Florida's Crist takes heat for more flip flops in Dem run for governor

Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist is taking heat for his call to lift the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba -- the latest episode in which Democrats and Republicans have attacked him for flip-flopping on everything from policy to his choice of political party.

Crist, now a Democrat, was squeezed from both sides earlier this week after saying he was in favor of lifting the 52-year-old embargo on communist Cuba, calling it an obviously “failed” policy that needs revamping.
The 57-year-old Crist took to social media to better explain himself after his remarks on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
“After more than 50 years of hoping the embargo would bring freedom to Cuba, it’s time to admit that it has failed,” he posting on his Facebook account. “We should replace it with a policy that facilitates more trade and more exchange of ideas and values, while simultaneously keeping the pressure on the regime for their human rights violations.”
However, the flood gates had already opened.
“It is not the time to unilaterally go in and lift the embargo until we see some iron-clad guarantees that freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of the assembly is being allowed inside Cuba by the police state that is still run by the Castro brothers,” said Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.
The Florida Republican Party said Crist’s position was “so far out the mainstream” that he’s gone to the left of Nelson, who voted last year with President Obama 100 percent of the time.
Among the first Washington Republicans to attack was Florida’s junior Sen. Marco Rubio.
“It’s just the latest in a series of flip-flops that he’s undertaken on public policy,” Rubio, who parents immigrated from Cuba in 1956, told The Miami Herald on Monday. “My interests in Cuba are about the freedom and liberty of the Cuban people. I wish he’d make that a priority.”
Florida Reps. Illena Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart were among the other Republicans to hammer Crist.
While serving as Florida governor from 2007 to 2011, Crist, then a Republican, signed into law a bill that forced travel agencies to post a $250,000 bond to book flights to Cuba. A federal court eventually struck down the law.
And in 2010, while Crist was running as an Independent for U.S. Senate seat in Florida, he agreed with other candidates that the embargo should remain.
“Democrats have to be wondering, will [Crist] use us to be something else next year," Florida Senate President Don Gaetz, a Republican, recently told Reuters.
Though Crist’s shift might appear like a political misstep, it could be an astute political move.

The older generations of Cuban exiles in Florida vote overwhelmingly Republican. But Crist could be trying to win votes from their children and grand-children, who lean Republican but are more open to ending the embargo, according to 2012 general election data.  

President Obama eased travel restrictions Cuba in January 2009 but is opposed to lifting the embargo.
The conservative-leaning magazine The National Review compiled a list several years ago of Crist’s apparent flip-flops including him suggesting that as a  senator he would have voted for ObamaCare, then saying within hours the legislation was too big and expensive.
Crist also denounced offshore drilling when running for governor in 2006, then embraced the “drill baby, drill” mantra when the possibility arose that he might be 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s running mate, according to the magazine.

Did CIA official suppress Benghazi narrative? Accounts raise new questions

New information about the intelligence available in the immediate aftermath of the Benghazi attack raises questions about whether the former No. 2 at the CIA downplayed or dismissed reporting from his own people in Libya that it was a coordinated attack and not an out-of-control protest over an anti-Islam video.
Then-Deputy Director Mike Morell, whose own agency lost two employees at Benghazi, former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, was heavily involved in editing the administration’s internal narrative on what happened – known as the “talking points” – which served as the basis for then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s controversial claims about a protest on the Sunday talk shows after the attack.
According to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi, on Sept. 15, four days after the attack and one day before Rice’s appearance, the CIA's most senior operative on the ground in Libya emailed Morell and others at the agency that the attack was "not/not an escalation of protests."
Fox News has confirmed that three days earlier, the CIA Chief of Station and the agency's team in Libya also sent situation reports, known as sitreps, to Washington.The raw intelligence reporting described a coordinated attack by extremists, not an out-of-control protest.
"In a crisis like Benghazi, you would expect it's going directly to the seventh floor," Sam Faddis, who recently retired from the CIA and writes extensively about the intelligence community, said. The “seventh floor” refers to CIA leadership – at the time, Director David Petraeus and his second-in-command Morell, among others. "In a situation like this, you're going to be looking at it immediately ... your aides are going to be asked to flag it to your attention the second that it comes in and bring it to your desk -- right in front of you," he said.
Further, Fox News has learned new details about a secure video teleconference some 72 hours after the attack.Two sources familiar with the call say it included Morell, the CIA chief of station and Benghazi survivors who were evacuated to Germany -- as well as Greg Hicks, the late Ambassador Chris Stevens' deputy.
Fox News is told that after an update from personnel on the ground, Washington's singular focus on the video left participants in Libya baffled, angry and dismayed that Morell seemed to dismiss their on-the-ground reporting.
On Sept. 12, based on the intelligence disseminated to senior lawmakers, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., also told Fox News that Benghazi was a “coordinated, military style commando-type” attack.
In a brief statement to Fox News, Morell did not address the situation reports. Separately, Bill Harlow, who is working with Morell on a book, said there was early intelligence reporting from the CIA operation in Libya of a protest before the assault.
This claim conflicts with the assessment of Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which recently released a bipartisan report concluding the Benghazi attack was preventable.
Burr said investigators never found credible reporting linking the attack to a demonstration spawned by an anti-Islam video.
"We've done a forensic on that event. We've never found a reference to demonstrations from individuals who were on the ground -- whether it's the chief of station in Tripoli, whether it's the diplomatic security, or the GRS (Global Response Staff) that went ... from day one, all referrals were an attack that was underway that continued well into the night and to the (CIA) annex."
Yet on Sept. 14 -- when the bodies of Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, as well as Woods and Doherty, were flown to Andrews Air Force base – then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued to talk about the video.
"We've seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men,"Clinton told the somber gathering."We've seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing do to with."
The video was linked to protests elsewhere in the region. But on Sept. 15, in what appears to be a direct response to the administration's public statements about the cause of the attack, the CIA's chief of station sent the email to Morell saying protests were not involved in Benghazi.
Faddis said it was unusual for the chief of station to directly e-mail the deputy director, but it appeared to be an effort to cut through the bureaucracy, to be sure nothing was getting lost in translation. And by taking the message outside standard intelligence channels, it may have been an effort by the chief of station to allow Morell and others to save face.
"The way the agency works, he's (chief of station), been running 24 hour a day to nail every fact,” he said, “… and now he is reaching out four days into this directly to the most senior levels of his organization, saying again with the big red crayon as clearly as he can, ‘there were no protests, I am trying to do my job and tell you at the most senior level don't go forward with anything that says something we can't factually support’."
Documents released by the administration last May show that by Sept. 15, Morell was engaged on the talking points with the State Department and White House.The bipartisan Senate report shows that on the same day, Morell cut half the text including prior intelligence warnings to the State Department.The word "Islamic" was dropped, but "demonstrations" stayed in.
Harlow said Morell was not aware Rice – or any administration official – was going to use the talking points, adding Morell believed they were being prepared for lawmakers. After the Sept. 15 e-mail, Harlow said Morell asked the chief of station to provide more information, adding that on Sept. 16, the chief of station's response was forwarded to the agency analysts.
"Morell immediately passed that to the analysts who produced the original analysis and asked for their reaction,"Harlow explained. "They responded that they had contradictory information and stuck with their judgment. It wasn't until several days later that the CIA was able to get their hands on the CCTV video (Sept. 18) -- when they did, it was clear there were no demonstrations and the analysts changed their reporting."
This emphasis on the analysts who are thousands of miles from the scene of the attack versus the agency personnel on the ground in Libya does not feel right, according to Faddis and other former intelligence officials contacted by Fox News.
"When I hear that explanation, the words that come to mind are disingenuous and frankly incomprehensible," Faddis said. "This strikes me as -- what you're doing is you're looking for an excuse for not paying attention to what (the chief of station) said."
Since retiring from the CIA last year, Morell has taken on high-profile assignments for the administration, including the NSA review panel, which formulated recommendations for President Obama. In addition to the book deal, he is now a TV commentator on national security issues for CBS News and has taken a position for Beacon Global Strategies, which was founded by Philippe Reines.The New York Times magazine recently described Reines as Clinton's "principal gatekeeper."
In a series of questions via e-mail, Fox News asked Morell for his recollection of the early intelligence, the video teleconference and whether he notified the administration at any point that its public statements were in direct conflict with the reporting of U.S. personnel on the ground in Libya.
While not disputing he was aware of the situation reports and participated in the video teleconference, Morell said: "I stand behind what I have said to you and testified to Congress about the talking point issue. Neither the Agency, the analysts, nor I cooked the books in any way."
While Morell has a standing invitation to speak with Fox News on camera, in his statement he said he does "not intend to get into an extended dialogue with you on the subject nor do I intend to grant you an interview on this matter."
While the bipartisan Senate report speculated that protests elsewhere over the anti-Islam video may have played a role in inspiring the attack, the report concludes the intelligence analysts stayed with the protest explanation for too long.“Analysts inaccurately referred to the presence of a protest at the Mission facility before the attack based on open source information and limited intelligence, but without sufficient intelligence or eyewitness statements to corroborate that assertion. The IC (Intelligence Community) took too long to correct these erroneous reports, which caused confusion and influenced the public statements of policymakers."
In an addendum to the bipartisan Senate report, six Republicans on the committee concluded of the talking points: “Rather than simply provide Congress with the best intelligence and on the ground assessments, the administration chose to try to frame the story in a way that minimized any connection to terrorism.”

