GOP Senator’s Wife–a Former Software Consultant–Experiences ‘Fiasco’ Trying to Use Obamacare Website (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

When it comes to Obamacare, “many members of Congress are feeling the very same pain that the rest of America is feeling,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) told Americans in a radio address on Saturday.

Toomey said he, his wife, and three children are among those “forced” to buy government-mandated health insurance on one of the new exchanges, and last week, his wife tried to sign up the family on an Obamacare exchange website.

“Now, my wife is a very sharp woman. She’s a former computer software consultant,” Toomey said. After entering the family’s personal information, the website wouldn’t let her browse the various plans. “When she called someone and asked for help, she was told the system just wasn’t working right now and it was best to try again later.”

According to Toomey, “The fiasco my wife just faced with the health care website is being experienced by Americans across the country when they try to sign up for health insurance. If this were just a matter of a slow-moving computer glitch, well, then maybe that would be excusable, but it’s much more than that.

“It’s been reported that perhaps as many as one third of those who have been able to complete the online enrollment process might not actually have insurance coverage at all. Apparently, the enrollment information isn’t always being transmitted to the insurers…Can you imagine going to your doctor or to a hospital in January only to find out you’re not actually insured?”

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Rep. Trey Gowdy Rips Obama for Acting Like Tyrant (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A member of Congress is now warning that Obama’s imperial presidency – his arbitrary enforcement or non-enforcement of the nation’s laws – has gone too far. And so he’s endorsing a resolution in the U.S. House that would allow a lawsuit over Obama’s decisions to abrogate laws passed by Congress.

“Assume that a statute said you had to provide two forms of ID to vote. Can the president require three forms? Can the president require one form? Can you suspend all requirements? If not, why not?” said Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in an interview on Fox News.

“If you can turn off certain categories of law, do you not also have the power to turn off all categories of law?”

He said Obama’s actions have reached “an unprecedented level, and we’ve got to do something about it.”

Gowdy cited Obama’s decisions to ignore certain immigration laws, even though Congress did not approve the changes. And Obama’s decisions to change the Obamacare law as he goes along. And his decision to make “recess appointments” even though the U.S. Senate was not in recess.

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Global Warming Climate Alarmists’ Search for Proof Growing Cold

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Photo Credit: MCT ILLUSTRATION

Photo Credit: MCT ILLUSTRATION

Recall global warming hysteria’s halcyon days? Just 13 years ago, Dr. David Viner, senior scientist at Britain’s University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit, confidently predicted that, within a few years, winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event.”

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

Of course, that doesn’t mesh with what happened. This past October, the UK Express headlined, “Worst winter for decades: Record-breaking snow predicted for November.”

By the end of November, Brits were shivering, “as Britain faces snow, ice and plummeting temperatures,” reported the Mirror newspaper. “Most of Scotland has been issued severe weather warnings for ice, and temperatures are expected to remain low, causing problems with snow and ice across the country.” Winter yet lay ahead.

We shouldn’t pick on Great Britain. There is plenty of global warming foolishness here at home. Recall James Hansen, global warming guru whose alarmist campaign was underwritten by his NASA paycheck. By the 2020s, Hansen predicted in 1986, the U.S. average annual temperature would rise 9 degrees Fahrenheit, or more, and up to 3 degrees by the 2010s.

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Keystone Contractor’s Ties to Energy Groups Draw New Scrutiny

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A contractor that worked on the State Department’s environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline is a member of several energy industry groups that have urged the government to support the project — news that is sure to further opponents’ accusations of bias.

Climate activists have already complained about alleged conflicts of interest by the London-based firm Environmental Resources Management, a company that worked on a State Department draft study concluding that TransCanada’s Alberta-to-Texas pipeline would pose little risk to the environment. The department’s inspector general is also conducting a probe into possible conflicts of interest in the pipeline review process.

While a previous State Department investigation found no conflicts of interest, the latest information could further roil a debate that has already turned Keystone into a political headache for the Obama administration, a campaign issue for Republicans in 2014 and a source of tension between the U.S. and Canada.

Websites or promotional material of the Western Energy Alliance, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association all list ERM as a members. In addition, two top ERM staffers are listed on the boards of the Western States Petroleum Association — another coalition of energy interests that supports the Keystone pipeline network.

Greens had already seized on ERM’s membership in the powerful American Petroleum Institute, another supporter of the pipeline.

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Vatican Chief Justice: Denying Communion to Nancy Pelosi “Makes Perfect Sense”

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

Catholics across the United States have for years wondered if and when pro-abortion “Catholics” like Nancy Pelosi or John Kerry would be told not to present themselves for Communion because they are out of step with Catholic Church teachings on the sanctity of human life.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis and now the chief justice at the Vatican’s highest court saying prohibiting Pelosi and Kerry from receiving Communion”makes perfect sense,” according to a new interview Burke gave to EWTN.

