More Whistleblowers Detail VA Abuses, Suffer Retaliation

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Photo Credit: Fox News By Jennifer Griffin.

The allegations of wait times, delayed care for veterans and cooked books began in Phoenix, but new revelations by two more Veterans Affairs whistleblowers in two different states suggest the VA problems are endemic.

“What really bothered me was that this delay was a direct result of this extremely low sense of caring for the patient,” said Dr. Jose Mathews, the chief psychiatrist for the VA Medical Center in St. Louis starting in Nov 2012.

Mathews and another whistleblower in Texas detailed their concerns to Fox News.

According to Mathews, he noticed that the doctors he oversaw who were responsible for seeing veterans with post-traumatic stress and other acute mental health issues were working just a few hours a day. They were seeing about half the patients they could, Mathews alleged in a federal whistleblower complaint filed last year. Meanwhile, there were mounting suicides among veterans being treated at his facility — and officially, the St. Louis VA was reporting to its headquarters in Washington that its productivity was among the highest in the nation.

“They all got bonuses — that’s the sad part. Because in reality we were not really doing a good job, but it shows up on paper as if we are,” Mathews told Fox News.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: YouTube Watch Jay Carney Lie About the Department of Veterans Affairs Scandal

By Jim Treacher.

Most transparent administration ever. This is what you voted for, America. And this is what you’re getting. Congratulations.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst VA Calls Top Official’s Planned Retirement A ‘Resignation’ Amid Scandals

By Patrick Howley.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced its top health official’s “resignation” Friday despite the fact that he was already scheduled to retire in 2014 and has a replacement lined up, records reveal.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki accepted Friday the “resignation” of Under Secretary for Health Affairs Robert Petzel amid a growing scandal about VA secret waiting lists and deadly wait times for veterans.

“Today, I accepted the resignation of Dr. Robert Petzel, Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Shinseki said in a statement. ”As we know from the Veteran community, most Veterans are satisfied with the quality of their VA health care, but we must do more to improve timely access to that care.”

But Petzel was already scheduled to retire.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Top VA Healthcare Official Resigns Amid Scandal

By Cathy Burke and Todd Beamon.

The top health official at the beleaguered Veterans Affairs department abruptly quit Friday amid growing outrage over delays in care for ailing veterans at numerous VA facilities.

VA Undersecretary for Health Dr. Robert Petzel was supposed to retire this summer, but VA Secretary Eric Shinseki asked for his resignation early, Military Times reports.

“As we know from the veteran community, most veterans are satisfied with the quality of their VA healthcare, but we must do more to improve timely access to that care,” Shinseki said in a statement. “I am committed to strengthening veterans’ trust and confidence in their VA healthcare system.”

VA officials wouldn’t elaborate on any specifics on the forced resignation, according to the Times.

Petzel was on the hot seat Thursday along with Shinseki, testifying before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee about the scandal.

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Common Core: ObamaCare for Education

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Photo Credit: The American Spectator Common Core. Rutgers and Condi Rice. Brandeis and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Smith College and Christine LaGarde. Glenn Beck, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie.

Amid all the swirling controversies over campus commencement speakers, seemingly in a separate corner of the political universe another controversy swirls over Common Core. In fact? They are the same controversy. Not to mention the battle for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. You could, in fact, call Common Core Obamacare for Education.

Let’s start with an appearance on the O’Reilly show the other night by Glenn Beck. Holding up an exercise on “Possessive Nouns” Beck read the problems a third grade grammar school student had to solve as a homework assignment. The exercise involved making “each sentence less wordy by replacing words with a possessive noun phrase.”

Possessive nouns. Simple and uncontroversial enough, yes? Here are the six sentences, the “wordy” sentence first and the grammatically correct version second, exactly as sequentially presented by Common Core.

1. The job of a president is not easy.
A president’s job is not easy.

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Miller: Sullivan and Treadwell’s LOST History ‘Deeply Troubling’

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Republican US Senate Candidate Joe Miller today addressed his primary opponents’ history of support for the United Nations’ Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).

“I find my opponents’ history of support for this naked power grab by our would-be global governors at the United Nations deeply troubling,” Miller said. “It is simply not enough that Mr. Treadwell and Mr. Sullivan are running from their records during a hotly contested senate election.” 

Miller continued, “I could never support a treaty that surrenders the sovereignty of the people of the United States and empowers the United Nations, for the first time, to directly tax and regulate our citizens. Freedom from the arbitrary decrees of unaccountable rulers is the very reason we fought the Revolutionary War. Why should we voluntarily submit to such a regime in our time?”