When Will the Backlash Occur?

Americans watching the Affordable Care Act’s implementation are witnessing a government policy debacle that is as large as any in memory. It is hard to imagine a more vivid demonstration of the ruinous consequences of government stepping into a market in which it doesn’t belong. And, sadly, what we are seeing now is only the beginning of the policy’s failure. 
In its most updated assessment of the ACA, the government’s own Congressional Budget Office caught the Democrats flat-footed by projecting that the law is severely flawed on a number of fronts, matching in many ways what the ACA opponents clearly and repeatedly warned about. Aside from all of its other negative impacts, millions of jobs will be lost, specifically due to this law.

The Obama administration and its mouthpieces somehow keep spinning this awful news into something positive.

Instead of being part of the remarkably productive American workforce, a labor force that has served as the model for the free world, millions of American families will become newly dependent on government subsidies and will exit from the workforce.
Yet, as we should have expected, the Obama administration and its mouthpieces somehow keep spinning this awful news into something positive. White House economist Jason Furman said it gives people new freedom, liberating them from full-time jobs with their long working hours to spend more time with their families. Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney insisted that people won’t be “trapped” in their jobs. And the New York Times editorial board joined in, claiming that reducing the number of full-time workers by 2.5 million over the next decade “is mostly a good thing, a liberating result of the law.” 
Eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984 where a new word blackwhite meant “a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this … the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary,” supporters of ObamaCare seem to have swallowed the president’s narrative about the ACA, illogical and distorted, indeed destructive to the very foundation of American society, as it is.
All that, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in new taxes and a dramatic take-over of authority over health care by the government. And despite spending over 2 trillion dollars of hard earned taxpayer money on subsidies, government insurance, and other costs, the law still leaves 31 million non-elderly adults uninsured. Yes, after an entire decade under this law, the most heralded “achievement” of ObamaCare, indeed the administration’s main justification for the law, getting people insured, is projected to be a failure by the CBO.
It couldn’t be a legitimate policy mistake, could it?
Only one conclusion about this administration seems reasonable at this point. President Obama and his administration must be convinced that the American public will remain “loyal soldiers” to his vision of liberalism, no matter what their cost. The Obama administration must cynically believe that Americans will continue to show a shocking naïveté and a near total lack of critical thinking about the Affordable Care Act.
Given that the public has been fed a wholly deceptive narrative on America’s health system - the gross misinformation and distortions directly contradicting the facts about the high quality and world-leading access in our health care system in the world’s leading scientific and medical journals - perhaps this should not be a surprise. And given that the ACA is completely antithetical to the best interests of young Americans yet they still support the law, perhaps the president can still be comfortable in assuming that he will receive their important support, regardless of the facts.
How long can the Obama supporters remain loyal to this catastrophe of a law? Common sense and independent thought are fundamental to the American psyche, so when the facts become clear, Americans typically see the truth. January 2014 polling from Gallup shows a startling increase in the percentage of Americans who now view health care as the nation’s most important problem, quadrupling from only 4 percent to 16 percent in just one year. And the most dramatic uptick is specifically among the very groups who were critical in reelecting this president. Almost five times as many women now point to health care as the top US problem compared to only 12 months ago, roughly 50 percent more than the percentage of men who do so. Among age groups, the percentage of those voters under 35 specifying health care as the biggest problem facing the country has skyrocketed by more than six-fold from an almost unnoticeable two percent in January of 2013 to 13 percent now, an increase far steeper than any other age group. Even the president's most ardent, most loyal supporters are rejecting ObamaCare, now that they have finally understood its impact.
So now, we are left wondering … when will the backlash occur? I have a feeling that it is already underway.
Scott W. Atlas, MD is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author of "In Excellent Health: Setting the Record Straight on America’s Health Care" (Hoover Press, 2011).

ObamaCare patients with serious pre-existing diseases could face expensive drug costs

People with serious pre-existing diseases, precisely those the president aimed to help with ObamaCare, could find themselves paying for expensive drug treatments with no help from the health care exchanges.
Those with expensive diseases such as lupus or multiple sclerosis face something called a "closed drug formulary."

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Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute explains,"if the medicine that you need isn't on that list, it's not covered at all. You have to pay completely out of pocket to get that medicine, and the money you spend doesn't count against your deductible, and it doesn't count against your out of pocket limits, so you're basically on your own."
The plan had claimed it would rescue those with serious pre-existing conditions.
"So it could be that a MS patient could be expected to pay $62,000 just for one medication," says Dr. Daniel Kantor, who treats MS patients and others with neurological conditions near Jacksonville, Florida. "That’s a possiblity under the new ObamaCare going on right now."
In fact, one conservative group, Americans for Prosperity, is running an ad on exactly this subject, featuring a woman with lupus, an auto-immune disease.
She starts by saying, "I voted for Barack Obama for president. I thought ObamaCare was going to be a good thing."
But Emilie Lamb says she later got a letter saying her insurance was canceled because of ObamaCare, pushing her premiums from $52 to $373 a month.
"I'm having to work a second job, to pay for ObamaCare,” she adds. “For somebody with lupus, that's not an easy thing. If I can't afford to continue to pay for ObamaCare, I don't get my medicine. I don't get to see my doctors."
One of the problems is that drugs for some diseases such as MS do not have generic versions. So without cheaper alternatives and no help from ObamaCare, patients could face huge personal out-of-pocket bills, forcing some to skimp on their medications.
Kantor worries that "this may drive more patients" to not buy their medicines, "which we know is dangerous," he says. "We know MS can be a bad disease when you’re not treating it. When you’re treating it, for most people they handle it pretty well, but we know when you don’t treat (it), it’s the kind of disease where people end up in wheel chairs potentially."
In the commercial market, of course, drugs not on a preferred list would also be more expensive, but with a major difference, according to Gottlieb.
"You go outside that list, you have to pay out of pocket for it, but you do get some co-insurance, meaning the plans will pay some of the cost of that."
Some say ObamaCare hoped to do better on that problem but ran out of time. Matthew Eyles of Avalare Health, a consulting firm, says although officials wanted "to be able to make sure that all the systems were operational in 2014, they realized that they needed to give an extra year to get those systems changes in place."
Officials intend to try again next year.
Additional benefits cost more, though, meaning premiums would have to rise, or the networks of providers would shrink even further.

