Soaring Number Of Cubans Are Entering The United States Through Mexican Border

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Photo Credit: GETTY IMAGESThe easing by the Cuban government of restrictions on traveling abroad has led to a rise in the number of Cubans who try to enter the United States through the Mexican border, the Miami Herald reports.

Undocumented Cubans stopped at the U.S.-Mexican border totaled 2,300 from January through August, more than double the 994 in the same time frame last year, the newspaper says, citing Mexican government figures.

Authorities estimate that roughly 13,000 got to the border undetected between Sept. 2012 and Sept. 2013, the Herald says.

The theory for the rise is that Cubans who make it to the U.S. border benefit from this nation’s “wet-foot-dry-foot” policy, which holds that any Cuban national who puts foot on U.S. soil may stay in the country. Those who are stopped at sea often are repatriated.

Meanwhile, Cuban officials say travel abroad has risen 35 percent since the island’s government loosened restrictions this year.

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McCaskill Demands Explanation Over Staged Arrival Ceremonies for Fallen Soldiers

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Photo Credit: AP2011Sen. Claire McCaskill is pressing the Pentagon for answers following reports — and an admission by the U.S. Department of Defense — that it staged “arrival ceremonies” for fallen soldiers.

“This is even more evidence that these recovery efforts are suffering from systematic problems and a lack of coordinated leadership,” McCaskill said in a statement. “Families in this community just want officials to be honest and forthright about the government’s efforts – instead, what they’re often getting is false hope and fake ceremonies.”

Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command — a unit in the Defense Department — has been holding arrival ceremonies for seven years, with flag-draped coffins being carried off cargo planes as though they held the remains of American troops that had just been returned, according to an initial investigation by NBC News. However, the remains typically were on site before each ceremony began, at a lab where they were undergoing analysis. The report focused on ceremonies at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.

“These ceremonies, which have been held numerous times over the past seven years, reportedly represented to veterans and families that the remains had been recently recovered and were arriving in the United States for the first time,” McCaskill wrote in her Oct. 25 letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Following the report, the Pentagon acknowledged that the ceremonies were more of a “pre-planned” memorial than a series of actual events unfolding. The Pentagon also confirmed allegations that planes used in the ceremonies at the military base in Hawaii couldn’t even fly and were towed into position.

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Video: Even Liberal New York Magazine Turning Against Obama’s Obamacare BS

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Photo Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesYou know things are bad for President Barack Obama when New York Magazine, no bastion of conservatism, is producing videos pointing out your lies.

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Conservative Group’s New Attack on Mitch McConnell Dismissed as ‘Dumb’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube The advocacy group Senate Conservatives Action announced Tuesday that it will spend six figures on a new television ad bashing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — but national Republicans are brushing off the buy.

Senate Conservatives Action, the PAC of the Senate Conservatives Fund that last week endorsed McConnell’s Republican primary opponent, Matt Bevin, will spend $330,000 to air the television ad across Kentucky, the group said. The 30-second spot attacks McConnell for his role in negotiations to end a 16-day government shutdown by restoring government funding, but without blocking the implementation of Obamacare.

“Conservatives asked Mitch McConnell to lead the fight against Obamacare,” the ad’s narrator says. “He didn’t listen.”

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Democrat Aide Does About-Face on Obamacare

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Photo Credit: WND After defending Obamacare from the vilest of insults from angry citizens, a former Democrat congressional aide says that she’s finally given up and admitted that she was wrong.

What prompted the turnabout?

Sue Klinkhamer is one of an estimated millions who, contrary to President Obama’s famous promise, has received, or is about to receive, a policy-cancellation notice.

After getting hers in the mail, she fired off an email to her former boss, Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., and other Democratic colleagues, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Klinkhamer wrote: “I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print.”

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DHS Approves Over 80% of DREAMers Who Apply for Legal Status

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Photo Credit: APThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has approved over 80 percent of young illegal immigrants who have applied for its Deferred Action program, an administrative version of the DREAM Act.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said they have granted legal status to 474,000 of the 580,000 illegal aliens who have applied.

“Last June, DHS announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals process, allowing young people who meet the guidelines to seek a two year provisional legal status to remain in the United States,” wrote Maria Odom, the ombudsman for USCIS, on Oct. 24.

“Our office played a key role in this effort by assisting with individual cases, sharing stakeholder feedback with USCIS and suggesting improvements to the application process,” she said.

“Already, more than 580,000 individuals have requested deferred action, and after a thorough review of each of those cases, including a background check, more than 474,000 requests have been approved, allowing these young people to continue to contribute to the country they call home.”

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Maryland 20-Year-Old Dies Never Having Aged (+video)

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Photo Credit: Times Online/GDA Photo Service/NewscomBrooke Greenberg, who baffled scientists because she never aged, has died at the age of 20, never having developed beyond the physical size of an infant or the mental capacity of a 2-year-old.

