Free Republic

President Obama believed that opposition to his healthcare reform law would fade after the 2010 election, according to former Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). Obama courted Snowe’s support in an attempt to make the bill bipartisan. He assured her GOP opposition to the law would be short-lived, she said. “He thought the opposition to it would lessen after the [2010] election. I said, ‘It’s just the beginning.’ I said, ‘It’s going to grow because I can tell you it’s not going to go away and it’s going to get worse,’” Snowe said in a radio interview moderated by Julie Mason, host...

Employers are increasingly recognizing they may be able to avoid certain penalties under the federal health law by offering very limited plans that can lack key benefits such as hospital coverage. Benefits advisers and insurance brokers—bucking a commonly held expectation that the law would broadly enrich benefits—are pitching these low-benefit plans around the country. They cover minimal requirements such as preventive services, but often little more. Some of the plans wouldn't cover surgery, X-rays or prenatal care at all. Others will be paired with limited packages to cover additional services, for instance, $100 a day for a hospital visit. Federal...

Official campaign ad is consistent with ageist hate speech hosted at My.Barackobama.comThis official advertisement, "Paid for by Obama for America" and approved by Barack Obama, continues his campaign's proud tradition of mocking and ridiculing senior citizens, and indeed people over 50. The ad opens with a mirror ball from a disco under the caption 1982, and then shows a clumsy portable phone and a Rubik's cube. Then it derides McCain for not knowing how to use a computer or send E-mail. It says, "Things have changed since then, but McCain hasn't." This ad was approved by Barack Obama, and it...

Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government’s large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question “Will Barack Obama’s scandals derail his second-term agenda?” was a question: What agenda? The scandals are interlocking and overlapping in ways that drain his authority. Everything he advocates requires Americans to lavish on government something his administration, and big government generally, undermines – trust. [emphasis added] Liberalism’s agenda has been...

Wh should we thank god for Obamcare?

<p>CEOs of large organizations all face the same problem – driving their agendas in organizations too diverse and geographically dispersed to manage directly.</p> <p>They hire competent managers for their units, set goals and establish clear metrics for evaluating performance. As in politics, competition in business is tough, and CEOs must set ethical boundaries for their managers’ conduct.</p>

(Read the whole article) Things will probably have to get a whole lot worse before a critical mass of voters choose the path of despair that the National Journal warns against: the point where they exit the game. The difficulty is that the restraint does not so far seem symmetric. What is perhaps most disturbing is the sheer effrontery of the administration. They seem unabashed and oblivious to the damage they are causing. They are telling lies that nobody can be expected to believe, almost as if the stranger hiding under the marital bed explains that he’s looking for change...

New York City, N.Y., May 18, 2013 / 06:02 am (CNA).- Bill Donohue of the Catholic League said he was “stunned” that the IRS investigated his organization in 2008, charging that the Democrat-leaning group Catholics United filed the complaint and used it to argue that CNN should drop him as a commentator. “This was a fishing expedition meant to intimidate me and create a chilling effect on my freedom of speech,” Donohue said. “I still couldn’t believe that a couple of weeks after the election, I was being asked to spend my entire Thanksgiving trying to defend the Catholic League...

As I read it, Obungacare is en route to collapse from its own dead weight. They're basically talking about illegals actually buying those policies and the typical American family spending 20,000 usd which doesn't exist in the world, i.e. they're talking about mandating a physical impossibility. The first and best story about anybody mandating something which was physically impossible involved King Canute. Unlike Obunga, Canute's motivation was entirely decent and honorable, i.e. to demonstrate to the sycophants and idiots of his own time the realities of the universe and the limitations which those realities placed on ALL men, including kings...

Following the national outrage over Kermit Gosnell and his late-term abortions that were essentially infanticide, a pro-life Republican member of Congress is pushing legislation that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy nationwide. Congressman Trent Franks informed LifeNews today that he will advance legislation to provide protection nationwide for unborn children who have the capacity to experience pain while being aborted, a capacity defined in the bill as existing by 20 weeks fetal age. Franks is the prime sponsor of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The current version of the bill, which garnered a majority vote in the...

