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House Republicans on Wednesday assailed the National Park Service director for erecting barriers at national monuments during the government shutdown. They accused Jonathan Jarvis of violating federal law by putting up the barricades at 401 national monuments and parks with no apparent imminent threat. In a joint hearing Wednesday, the House Natural Resources, and Oversight and Government Reform committees met to review the actions of the Park Service since the government shutdown took effect Oct. 1. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) charged the NPS with violating the Antideficiency Act in barring visitors from the parks during the shutdown. The law prohibits...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sat down with MSNBNC anchor Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday to discuss what appears to be a deal which is poised to end the government shutdown and raise the nation’s borrowing limit. She criticized the unfocused Republican members of Congress and praised Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) who she said had been “a master at work” during the shutdown. “Have you ever seen anything quite like this, a battle over what most people felt was nothing — nothing relevant to the issues at hand?” Mitchell asked. “I think that Republicans even forgot what they...

The head of the Senate panel overseeing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that the agency’s chief is committed to restarting its operations as soon as possible once the government shutdown ends. “Knowing Gina McCarthy the way I do, Administrator McCarthy, she will get up and running as fast as she can,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said at a press conference on Wednesday. “And knowing the workers as well as I know them, they care deeply," she added. "Their morale is low, but they know that America is behind them." Boxer’s comments came as House and Senate leadership was scrambling...

National Park Service director Jarvis said he discussed closing the open-air monuments and memorials with the White House, as well as the secretary of the Interior Department.

Time to Back Up World War II Vets as They Continue to Storm ‘Obama Beach’ First Honor Guard Shift: Wed., October 16 to Sunday, October 20 Every Day, Dawn till Dusk (you pick the day(s) you can serve) World War II Memorial, Washington D.C. (and other D.C. area war memorials, if we have enough volunteers) To Volunteer, RSVP by posting a comment to this article, giving us at least your first name, and telling us what day(s) and times you can be there, at the WWII memorial. See below for more details. In yet another intolerable act, the Obama Administration...

Americans who want to honor and reflect upon the memory of the crew and passengers who perished aboard United Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001 will find that the federal government has blocked the road four miles down from the open-air memorial near Shanksville, Pa. CNSNews.com photographed the spot of the road closure this past weekend. The steel barrier blocking vehicles from passing says: “Because of the federal government shutdown, this National Park Service facility is closed.” …

The dance we are watching this weekend is a very important moment in modern American history with big implications for how the executive and the legislative branches interact in the future. The House Republicans have staked out a position that they can use their constitutional power of the purse to force the President to negotiate over key issues. President Obama and Senate Democratic Leader Reid believe they can break the House Republicans and force them to reopen the government and pass a debt ceiling hike with no negotiations and no conditions. Senate Republicans are split between a majority who want...

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Gov. Bill Haslam says a deal to open the Great Smoky Mountains National Park parks in Tennessee for the weekend came too late for the state to send money to the federal government. The price tag? $60,000 per day.

Labor unions are poised to score the delay of an ObamaCare tax in the bipartisan budget deal emerging in the Senate. The bargain under negotiation would make small adjustments to the healthcare law, including delaying the law's reinsurance fee for one year. The three-year tax is meant to generate revenue that will stabilize premiums on the individual market as sick patients enter the risk pool. The tax applies to all group health plans, but unions argue it will raise their healthcare costs while providing them no benefit.  The reinsurance tax figured prominently in discussions at a recent AFL-CIO convention, where...

A crowd of demonstrators converge upon U.S. government property closed to the public. The demonstrators know that they are prohibited from entering the property. Nonetheless, they push through the metal barricades, chanting, “Tear down these walls.” That incident occurred yesterday at the World War II Memorial on the National Mall. Not confining their protest to the World War II Memorial, some of the protesters then picked up the government’s metal barricades and carried them blocks away to the White House, where the barricades were deposited outside the gates. Television recorded police struggling to keep the protesters away from the White...