The daughter of Howard and Melanie Greenberg from Reisterstown, Md., Brooke is one of about a dozen children in the world who have what some call syndrome X — a kind of Benjamin Button disorder that prevents them from aging.

Her funeral was Sunday at a synagogue outside Baltimore, family friends confirmed.

“The family is doing as well as can be expected,” Chris Cole, a colleague of Brooke’s father, told ABCNews.com today. “They are going through their traditions this week — the shiva.”

Brooke has been pushed around in a stroller all her life. In 2009, when her family was interviewed on ABC’s “20/20,” Brook weighed 16 pounds and was 30 inches tall. She didn’t speak, but she laughed when she was happy, and clearly recognized her three sisters: Emily, now 26; Caitlin, now 23; and Carly, now 17.

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14 Political Races to Watch in 2014

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Photo Credit: Bob LairdIn the 2014 elections, Republicans need to net a six-seat pickup to retake control of the U.S. Senate. They have high hopes, but there is little room for error. In the House, Democrats need a net gain of 17 seats next year to gain majority control and return Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to the speaker’s chair. Here are seven key races to watch in each chamber:

SENATE

•ALASKA: In 2010, Tea Party candidate Joe Miller shocked the GOP by defeating incumbent Lisa Murkowski in a primary; she came back to win re-election as a write-in candidate. Now Miller is expected to be one of three candidates vying for the Republican nomination to challenge Mark Begich, the first-term Democratic incumbent. Other Republicans who could be strong candidates: Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and Dan Sullivan, former head of the state’s natural resources department.

•LOUISIANA: Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu has been called vulnerable in each of her three prior Senate races, and her fourth run is no different. Louisiana regularly votes Republican in presidential years, and Landrieu’s support of the Affordable Care Act has not helped boost her popularity. Her opponent, Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, staunchly opposes the law although he introduced health care legislation while a state senator in Louisiana.

•ARKANSAS: Mark Pryor is a moderate Democrat hoping for a third term. His voting record on the Affordable Care Act in increasingly conservative Arkansas, coupled with a strong Republican challenge, may hamper that. Republicans have quickly coalesced around Tom Cotton, a young freshman congressman who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. This race will be a huge spend for partisans on both sides of the aisle.

•KENTUCKY: Americans are frustrated with Washington, and Mitch McConnell is one of its best-known faces. The five-term senator is facing a primary challenge from Tea Party candidate Matt Bevin and, if he survives, an Election Day challenge from Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. Major ad buys are already taking over the airwaves – eight months ahead of the primary.

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Report: Obama Knew He Was Lying About Keeping Your Insurance

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Photo Credit: APIn a blockbuster report on Monday, sources told NBC News that at least half to three quarters of those who buy individual insurance will have that insurance cancelled by their insurers over the next year thanks to changes mandated by Obamacare. A huge number of the people forced off their current insurance will have “sticker shock,” the sources said. What’s more, President Obama knew all that even as he campaigned on the promise that if you liked your insurance, you could keep it: “the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.”

Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates has been a supporter of Obamacare, but stated, “This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either.” On Monday, White House spokesperson Jessica Santillo said that people might have to pay more for insurance, but that their insurance would be better: “One of the main goals of the law is to ensure that people have insurance they can rely on – that doesn’t discriminate or charge more based on pre-existing conditions. The consumers who are getting notices are in plans that do not provide all these protections – but in the vast majority of cases, those same insurers will automatically shift their enrollees to a plan that provides new consumer protections and, for nearly half of individual market enrollees, discounts through premium tax credits.”

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More Obamacare Heartache: Tally Rises for Americans Losing Their Health Insurance

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Photo Credit: heritage.orgBy Marguerite Bowling.

The hype and dream are fizzling out with the Administration’s big promise on Obamacare—that every American who liked his or her health plan could keep it. According to a new tally, nearly 1.5 million customers in the individual insurance market have lost their current health plans.

They’re losing coverage that many of them liked, with one woman in Florida saying the new option under Obamacare would cost her more than 10 times what she currently pays in monthly premiums. David Hogberg breaks down the insurance cancellations to date at the National Center for Public Policy Research:
-800,000 in New Jersey.

-119,000 from Blue Shield in California.
-160,000 from Kaiser in California.
-300,000 in Florida.
-24,000 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
-13,000 in central and eastern Pennsylvania.
-76,000 from CareFirst in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia…

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Photo Credit: westernjournalism.comWhite House Extends ObamaCare Enrollment Period

Americans now have an additional six weeks in which to enroll for a government-mandated healthcare plan without incurring penalty charges.

In the wake of ObamaCare’s rising unpopularity and a website that does not function for the vast majority of users, White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed Monday that the enrollment deadline has been extended to March 31. Last week, Carney indicated the administration would work to fix the litany of issues plaguing healthcare.gov.

After sending Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on a whirlwind tour to put a positive spin on the site’s malfunctions, the Obama administration apparently decided damage control was not working.

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