Medical Center won't let patients watch Fox News

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  Oct.2, 2013: A man looks over the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) signup page on the HealthCare.gov website in New York in this photo illustration. (Reuters)

I imagine the only thing worse than being forced to watch CNN inside an airport terminal is being forced to watch it in a doctor’s office.
So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered a Michigan health care facility, funded by federal tax dollars, blocked Fox News Channel from its waiting room television sets.
The president of Family Health Care directed staff to block Fox News after a board member complained about our network’s coverage of the Affordable Care Act, an employee told me.
“The board member complained that patients were turning the channel to Fox News,” said the employee who asked not to be identified for reasons related to the unemployment line. “They are pro-ObamaCare and they felt (Fox’s) stance did not mesh with our stance.”
Family Health Care is a private, non-profit business that operates community health centers in five Michigan towns. According to the employee, the health centers have ObamaCare facilitators on site to help people apply for the program.
The employee provided me a copy of an internal office memorandum that confirms the home of “Fair & Balanced” news is blocked.
“A while ago Kathy Sather had asked all sites not to air the Fox News channel on the public waiting room TV’s,” wrote a network manager in an email to staff members on Feb. 4. “Today I blocked the channel on both the medical and dental waiting rooms.”
Sather is president of Family Health Care.
“I did check with staff and they mentioned often the visitors are changing channels on the TV’s,” the network manager wrote. “I now have both TV’s blocking that channel, so the public won’t be able to change the station. If anyone asks for the TV to be put on that channel please let them know we cannot air that channel.”
That edict didn’t set well with the employee who contacted me.
“I feel like we are being manipulated,” the employee said. “Who are they to say you can’t watch something? If the patient wants to put on Fox they should be able to put on Fox.”
It’s almost impossible to believe, right? Surely, there must have been some sort of misunderstanding. What could possibly be so offensive about Fox News? I mean sure, Bob Beckel is known to use a few “colorful metaphors,” but he’s just a lovable curmudgeon. And who doesn’t love the Factor Word of the Day? We are a pithier nation because of the No Spin Zone.
So I reached out to Sather who promptly confirmed that Steve and Elizabeth and Brian were no longer welcome in the waiting rooms.
She said the health center had a responsibility to do everything humanly possible to “ensure a positive patient experience in the waiting room.”
“Simply put, several complaints have been brought to my attention asking that we not air the Fox News channel in our televised waiting areas,” Sather wrote. “I responded by addressing the issue promptly asking that the channel be blocked in response to those complaints.”
I can’t imagine a patient finding a more positive experience than watching Fox News Channel.
A few years ago my mother was hospitalized. Because of her medical condition she was unable to talk. One day I received a telephone call from my mother’s nurse. She told me that mom was thrashing about and throwing things at the television set. She couldn’t figure out why she was so rattled.
We went through a list of possibilities, until I suggested it might have something to do with the television show she was watching.
“Well,” the nurse replied, “When I walked in she was watching Fox & Friends, but after she fell asleep I changed the channel.”
Which channel, I asked?
“CNN,” she said.
“Sweet mercy,” I hollered into the phone. “Change it back to Fox News! And hurry – before she breaks the television set.”
My mother was not a big fan of CNN. She said that was one of the reasons she hated to fly. But she sure loved Fox News – especially when Shep would tell her what the game day temperature was in Oxford.
Back in Michigan, the employee told me Sather’s explanation is a bunch of “baloney.”
The employee said that there were no complaints from patients – only a board member of the organization.
“It’s all very politically correct,” the employee said. “This complaint thing is baloney. They don’t want anyone to get the idea that affordable care is not good.”
Surely there must be some way to reach a compromise. Maybe they could blur the Fox News logo. Or perhaps they could bleep out all the conservative words?
My suggestions fell on deaf ears.
“We are a health care provider, not a news analyst,” Sather wrote to me.”We are in no position to comment on the quality of news programming. We simply responded to a patient request.”
As it now stands, patients at federally-funded Family Health Care will not be allowed to watch Fox News Channel in their waiting rooms.
And you won’t believe what the health center is forcing patients to watch.
“CNN,” the employee told me. “Ugh.”
 By Todd Starnes

Cave In?

Insurance industry raises questions about new ObamaCare enrollment numbers being ‘inflated’

The Obama administration’s latest rosy scenario about 3.3 million consumers signing up for health care plans is facing skepticism from top insurance industry officials, who estimate that somewhere in the range of 10 to 25 percent of those “enrollees” actually have not yet paid their premiums and are not fully enrolled.
“The numbers are not as high as 3.3 million -- it’s lower,” one senior insurance industry source told Fox News. “Those numbers are inflated. The question is how much.”
Industry officials tell Fox that some insurance companies have privately reported up to 30 percent of enrollees have not paid up, while other companies believe a higher percentage of customers have taken care of their premiums. The senior insurance industry source suggested it averages out to roughly 10 to 25 percent of enrollees not yet paying into the system, and thus those individuals do not really have insurance.
Scenarios for not paying include people who went through the struggles of logging on to HealthCare.gov and eventually decided it was not worth it to go through the final steps of payment, and others who may simply not be able to afford the premiums. Industry officials believe others have gone through the process of choosing a plan and simply have not gotten around to writing a check, but eventually may make the payment to complete the process and wind up being a success story.
It’s hard to pinpoint precisely how many people have paid their premiums, since companies like Humana and United have not yet disclosed numbers. Aetna has said that 70 percent of their enrollees paid premiums in January, and of those who signed up before January, 90 percent paid their premiums. WellPoint has reported that a majority of its 500,000 enrollees have paid premiums but not a “vast majority” as of yet.
Insurance industry officials are also raising questions about whether the White House really does not know how many people have paid into the system, as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has suggested.
Pressed by Fox on Wednesday about how many of the 3.3 million enrollees have paid premiums, Carney said the data rests with the industry. “It is a contract between an individual or – well an individual even representing his or her family – and a private insurance provider,” he said. “So insurance companies obviously have data about when those payments were made, but this would be no different from any other insurance contract that you would – you would purchase.”
A senior insurance industry source said the administration actually does have at least a rough idea of how many people have paid into the system because that determines who gets government subsidies, so the administration has to eventually know who’s paying into the system in order to make sure subsidies are going to the right people.
As a rough example, an industry source said if a consumer has to pay a $100 monthly premium for coverage and the government subsidy is worth $80, the consumer only pays the $20 difference to the insurance company. The $80 subsidy is later paid by the government directly to the insurance company, so the insurance companies have to show the administration who is paying into the system in order to get that reimbursement.
An administration official confirmed that the key federal agency involved does get some payment data, but stressed the administration is more focused on getting the payment system completed over the long term.
“CMS receives aggregate-level enrollment data on a monthly basis from issuers that are owed payments of marketplace financial assistance,” said the official. “However, enrollments on the individual level for all issuers will be measured in the long term” using documents known as 834 forms.
The official added that some health plans have already begun providing those forms, “which will eventually be the mechanism for making payment and reporting enrollment data as part of our automated system.” Once that system is fully operational, the official said, “we will determine the most appropriate way to make detailed payment information available.”