Operating through an “emergency and health services” protocol, congressional representatives, senators, their staff, credentialed journalists, other credentialed media personnel, and U.S. Capitol Police are still receiving free flu shots at health units in the Capitol and at locations in office buildings. … According to a “Contingency Staffing Plan for Operations” for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, page 3, the partial government shutdown will, however, prevent the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from performing its role to protect the citizenry from influenza. …

Sen. Barbara Boxer likened GOP lawmakers to people who abuse their spouses on Monday when discussing the current government shutdown and the looming debt limit deadline. The California Democrat, who like most in her party, blames the lack of government funding and current impasse over raising the debt ceiling on Republicans who have insisted on passing measures aimed at dismantling the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. First she compared the current budget crisis to walking down the street on a nice day and then deciding to bash yourself in the head with a rock. Then she said: “It’s a...

As I mentioned yesterday, the medical device tax that went into effect last January is just one of the many insidious job-killing measures contained within ObamaCare, but it is an especially terrible one. The 2.3 percent excise tax is meant to raise a handsome $30 billion to pay for ObamaCare over the next decade, except that, added bonus: It’s going to stifle innovation and competition in an industry that provides all manner of life-saving medical devices, from MRIs to pacemakers to blood tubes. And this hasn’t just been a Republican refrain, by the way. Thursday night, the Senate voted overwhelmingly...

The terms: Government re-opens and is funded until mid-December, debt ceiling is raised for another six to nine months, and Democrats maybe agree to repeal ObamaCare’s medical-device tax and reinstate anti-fraud measures for O-Care applicants — depending upon what Republicans give them in return.Peace in our time? The proposal would set up a framework for larger budget negotiations with the House over the automatic sequestration spending cuts and and other major deficit issues, the sources said…McConnell is still reviewing the offer and is privately huddling with groups of GOP senators Monday who could be key to providing enough votes in...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has privately offered Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a deal that would reopen the government until mid-to-late December while extending the U.S. debt ceiling until next year, according to several sources familiar with the talks. The proposal would set up a framework for larger budget negotiations with the House over the automatic sequestration spending cuts and other major deficit issues, the sources said. Moreover, Senate Democrats are open to delaying Obamacare’s medical device tax and a requirement that those receiving Obamacare subsidies be subject to income verification — but they would have to get something...

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 Web site 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 actually buy something.

Radio Lefty Bill Press Calls Paying Soldiers’ Families Death Benefits ‘Big Mistake’ Just hours before the Senate voted to approve a measure that was passed by the House on Wednesday in a 425-0 vote to restore the death benefits paid to the families of fallen soldiers, liberal radio talk show host Bill Press showed his true colors when he said it would be a “big mistake” for the government to do that because “once the government starts making special exceptions, it allows the shutdown to continue.”

On the pages of The Washington Post, columnist Kathleen Parker (who poses as a Republican) compared the Republican Party to a fictional mafia crime family and refers to Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz as "Ted bin Laden," an obvious reference to the Osama bin Laden, the Islamist terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands of Americans: In trying to understand the Republican Party’s internal battles, it helps to think of Michael and Sonny. Corleone, that is. … That would be Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who grabbed headlines by speaking for 21 hours against Obamacare. Cruz is neither Michael nor...

President Stompyfeet send essential govt employees to re-install barricades at WWII memorial https://twitter.com/DaveFox5DC/status/389720494737727488 …

After Republicans drifted for years without a pilot, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have taken the helm of the GOP, steering their party and its grassroots into a much-needed, head-on battle with the Democrats. On the campaign trail on the way to his win in November 2012, President Barack Obama promised to finish the work he’d gone to Washington to do: “fundamentally transforming the United States.” Things look tough for the right in Washington today, but the reality is these three conservative Republicans, aided by friends in the Senate

WASHINGTON — Several Republican senators said Sunday a Democratic request to increase government spending is hurting chances of a deal to end the 13-day-old shutdown. Leaders of the Democratic-led Senate were dismissive of a proposal Saturday, in part, because it kept in place for too long the automatic spending cuts that went into effect earlier this year. Another round of those decade-long cuts -- dubbed the sequester and approved by Congress and the White House in 2011 -- is expected in January. The Republican complaints came as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., spoke...

