Free Republic

Neenah, Wisconsin - While much of the political world has been obsessing over the troubles of Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, or the sparring over Rand Paul and "Aqua-Buddha" in Kentucky, or the controversies surrounding Sharron Angle in Nevada, another Republican newcomer has been running a quiet, direct, and devastatingly effective campaign. Here in Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, a businessman who has never before run for public office, appears poised to pick up a Senate seat for Republicans, defeating Democratic legend Russell Feingold and becoming the first GOP senator elected from the state since 1986.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners today finally released its final set of regulations on the “Medical Loss Ratios” established under ObamaCare. The NAIC regulations are widely considered to be the ones that the Department of Health and Human Services will adopt. Bottom line: The proposed rules don’t bode well for the long-term health of private health insurance. They would give insurers perverse incentives to neither control costs nor root out fraud.

(CNN) -- It was 5:16 a.m. when the call came in to a 911 dispatcher in Madison, Wisconsin. The story, from Cathy Silver, came out staccato: Cathy's husband, Jim, was gagging, gasping for air. A nurse at the University of Wisconsin Hospital, Cathy could see that her husband, the father of four grown children, was in cardiac arrest. Though trained in CPR, Cathy was flustered. "I can't do the breaths!" she shouted. Nevermind, said the dispatcher. Get over him, press on his the chest, circulate the blood. Help would be there soon. Four minutes later, a Madison police officer arrived...

Via Glenn Reynolds, Rich Lowry drops this amazing statistic into his column today: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 214,000 net new jobs were created in the United States from August 2009 to August 2010. Texas created 119,000 jobs during the same period. If every state in the country had performed as well, we’d have created about 1.5 million jobs nationally during the past year, and maybe “stimulus” wouldn’t be such a dirty word. What does Austin know that Washington doesn’t? At its simplest: Don’t overtax and -spend, keep regulations to a minimum, avoid letting unions and trial lawyers

Last night’s “Parker-Spitzer” saw the lowest numbers yet for the program and the show did little to help the one that followed on the schedule — “Larry King Live” which had its worst numbers in more than 10 years. In its sixth outing, “Parker-Spitzer” drew 311,000 Total Viewers and 86,000 A25-54 viewers. That’s lower than the previous low for the time period set by Campbell Brown earlier this year. (332,000 / 87,000). Last week, Parker-Spitzer finished fourth in the time period averaging 465,000 Total Viewers and 124,000 A25-54. At 9pmET, “Larry King Live” put up its lowest A25-54 demo viewership...

NASA scientists say they may have discovered a new force of nature, after research showed two of their deep space probes were being inexplicably pulled off course. Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, which have been in space for over 40 years, are being steadily pulled towards the sun by an unknown power, according to London’s Telegraph newspaper The scientists said it could not be gravity or solar radiation, as they decreased over distance.

WASHINGTON -- The nation's health system can't be transformed by rationing medical care, President Barack Obama's new Medicare chief said Monday in his first major speech. Dr. Donald Berwick's appointment earlier this summer without Senate confirmation was contentious because some Republicans accused him of being willing to deny care to save on costs. Since then, the administration has kept Berwick out of the limelight, turning the otherwise well-known medical innovation guru into something of a mystery man in Washington. Berwick broke his silence Monday, telling an audience of health insurance industry representatives that pushing back against unsustainable costs cannot and...

WASHINGTON - President Obama's Oval Office has had a face-lift with a New York accent. The office has undergone a top-to-bottom makeover, highlighted by handmade striped wallpaper from Amagansett in the Hamptons. The President's brown leather desk chair, coffee table made of American walnut and mica, custom-made couches and two new table lamps with blue ceramic bases were all crafted by New York manufacturers. The White House treated the identities of the Empire State companies who produced the furnishings like state secrets, declining to further identify them. The price tag for the redo also was not disclosed, but interior design...

Have you noticed bagel shops tacking on a few more cents to your beloved pumpernickel and cream cheese? Blame Albany. Bagels – however you slice them – most likely haven't been subject to tax at your favorite neighborhood shop. But, desperate for cash, Albany began enforcing a little known clause in its sales tax code that calls for a tax on sliced bagels or whole bagels consumed at the place of purchase, according to The Wall Street Journal.

1,000 olim (new immigrants) from France, Britain, South Africa, and various countries in South America will arrive in Israel this week to build their lives in the Jewish state. The new arrivals will come in on 23 flights. Of the 1,000 arrivals, 550 will come from France, 170 from various countries in South America, 100 from Britain, and 60 from South Africa. Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky said, “At a time when Israel is dealing with de-legitimization around the world, it is important to see that our brothers throughout the Jewish world not only support us, but even choose to...

