Obama’s Ex-Bodyguard Losing Health Coverage

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Photo Credit: WNDPresident Obama repeatedly has promised that no one will lose his health insurance because of Obamacare, declaring, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

Media fact checkers were doubtful, and all the way back in 2009 PolitiFact gave it a “half true” rating. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, it could be time now to change that to “pants on fire” or even a retroactive “lie of the year.”

Among those with evidence Obama wasn’t telling the truth is Dan Bongino, a former member of the Secret Service’s elite Presidential Protective Division.

That’s because he is losing his coverage due to Obamacare.

“My plan was canceled, simple as that,” he told WND.

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Nancy Pelosi: ‘I’m Here On a Mission’

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Photo Credit: ReutersNancy Pelosi isn’t going anywhere.

While many thought the California Democrat would step down as House minority leader after this Congress, Pelosi confidants now believe she will remain atop House leadership through 2016 and maybe even longer.

Pelosi herself won’t tip her hand about her plans. But she doesn’t appear to be contemplating retirement.

“I’m not here on a shift. I’m here on a mission — and when my work is done, that’s when I will leave,” Pelosi said in a recent interview with POLITICO.

Pelosi declared the main reason she chose to stay put the past two years is to see Obamacare, which she had a strong hand in crafting and pushing through Congress, implemented successfully. Pelosi, like other Democrats, has publicly complained about the disastrous online rollout of the program, but she remains convinced it will turn out well in the long run.

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Pope Expels German ‘Luxury Bishop’ from Diocese (+video)

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Pope Francis expelled a German bishop from his diocese on Wednesday pending the outcome of a church inquiry into his 31 million-euro ($43-million) new residence complex.

The Vatican didn’t say how long Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, 53, would spend away from the diocese of Limburg but it refused calls to remove him permanently. It gave no information on where he would go or what he would do.

The Vatican said the bishop was leaving pending the outcome of a German church investigation into the expenditures and his role in the affair. Fellow bishops and lay Catholics in the diocese, however, expressed doubt that he would ever be able to return.

“This is a crisis of confidence that will be hard to overcome,” said the dean of the cathedral chapter, Guenther Geis.

Limburg’s vicar general, the Rev. Wolfgang Roesch, who had been due to start Jan. 1, will instead begin work immediately and will run the diocese during Tebartz-van Elst’s absence, the Vatican said.

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Merkel’s Call to Obama: Are You Bugging my Phone?

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Photo Credit: Yves Herman/ReutersThe furor over the scale of American mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden shifted to an incendiary new level on Wednesday evening when Angela Merkel of Germany called Barack Obama to demand explanations over reports that the US National Security Agency was monitoring her mobile phone.

Merkel was said by informed sources in Germany to be “livid” over the reports and convinced, on the basis of a German intelligence investigation, that the reports were utterly substantiated.

The German news weekly, Der Spiegel, reported an investigation by German intelligence, prompted by research from the magazine, that produced plausible information that Merkel’s mobile was targeted by the US eavesdropping agency. The German chancellor found the evidence substantial enough to call the White House and demand clarification.

The outrage in Berlin came days after President François Hollande of France also called the White House to confront Obama with reports that the NSA was targeting the private phone calls and text messages of millions of French people.

While European leaders have generally been keen to play down the impact of the whistleblowing disclosures in recent months, events in the EU’s two biggest countries this week threatened an upward spiral of lack of trust in transatlantic relations.

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Bombshell: Federal Judge Suddenly Green-Lights Lawsuit that Could Stop Obamacare in its Tracks

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Photo Credit: Corbis A federal judge on Tuesday refused to dismiss a case that could fatally cripple the Obamacare health insurance law.

The Affordable Care Act forbids the federal government from enforcing the law in any state that opted out of setting up its own health care exchange, according to a group of small businesses whose lawsuit got a key hearing Monday in federal court.

The Obama administration, according to their lawsuit, has ignored that language in the law, enforcing all of its provisions even in states where the federal government is operating the insurance marketplaces on the error-plagued Healthcare.gov website.

Thirty-six states chose not to set up their exchanges, a move that effectively froze Washington, D.C. out of the authority to pay subsidies and other pot-sweeteners to convince citizens in those states to buy medical insurance.

But the IRS overstepped its authority by paying subsidies in those states anyway, say the businesses and their lawyers.

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Ex-Apple CEO Sculley: Rollout Reflects Broken Government

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Photo Credit: gtsantos/flickrFormer Apple CEO John Sculley says it would be great if the Obamacare rollout fiasco led to a realization that the private sector works better than government. But he isn’t holding his breath.

“I think this huge belly-flop of the president’s most important program is really a great lesson for all of us of just how broken government is,” Sculley said Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto.”

The White House tried initially comparing what it termed “glitches” in the HealthCare.gov website to issues with Apple products that it quickly fixes. That explanation has been panned by mainstream media outlets and even liberal supporters of the Affordable Care Act as it’s become clear the government knew about the problems even before the site was launched.