Columbus didn’t sail the Ocean Blue to discover a land where we wait around for Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid to decide the future of our lives. We decide. Not the power brokers in DC. We haven’t gone all this time and risked so much over two hundred years to turn the keys over now to others to run our lives. The Veterans on the Mall today don’t deserve a country the leaders of which play games with a memorial dedicated to them and their fallen brethren. Mitch McConnell is the single obstacle we have this week to taking our...

FOX NEWS ALERT! The barricades are back up!

MANSFIELD, LA (KSLA) - Shelves in Walmart stores in Springhill and Mansfield, LA were reportedly cleared Saturday night, when the stores allowed purchases on EBT cards even though they were not showing limits. Additional Links Computer issue, not government shutdown, likely cause of EBT card failures The chaos that followed ultimately required intervention from local police, and left behind numerous carts filled to overflowing, apparently abandoned when the glitch-spurred shopping frenzy ended. Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd confirms they were called in to help the employees at Walmart because there were so many people clearing off the shelves. He says...

[With video] Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert got into a tense back-and-forth Saturday with Fox New’s Arthel Neville over who is to blame for the partial government shut down and the frightening possibility of a debt-ceiling breach. The Republican Congressman insisted that President Barack Obama and his Democrat allies in the U.S. Senate are responsible for the current mess in the nation’s capital. [SNIIP] The Fox News anchor wasn’t satisfied with Rep. Gohmert’s analysis. “You’re not saying that either, Congressman?” Neville said. “Let’s have some honest talk here.” The Congressman repeated that it’s the Democrats, especially Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,...

Condemning the stupefying incompetence and callous disregard for the families of veterans who died during the “shutdown”, Judge Jeanine lambastes the Obama administration, the Pentagon, and the whole collection of Washington political hacks. She is especially tough on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. The judge also decries our gargantuan national debt and the president’s desire to raise the debt ceiling yet again. In the judge’s view, any Congress that leaves us with increased debt should have all members forfeit their entire Congressional pension. Better yet, she says, throw all of them out — both parties, both houses.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, President Barack Obama said the government shutdown needed to end so Congress could work on comprehensive immigration reform. Obama rejected a House Republican proposal that would have re-opened the government and raised the debt-ceiling for six-weeks in return for an agreement on a "framework" on negotiations on more long-term budgetary issues. He said "this Republican shutdown" had to end "because there is so much else we should be focusing our energies on right now" and cited immigration as one of the things the government had to "fix." "We’ve got to create more jobs,...

NORWALK, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- During a routine test of our back-up systems Saturday morning, Xerox’s Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system experienced a temporary shutdown. While the system is now up and running, beneficiaries in the 17 affected states continue to experience connectivity issues to access their benefits. This disruption impacts EBT beneficiaries who rely on the system for SNAP and WIC. Technical staff is addressing the issue and expect the system to be restored soon.

Some grocery and food shoppers who were trying to used government benefit cards to pay got a rude awakening on Saturday morning: their EBT cards were not working. A check here in Central New York, however, showed that grocery chains were apparently unaffected. We are being told that a technical services vendor (Xerox) had a power outage which did affect being able to pay with a benefits card in several states. As of early Saturday afternoon, the debit system was back up and the SNAP program was being rebooted, with expectations that all services would be back up shortly.

Bridge Cards reportedly not working EBT Food stamps system experiencing glitches in Michigan, other states Joanne Marie Hoopes Oct 12 2013 01:54:13 PM EDT DETROIT - The Local 4 newsroom has been flooded with calls and emails from people reporting problems with their Michigan EBT Food stamp card. Viewers say they attempted to use their Bridge Card but the system is not working and they are left unable to purchase groceries. Local 4 contacted the Michigan Department of Human Services; a spokesperson says the issue with client cards is not on the DHS end. The spokesperson says the issues are...

People in Ohio, Michigan and several other states found themselves unable to use their food stamp debit cards on Saturday, after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. Shoppers from Maine to Oklahoma had to abandon baskets of groceries because they couldn't access their benefits.Ohio's cash and food assistance card payment systems went down at 11 a.m., said Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Ohio's cash system has been fixed, however its electronic benefits transfer card system is still down. All states that use Xerox systems are affected...