Higher-than-expected premiums, combined with the scandal-ridden IRS, are putting a shadow over Obamacare, with House Republicans vowing to keep up the fight against President Barack Obama's key agenda item. On Thursday, the House voted once again to repeal Obamacare. This time around, two Democrats, Reps. Jim Matheson (Utah) and Mike McIntyre (N.C.)., sided with Republicans on the vote. All GOP members voted to repeal the health care issue. In Saturday's weekly GOP address, Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris vowed his party will keep up the fight, discussing a report by the House Energy and Commerce Committee that detailed how insurance...

A Northwestern University student was rejected for a “diversity and inclusion post” in student government because he is a white, heterosexual male, resulting in a sharp rebuke from the university’s student newspaper. Northwestern University’s Associated Student Government rejected the nomination of Stephen Piotrkowski for associate vice president of diversity and inclusion last week. The student-run committee “oversees diversity initiatives that stem from the undergraduate student body.” …

President Obama’s most recent budget request would reduce borrowing by $1.1 trillion over the next decade compared with current law -- almost entirely through higher taxes on the rich, large estates and smokers, congressional budget analysts said Friday. In addition to raising nearly $1 trillion in new taxes, the president’s blueprint would also cut spending modestly, according to the analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. However, those savings include money the government never intended to spend anyway, such as a contingency fund for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and nearly $300 billion in unneeded disaster relief. Obama also...

House Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety,

A Philadelphia detective who participated in a press conference today following the sentencing of abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell made a startling statement, saying more babies Gosnell killed may still be at his clinic. As most people who have followed the case know, officials discovered and obtained 45 babies from Gosnell’s clinic — many of whom had their bodies stored in a freezer. But did authorities obtain all of the bodies of the babies Gosnell killed and stored in his House of Horrors? As local reporter J.D. Mullane reported today on Twitter, maybe not. LifeNews featured photos from the Gosnell House...

The Lt. Governor of Texas is today demanding an investigation of an abortion practitioner who is considered the second Kermit Gosnell. A new video released yesterday has three former abortion clinic employees of abortion practitioner Douglas Karpen exposing horrific practices that took place at his abortion clinic. The three informants, Deborah Edge, Gigi Aguliar, and Krystal Rodriguez, have come forward to tell of their horrific experiences working for him at one of three of his Texas abortion clinics, the Aaron Women’s Clinic in Houston. A fourth informant has co-operated with Operation Rescue, filing an affidavit about her experiences, but remains...

What happens when two lesbians marry and try to raise a healthy boy? Sometimes, I’m sure, the child finds a male role model somewhere, and he turns out psychologically sound. Sometimes, though, that little boy is so confused and unaffirmed, so shamed by his lack of resemblance to either parent that he decides he is really a girl like both of his parents, that he wants to take hormones to someday grow breasts, and have doctors cut his penis off and carve him out a vagina. And sometimes those lesbian parents – instead of admitting that the child they acquired...

While the White House claims its stimulus package “supported as many as 3.5 million jobs,” none were yielded from a $152,000 project to ready lesbians for “adoptive parenthood.” The $833 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), commonly known as the stimulus, awarded the tustees of Clark University, in Worcester, Mass., $152,000 to interview roughly 50 lesbian couples about their adoption experiences. “The goal of this project is to investigate the unique strengths and potential challenges of lesbian couples across the transition to adoptive parenthood,” the grant states. “Given that parental mental health has implications for child development, and the...

Don't tell me the left doesn't survive primarily on luck. On Friday, April 12, the legacy media was on the ropes. A spectacular uproar, of a type never before seen, had erupted over media refusal to cover the trial of Kermit Gosnell, the serial killer lucky enough to own an abortion mill. The story they were attempting to bury involved his trial for a homicide by medical malpractice (one of several such), the murder of four healthy infants (out of hundreds of similar killings), the abuse of human remains, and assorted associated felonies. Gosnell had been enabled by official malfeasance...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let me start digging into this IRS Stack that I have here. UK Daily Mail: "When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and college students about conservative political philosophy, the agency responded with a list of 95 questions in 31 parts, including an ultimatum for a list of everyone the group had trained, or planned to train. "'Provide details regarding all training you have provided or will provide,' the IRS demanded. 'Indicate who has received or will receive the training and submit copies of the training...

