Back in 2009, as politicians began debating Obamacare–a massive detour from the economy into an issue less important to voters but critical to Democrats’ ideological goals–Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) reveled in the prospect that health care reform might “put the
In a speech at Boston’s Faneuil Hall on Wednesday afternoon, President Barack Obama discarded his now-infamous broken promise: “If you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance.” Instead, he offered a new promise: “You will be getting
President Barack Obama spoke at a rally in Boston on Wednesday in an attempt to use the backdrop of Mitt Romney’s home state to reinforce the case for Obamacare. Obama cited his 2012 Republican rival’s signature policy achievement as Massachusetts
Abraham H. Foxman, a self-described liberal and head of the Anti-Defamation League, slammed Secretary of State John Kerry for “inappropriate” remarks directed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ha’aretz reports. On Sunday, Kerry had warned in an address to the
President Barack Obama is pressuring Jewish and pro-Israel organizations not to lobby for new sanctions against Iran, which Congress is considering this month. The Obama administration wants to give Iran time prove its good faith in new diplomatic efforts to
Watching and listening to today’s congressional hearing on Obamacare, I heard many Republican members repeat some of the same errors they have committed in past hearings on other scandals. Asking two questions at once, for example, allows the witness to
The prize for best line of questioning to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius at the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Wednesday morning must go to Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), for pinning Sebelius down on the question
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who serves as Ranking Member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, called the private sale of cheap health individual insurance plans “the worst abuses of the insurance industry” and said that Obamacare would halt
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius told Congress on Wednesday morning that the Obamacare website, healthcare.gov, never actually “crashed,” but had merely been running slowly. Sebelius made the claim during a highly-anticipated and contentious hearing at the House
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), the second-highest ranking member of the Democrat-controlled Senate, has admitted that he lied about the House Republican leadership when he claimed that one of them had said they “cannot even stand to look at”
Germans were among Barack Obama’s foremost fans when he first ran for president in 2008. That country had been among the leading opponents of the Iraq War at the UN, joining France on the UN Security Council to push back
The Los Angeles Times reports this morning about a “plague of garbage” in the center of town. More than the usual urban blight is at play. The problem stems from poor attitudes about littering and public sanitation among the itinerant residents
The New York Times reports Tuesday that Silicon Valley is breeding a secessionist movement. It is attracting tech gurus who are frustrated with society’s refusal to listen to them, and its insistence on regulating them. Entrepreneur Balaji S. Srinivasan, who is leading
The American media are the biggest losers in the latest revelations in the National Security Agency scandal. Not because domestic journalists could have been expected to discover closely-guarded state secrets such as a spy program that targeted foreign heads of
White House press secretary Jay Carney insisted on Monday that health care is a “right,” not a “privilege.” That is a theme the Obama administration is sounding with increasing frequency as the rollout of Obamacare becomes a bigger policy and
The UN Human Rights Council is as anti-Israel as its predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights. It protects dictatorships while focusing disproportionate attention and outrage on Israel’s alleged human rights violations. So in 2012, when Israel announced a boycott
On Sunday evening, CBS News’ 60 Minutes featured an investigative report on the Benghazi attacks by Lara Logan. Logan’s reporting confirmed that the Obama administration had been warned, months in advance, about inadequate security at the U.S. facility in Benghazi, and
The Obama administration claims that President Barack Obama was personally unaware that the National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on thirty-five world leaders, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday evening. The claim is contradicted by other reports and, regardless, represents
I came of age far too late to enjoy the late Lou Reed in his heyday, but in time for his 1990s revival. Much of the dialogue and soundtrack in Trainspotting (1996)–including the crazy overdose scene (content warning)–revolved around Reed, both
Politico reports that 300 K Street lobbyists met with the conservative Republican Study Committee, a group within the House GOP caucus last week–and were irritated that the conservatives did not express guilt for the recent government shutdown. Anna Palmer and
Before embarking on yet another “comprehensive” legislative effort, Congress should learn from the failures of Obamacare and start with incremental fixes that prioritize the most urgent problems. On immigration, the most urgent priorities are border and visa security, plus the
Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that well over half a million Californians are set to be dropped from their current insurance plan as the Obamacare rollout continues. According to Saunders, “as of December 2012, there were 491,977 covered
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promised that his government would review the case of Dr. Shakil Afridi, the doctor who has been imprisoned since 2011 for helping the United States find Osama bin Laden, Fox News reports. Dr. Afridi has
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) has asked state authorities to ban the use of the name “Redskins” when the Washington (_blank_) travel to play the Minnesota Vikings on Nov. 7. In the same spirit, and for many of the same reasons,
Tunisia was the birthplace of the Arab Spring, and was seen as one of that movement’s few success stories after the failure and ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Yet Tunisia’s ruling Islamist party is facing the potential collapse