Food stamp users across Mississippi and neighboring states were being declined Saturday morning as they tried to use their EBT, or Electronic Benefit Transfer, cards at grocery, dollar and convenience stores. A Sam's Club member services representative, however, said the cards would work if purchases were broken down into smaller increments worth less than $90, but one food stamps user said his card wouldn't work for a $4 purchase.

(TheBlaze/AP) — Major problems were reported Saturday all across America with the Electronic Benefits Transfer System, as consumers were stuck with no way to pay at registers, notes WBZ-TV in Boston. WBZ reported that a computer-system upgrade was to blame, while the Associated Press reports that a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. People in Ohio, Michigan and several other states found themselves unable to use their food stamp debit cards while shoppers from Maine to Oklahoma had to abandon baskets of groceries because they couldn’t access their benefits.

<p>A "very disturbed" President Obama has ordered his top aides to restore death benefits today for families of military service members killed in action.</p> <p>"The president was very disturbed to learn of this problem," said White House press secretary Jay Carney. "The president expects this to be fixed today. He was not pleased."</p>

On the Chuck Brooks Law-Call hour, 12:00-1:00 pm, Saturday October 10, on the Baltimore station WCBM, two separate callers stated that the "Food Stamp System" was not working at several Baltimore grocery stores. The second caller mentioned that folks in the store were blaming Republicans. I cannot personally confirm these reports. Are other Freepers noticing this in their locations?

Jonathan Bernstein considers what the pointless shutdown fight has done to Ted Cruz’s political prospects: It’s one thing to have a reputation as a loudmouth; it’s quite another to have a reputation as a loser. That’s what the shutdown fight has done to Cruz. Among true believers he’ll be the one who was a leader in a fight that surely would have won if the squishes hadn’t sold them out. But for most party actors, including many sympathetic to Tea Partyism, he’s going to be the guy who ran up the wrong hill. It would have been different if Cruz’s...

Appearing on MSNBC on Friday, Congressman Peter King continued his epic verbal assault on Ted Cruz — and, to a lesser extent, Rand Paul — by describing the Texas Senator as a “RINO” (Republican in name only) and a “fraud.” Speaking with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, King called the ongoing government shutdown “the strategy of Ted Cruz” and wondered aloud “why more Republicans around the country didn’t join me in denouncing Ted Cruz” before the shutdown began. “We cannot allow our party to be taken over by the likes of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul,” King continued, describing Cruz and Paul...

Obama told 25 governors on a conference call that the shutdown "is hurting local economies." President Obama hit Congressional Republicans on Friday telling a bipartisan group of governors that the "brinksmanship strategy" of shutting down the government and threatening default is something "the country can't afford." Obama made the comments to 25 governors on a conference call aimed at discussing the effect of the federal shutdown on state budgets and the overall economy, according to a White House readout of the call....... Obama was joined on the call by senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, NEC Director Gene Sperling, Deputy Office of...

Here is where we’re at: The Republican establishment — the guys who told us that for a trillion dollars and several thousand American casualties, we could build “Islamic democracies” that would be reliable U.S. allies in the War on Terror — say it is Ted Cruz who is “delusional” and the effort to stave off Obamacare that is “unattainable.” These self-appointed sages are, of course, the same guys who told us the way to “stabilize” and “democratize” Libya was to help jihadists topple and kill the resident dictator — who, at the time, was a U.S. ally, providing intelligence about...

"...................But perhaps the most extraordinary story to emerge from the NPS is that of the tour group of foreign seniors whose bus was trapped in Yellowstone Park on the day the shutdown began. They were pulled over photographing a herd of bison when an armed ranger informed them, with the insouciant ad-hoc unilateral lawmaking to which the armed bureaucrat is distressingly prone, that taking photographs counts as illegal “recreation.” “Sir, you are recreating,” the ranger informed the tour guide. And we can’t have that, can we? They were ordered back to the Old Faithful Inn, next to the geyser of...