The Internal Revenue Service is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that more than 60 million personal medical records were improperly accessed, and stolen, by agents from the embattled agency. It’s just one more reason, as I wrote yesterday, to re-think the agency’s role under Obamacare. Inevitably, Obamacare confers the IRS with broad access to information about our health insurance, as well as direct electronic linkages into a new government super computer that will also store a lot of bottom line information about our individual healthcare choices. It’s a recipe for mischief by an agency that’s proving that it can’t...

Give me a break! Repeal this criminal monstrosity! NOW!! Obviously, the government is waaaay too big to control. Cut it back. Drastically (per the U.S, Constitution)!!

he Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges. According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data. "This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power...

The last scandal dampening rods just failed, and the reactor core at the Internal Revenue service may be about to blow. From Healthcare IT News: The Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March...

Abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell today received his third consecutive life prison term, this one for the baby he killed in an abortion-infanticide he said was so big it could “walk to the bus.” Gosnell was convicted this week of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies born alive after an abortion process that involved jabbing them in the neck with scissors. On Tuesday, Gosnell gave up his right to appeal the verdict that found him guilty on three of the four first-degree murder charges he faced. As a result, prosecutors agreed to two life terms in prison and Gosnell...

The resistance to Obamacare is writing a new chapter in U.S. history. It may well become the most unpopular law since Prohibition became an Amendment to the Constitution in 1919. By 1933, another Amendment repealed it. Obamacare passed by a straight Democratic party vote on Christmas Eve in 2009. No Republican voted for it and, as one poll recently revealed, a third of Americans are still unaware it is the law of the land. A divided Supreme Court gave it a pass, calling it a tax, but it is a profoundly unconstitutional law insofar as the federal government may not...

Simple Tool Stratifies Mortality Risk in Type 2 Diabetes Marlene Busko May 13, 2013  Researchers have created an online mortality-risk calculator for patients with type 2 diabetes, which stratifies patients into low, medium, or high risk of dying from any cause within 2 years. By plugging in values for 9 readily available patient characteristics — age, body mass index (BMI), diastolic blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio, antihypertensive treatment, and insulin therapy — a physician can quickly determine whether a patient has a high risk for death. "The novelty and the importance of this study is that we provide...

When open enrollment begins in October under the new federal health care law, nearly 260,000 immigrants in Illinois will be eligible to apply for government-subsidized insurance, according to a study released Thursday. However, many of those now uninsured people are either unaware of the Affordable Care Act or are afraid to seek insurance because they have family members who are in the country illegally, the report by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights found. Those families will be targeted in a monthslong campaign to raise awareness of the new law as it begins to affect millions of uninsured...

The White House found a way to celebrate Mother’s Day early, by sending out a series of tweets today promoting Obamacare. The official White House Twitter account specifically touting the HHS abortion mandate that compels religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions under their employee health care plans. The mandate is so egregious it has drawn more than 100 lawsuits from religious groups, business, school and others who are not allowed to opt out under the narrow provisions. Last week, in a huge victory for pro-life advocates taking on the controversial HHS mandate, the...

Democratic senator Max Baucus is retiring because he is “fed up” with the Affordable Care Act, according to his Republican colleague Chuck Grassley. Speaking at Friday night’s Lincoln Day dinner in Iowa, Grassley told the audience the Montana senator is leaving office ”because he’s so fed up with the possibility of the implementation of Obamacare being a train wreck.” Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, played a key role in writing the 2010 law. Grassley said that dissatisfaction with the health-care bill exists across party lines, describing a “bipartisan coalition in Washington” that considers the implementation of the...

When Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect in 2014, all Americans who file income tax returns must complete an additional IRS tax form. The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.

A judge has ruled against the Obama administration's request for a stay of the decision allowing the morning-after pill to be made available to women of all ages without a prescription. U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman also lashed out at the administration for appealing his ruling, calling it a "frivolous" move meant to delay its implementation. Korman's ruling had been slated to take effect today. But Korman did allow the administration some time to ask an appeals court for a stay before the ruling goes into effect.