As CNS News reports on the interview:

In an interview with EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo on Dec. 13, Cardinal Burke explained that it is necessary to protect the Sacrament, the Communion wafer offered at Masses, from “being profaned, being violated by someone receiving unworthily,” someone “who knows that he or she is unworthy and yet presumes to come forward and to take the Holy Eucharist.”

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GM CEO Rejects Repaying Feds for Bailout Losses

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Photo Credit: ERIC SEALS Detroit Free Press

Photo Credit: ERIC SEALS Detroit Free Press

The General Motors bailout may have cost the government $10 billion, but GM CEO Dan Akerson rejects any suggestion that the company should compensate for the losses.

He says Treasury officials took the same risk assumed by anyone who purchases stock.

“I would not accept the premise that this was a bad deal,” Akerson said during a question-and-answer session at the National Press Club in Washington. He also said the government’s $49.5-billion aid to GM helped save billions of dollars in tax revenue and government social services.

Akerson spoke in the wake of Treasury announcement last week that it sold its last shares in GM and Akerson’s decision to retire in January. The automaker’s board of directors named Mary Barra, the company’s first CEO, to succeed Akerson.

The speech also came as GM announced it is investing $1.2-billion in five U.S. plants, which Akerson said is a recognition that after 15 straight profitable quarters the automaker can’t rest on its success.

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Analysis: China Needs Western Help for Nuclear Export Ambitions

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

China’s investment in Britain’s 16 billion pound Hinkley Point project is its first foray into Europe’s nuclear power market and a marker of its global ambitions, but its firms will depend on foreign partners if they are to fulfill them.

China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) plan to take a combined 30-40 percent stake in a consortium led by French utility EDF to build French-designed EPR reactors in southwest England.

China has the world’s largest nuclear building program at home and hopes to leverage this into a nuclear export industry.

While China has already built reactors for its ally Pakistan, Hinkley Point is its first nuclear project in a developed country, and Beijing hopes the UK credentials will help promote its two nuclear giants on the global stage.

But industry analysts say gaps in the Chinese supply chain, fears of political interference and inexperience in the economics of nuclear power mean the firms will struggle to go it alone.

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Obama’s 2013 Hawaiian Vacation — What’s Wrong with Dollywood?

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Obama is packing his bags for a 17-day, taxpayer-funded Christmas vacation to Hawaii, The Washington Times reported. The vacation begins on Friday, December 20.

The first family will reportedly be shacking up at a palatial ocean-front home that rents for $24,500 a week. When you toss in the shaved ice, greens fees, and gas for Air Force One, the American taxpayers could be on the hook for one mighty expensive Hawaiian holiday.

The Hawaii Reporter ran the numbers on last year’s trip and found that it cost taxpayers more than $4 million. That’s some pricy poi.

And while the first family enjoys pampering in paradise, it’ll be anything but a vacation for folks who live close by, according to Hawaii News Now. Residents will be subjected to roadblocks and security checks. A popular canal will be closed and patrolled by Navy Seals and military blockades have reportedly been erected on the beach.

“One time they stopped me – they opened up my gas cap to look into the lawn mower,” resident Norman Asing told the newspaper.

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Small Businesses Claim U.S. Government Stealing their Ideas

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

“They stole all my stuff and used taxpayer money to do it,” John Hnatio, a Maryland small business owner, says of the U.S. government.

Hnatio claims the government has put his company, FoodquestTQ, nearly out of business by stealing his firm’s software that was designed to be licensed to the Food and Drug Administration to monitor food safety.

The FDA “took our ideas, plagiarized my doctoral dissertation on which a patent was based, and then they infringed on our patent. The result was that it decimated our business,” he adds.

Hnatio says his company has been left hanging by a thread. He has had to fire employees and says that the remaining three, including himself, are receiving no salary and have been forced to go on unemployment insurance.

“I have never seen anything like it,” says Hnatio, who is a retired federal government official.

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High School Senior Suspended for Year After Hugging Teacher

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Photo Credit: ben swann

Photo Credit: ben swann

A high school senior won’t graduate on time after being suspended for one year for hugging a teacher.

CBS Affiliate WGCL reports that a hearing officer at Duluth High School found that the boy violated the Gwinnett County Public Schools’ rules on sexual harassment.

Surveillance camera video captured Sam McNair, 17, entering a room, placing his arms around the back and front of the teacher and tucking his head behind her neck.

The teacher alleged in a discipline report that McNair’s cheeks and lips touched the back of her neck and cheek, according to WGCL.

The 17-year-old denied he sexually harassed his teacher or that he kissed her. He said he has hugged his teachers many times before, including this one, and has never been warned about doing so. WGCL reports McNair has previous suspensions, but none for sexual harassment.

CBS Atlanta News

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