Government thinks about special interests, not about customers, Sculley told Cavuto. When he worked for Apple, the rule was to start with “clear thinking,” then constantly simplify, he said.

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The Tea-Party Plan to Delay/Defund Obamacare Was Not Only More Realistic, It Was More Compassionate

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Photo Credit: APOne of the more irritating aspects of the recent government-shutdown unpleasantness has been the “I told you so” lamentations of the defund/delay plan’s critics — as if they had anything approaching a workable alternative. I highly recommend Andrew McCarthy’s weekend column. It’s a devastating takedown of the notion that Obamacare repeal is just a multi-election Republican winning spree away. Even if we were able to achieve a Republican perfect storm, sweeping the Senate in 2014 then taking the White House in 2016, does anyone foresee a filibuster-proof Republican senate majority? Isn’t the best-case outcome of that strategy a tweaking of the law not unlike, say, welfare reforms in the 1990s — positive changes that still leave intact a trillion-dollar-per-year, failed entitlement superstructure?

As Mr. McCarthy notes, the tea-party plan was a Hail Mary pass, but those sometimes work. I will note, however, that unlike in every football game I’ve ever watched, in this case members of the offense actually joined the defense in batting down the pass.

Not only did the tea-party plan have a chance, it was far less cynical and far more compassionate than the Republican alternative. The Republican alternative to the tea-party plan boils down to this: Let the people suffer (also called ”let Obamacare implode”), then they’ll come to us, we’ll win a bunch of elections over several cycles, then we’ll make it better.

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Thousands Of Consumers Get Insurance Cancellation Notices Due To Health Law Changes

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Photo Credit: kaiserhealthnews.orgHealth plans are sending hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters to people who buy their own coverage, frustrating some consumers who want to keep what they have and forcing others to buy more costly policies.

The main reason insurers offer is that the policies fall short of what the Affordable Care Act requires starting Jan. 1. Most are ending policies sold after the law passed in March 2010. At least a few are cancelling plans sold to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

By all accounts, the new policies will offer consumers better coverage, in some cases, for comparable cost — especially after the inclusion of federal subsidies for those who qualify. The law requires policies sold in the individual market to cover 10 “essential” benefits, such as prescription drugs, mental health treatment and maternity care. In addition, insurers cannot reject people with medical problems or charge them higher prices. The policies must also cap consumers’ annual expenses at levels lower than many plans sold before the new rules.

But the cancellation notices, which began arriving in August, have shocked many consumers in light of President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their plans if they liked them.

“I don’t feel like I need to change, but I have to,” said Jeff Learned, a television editor in Los Angeles, who must find a new plan for his teenage daughter, who has a health condition that has required multiple surgeries.

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Sen. David Vitter Calls on DOJ to Investigate Armed EPA Raid in Alaska

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Photo Credit: APSen. David Vitter (R., La.) called on the Justice Department (DOJ) Tuesday to investigate an armed raid by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agents on an Alaskan gold mine that occurred earlier this year.

Vitter, in a letter sent Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder, requested the Justice Department investigate the EPA raid, which occurred at a gold mine in Chicken, Alaska earlier this year as part of an investigation into violations of the Clean Water Act.

“The EPA’s use of unnecessary armed intimidation tactics against Alaska miners this summer was extreme, especially to investigate potential Clean Water Act violations from what are essentially a handful of small business owners,” said Vitter, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “At the very least, EPA owes Congress and the American people a thorough explanation, but since they have refused to publicly explain their raid, I hope DOJ will investigate EPA’s excessive actions.”

Vitter and Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) sent a letter in September calling on EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to explain the circumstances of the inspection, which rankled Alaskan politicians and residents already distrustful of the nation’s top environmental enforcer.

“According to several news outlets, EPA agents needlessly intimidated miners last month near Chicken while investigating supposed Clean Water Act (CWA) violations, going so far as to wear full body armor and carry guns in confronting the surprised miners,” the senators said.

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HHS Chief: President Didn’t Know of Obamacare Website Woes Beforehand (+video)

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Photo Credit: WEBN-TVPresident Barack Obama didn’t know of problems with the Affordable Care Act’s website — despite insurance companies’ complaints and the site’s crashing during a test run — until after its now well-documented abysmal launch, the nation’s health chief told CNN on Tuesday.

In an exclusive interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked when the President first learned about the considerable issues with the Obamacare website. Sebelius responded that it was in “the first couple of days” after the site went live October 1.

“But not before that?” Gupta followed up.

To which Sebelius replied, “No, sir.”

Sebelius admitted that there is concern in her department and the White House over the technical debacle surrounding the website rollout, saying “no one could be more frustrated than I am and the president.” The site was supposed to make it simple for people to search and sign-up for new health care policies starting on October 1, but instead it’s been clunky and, at times, inoperable.

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