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(VIDEO-AT-LINK)BILLINGS - Given the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling that same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states, a Lockwood family is now looking to solidify rights of its own. We first told you about the Colliers in January of 2015 when the polygamist family appeared on an episode of the TLC show, "Sister Wives."The polyamorous movement is a national push to allow marriage between multiple partners. Nathan Collier and his two wives, Vicki and Christine, said Tuesday that they are simply looking for equality. Nathan is legally married to Vicki, but also wants to legally wed Christine. On Tuesday,...

The University of California’s Board of Regents recently voted to increase student tuition up to 25 percent over the next five years. UC president Janet Napolitano said the tuition hike was necessary “to maintain the University of California in terms of academic excellence.” But the real reason for the tuition increase is that the UC system needs funds to bail out the mismanaged pension system that covers retired employees of its ten campuses. Let this be a lesson to the rest of the country: Public officials rarely take responsibility for the messes they make. Rather, they deny culpability and send...

House Budget Committee Chairman released his Fiscal Year 2015 budget Tuesday ahead of a potentially difficult vote in the House as he continues to deal with unrest on the right from a deal he struck with Democratic Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA). The 2014 budget spent $3.498 trillion in 2015, while this year's budget spends $3.664 trillion, an increase of $166 billion. The 2014 budget spent $3.660 trillion in 2016, while this year's budget spends $3.676, an increase of $26 billion, according to a report outlining the budget. The spending in years further out is actually lower than...

Eleven Republican doctors are running for the Senate, hoping that voters will see their medical expertise as an asset amid the administration’s botched rollout of ObamaCare. “Doctors are in a very unique position to look at the financing of healthcare,” Rep. Paul Broun, a family physician running for the GOP nomination for Georgia’s open Senate seat, told The Hill. “We go into medicine for one reason, and one reason only: Because we care about people, we want the people who we serve to have a productive, happy, healthy life,” he added. “That’s the kind of policymaker we should have in...

How could the U.S. Government make such a mess of the roll-out of the website for ObamaCare? Actually, government computer systems incompetence is normal. The reaction to www.HealthCare.gov presupposes that our government normally does these things well. ObamaCare is high profile and under the microscope. The filibuster and shutdown confrontation brought intense attention to the roll-out on October 1. But the U.S. Government routinely bungles computer projects large and small and wastes money. Why didn't the Federal government learn anything from past fiascoes? How could President Obama imagine that the Federal Government could hijack and control one-sixth of the nation's...

<p>But under questioning Thursday, Campbell said her company, CGI’s, total contract was “about $290 million,” $112 million of which has already been paid.</p> <p>Slavitt said QSSI received “just under $85 million” for the data hub, which covers much — but not all — of the firm’s work for CMS.</p>

As the new registrants for Obamacare trickle in to the private insurers who are expected to provide coverage complaints about the quality of the registration data are emerging. Executives at more than a dozen health insurance companies say that the information being forwarded to them from the Obamacare Exchanges is riddled with errors. “We’re getting duplicate requests for the same individuals,” said Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini. “In other cases crucial information is missing or incorrect. Some of these errors can be handled by personally phoning those trying to buy insurance, but this is labor-intensive and not cost-effective. If this is...

Full title: VIDEO Montage: Kathleen Sebelius’ Many Assured Assurances that the Obamacare Exchanges were ‘On Track’ to Launch on October 1 Lefty blogger Matt Yglesias laid down his marker that the Obamacare exchange website would be fabulous from day one . Now, where did he get that idea? VIDEO 1:06 minutes More: Now Sebelius is on the run like a common thief, refusing a congressional request to testify about the chaotic Obamacare rollout. Maybe charging her with contempt of Congress will get her attention.

The healthcare.gov website has been online for two weeks. But folks are having trouble signing up. One person who says she's been trying for two weeks straight to sign up is CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. ..... Snip .....

House Republicans are seizing the Obama administration’s decision to barricade the open-air World War II memorial in Washington as a potent political weapon in their shutdown showdown with the president. Majority Leader Eric Cantor led a group of GOP lawmakers in denouncing the decision from the Capitol steps, and House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa has launched an investigation into why the WWII memorial and other open-air monuments have been shut down.