I wrote HERE about Jesuit-run Boston College’s plan to have anti-Catholic catholic, pro-abortion Prime Minister of Ireland Enda Kenny speak at commencement and then confer on him an honor.Outrageous. Shades of Notre Shame.Now I read at the site of the Cardinal Newman Society (see their feed on the side bar) that the local Archbishop, Sean Card. O’Malley, will boycott the event. Cardinal Sean O’Malley Will Boycott Boston College CommencementArchdiocese of Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley said today that he plans to boycott Boston College’s commencement ceremony May 20 because it will feature Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny as its commencement speaker....

Obama's health secretary seeks donations from companies for healthcare law Photo 12:14pm EDT By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is asking companies for financial donations to help implement President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul, months before it is due to take effect. In telephone calls that began around March 23, officials say, Obama's top healthcare adviser has been seeking assistance from companies in the healthcare field and other industries as well as from healthcare providers, patient advocacy groups, churches and other charitable organizations. "The secretary has been working with a full range of stakeholders...

The annual deficit has fallen 32% over the first seven months of this fiscal year compared with same period last year, according to Congressional Budget Office figures released Tuesday. A major reason: A big jump in tax revenue. Tax collections rose by $220 billion -- or 16% -- between the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1 through April 30. Individual and payroll taxes accounted for $184 billion of that increase. The tax haul rose sharply primarily because wages and salaries were higher, the payroll tax cut of the past two years expired on Jan. 1 and the fiscal...

Elizabeth Colbert Busch seeks to distance herself from national Democrats “It’s cutting into Medicare benefits and it’s having companies lay off their employees because they are worried about the cost of it,” she said at a debate. Colbert Busch, who is running in a special election against former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford for South Carolina's 1st congressional district, noted while there are some good parts of the health care law, she was troubled by it's cost and the burden it could put on employers. "Obamacare is extremely problematic, it is expensive, it is a $500 billion cost than we...

Chirlane McCray’s 1979 Essence essay “I Am a Lesbian,” broke boundaries, marking the first time a Black gay woman shared her sexuality openly. RELATED: Chirlane McCray Controversy Proves It’s Time To Get Out Of People’s Bedrooms Today, McCray is married to N.Y.C. Public Advocate and Mayoral Candidate Bill de Blasio (pictured right), sharing with Essence how she transitioned into a “traditional marriage.” According to McCray, her shift to a heterosexual union was natural, happening “by putting aside the assumptions I had about the form and package my love would come in. By letting myself be as free as I felt...

Elizabeth SmartIn 2002, the kidnapping of 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart captured the nation’s attention. Rescued nine months later, Smart had been held prisoner and raped by Brian David Mitchell, who is currently serving a richly-deserved life sentence. Today, Smart is a 25-year-old author, advocate for child-protection laws, and missing persons commentator for ABC News. Last Wednesday, Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins University forum on human trafficking. She discussed her mindset while in captivity, the following excerpt of which has been picked up by numerous liberal commentators: I remember in school one time, I had a teacher who was talking about,...

Archdiocese of Boston's Cardinal Sean O'Malley said today that he plans to boycott Boston College's commencement ceremony May 20 because it will feature Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny as its commencement speaker. The College is scheduled to award Kenny an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Kenny supports loosening the country's legislation against abortion. “Since the university has not withdrawn the invitation and because the Taoiseach (prime minister) has not seen fit to decline, I shall not attend the graduation,’’ O’Malley said in a statement released this afternoon. “It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the...

Caught between nervous Democrats and emboldened Republicans, President Barack Obama on Friday stepped up the sales pitch on his health care overhaul as the final elements of his top domestic achievement go into effect. With his legacy and the law’s success at stake, Obama said: “The law is here to stay.” Behind the scenes, the White House readied a campaign-style effort to get healthy young people to sign up for the insurance “exchanges” in order to keep premium costs from skyrocketing. On Capitol Hill, House Republicans are planning yet another vote to try to try to repeal the law. …...