Dan Sullivan has been described in the Anchorage Daily News as “a strong advocate in government meetings, congressional testimony and public speeches on the importance of U.S. accession to the Law of the Sea Convention.”

In a speech delivered at the 2007 Arctic Energy Summit in Anchorage, Sullivan praised Senator Murkowski for her “leadership on [Arctic] issues, particularly the Law of the Sea ratification.” He further stressed that “updating our Arctic policy will involve working closely with Congress on a variety of issues, including U.S. accession to the Law of the Sea Convention.”

Sullivan went on to say that “avoiding nationalistic policies and sovereignty conflicts” should be a high priority, and stressed the need for “a global community working toward common global interests.”

Mead Treadwell also has a long history of support for ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. 

In a speech before the Juneau World Affairs Council in 2011, Treadwell stated unequivocally that “international cooperation in the Arctic must be strengthened — with the force of both international law and ratification of the Law of the Sea.”

The Alaska Dispatch described Treadwell’s advocacy for LOST in a 2012 story: 

“Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell is doing his part to keep it on the table. Although he says he has concerns about the treaty, Treadwell, who has a long history of working for the treaty and for Arctic issues, has worked diligently toward passage. He has testified repeatedly in front of Congress, regularly partakes in the State Department-chaired monthly Arctic Policy Group meeting, attends conferences where the treaty is discussed, and leads Alaska in its representation to the Arctic Council, where the Law of the Sea is the agreed-upon legal framework for resolving Arctic issues.”

Joe Miller concluded, “Both candidates’ meager efforts to back away from their past, hardline backing of LOST are likely to be seen by increasingly skeptical Alaskan voters as election-year pandering.”

SunTrust Reverses Decision On Conservative Benham Brothers

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller By Alex Pappas.

After an uproar from conservative customers, SunTrust Banks announced Friday afternoon that the decision to end its relationship with real estate entrepreneurs David and Jason Benham had been reversed.

Earlier Friday, The Daily Caller reported that SunTrust Banks had pulled all of its listed properties with the Benham brothers’ bank-owned property business.

The move came just a week after HGTV announced it was canceling a planned home renovation show hosted by the Benhams because of their conservative views on abortion and gay marriage.

By Friday afternoon, SunTrust released a statement saying the decision had been reversed. The bank didn’t go into detail about why they originally cut ties with the Benham brothers, though SunTrust said the decision was made by a third party vendor. TheDC reported earlier Friday that the vendor had told a Benham Brothers franchisee that the bank itself made the decision.

“We clarified our policies with our vendor and they have reinstated the listings with Benham Real Estate,” SunTrust spokeswoman Beth McKenna said.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APRev. Graham: Christ’s ‘True Followers’ Can’t Endorse Gay Marriage Regardless What President, Media, Courts Say

By Michael W. Chapman.

Rev. Franklin Graham, son of world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham, said that “true followers” of Jesus “cannot endorse same-sex marriage” regardless of what President Barack Obama, the Congress, the Supreme Court, or the media say about the issue, adding that marriage was “settled by God Himself” and cannot be modified by man.

“True followers of Jesus Christ, whose salvation is based entirely upon God’s Word, cannot endorse same-sex marriage, regardless of what our President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the media or the latest Gallup poll says about the matter,” said Rev. Graham in his May 2014 column for Decision magazine.

“This moral issue has been settled by God Himself and is not subject to man-made revisions or modifications,” he said. “In the end, I would rather be on the wrong side of public opinion than on the wrong side of Almighty God who established the standard of living for the world He created. Marriage is a biblically moral issue, not a political or theological one.”

Rev. Graham made those remarks after first discussing how “pressure from the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community” on the A&E cable channel had tried to force Duck Dynasty off the air last year because its patriarch, Phil Robertson, had expressed his “biblically based convictions.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Where Did ’97 Percent’ Global Warming Consensus Figure Come From?

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Mike Finn-KelceyThe University of Queensland in Australia is taking legal action to block the release of data used by one of its scientists to come up with the oft-quoted statistic that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that mankind is causing global warming.

Since coming out with this figure last year, climate scientist John Cook of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute has been under fire for the methodology he used.

“Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on [anthropogenic global warming] is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research,’’ Cook and his fellow authors wrote in their study which was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters last year.

The university has told climate skeptic blogger Brandon Schollenberger that the data on the study he possesses was illegally obtained and they would take legal action against him if he published it.

“UQ has therefore published all data relating to the paper that is of any scientific value to the wider community,” said Queensland’s acting pro-vice-­chancellor Alastair McEwan.

