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In addition to covering up appointment wait time records and handing out undeserved bonus awards, misconduct within the Department of Veterans Affairs extends to everything from sexual abuse and skipping work to identity theft and drug distribution. Some examples of the department’s most egregious employee misconduct, from a report released by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.): 1. Veteran patients suffer sexual abuse by VA doctors A male neurologist at the Colmery-O’Neil VA Medical Center in Kansas violated at least five female patients by conducting unnecessary “breast examinations” and at least one unnecessary “pelvic examination.” He received a 32-month suspended sentence and...

WASHINGTON — Over the past decade, more than 1,000 veterans may have died as a result of misconduct by employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a report released Tuesday by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. “Too many men and women who bravely fought for our freedom are losing their lives, not at the hands of terrorists or enemy combatants, but from friendly fire in the form of medical malpractice and neglect by the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Coburn said in a letter addressed to taxpayers, which was attached to the report. In a press release, Coburn said the...

People don’t trust Barack Obama. They don’t think he is competent and are ready to believe he is the cause of the VA scandal whether this is true or not. In the 1970’s 80s 90s and on to 2000 the VA had to treat far fewer veterans who had sympathy invoking visible injuries. They were treating veterans of WW I, WW II Korea and Viet Nam, many of whom were suffering from age related infirmities. The WWI and II veterans mostly presented illnesses associated with old age. The Korea and Viet Nam veterans had more visible injuries, but they were...

If the ongoing scandal in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system provides evidence of anything — in addition to our ongoing failure to provide adequate care for our veterans — it’s that Washington’s response is sadly predictable. The first instinct in Washington is to look for scapegoats, or at least a sacrificial lamb. Accordingly, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has resigned. No doubt he should have, since he was apparently clueless about the ongoing problems in his department. But the keyword here is “ongoing.” The problems within the VA health system go back decades, long before the current...

If people aren't extremely concerned about what's going on in this country now, you might want to check them for a pulse. Frankly, I am having a hard time getting my mind around the rapidity of the nation's decline. I have written two books chronicling President Obama's nightmarish path of destruction, but since the second one was published, events have been happening at an even more explosive pace. Who would have ever imagined that Ronald Reagan's famous statement that "freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction" would turn out to be a gross understatement? In the past...

Since revelations of secret wait lists and veteran deaths at VA medical facilities surfaced two months ago, lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have been pressing the Department of Justice to open up a criminal investigation into the ongoing VA scandal. According to CBS News, the FBI office in Phoenix has launched that criminal probe. Phoenix was the first location where whistleblowers exposed potential criminal wrongdoing and stated veterans had died as a result of long wait times for care. As of now, we know the VA scandal includes more than 40 hospitals in dozens of states...

Vietnam veteran Gene Stoesser has been waiting nearly two months for an appointment with a Veterans Affairs doctor to schedule his heart surgery. The 71-year-old former Marine from Glendale, Arizona, went to the emergency room at the VA’s Phoenix hospital on April 28 with chest pains. He said he was told he’d need surgery soon, but has yet to get an appointment. “They sent me home to die,” Stoesser said Tuesday, surrounded by dozens of other veterans at a crisis center set up by the American Legion in downtown Phoenix in a first-of-its-kind event for the nation’s largest veterans group....

People are arguing about what the United States got out of the deal that swapped five top level terrorist leaders for one American soldier who was, at best, absent from his post in a war zone. Soldiers who served in the same unit with him call him a deserter. The key to this deal, however, is less likely to be what the United States got out of the deal than it is about what Barack Obama got out of the deal. If nothing else, it instantly got the veterans' hospitals scandals off the front pages of newspapers and pushed these...

So it comes to this: After all that has been said about Barack Obama, in the end there is very little to say. You are either willing to overlook Barack Obama’s foibles and foolishness; or you aren’t. We we're right, you were wrong. You can either admit or you can't. There is no middle ground. There is no saying for example “Well he’s kind of new in the job,” or “This is an example of one bad apple in his Cabinet,” or “The president didn’t know about it.” Going into his second term, you either knew what we had...

