Free Republic

The vast majority of people who bought health insurance through ObamaCare exchanges are satisfied with their plans, according to a new national survey.People overwhelmingly said they felt positively about their choices of doctors and hospitals and their copays for appointments and prescriptions, delivering good news for the Obama administration one year into the law's rollout.More surprisingly, that satisfaction also extended to people’s monthly premiums and annual deductibles, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.Sixty percent of ObamaCare customers said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their monthly premium costs — more than people who bought coverage before the...

A military plane has gone off the runway at Naval Air Station North Island into the San Diego Bay, officials confirmed Friday. A Navy pilot, flying in a T-45C aircraft, overshot the runway while landing during a training exercise at 2 p.m. (5 p.m. ET) a Navy spokesman said. The pilot was able to eject from the aircraft before it ran into the water. According to Harbor Police, a civilian boater pulled the crew member out of the water. After being evaluated at UC San Diego Medical Center, the pilot was released and is in stable condition, Navy officials said....

Speaker of the House John Boehner is praising the Senate's passage of the trade bill and calling on Democrats to join with Republicans to pass the law in the House. “Trade helps create good-paying American jobs, so it’s good news that the Senate has put us one step closer to eliminating trade barriers. These reforms have the support of farmers, manufacturers, small business owners, and Americans from all walks of life, and it’s not hard to figure out why," Boehner says in a statement. "With trade promotion authority, we’ll be able to hold President Obama accountable so America’s workers can...

At least 43 people died Friday in what authorities described as a fierce, three-hour gunbattle between federal forces and suspected drug gang gunmen on a ranch in western Mexico, the deadliest such confrontation in recent memory. All the dead were suspected criminals except for one federal police officer, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said. He said the officer died trying to help a colleague wounded in the shootout.

Frankly, I'm tired of listening to Senator Clinton portray herself as being in the solutions business -- as boasting a nice, fat resume of accomplishments -- while mocking Barack Obama for being a rhetorical empty suit. Is she truly a beacon of experience? Because I couldn't think of a single piece of legislation that has her name stuck proudly on the front of it, no equivalent of McCain-Feingold, for example, I headed straight for her campaign website to see what glorious aspects of her vaunted experience I was missing. Actually, I was missing nothing. There is not one single example...

A man convicted of killing Washington DC intern Chandra Levy fourteen years ago is expected to get a new trial after government attorneys on Friday said the 'interests of justice' would best be served by one. On Friday, after more than a year of sporadic hearings and legal wrangling, government attorneys made a stunning legal decision and withdrew their opposition to a new trial for El Salvador native Ingmar Guandique, 33. In a four-page motion, they told a judge they were preparing to retry him after doubts have emerged about the testimony of his one-time cellmate. Guandique's attorneys had previously...

Officer Michael Brelo is charged with two counts of voluntary manslaughter for the deaths of Timothy Russell, 43, and Malissa Williams, 30. Closing arguments in the month-long trial were presented on May 5 and Judge O’Donnell was left to deliberate. If convicted, Brelo, 31, faces a maximum sentence of 22 years in prison. On Nov. 29, 2012, Cleveland Police Officer Vasile Nan thought he heard a gunshot while he was outside of his cruiser on St. Clair Avenue near the Cuyahoga County Justice Center, and pursued a blue car. The resulting police chase lasted 22 minutes, and involved more than...

The Obama administration released its spring regulatory agenda Friday, including its costliest regulation to date, just as Americans are getting ready to celebrate the long Memorial Day weekend. The Spring 2015 Unified Agenda and Regulatory Plan includes more than 2,300 regulations that are in a variety of phases and also includes the administration's plans for implementing the various regulations going forward, The Daily Caller is reporting. This is not the first time the Obama administration has released its regulatory agenda right before a major holiday, when such things might go unnoticed. In 2014, the fall regulatory agenda was released right...

President Barack Obama has adjusted his goal of having 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by this year's end, much to the disappointment of many electric vehicle enthusiasts. The change of heart comes six years after Obama signed an executive order mandating electric cars with the intent of the government buying 1 million EVs by 2015, according to Bloomberg. However, the president scaled back this objective in March, due to sales and government purchases not meeting expectations. The decline in consumer interest in electric vehicles, which lack the infrastructure that gasoline-powered vehicles have, played a significant role. U.S. consumers...

The EPA proposal to impose a de facto ban on new coal-fired power plants received more than two million comments from the public - but it looks like it was just one five-page comment from the Energy and Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) that sent EPA scrambling back to the drawing board. The draft rule mandated the use of so-called carbon capture and storage, a technology that would inject carbon dioxide underground but which has so far proved to be little more than a white elephant experiment. To mandate this technology, the law required the EPA to prove it...