Read more from this story HERE.

International Outrage Grows for Sudanese Woman Sentenced to Death for Apostasy

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Photo Credit: Fox News International outrage is mounting over the death sentence a Sudanese judge ordered for the pregnant wife of an American citizen — all because she refuses to renounce her Christian faith.

Meriam Ibrahim, 26, was sentenced Thursday after being convicted of apostasy. The court in Khartoum ruled that Ibrahim must give birth and nurse her baby before being executed, but must receive 100 lashes immediately after having her baby for adultery — for having relations with her Christian husband. Ibrahim, a physician and the daughter of a Christian mother and a Muslim father who abandoned the family as a child, could have spared herself death by hanging simply by renouncing her faith.

“We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam,” Judge Abbas Khalifa told Ibrahim, according to AFP. “I sentence you to be hanged to death.”

But Ibrahim held firm to her beliefs.

“I was never a Muslim,” she answered. “I was raised a Christian from the start.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Jerry Brown: ‘LAX Must Be Moved Due to Rising Seas From Global Warming’ then ‘Oh, Never Mind’

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Photo Credit: IJ Review California Governor Jerry Brown released his state budget earlier this week and had some strong warnings about future cost impacts due to the effects of global warming.

According to some scientists, over the next couple of hundred years, sea levels could rise up to four feet and that will affect the airports in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as the nuclear plant in San Onofre.

His comments:

If that happens, the Los Angeles airport’s going to be underwater.

So is the San Francisco airport.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dept. of Agriculture Orders Ballistic Body Armor (+video)

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Photo Credit: Breitbart A May 7th solicitation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks “the commercial acquisition of ballistic vests, compliant with NIJ 0101.06 for Level IIIA Ballistic Resistance of body armor.”

According to the solicitation, “The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General,” seeks “Body Armor [that] is gender specific, lightweight, [having] trauma plate/pad (hard or soft), [and] concealable carrier.” The order includes “tactical vest, undergarment (white), identification patches, accessories (6 pouches), body armor carry bag, and professional measurements.”

Read more from this story HERE.

The Obama Coalition is About to Come Apart

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Photo Credit: UPIFor the past decade the Democrats have managed to defy gravity by bolting together an unlikely coalition of the richest and poorest Americans. It’s no secret. Ever since President Bush’s re-election in 2004, the pattern has been clear. People making above $100,000 and below $40,000 vote Democratic. The people in the middle vote Republican.

But now that top-bottom coalition is about to come apart, or lose its majority status at least. And the issue will be one that may loom larger than the debacle of Obamacare — the Keystone Pipeline.

Forget all that business about Barack Obama being the first African-American President, the child of poverty and discrimination who fought his way to the top through sheer brilliance and doggedness. Sure African-Americans vote 90 percent for him and form an indispensable part of his coalition. But Obama hasn’t done a thing for them since taking office except increase unemployment.

No, the real Obama is the one who came out of Harvard and Chicago Law Schools, picking up everything he knows in the faculty lounge. That’s where he met the people who taught him that middle Americans are frustrated yahoos “clinging to their guns and religion,” the ones who set him on the lunatic path of believing that what the weather is going to be like in 50 years is the most important issue facing America.

Obama’s critical support comes from the upper crust of America, the citizens who live comfortably sheltered in academia and the non-profit sector, who don’t care much about electricity or the manufacturing economy but who honestly believe that we can shut down the whole middle portion of the country and turn off the lights in order to save the world from the “pollution” of carbon dioxide.

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Bring it On: Iran to ‘Destroy U.S. Navy’

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Photo Credit: US Navy A top Iranian naval commander said that he is prepared to order suicide attacks, drone strikes, and missile technology to “destroy the U.S. Navy” in any upcoming confrontation, according to an interview printed in Iran’s state-run media.

Iranian Naval Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, a member of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that Iran is constantly training and preparing for a clash with the United States,according to a recounting of his remarks provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Fadavi revealed that Iran “compensates for its technological inferiority to the United States with a strategy of asymmetrical warfare, including suicide attacks and the use of speedboat and its missile capability,” according to MEMRI.

Additionally, Fadavi revealed that on “at least” three occasions senior U.S. officials have contacted Iran to establish a telephone hot line like the one used between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War era.

Fadavi’s military threats come amid a massive military buildup by Iran, which claims to have duplicated and armed a downed U.S. drone and to have developed advanced ballistic missiles that could be capable of carrying a nuclear payload.

Read more from this story HERE.