Democrats who oppose Keystone XL pipeline own shares in competing companies

Democrats who oppose the Keystone XL pipeline have thousands of dollars invested in direct competitors to the company looking to build the pipeline, public records show.
A recent environmental assessment by the State Department was seen as a step toward the pipeline’s approval, but Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., remains opposed to its construction.
“In my view, there is now enough evidence to conclude that construction of this pipeline is not in America’s long-term interest,” Kaine said in a statement on the review.
The freshman Democrat has between $15,000 and $50,000 invested in Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, according to his most recent financial disclosure. Kinder Morgan is looking to build a pipeline that would directly compete with Keystone.
Kinder Morgan is considering expanding its Canadian pipeline infrastructure with an expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which carries oil sands crude from Alberta to refineries and export terminals on Canada’s west coast.

Missouri Senate endorses bill that would nullify federal gun laws

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. –  Missouri senators endorsed legislation on Tuesday that seeks to nullify U.S. gun restrictions and send federal agents to jail for enforcing such laws, though the measure would likely face a court challenge if it gets approved in the state.
Courts have consistently ruled that states cannot nullify federal laws, but that hasn't stopped Missouri and other states from trying.

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Sen. Brian Nieves, the Republican sponsoring the bill, said the legislation would protect law-abiding gun owners from federal encroachments and regulations. Missouri Republicans began pushing for the legislation following President Obama's call last year for increased background checks and a ban on assault weapons.
The legislation would subject federal agents to civil and criminal penalties for knowingly enforcing federal gun laws. Agents could face up to one year in prison and a $1,000 fine.
"This is primarily purposed to protect liberties of Missourians," said Nieves, of Washington.
The measure also would give school districts the option to designate personnel to carry a concealed weapon in school buildings after undergoing training. Opponents argue that provision would increase access to firearms, which could then lead to more instances of gun violence.
"I cannot support this legislation in good conscience," said Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis. "Kids are killing kids in school."
An amendment was added to require school districts to hold a public meeting before allowing personnel to carry in buildings. That provision's sponsor said he hopes that would cause districts to think twice before letting guns in the classroom.
"I believe my parents would say we don't want our teachers to carry guns and our school board members would then have to look at the consequences of that decision," said Rep. Jason Holsman, D-Kansas City.
Holsman's amendment would also allow designated personal to choose to carry pepper spray instead of a weapon.
Another provision of the bill would let holders of concealed gun permits carry firearms openly, even in municipalities with ordinances banning open carry. It would also lower the minimum age to get a concealed weapons permit to 19, down from 21. Under the bill, health care professionals could not be required to ask or document whether a patient owns a firearm.
The Senate also approved an amendment sponsored by Nasheed that would give gun owners 72 hours to report a stolen firearm to law enforcement.
Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed a similar measure that the Republican-controlled Legislature passed last year.
Nieves' bill is less specific than last year's version about which federal laws it seeks to nullify. It removes references to the 1934 and 1968 gun control acts, while keeping generic references to fees, registration and tracking policies that are considered "infringements" or "have a chilling effect on the purchase or ownership" of guns and ammunition by law-abiding citizens.
The measure needs one more affirmative vote in the Senate before heading to the House.

House Republicans fighting Treasury Dept. effort to limit political activities of tax-exempt groups

Republican lawmakers are fighting back against what they call an effort by the Obama administration to silence the political speech of tax-exempt groups, including those originally targeted by the IRS. 
A House panel passed a bill Tuesday that would delay regulations by the Treasury Department designed to limit the political activities of so-called social welfare groups.
Treasury officials claim the regulations would help clarify vague rules about which groups qualify for tax-exempt status, but congressional Republicans believe the regulations are an attempt to legalize the targeting of conservative groups.
“Make no mistake about it: the Obama administration is doing this as a blatant attempt to silence political speech,” Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., said in a statement.
The proposed regulations came after IRS officials acknowledged last spring that agents had improperly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.
The Ways and Means Committee voted 23-13 to pass a bill that would block the regulations for a year. It was a straight party-line vote, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. The full House is expected to take up the bill after the House returns from its Presidents' Day vacation.
Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said delaying the regulations would give Congress and the Justice Department time to finish their investigations.
"The notion that the administration would rush forward with rules intended to remove these groups from the public forum is simply unacceptable," Camp said. "I have long made clear that this committee will fight any and all efforts to restrict the rights of groups to organize, speak out and educate the public."
Senate Republicans have embraced the effort but the bill has little chance of becoming law because Democrats oppose it. Democrats said the bill is little more than an election-year ploy by Republicans to rally the party base. They note that final regulations probably wouldn't be issued for at least a year, anyway.
"Unfortunately, the proposed regulations are being used by Republicans in Congress to renew a tireless campaign to turn the issue into a scandal that would pay political dividends," said Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee.
The regulations would apply to social welfare groups applying for tax-exempt status under section 501(c) 4 of the tax code. Under current regulations, these groups can engage in politics, but their primary mission cannot be to influence the outcome of elections.
"It is about disclosure," said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J., a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee. "Nowhere in the Bill of Rights does it say you have the right to say anything you want — and also not pay any taxes."
The current regulations have led IRS agents to ask groups intrusive questions about the amount of time they spend on activities that are potentially political.
The proposed rules would limit certain "candidate-related political activity,” but leave open the question of how much the activity would be restricted.
Limited activities would include voter drives and voter registration efforts, as well as ads that "expressly advocate for a clearly identified political candidate or candidates of a political party." Also included would be ads that mention a politician or a political party within 60 days of a general election or 30 days before a primary.
Republicans have raised myriad concerns in recent weeks about the status of the IRS controversy. The Justice Department has received complaints over the slow pace of the investigation and the discontent grew louder after officials announced last month they aren’t expecting criminal charges will be filed in the case.

The Hillary Papers: Archive of 'closest friend' paints portrait of 'ruthless' first lady

On May 12, 1992, Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake, top pollsters for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, issued a confidential memo. The memo's subject was "Research on Hillary Clinton." 
Voters admired the strength of the Arkansas first couple, the pollsters wrote. However, "they also fear that only someone too politically ambitious, too strong, and too ruthless could survive such controversy so well." 
Their conclusion: "What voters find slick in Bill Clinton, they find ruthless in Hillary." 
The full memo is one of many previously unpublished documents contained in the archive of one of Hillary Clinton's best friends and advisers, documents that portray the former first lady, secretary of State, and potential 2016 presidential candidate as a strong, ambitious, and ruthless Democratic operative. 
The papers of Diane Blair, a political science professor Hillary Clinton described as her "closest friend" before Blair's death in 2000, record years of candid conversations with the Clintons on issues ranging from single-payer health care to Monica Lewinsky. 
The archive includes correspondence, diaries, interviews, strategy memos, and contemporaneous accounts of conversations with the Clintons ranging from the mid-1970s to the turn of the millennium. 
Diane Blair's husband, Jim Blair, a former chief counsel at Tyson Foods Inc. who was at the center of "Cattlegate," a 1994 controversy involving the unusually large returns Hillary Clinton made while trading cattle futures contracts in the 1970s, donated his wife's papers to the University of Arkansas Special Collections library in Fayetteville after her death.