As one of the characters in “Anchorman” observed of its bloody brawl between news teams: Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast. Two days after President Obama broke the law to arrange an insanely reckless swap of five incredibly dangerous Taliban terrorists for captive American Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, virtually every aspect of the deal has blown up in Obama’s face, and the whole thing has soured into another five-star scandal for an Administration riddled with them. Maybe it’s the accumulated weight of Obama fatigue, or the sheer stupidity and arrogance the President displayed in...

The Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange keeps getting worse for Obama. The military for years considered him a deserter. They knew where he was and how many people guarded him but didn’t risk more American lives for a deserter. Six had already died in the original search for Bergdahl. The news on Bergdahl hasn’t gotten any better in the last 24 hours. Not only is it apparent that he was a deserter, he may also have been a Taliban collaborator. It makes you wonder whether the six soldiers killed looking for Bergdahl died because he provided the Taliban with intelligence. What...

link only: http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/letters/2014/05/26/bernie-sanders-blocked-va-accountability-act/9614547/

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) says that over 4 million Florida residents will die if Medicaid is not expanded there. “In fact, we’ve got over 4 million people that need medical expansion of health care that we are sending back, that’s going to die because they’re not getting the quality health care that they need,” Brown said during Wednesday night’s Veteran’s Affairs Committee hearing. Brown was being critical of Gov. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) move to sue the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs for not allowing state hospital officials to inspect federal medical care facilities. …

This was not in the Barack Obama playbook. The resignation of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki on Friday did not follow the usual arc of a crisis in the Obama administration. Obama prefers to not get sucked into a drama and cede in the heat of the moment. He’d rather send in fixers and have the bloodletting occur in due course. Shinseki, however, tendered his resignation at the height of a political clamor for his departure and as revelations of systemic delays in veterans’ patient care mounted daily. Shinseki left even before the review Obama had ordered of the department’s...

The U.S. senator from Illinois said as commander-in-chief he would “keep you safe. I will not hesitate to strike against those who would do us harm.” He said the U.S. military should also be treated properly “when they come home. No more homeless veterans, begging for disability payments, no more waiting in line at the VA [Veterans Administration]. “It also means using our military wisely. The war in Iraq was unwise. That is why I opposed it in 2002 and that is why I will bring it to an end in 2009. It is time to bring our troops home,”...

Trying to get details

On the floor of the House Wednesday, the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs featured a dialogue between Chairman Jeff Miller and Dr. Thomas Lynch, assistant deputy undersecretary for health for clinical operations at the Veterans Health Administration. Another shocking piece of information about VA hospitals was revealed during that exchange. Miller revealed he had received an email from an employee at the Los Angeles VA Medical Center in which the employee raised concerns over the status of patient wait times and the possible manipulation of records. The director of the facility responded to colleagues via email and said that the...

Seven vulnerable Democrats are now calling for Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki’s resignation after a preliminary Inspector General’s report confirmed allegations of a scandal in the agency.

The White House offered tepid support on Thursday for embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, skirting questions on whether he’ll soon be fired. White House press secretary Jay Carney repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether Shinseki retained the confidence of the president. Carney said the president believed Shinseki had “performed overall well” and “put his heart and soul” into providing care for veterans. But he also emphasized that the president was waiting to see the results of an internal investigation led by White House deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors. “When it comes to the current situation, the inquiries and...

Navy veteran Ken Senft turned to the Department of Veterans Affairs for medical care in 2011 after his private insurance grew too costly. It could have been a fatal mistake, he now says. A few years ago, the 65-year-old had a lesion on his head. He went to a VA clinic near his home outside Phoenix, but he said the doctor told him it could be two years before he might get an appointment with a dermatologist.So he paid out of pocket to see a private physician. Turns out, he had cancer. […] A probe of operations at the Phoenix...