Ezekiel Emanuel, a noted oncologist, has helped advise the Obama administration in its effort to create an economic system larger than France’s economy to distribute health care services to over 300 million people. Together, those facts encapsulate the essence of our federal government: hopelessly overextended, devoid of caution and chock full of hubris. If that isn’t succinct enough to signal the coming disaster that will be Obamacare, then Emanuel’s recent column in the Wall Street Journal should tip the balance. Coincidentally, the column was about me, or, more appropriately, about a class of the peasantry to which Doctor Emanuel has...

President Obama continues to hold a substantial advantage over congressional Republicans in public regard. Obama’s job approval is back in positive territory at 51%, after slipping to 47% in March. By comparison, just 22% approve of the job Republican leaders in Congress are doing, among the lowest approval rating for congressional leaders from either party in 20 years. Furthermore, a record-high 80% say Obama and Republican leaders are not working together to address important issues facing the country, and by nearly two-to-one (42%-22%) more blame Republican leaders than Obama for the gridlock. Despite GOP leaders’ poor job ratings, the Republican...

One of the most politically intense fights over the Affordable Care Act was over the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, infamously dubbed a "death panel" by Republicans during the 2010 elections. On Thursday, Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled that they would keep working to keep opposition alive by doing everything they can to impede the board's implementation. The two leaders wrote a letter to President Barack Obama, notifying him that they would not be submitting any recommendations to the panel because of their opposition to it and to the law in...

In a huge victory for pro-life advocates taking on the controversial HHS mandate, the Obama administration is giving up its effort to force a Bible publisher to obey it. The mandate has generated massive opposition from pro-life groups because it forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties. The Obama administration opposed an order a judge gave temporarily stopping enforcement, arguing that Tyndale House Publishers isn’t religious enough for an exemption from the mandate, a component of ObamaCare that forces employers, regardless of their...

I don't write about the ramblings of Michael Sean Winters at the National Catholic Reporter too often because he, they, are terribly boring. Terribly. But this paragraph really caught my eye because it is indicative of the mental and moral backflips that these people will do to justify their support of those who support the culture of death. Mr. Winters has figured out why Mr. Obama is so virulently anti-life, why he has supported infanticide, why he lied and entrenched abortion and contraception as government handouts, why he will make Christians support abortion. See all these things that Obama supports...

Former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint argued on Sunday that implementing immigration reform as proposed by the “Gang of Eight” would “cost Americans trillions of dollars.” “The study you’ll see from Heritage this week presents a staggering cost of another amnesty in our country and the detrimental effects long term that that will have,” Mr. DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation, said on ABC’s “This Week.”

I can say with great confidence that government bureaucrats are overpaid compared to people in the productive sector of the economy. Why am I sure that this is true, particularly when the so-called Federal Salary Council claims bureaucrats are underpaid? For the simple reason that the “job opening and labor turnover� data from the Department of Labor is the best way to measure whether a group of workers is overpaid or underpaid. And you probably won’t be surprised to learn from this data that bureaucrats at the federal, state, and local level are only about 1/3rd as likely to quit...

The percentage of Americans that are working for themselves has never been lower in the history of the United States. Once upon a time, the United States was a paradise for entrepreneurs and small businesses, but now the control freak bureaucrats that dominate our society have created a system that absolutely eviscerates them. This is very unfortunate, because by murdering small business, the bureaucrats are destroying the primary engine of job growth in this country. One of the big reasons why there are not enough jobs in America today is because small business creation is way down. As I mentioned...

If you think that the latest employment numbers are good news, you might want to look again. In April 2013, 58.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. But three years ago, in April 2010, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Well, you may argue, that is not much of a difference. And that is precisely my point. The percentage of Americans that have a job fell like a rock during the last recession. It dropped from about 63 percent all the way down to below 59 percent, and it has stayed below 59...

HealthCare Partners, one of the original pioneer ACOs, appears to have been built on a house of cards. Charges of illegal operations, providing unlawful hospital networks, and repeated denials of care at the patient level are just some of the issues. HealthCare Partners, hand picked by the Obama Administration, allegedly has been operating in California for one decade without the required state license, according to charges filed last September in a class action lawsuit by lead plaintiff Juan Carlos Jandres (lawsuit pdf here). Charges include shoddy, substandard care to more than 675,000 patients in Southern California, including a disproportionate number...