Contractor hired to fix Healthcare.gov reportedly has history of problems

Accenture, the contractor fired to fix ongoing problems with the federal health exchange website, has been heavily criticized by some of its largest clients, including federal agencies, according to a published report. 
The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Postal Service Inspector General's Office recommended this past June that the agency consider terminating more than $200 million in contracts with Accenture. The recommendation cited an "absence of business ethics" by the firm, including a 2011 settlement with the Justice Department to resolve allegations of "kickbacks" and "bid-rigging" in federal contracts. Accenture, which paid $63 million to resolve the claims, denied the allegations. 
The Obama administration announced last month that it had tapped Accenture to become the lead contractor for Healthcare.gov after cutting ties with CGI Federal, which handled the site's troubled launch this past Oct. 1. Technical glitches blocked many prospective customers from initially using the site, and while enrollment has picked up, the numbers have struggled to recover from the early setback and reach the administration's benchmarks. 
Accenture's contract to oversee Healthcare.gov is believed to be for one year and worth an estimated $91 million. Experts interviewed by the Post were divided over whether Accenture was the right choice to tackle the ongoing problems of the site, with one IT consulting firm executive saying Accenture was "at the top of the stack" in the industry. However, the same executive also questioned whether Accenture's relative lack of experience in health care would be an issue. Citing the government spending tracker website USASpending.gov, the Post reported that less than $50 million of Accenture's $10 billion in federal contracts has involved the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 
The Post reports that nearly 30 projects undertaken by Accenture over the past 10 years have encountered problems like technical malfunctions and cost overruns. Among the troublesome federal projects spotlighted by the Post include a computer system for the Department of the Interior's Mineral Management Service, which regulates the oil industry. A 2007 report  quoted an accounted as telling auditors that the system took longer to use than the one it replaced. 
Between 2004 and 2007, the Post reports that the Pentagon and four states canceled Accenture contracts to develop online voting for voter registration systems. And in 2006, a report by the IT firm The Wendell Group blasted a tax office computer system for the District of Columbia developed by Accenture. The report found that the system incorrectly calculated penalties and interest on tax bills and called it "poorly designed" and "mismanaged."
"There is a real concern," Daniel I Gordon, the former head of government procurement policy for the Obama administration, told the Post. "This company has problems in their past performance that are relevant and recent ... The real question is whether the government did its due diligence."

Vets face crashes, delays on fed's online benefits system like those that plagued ObamaCare site

The glitches and other problems with the ObamaCare website that sparked a national firestorm are similar to those military veterans using the federal government’s online benefits system have routinely faced for about the past 18 months.
Eric Jenkins, a veteran and American Federation of Government Employees representative, recently told Congress that during January, the Veterans Benefits Management System crashed about once a week, with downtimes ranging from one hour to multiple days.
“The constant … technical issues and frequent shutdowns make it difficult for me and others to serve veterans,” Jenkins told a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee.
The $537 million system went online in fall 2012 at a Department of Veteran Affairs office in New England and is now in all 56 regional offices.
The change to a paperless system was a major part of the Veterans Affair’s goal of eliminating a massive backlog of compensation claims by 2015 with 98 percent accuracy.
The number of claims started skyrocketed in 2010, to more than 1 million annually, in large part because of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
But Jenkins and other critics say the push to slash the backlog has created its own problems, similar to those experienced by insurance shoppers on the ObamaCare website, HealthCare.gov.
Jenkins said the VA computer system had to be rebooted four times during one week, resulting in him losing all the electronic claims on which he was working, with no paper documents as backup.
The problem is “quantity over quality,” he said in testimony Wednesday before the Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs.
The federal ObamaCare website and the 14 state-run exchanges went online in October, but their early debut also was spoiled by crashes, as well as slow response times and the dissemination of inaccurate information.
Jenkins, a disabled combat veteran and a VA service representative,  also pointed out that the benefits management system has another problems similar to one during the rollout of ObamaCare -- more users compound slow response times.
Subcommittee Chairman John Runyan, R-Pa., said the regular, weekly shutdowns “weren’t the only problems” with Veterans Affairs systems, pointing to a recent security breach of the electronic benefits system that reportedly compromised the personal data of 1,400  users.
“The lack of security is of tremendous concern,” he said.
Nevada Rep. Dina Titus, the subcommittee’s top ranking Democrat, said: “We’re not overly impressed by the systems’ security and consistency.”

Exclusive: AIDS patients in Obamacare limbo as insurers reject checks

By Sharon Begley and Julie Steenhuysen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hundreds of people with HIV/AIDS in Louisiana trying to obtain coverage under President Barack Obama's healthcare reform are in danger of being thrown out of the insurance plan they selected in a dispute over federal subsidies and the interpretation of federal rules about preventing Obamacare fraud.

Some healthcare advocates see discrimination in the move, but Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana says it is not trying to keep people with HIV/AIDS from enrolling in one of its policies under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

The state's largest carrier is rejecting checks from a federal program designed to help these patients pay for AIDS drugs and insurance premiums, and has begun notifying customers that their enrollment in its Obamacare plans will be discontinued.

The carrier says it no longer will accept third-party payments, such as those under the 1990 Ryan White Act, which many people with HIV/AIDS use to pay their premiums.

"In no event will coverage be provided to any subscribers, as of March 1, 2014, unless the premiums are paid by the subscriber (or a relative) unless otherwise required by law," Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana spokesman John Maginnis told Reuters.

AIDS FUNDS EXEMPT FROM FRAUD CONCERNS

The dispute goes back to a series of statements from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the lead Obamacare agency.

In September, CMS informed insurers that Ryan White funds "may be used to cover the cost of private health insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-payments" for Obamacare plans.

In November, however, it warned "hospitals, other healthcare providers, and other commercial entities" that it has "significant concerns" about their supporting premium payments and helping Obamacare consumers pay deductibles and other costs, citing the risk of fraud.

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In this Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, file photo, Rosemary Cabelo uses a computer at a public library to …

The insurers told healthcare advocates that the November guidance requires them to reject payments from the Ryan White program in order to combat fraud, said Robert Greenwald, managing director of the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, a position Louisiana Blue still maintains.

"As an anti-fraud measure, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana has implemented a policy, across our individual health insurance market, of not accepting premium payments from any third parties who are not related" to the subscriber, Maginnis said.

On Friday, CMS spokeswoman Tasha Bradley told Reuters that, to the contrary, Ryan White grantees "may use funds to pay for premiums on behalf of eligible enrollees in Marketplace plans, when it is cost-effective for the Ryan White program," meaning that having people with HIV/AIDS enroll in insurance under Obamacare could save the government money.

"The third-party payer guidance CMS released (in November) does not apply to" Ryan White programs.

Maginnis did not respond to further requests, sent after business hours, for comment on CMS's Friday statement.

Hundreds of indigent HIV/AIDS patients are dependent on Ryan White payments for Obamacare because they fall into a gap. They are not eligible for Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor, because Louisiana did not expand the low-income program, and Obamacare federal subsidies don't kick in until people are at 100 percent of the federal poverty level.

Before Obamacare, the 1990 Ryan White Act offered people with HIV/AIDS federal financial help in paying for AIDS drugs and health insurance premiums, especially in state-run, high-risk pools.
Obamacare, which bans insurers from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions, was designed to replace these high-risk pools.
Starting on October 1, AIDS advocates and others in Louisiana "were enrolling anyone and everyone we could" through the Obamacare exchange, said Lucy Cordts of the New Orleans NO/AIDS Task Force.
Last month, her clients and those of other AIDS groups began to hear from Louisiana Blue that their enrollments were in limbo because the company would not accept the Ryan White checks for premium payments.
The only other carrier that is refusing to accept such payments is Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, according to a CMS official.

North Dakota Blue "restricts premium payment from third parties including employers, providers, and state agencies," said spokeswoman Andrea Dinneen, but "is currently reviewing its eligibility policies with respect to recipients of Ryan White Program funding."

'SURE LOOKS LIKE DISCRIMINATION'

Healthcare advocates are worried that the refusal to accept Ryan White payments is an effort by insurers to keep AIDS patients from enrolling in their plans and last month began pressing the issue, including with the office of Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu.

In an email reviewed by Reuters, a healthcare expert on Landrieu's staff wrote, "BCBS LA told me their decision was not due to the CMS guidance or any confusion (as we thought before) but was in fact due to adverse selection concerns. I have also recently learned North Dakota's BCBS plan has implemented the same policy."

Jessica Stone, the Landrieu staff member, declined to elaborate on the email further or to discuss her interactions with Louisiana Blue.