New Black Panther Party Chairman Malik Shabazz told a Russian TV reporter that Fox News should be ashamed of themselves and that the charges of voter intimidation leveled against them by the Justice Department had no merit. Shabazz also said the Fox News audience was made up of mostly white right wingers, some independents, confederates and racist organizations and that their base are mostly dissatisfied whites who want to take back America. If anything one could accuse Shabazz of fomenting violence as he talked about a potential confrontation with the Tea Party Movement in September saying that “We’re ready to...

The top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee plans to release a report Thursday that he alleged would blow holes in White House claims about its command of the oil spill response and the amount of assets deployed. Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) report on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is titled “How the White House Public Relations Campaign on the Oil Spill is Harming the Actual Clean-up.” “The evidence on the ground suggests that the White House has been more focused on the public relations of this crisis than with providing local officials the resources they...

New Black Panthers meet, demonstrate Crowds chanted and marched, but the crowd was well behaved as the New Black Panthers demonstrated at Wise Street Park Monday night. Between 200 and 300 residents, mostly women and children from the Wise Street area, gathered at the town meeting along with Newberry police, Sheriff’s deputies, S.C. Highway Patrol troopers and S.C. Law Enforcement Division agents. Sheriff Lee Foster says law enforcement did not know about the planned meeting until they were forwarded an e-mail by The Newberry Observer Monday morning. “Anytime someone is dragged, it is a hate crime and the Sheriff needs...

Los Angeles - Dozens of people who were blinded or otherwise suffered severe eye damage when they were splashed with caustic chemicals had their sight restored with transplants of their own stem cells--a stunning success for the burgeoning cell-therapy field, Italian researchers reported Wednesday. The treatment worked completely in 82 of 107 eyes and partially in 14 others, with benefits lasting up to a decade so far. One man whose eyes were severely damaged more than 60 years ago now has near-normal vision.

There was a particularly disturbing segment during Howard Kurtz’ Reliable Sources program on CNN this weekend. Host Howard Kurtz was interviewing David Remnick, Editor-in-Chief of the New Yorker, who was “pimping” his new book “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.” Kurtz asked Remnick a question about the love affair between the mainstream press and Obama during the campaign to which he answered the media was in love with the narrative of having an African-American win the presidency and that was a legitimate approach for a journalist to have.

TRENTON, N.J. - Democrats in the New Jersey Assembly have failed to override the Republican governor's veto of a tax surcharge on millionaires. Monday's vote was strictly along party lines. All 47 Assembly Democrats voted for the override and all 33 Republicans voted against it. The measure needed seven GOP votes to advance. The one-year surcharge would have raised about $600 million by increasing income taxes nearly two percent on the state's 16,000 highest wage earners. Gov. Chris Christie vetoed the tax last month after the Legislature passed it along party lines. The governor vetoed the tax because it would...

The Obama administration issued strict rules Monday under which even some small changes to existing health care plans will make them subject to the requirements of the new health care reform law. The president promised repeatedly during the health care debate that individuals who like their current plans would be able to keep them. To meet that goal, the health care law envisioned that some plans would be “grandfathered in” under the old law — and therefore would not be required to meet some of the mandates of the new law, such as no-charge preventive care screenings.

Hamburg - A senior Iranian ayatollah called Friday for the formation of a new United Nations after the UN Security Council passed new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programmes. "This UN is not the UN of independent world states but the UN of imperialistic and hegemonic powers," Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said in the Friday prayer ceremony carried live by Iranian radio.

DALLAS, TX (KERA) - There are new rules in Dallas for handling stray dogs. Anyone who takes "possession" of a stray must try to locate the owner within 72 hours, or face a fine up to 500 dollars. Council member Vonciel Jones Hill was the only "no" vote. She said the ordinance would place a burden on anyone trying to have some kindness towards a stray. Dog owner Brad Kirby spent two years pushing for the ordinance after his dogs were stolen from his yard. He discovered who took them, but police had no legal power to make the man...

What is vodka eyeballing? A new fad among some kids in Europe may be spreading to the US. In online videos it is dubbed vodka eyeballing and now the claim is that some American teens have tried the odd way to get a buzz. It is just as it sounds - supposedly it is a shot of vodka into the eye. This bizarre new "trend" has found a home on YouTube and some say they are concerned for US kids as the claim is that it will get you a buzz quicker than taking a shot of vodka by mouth....