Let's just get into this NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that just totally turned Washington upside down yesterday....The poll that shows the Republicans literally getting killed over the government shutdown... Now, keep in mind just two days ago there was an AP poll that showed Obama at 37% and we're still hearing crickets over that poll. People have looked at the internals of the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, and it's 800 people. The spread of Democrat to Republican is 43 32. So 43% in the poll are Democrats, 32% are Republicans. That's an 11 point difference there. That's not representative at...

[with AUDIO] House Republicans wouldn’t accept a bad deal on the government shutdown and the pending federal debt ceiling negotiations from President Barack Obama, House Rules Committee chairman Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions announced. “I will tell you we will not back down, but there is much, much that we must understand about what is out there and how to accomplish it,” Sessions said on an interview set to air on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Friday night. Hewitt asked Sessions about the possibility of a deal made by the first of the month to ensure the government fulfills certain...

Rep. Peter King (N.Y.) would support a discharge petition on a "clean" spending bill if GOP leaders don't bring it to the floor soon, the centrist Republican vowed this week. King has long-pushed Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to take up the Senate-passed continuing resolution (CR) to reopen the government. But he has refused to buck leadership further by endorsing the Democrats' discharge petition, which would force a floor vote on the bill. Until Friday. "If we have to do a discharge petition, ultimately, we will, but this is going to come [to the floor]," King said in an interview with...

Sen. John McCain said Wednesday that there was never a chance of defunding Obamacare, blaming politicians who said it was possible for the current government shutdown. “We started this on a fool’s errand, convincing so many millions of Americans and our supporters that we could defund Obamacare,” McCain (R-Ariz.) told Wolf Blitzer on CNN. “[That] obviously wouldn’t happen until we had 67 Republican senators to override a presidential veto.”[snip] “[It was] the people that convinced so many millions of Americans, tea partiers specifically we’re talking about, that there was some way to defund Obamacare. We can’t,” McCain said.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) channeled his inner-maverick Friday during an appearance on Fox News Channel, repeatedly reminding the conservative network that the government shutdown was brought about by the quixotic effort to halt the Affordable Care Act. When anchor Martha MacCallum asked him about the White House's handling of the suspension of death benefits to military families, McCain said that while the administration deserves blame it was a GOP-induced shutdown that caused the problem in the first place.

  Why would the president of the United States try to purposely hurt the American people? Well, in 2013 this is done in order to score political points and force the opposition in to doing what you want them to do. A few days ago, an angry Park Service ranger publicly admitted that he and his fellow rangers have been ordered to “make life as difficult for people as we can” during this government shutdown. That Park Service ranger would never have received such an order unless it came from the very top. Apparently the Obama administration plans to cause as...

The National Park Service’s closure of the World War II and other memorials violates rules requiring them to stay open, 93 House members charge in a letter to the agency. Led by Michigan Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga, they claim that Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis is simply making up closure rules to punish the public during the government shut down and they question the costs of the random closures in Washington where not all memorials are being closed. "The National Park Service continues to act in an arbitrary and punitive manner to exclude veterans from memorials built in their honor...

President Barack Obama’s former senior White House adviser and campaign manager David Plouffe accused House Republicans of “committing economic treason” during the partial government shutdown on Thursday. In a snarky tweet about Republicans’ attempts to negotiate an end to the government shutdown, Plouffe dredged up the “birther” issue in order to discredit the GOP: David Plouffe @davidplouffe Maybe throw in a Special Counsel to investigate the President's birthplace and the House GOP will stop committing economic treason. 8:56 AM - 10 Oct 2013

"Part of the atmosphere that allowed this shutdown to take place was this attitude that these folks aren’t providing important services and value to our country and they’re dead wrong about that," Obama said. "Those politicians who are always complaining about federal workers ... I guess they’re doing it for political reasons." He said he has seen the impact of the shutdown firsthand -- seeing younger staff get furloughed and struggle day in and day out. "There are people who are being impacted every day, and in the D.C. metro region that much more," Obama said. "I’ve got young staff...