Adverse selection refers to the situation where an insurer attracts patients with chronic conditions and expensive care. Louisiana Blue's action "sure looks to us like discrimination against sick people," said John Peller, vice president for policy at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago.

Asked if it were engaging in efforts to avoid adverse selection by refusing to accept Ryan White payments for would-be customers with HIV/AIDS, Louisiana Blue said it was not trying to keep such customers out of its plans. "We welcome all Louisiana residents who chose Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana," said Maginnis.

LA Times: California’s ObamaCare execution has been something of a hot mess

Because getting through the signup process, dear enrollees, was only the beginning. It was only ever going to be the beginning, really.

After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get Obamacare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor’s office.
A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business.
Experts have warned for months that the logjam was inevitable. But the extent of the problems is taking by surprise many patients — and even doctors — as frustrations mount.
Aliso Viejo resident Danielle Nelson said Anthem Blue Cross promised half a dozen times that her oncologists would be covered under her new policy. She was diagnosed last year with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and discovered a suspicious lump near her jaw in early January.
But when she went to her oncologist’s office, she promptly encountered a bright orange sign saying that Covered California plans are not accepted.

Conservatives have been warning about the limited networks and fewer healthcare options that insurers were bound to use as a way to help control costs since before the law’s passage; some of the law’s cheerleaders finally caught on just a tad bit later; and now that the law has gone into effect, Americans are living it. And if organizing just the signup process through the website was such a shame spiral of royal bureaucratic incompetence on so many fronts, you know that trying to administer the actual healthcare system through it is going to be just as bad — as California also aptly showcased today. Again via the LA Times:

Admitting it gave some consumers bad information, California’s health insurance exchange pulled its physician directory for having too many errors.
Covered California made the move late Thursday amid growing frustration among both consumers and doctors over inaccurate information about insurance networks in the state marketplace.
The exchange yanked its online directory of medical providers in mid-October after acknowledging there were serious problems then with the data. It published an updated list in November. …
The exchange said Thursday that “while the combined provider directory was a useful service for many consumers, some enrollees located physicians thought to be in their plan, and subsequently discovered they were not.”

The state suggested that enrollees “who are unsatisfied with their provider network still have time to cancel their coverage and sign up with a different insurer” before enrollment ends in March — but I doubt that that’s much comfort to the people for whom signing up in the first place was a tortuously drawn-out trial, or for the people who are discovering that they cannot, in fact, keep their doctor. Or, you know, “if you want to, you can pay for it.” It’s a matter of “choice,” or something.

posted at 7:21 pm on February 7, 2014 by Erika Johnsen     hotair.com

Justice Dept. latest to apply privileges, protections for same-sex spouses

Attorney General Eric Holder announced Saturday evening that the Justice Department will now follow a landmark Supreme Court ruling on same-sex spouses, which means they will no longer be compelled to testify against each other in civil and criminal cases.
The policy changes mean same-sex spouses also should be eligible to file jointly for bankruptcy and have the same rights and privileges in federal prison as inmates in heterosexual marriages.
Prosecutors have used various legal challenges against the spousal privilege. But Holder made clear the federal government will no longer make such challenges, even in states where same-sex marriages are not recognized.
The changes will officially be made through a policy memorandum to be issued Monday.
“This means that, in every courthouse, in every proceeding, and in every place where a member of the Department of Justice stands on behalf of the United States -- they will strive to ensure that same-sex marriages receive the same privileges, protections and rights as opposite-sex marriages under federal law,” Holder said at the Human Rights Campaign’s Greater New York Gala.
Among the agencies under the Justice Department that will be impacted by the changes are the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Holder also said same-sex couples will now qualify for several Justice Department benefits programs, including the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and benefits to surviving spouses of public safety officers who suffer catastrophic or fatal injuries in the line of duty.
“This landmark announcement will change the lives of countless committed gay and lesbian couples for the better,” said campaign President Chad Griffin. "While the immediate effect of these policy decisions is that all married gay couples will be treated equally under the law, the long-term effects are more profound. Today, our nation moves closer toward its ideals of equality and fairness for all."
Holder's speech was criticized by the conservative National Organization for Marriage.
"This is just the latest in a series of moves by the Obama administration, and in particular the Department of Justice, to undermine the authority and sovereignty of the states to make their own determinations regulating the institution of marriage," said Brian Brown, the group's president. "The changes being proposed here to a process as universally relevant as the criminal justice system serve as a potent reminder of why it is simply a lie to say that redefining marriage doesn't affect everyone in society."
Holder compared this generation’s efforts to achieve same-sex marriage rights to those in the 1960s for achieving civil rights and said the stakes “could not be higher.”
"The Justice Department's role in confronting discrimination must be as aggressive today as it was in Robert Kennedy's time," Holder said of the attorney general who played a leadership role in advancing civil rights.
The changes are the most recent application of a Supreme Court ruling that struck down a provision in the Defense of Marriage Act defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The decision applies to legally married same-sex couples seeking federal benefits.
After the Supreme Court decision last June, the Treasury Department and the IRS said that all legally married gay couples may file joint federal tax returns, even if they reside in states that do not recognize same-sex marriages.
The Defense Department said it would grant military spousal benefits to same-sex couples. The Health and Human Services Department said the Defense of Marriage Act is no longer a bar to states recognizing same-sex marriages under state Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Programs. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management said it is now able to extend benefits to legally married same-sex spouses of federal employees and annuitants.
Holder told his audience:
--The Justice Department will recognize that same-sex spouses of individuals involved in civil and criminal cases should have the same legal rights as all other married couples, including the right to decline to give testimony that might incriminate their spouse.
--The U.S. Trustee Program will take the position that same-sex married couples should be eligible to file for bankruptcy jointly and that domestic support obligations should include debts such as alimony owed to a former same-sex spouse.
-- Federal prisoners in same-sex marriages will be entitled to visitation by a spouse, inmate furloughs during a crisis involving a spouse, escorted trips to attend a spouse's funeral, correspondence with a spouse and compassionate release or reduction in sentence based on an inmate's spouse being incapacitated.

The Waste List

$100 Million On DOJ Conferences  - $100,000,000

In addition, the DOJ staff hosted numerous conferences around the country. In 2010 alone, the department spent nearly $100 million on conferences, which is twice what was spent two years earlier. This includes more than $600,000 in event-planner costs for five conferences, even though the need for this was not shown.
The food at these conferences was also exorbitant. For example, coffee and tea cost from 62 cents to $1.03 an ounce. At the $1.03-per-ounce price, a 12-ounce cup of coffee would have cost $12.36!

Source: Chairman Bob Goodlatte, “Excessive waste at Department of Justice,” Politico, 4/10/13

IRS-Gate

GOP proposal would require food stamp recipients to show photo ID

Several House Republicans have introduced a proposal that would require food stamp recipients to show photo identification when making purchases -- a move they say is necessary to prevent fraud in the program that aids 1 in 7 Americans.
Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., introduced the SNAP Verify Act, which would require individuals who receive acceptance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to present a photo ID when buying products at stores that accept food stamp recipients. 
"My bill simply requires the photo identification of authorized users of SNAP electronic benefit cards at the point of transaction," Salmon said in a statement. "With over $750 million in SNAP card and food trafficking fraud each year, it is time Congress take action to address the rampant waste in this program." 
Salmon said conducting effective oversight for the program has proven difficult as food stamp spending grows. He cited a Government Accountability Office report showing that $2.2 billion in benefits were erroneously handed out in 2009 alone.
Several Republicans have signed onto the bill as co-sponsors, including Reps. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., Bill Posey, R-Fla., David Schweikert, R-Ariz., and Jack Kingston, R-Ga.
There is no federal requirement to show photo identification at the time of food purchases, though some states have the option to require a photograph of individuals using SNAP program's Electronic Benefits Transfer system. 
In Rhode Island, legislation has been filed in the state's General Assembly that would force residents trying to buy products using a food stamps to present photo ID.
The proposal by Rep. Patricia Morgan, R-West Warwick, would apply to those using electronic benefit cards to redeem other public assistance too. It would be up to retailers to check the photo ID against the name on the government-issued EBT card. 
On Friday, President Obama signed into law an agriculture spending bill that will expand federal crop insurance and ends direct government payments that go to certain farmers, while trimming the nation's  $100-billion-per-year food stamp program. 
The bill finally passed with support from Democratic and Republican lawmakers from farming states, but the bipartisan spirit didn't extend to the signing ceremony at at Michigan State University where Obama was flanked by farm equipment, hay bales and Democratic lawmakers.
Conservatives wanted much larger cuts to food stamps than the $800 million Congress finally approved in a compromise. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters he did not expect the cut of about 1 percent of the food stamp budget to have a significant impact on recipients.