The Clinton Foundation said Thursday it received as much as $26.4 million in previously undisclosed payments from foreign sources, universities, large corporations. South Korea, Thailand and Nigeria. Etc. This after “forgetting” to disclose 1,100 foreign donors. This after the Clinton Foundation failed to report $$tens of millions in foreign donations on their taxes, forcing them to refile at least five years’ worth of returns. I’m sure the IRS is cool with that – after all, they don’t have “Tea Party”, “Conservative” , “Christian” or “Palin” in the name of their organization – Friend me on Facebook – no one turned...

WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton received information on her private email server that has now been classified about the deadly attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi. The email in question, forwarded to Clinton by her deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, relates to reports of arrests in Libya of possible suspects in the attack. The information was not classified at the time the email was sent but was upgraded from “unclassified” to “secret” on Friday at the request of the FBI, according to State Department officials. They said 23 words of the Nov. 18, 2012,...

The proposed adoption of $300,000 worth of reading materials for Cody, Wyoming students stalled this week amid criticisms about the curriculum’s “very liberal, very slanted view of the world.” School board and community members spoke out against a slate of proposed materials for K-12 students that cover topics like global warming, evolution and race. The materials are published by education giant Pearson and Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ... that aligns with the national Common Core standards. But many in the community are concerned about how the texts address issues like global warming, which is treated as settled science ......

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is referred to as the “public face of the U.S. effort in Libya” in a 2012 memo written by Jake Sullivan, a top Clinton aide at the State Department. The email was written months before the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi that killed four Americans. Sullivan’s April 2012 memo detailed Clinton’s role in Libya, framing her as “instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition, and tightening the noose around Qadhafi and his regime.” It notes Clinton’s role in those efforts, including her work lobbying for United Nations sanctions against the dictator and...

EDITED The Blumenthal email story underlines what we already suspected about Hillary’s atrocious tenure as Secy of State and at the Clinton Foundation. The avalanche of ethical controversies were exacerbated by Clinton loyalist Sidney Blumenthal resurfacing. He was banned from govt employment, but from his paid perch at the Clinton Foundation, he sent Secy of State Hillary memos on Libya that she forwarded (unattributed and unquestioned)....even as Blumenthal's agit-prop caused eye-rolling among State Dept pros. Hillary portrays herself as the picture of openness, that she wants her e-mails public as soon as possible. But the Clinton-Blumenthal emails were cleansed until...

Faced with an increasingly segregated education system, Dutch immigrant children have taken to the streets of their ethnically mixed Amsterdam neighbourhood seeking "white" pupils to attend their schools and help their integration. Around 100 schoolchildren -- Arabs, Turks, Africans, Moroccans -- accompanied by their parents and teachers, wore provocative dazzling white T-shirts emblazoned with "Is this white enough for you?". Dutch native Annelies, 10, and immigrants' daughter Aminata, 11, have been friends since kindergarten and are also wearing the shirts, which have "All children have the right to integrate" written on the back. They "want more white children in the...

Hundreds of Hillary Clinton‘s emails were released today, something Clinton herself said she wants, but Charles Krauthammer doesn’t really buy this is some great victory for transparency and disclosure. “There isn’t a shred of evidence,” he said, “because she shredded the evidence. This whole release is a farce.” He pointed out that it’s not like every little email Clinton ever sent will be released to the public, only the ones ‘scrubbed and cleansed and decided upon, chosen by her own people, acting in her own interest.” And, Krauthammer added, it’s working, because the media is eagerly looking through “pre-scrubbed material”...

WASHINGTON—The Senate early Saturday defeated a string of efforts to extend the Patriot Act as lawmakers splintered over its contentious phone surveillance program and left town with no plan in place to prevent the law from lapsing. After next week’s Memorial Day recess, the Senate will resume its debate over the national security law at 4 p.m. on May 31, eight hours before the law expires at midnight. Lawmakers fractured through the evening, rejecting a House bill overhauling the NSA, a two-month Patriot Act extension and then increasingly short extensions of the law. Primarily due to objections from presidential candidate...

On the whole, the Affordable Care Act is working pretty well, getting more people insured and increasing the quality of insurance overall. But on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported an alarming development: Health insurers on many state exchanges are looking to boost their premiums a ridiculous amount in 2016. New Mexico's leading provider, for instance, is seeking a 51.6 percent hike, while Maryland's is seeking a 30.4 percent hike. (Insurers in other states, like Vermont and Indiana, are asking for minimal increases.) Libertarian and conservative outlets are, predictably, citing the rate hike as yet another Obamacare catastrophe. But it's...

Department of Justice security official in Adult Friend hack release? Gotnews.com, along with the whistleblower Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, may have IDed a Department of Justice official with an Adult Friend Finder profile. Adult Friend Finder was hacked earlier and upwards of 4 million usernames and identities were released to the public. We are currently going through them now. Gotnews.com is working to find all of the government officials on the data. Here’s the first one we’ve IDed