The federal government is months behind in testing data security for the main pillar of Obamacare: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1 The missed deadlines have pushed the government's decision on whether information technology security is up to snuff to exactly one day before that crucial date, the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general said in a report. As a result, experts say, the exchanges might open with security flaws or, possibly but less likely, be delayed.

It was a fiasco — the worst possible result: A terribly flawed bill that, of all the GOP’s Senate superstars, only Marco Rubio could support. All the other rising stars — Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and John Thune — voted “no,” as did Leader McConnell and Whip Cornyn. Worse yet, the jam down created a toxic environment around immigration reform, greatly complicating if not dooming the effort in the House for this session. How much of a fiasco? Read my interview from Wednesday with a very good guy and a serious conservative, Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota. It is...

It is a simple question without a simple answer: Should Minneapolis be its own power company? Delegates at last weekend's Minneapolis DFL convention passed a resolution supporting an initiative to study whether Minnesota's largest city has anything to gain by going into the utility business. The passage provided momentum to the proposal, borne of a coalition of green-energy groups. Their goal: compel Xcel Energy to step up efforts to provide clean, affordable electricity -- and CenterPoint Energy to provide more affordable natural gas -- or get the city to provide it. "Our campaign is not saying we should kick Xcel...

Military leaders are ready to begin tearing down the remaining walls that have prevented women from holding thousands of combat and special operations jobs near the front lines. Under details of the plans obtained by The Associated Press, women could start training as Army Rangers by mid-2015 and as Navy SEALs a year later. The military services have mapped out a schedule that also will include reviewing and possibly changing the physical and mental standards that men and women will have to meet in order to quality for certain infantry, armor, commando and other front-line positions across the Army, Navy,...

Energy: Oil is rising sharply from two disasters in the Caribbean region — one, a fierce storm, and the other a massive blast at the world's second-largest refinery in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. Only one was perfectly preventable. When the strongman cracked the whip on Venezuela's oil industry in 2003, firing 20,000 experienced oil managers from state-owned Petroleo de Venezuela (PDVSA) to break a strike he admitted he had provoked, he insisted that merit didn't matter anymore, only political loyalty. "There will be no more meritocracy," he told his cheering red-shirts. That philosophy has been laid out in all its glory...

Pic courtesy another major Japanese national TV network, TBS For those who have been following this, the Japanese press is filled with snippets, chortling and stories and about the keystone-cop-ish US White House (specifically the National Security Council under Tom Donilon) and the White House website, which mistakenly listed the first name of Japan's Prime Minister (the third largest economy in the world you recall) as a common Japanese "female first name", "Yoshiko" (sic), and now the Chunichi Shimbun News off a Kyodo News Agency story (which is the blue ribbon equivalent of AP), has run an article saying...

The next time someone moans about Washington "austerity," tell them about the Senate's food stamp votes on Tuesday. Democrats and a few Republicans united to block even modest reform in a welfare program that has exploded in the last decade and is set to spend $770 billion in the next 10 years. Yes, $770 billion on a single program. And you wonder why the U.S. had its credit-rating downgraded?

...While Mitt Romney "carpet-bombed" Newt Gingrich with merciless attacks; while Newt Gingrich succumbed to the temptation to respond with similar efforts, one candidate demonstrated the singularly most important trait we need in a President, character. His name is Rick Santorum, Bella's Dad. There was a book of essays on Presidential leadership written in 1996 entitled "Character Above All" The book contained an excellent essay by Peggy Noonan on Ronald Reagan... "In a president, character is everything..." People like me, "former" Democrats, were inspired by the courage, character and manner of Ronald Reagan. His was the kind of "conservatism" which made...

Mark Levin, being a disenfranchised Virginian, weighed in on the Virginia ballot fiasco, saying that the compliance rules were changed a month ago and that it is not the fault of the candidates. In fact, he believes the rules were changed to help shove Romney down our throats.

That’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that Perry and Gingrich, either one of whom could still become the Great Grassroots Hope against Romney, might not have qualified either. You need 10,000 signatures to make the ballot but 15,000 are recommended since a bunch are bound to be thrown out as false or duplicative as the petitions are scrutinized. You also need at least 600 signatures from each of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts. Romney submitted 16,026 and Ron Paul submitted 14,361. Perry’s total: 11,911. Gingrich’s: 11,050. If they end up getting bounced, the Republican primary ballot for...