James Carville joining Fox News as contributor

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville has been hired as a Fox News contributor. 
The former Bill Clinton adviser will join the network to provide political commentary. Bill Shine, executive vice president of programming, announced the move on Thursday. 
"James' successful and storied career in politics over several decades is an enormous asset to Fox News," Shine said. "We are privileged to have him lend his breadth of experience, wit and dynamic perspective on the network." 
Carville helped lead Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign; he continued to serve as a senior political adviser in the Clinton White House. 
Carville went on to work as a consultant, and also as a political contributor at CNN. 
Carville is currently a political science professor at Tulane University. He has written several books, including with his wife, GOP strategist Mary Matalin.

WaPost: Obamacare Computers Not Yet Equipped to Fix Errors

The HealthCare.gov website is not yet equipped to handle appeals by thousands of people seeking to correct errors the system made when they were signing up for the new federal healthcare law, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
The newspaper, citing sources familiar with the situation, said appeals by about 22,000 people were sitting untouched in a government computer.
"And an unknown number of consumers who are trying to get help through less formal means — by calling the health-care marketplace directly — are told that HealthCare.gov's computer system is not yet allowing federal workers to go into enrollment records and change them," according to the Post.
It added that the Obama administration had not made public the problem with the appeals system.
Despite efforts by legal advocates to press the White House on the situation, "there is no indication that infrastructure . . . necessary for conducting informal reviews and fair hearings has even been created, let alone become operational," attorneys for the National Health Law Program were quoted as saying in a December letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, which oversees HealthCare.gov.
The Post quoted two knowledgeable people as saying it was unclear when the appeals process would become available.
The system is designed to allow people filing appeals to do so by computer, phone or mail. But only mail is currently available, the newspaper said.
Asked to comment, a CMS spokesman said: "As we work to fully implement the appeals system, CMS is working directly with consumers to address concerns they have raised through this process.
"We have found that the appeals filed are largely related to previous system errors, most of which have since been fixed. We are inviting those consumers back to healthcare.gov where they can reset and successfully finish their applications without needing to complete the appeals process," Aaron Albright said in an email.
"We are also working to ensure that consumers who wish to continue with their appeal are able to do so," he said.
The healthcare law, known as Obamacare, is designed to provide health coverage to millions of uninsured people in the United States, but was plagued by a botched rollout in October.
The Obama administration said in late January that enrollment soared in recent weeks to about 3 million.
Addie Wilson, 27, of Fairmont, W.Va., said she is paying $100 more a month than she should for her insurance. "It is definitely frustrating and not fair," she said.
In December, Wilson found herself in a bind. Her old insurance was running out and she needed surgery. The healthcare.gov site was not capable of calculating the federal subsidy due to her and Wilson did not want her coverage to lapse.
She asked a navigator at a federal call center what to do and was advised to sign up, pay the full price, and appeal later. Now, she has discovered there is no system in place to process her appeal.

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obamacare-computers-cant-handle/2014/02/03/id/550481#ixzz2sdPaqDEr
Urgent: Should Obamacare Be Repealed? Vote Here Now!

House GOP bill aims to end ‘secret science’ in EPA rulemaking

Republican lawmakers in the House are pushing legislation that would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from proposing new regulations based on science that is not transparent or not reproducible.
The Secret Science Reform Act, introduced Thursday by Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., would bar the agency from proposing or finalizing rules without first disclosing all "scientific and technical information" relied on to support its proposed action.
"Public policy should come from public data, not based on the whims of far-left environmental groups,” Schweikert said in a statement. “For far too long, the EPA has approved regulations that have placed a crippling financial burden on economic growth in this country with no public evidence to justify their actions.”
Several of Schweikert’s fellow House Science Committee members have signed onto the bill as co-sponsors, including Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas., Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., and Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas.
In December, members of the House Science Committee accused agency of disregarding ignoring dissenting voices on its independent science advisory review board in its push to impose carbon dioxide limits on new power plants.  
Smith said the proposal “prohibits EPA from using secret science to justify new regulations."
"The American people foot the bill for EPA's costly regulations, and they have a right to see the underlying science. Costly environmental regulations should be based upon publicly available data so that independent scientists can verify the EPA's claims,” Smith said in a statement.
Meanwhile, some states are considering legislation aimed at banning or curtailing future environmental regulations that would be costly to local energy industries.
In Idaho, Rep. Paul Shepherd, a conservative legislator, has introduced a proposal to declare restrictions handed down by the EPA unconstitutional, touting the bill as a way for Idaho to call the shots while disregarding federal regulations on air and water pollution.
In particular, his bill would help dredge miners whose work was being impeded by what they say is unnecessarily restrictive pollution rules.
Although the House State Affairs Committee voted Thursday to send the proposal to a full hearing, it was met with deep skepticism from lawmakers who questioned its legality.
The Idaho Legislature has a history of using largely symbolic legislation as a gesture of defiance against what they view as oppressive government controls.
In Indiana, the Republican-controlled Indiana House approved a bill that would bar state environmental regulators “from adopting a rule or standard that is more stringent than” corresponding federal rules or standards.
If the bill passes the Legislature, it could reportedly have numerous ramifications, including limiting what rules the Indiana Department of Environmental Management could propose to address the large amounts of manure produced by the state’s big livestock farms.

Obamacare

Insurers face pressure for limiting doctor choice for ObamaCare enrollees

Bailey Comment: " I'm thinking this is one of the reasons that the Canadians come over here for medical. Now that ours is just as crappy, where are they gonna go?"

