally for amnesty on the "closed" National Mall. Americans were also angered last week after the Healthcare.gov ObamaCare website, which cost $634 million to build (half a billion dollars over budget), utterly failed to work. Now it has emerged that an illegal alien in New York is serving as an Obamacare navigator, according to the Center for Immigration Studies. According to the CIS report, Maria Marroquin — identified as an illegal...

Apparently, it’s become fashionable to wonder whether fissures in the GOP might eventually grow into a schism, with tea party candidates mounting independent challenges to the GOP in the 2014 elections. Last night, David Frum went a step farther, writing that a tea party exodus might actually help Republicans by freeing them of Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, allowing the GOP to slide back to the political center. It's a centrist fantasy. If Republicans think they have a pathway to victory without the tea party, they’re sorely mistaken. The tea party is not some small, fringe element of the Republican...

Eleven million American adults with mental illnesses do not have health insurance, making it very difficult for them to get treatment. It is difficult for these Americans to get health insurance because their applications are often rejected due to their pre-existing condition of mental illnesses. Thankfully, the Affordable Care Act has many provisions that aim at trying to fix this problem. Here are some of the ways Obamacare is working to bridge the insurance gap that exists for adults with mental disorders:

We’ve written extensively of late regarding the widening divide between fiscally conservative Republicans and the “neoconservative” fiscally liberal wing of the party – led by U.S. Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn. In fact according to the website Mississippi PEP, they’ve censured him. For those of you unfamiliar with this aging RINO, Cochran is one of several Southern “Republicans” who habitually caves to U.S. President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats (along with Graham, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander and Georgia’s Johnny Isakson). “When any official continues to engage repeatedly in a course of conduct that violates...

FORT WORTH (CBS 11 NEWS) – A surprising statement from one of Texas’ top leaders: President Obama should be impeached. This came from Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, who is running for re-election and appeared at a Tea Party candidates forum. Dewhurst warned that freedoms are being trampled on, and so the President should be impeached. Later he fleshed out his thoughts for the Texas Observer’s Christopher Hooks. “I think this President, Barack Obama, has disregarded federal law. He has tried to do things which are not authorized under federal law. Things he’s disregarded such as immigration. He’s not, not...

Obama: Critics will stop calling it ‘Obamacare’ if it works By Ben Wolfgang - The Washington Times Tuesday, October 15, 2013 President Obama has embraced "Obamacare" as the de facto name of his signature health care initiative. But the commander-in-chief believes that if the law ends up being a wild success, the moniker will disappear. "My suspicion is what is going to happen is when it's working and everybody is really happy with it, Republicans are going to stop calling it 'Obamacare,'" the president said Tuesday in an interview with New York's WABC TV station.

House Republicans are in trouble. GOP leadership pulled their bill to open the government and lift the debt ceiling because they didn’t have the votes to squeeze it through the chamber. There will be no vote Tuesday, which means Washington will have one day to lift the debt ceiling before the U.S. government reaches its borrowing limit. It’s unclear what Speaker John Boehner’s team will do next. This could, once again, sideline the House and kick action over to negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The U.S. government reaches its debt limit...

Obama: When you're the president, everyone takes your calls Photo 6:50pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The coolest thing about being the leader of the free world? Everyone will take your call, said President Barack Obama in a television interview on Tuesday. Obama did another round of interviews with local television anchors to talk about the threat of a Thursday deadline to raise the debt limit, and the impact of a 15-day government shutdown. But Diana Williams of New York's WABC television said her teenaged daughter wanted her to ask Obama whether the coolest thing about being president was being friends...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: To Marc Thiessen's piece. "Obamacare is imploding. But thanks to the government shutdown, everyone is talking about the implosion of the GOP instead. The shutdown drama has distracted from the fact that Obamacare's debut is worse than many realize -- and it threatens the fundamental viability of the law itself. The administration claims the Obamacare online exchanges crashed because the website got more than 8 million hits in the first week. Please. You know how many people visit Amazon.com every week? More than 70 million. The difference is: 1.) Amazon seldom crashes, and 2.) on Amazon, people...

LINK ONLY PER FR POSTING RULES. Gist: Official from Michigan Department of Insurance cannot confirm that anyone has enrolled.