Federal and state regulators and lawmakers are stepping up pressure on the insurance industry for offering plans under ObamaCare that limit access to doctors and hospitals -- a strategy insurers say is necessary to keep coverage prices low in the health law's marketplaces. 
The Wall Street Journal reports that some state legislatures are weighing bills that could force insurers to add more hospitals and doctors to plans, while federal regulators have proposed a tougher review process for plans to be sold next year through HealthCare.gov.
The access problem is a byproduct of the effort to drive down costs of subsidized coverage, prompting insurance companies to offer limited choices of doctors and hospitals.
Under a federal proposal announced this week, insurance companies selling plans in the federally-run marketplace would be required to submit to the government a full list of providers in a network before the plans are approved for the exchanges, The Wall Street Journal reported.
A spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told the newspaper it is "working to strengthen the network adequacy requirements that took effect for this year."
In Washington state, Seattle Children's Hospital has sued over the state insurance department's decision to approve networks that didn't include the facility. The hospital is excluded from five of seven plans on Washington’s state insurance exchange, according to Bloomberg News.
The hospital says is struggling to get paid for care given to about 125 children it has treated since Jan. 1, when ObamaCare coverage took effect. The facility will be required to pick up costs beyond the standard deductible if insurers refuse to cover their services.
"We made the decision to see all the children," Sandy Melzer, the facility's strategy officer, told Bloomberg News. "Maybe we’ll be paid, maybe we won’t. It’s completely done on faith." 
The family of 5-month-old Gabriella Blankers visited Seattle Children’s last month for a CT scan that found a rare birth defect. They said they were initially rejected by their insurer because the hospital wasn't in their network, though the insurer later made a temporary exception, according to the report.
"There’s nowhere else I could go," to get the care Gabriella needed, Rebekah Blankers, the girl’s mother, told Bloomberg News. "Unless I went out of state, out of network, or out of pocket."
Lawmakers in a Washington state Senate committee heard a proposal this week that would reportedly allow health insurance companies to keep offering insurance plans that don't meet the new federal and state requirements. But they would only be offered to people who were enrolled in such plans as of Oct. 1, 2013.
Senate Bill 6464 also would let insurers from other states sell plans to Washingtonians without requiring the carriers to meet Washington state insurance regulations.
When President Obama announced he would leave it up to the states to decide whether to continue to offer some old plans for a while, Washington's Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler said he would not allow it.
Meanwhile, in Mississippi, proposed legislation would bar insurers from cutting off most doctors and hospitals that agree to prices set by insurers. The bill also would prohibit insurers from charging higher copayments at certain doctors' offices or hospitals, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

The Obamacare Security Nightmare: It Gets Worse

 
Michelle Malkin | Feb 05, 2014

 Fraudsters on the inside, hackers on the outside. Here we are, stuck in the middle with the security nightmare called Obamacare. Can it get any worse? Yes, it can.
After the spectacular website crashes during last fall's federal health insurance exchange rollout, enrollees will soon wish the entire system had stayed down and dead. "404 Error" messages and convicted felon Obamacare navigators may be the least of our health care tech problems now. The latest? U.S. intelligence agencies notified the Department of Health and Human Services last week that the Healthcare.gov infrastructure could be infected with malicious code.
Who's responsible? Washington Free Beacon national security reporter Bill Gertz writes that U.S. officials have "warned that programmers in Belarus, a former Soviet republic closely allied with Russia, were suspected" of possible sabotage. A government tech bureaucrat in the Belarusian regime bragged last summer on Russian radio that HHS is "one of our clients" and that "we are helping Obama complete his insurance reform."
Gulp. When an authoritarian minion from the country known as "Europe's last dictatorship" boasts about "helping" the Obama White House, be afraid. One of our intel people spelled it out for Gertz: "The U.S. Affordable Care Act software was written in part in Belarus by software developers under state control, and that makes the software a potential target for cyber attacks."
No kidding. The friends of Vladimir Putin are not our friends. If you've been paying attention, you know that Belarus and other Eastern European hacking gangs have been at the center of several recent international cybercrimes. These aren't merely schemes to steal credit card numbers or vandalize websites with annoying graffiti. They're acts of espionage and sabotage -- like using malware in a phishing scheme aimed at White House employees to gather military intelligence and pilfer sensitive government documents.
It's not just the federal health care system's problem. Former Obamacare website contractor CGI still holds dozens of contracts with other federal agencies and state governments worth billions of dollars -- and wide access to health and financial data. In my state of Colorado, for example, CGI has a $78 million contract to "modernize, host and manage" the state's financial system. Have they checked to see whether Belarus hackers are standing by?
For their part, Obamacare officials are making their usual "don't worry about it, the problem's under control" noises. But we already know the problem is far out of control. Last month, GOP oversight hearings exposed persistent failures by Obamacare overseers to fix security lapses.

Administrators reverse ban on American celebration at high school

The sun was just beginning to rise over the Rocky Mountains, but Sheriff Justin Smith was already awake. He was standing outside Fort Collins High School – shivering in the frigid cold.
It was 12 degrees. Snow was falling. But Mr. Smith, wearing his dress blues, stood resolute, waving an American flag.
The sheriff of Larimer County, Colorado had come to school Tuesday to send a message to those responsible for educating the county’s children. The sheriff was not in a good mood.

Whoever would have thought that American teenagers would be treated as second-class citizens in their own country?

He was standing in the winter snow to protest the school’s decision to ban a celebration of American patriotism.
The student council had wanted to designate a day during Spirit Week to celebrate the red, white & blue. The young people called it “’Merica Monday.” But the school turned down their request.
“They said they didn’t want to offend anyone from other countries or immigrants,” a 16-year-old member of the student council told me. “They just really did not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.”
But after a day of righteous Rocky Mountain outrage, the principal at Fort Collins High School reversed course and apologized. 
Principal Mark Eversole sent a letter to parents announcing that next Monday would in fact be America Day.
Following is the entire letter that was obtained by Fox News Radio affiliate KCOL:

“We apologize for our recent decision regarding My Country Monday and that it was seen as not patriotic. This could not be further from the truth. The original intent of Spread the Love week at Fort Collins High School was to unify the student body. When students first proposed "Merica Monday," we felt that it was against this unifying theme and disrespectful to our country. Merica is a slang term that is often used in a negative stereotypical way to describe life in the United States. This is what led us to discuss alternatives with students. We were surprised that our community interpreted our actions as anti-American. We are a proud public school in America and support many activities to celebrate our great nation. Due to this outpouring of sentiment and misinterpretation of our intentions, we have decided to rename the first day of Spread the Love week to "America Day" as opposed to "Merica Day." We look forward to enjoying the creativity and energy of our students as they celebrate their patriotism next week."

That’s not exactly how parents or students recall the events. They said they suggested “America Monday” but administrators rejected that idea. And members of the student council were adamant that the only reason the event was barred was to prevent non-Americans from being offended.
It seems to me that a public school administrator got caught with his hand in the multicultural cookie jar.
While  the school should be commended for doing the right thing and allowing students to celebrate America, whoever would have thought that American teenagers would be treated as second-class citizens in their own country?
And that’s why Sheriff Smith was standing in the bitter cold, waving his American flag – the one that normally flew outside his home.
“We can’t and we won’t stand for that kind of attitude in our schools,” Sheriff Smith told me in a telephone interview. “It’s our country. They’re our community schools. We will take them back and restore the values – the ones that made America the great nation it is today.”
“I realized I could not just sit on the sidelines,” he said. “I had to stand up and do something.”
Within minutes, he was joined by a dozen others – an uprising of patriots sick and tired of the anti-American venom spewing from public school administrators.
“This is really a sign of root problems we have,” he said. “A lot of us understand -- this anti-American sentiment has poisoned our schools – the ideas and beliefs that are preached to them.”
A sort of grassroots protest movement unfolded early Tuesday on KCOL, the local news radio station that carries my daily commentary. Callers unleashed their fury over the airwaves. Students from the high school emailed passionate messages.
Among them, was a young man – a tenth grader who asked not to be identified.
“I'm personally outraged at the school that we can celebrate every other culture but our own,” this young American teenager wrote. “We have activities that go on during Cinco de Mayo but we can't celebrate and honor our own country [where] we live I'm very angry.”
As Sheriff Smith and his frozen band of patriots waved their flags, drivers honked their horns, bus drivers waved and students stopped to watch.
“It was important to send a message to students,” the sheriff said. “They needed to know they are not alone and that they did the right thing by standing up. I hope when they and their parents saw their sheriff standing out in front of the school – they knew they weren’t alone.”
The sheriff is correct. These brave young men and women are not alone.
We are compelled to stand alongside our fellow countrymen at Fort Collins High School.
Patriotism must never be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.
“This is a wake up call,” Sheriff Smith said. “We’ve been given the blessing of a wake up call as to what is going on (in our school). Now the question is -- what do we do about it?”