Could Another ObamaCare Extension Be in the Works Going Beyond 2016?

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Photo Credit: Fox News Following a string of setbacks, the Obama administration reportedly is considering yet another extension of existing individual health insurance policies in an effort to smooth the transition to the federal exchanges under the Affordable Care Act.

Aetna Inc. Chairman and CEO Mark Bertolini told analysts during a conference call he heard the plans could be extended. So did Avalere Health CEO Dan Mendelson.

Meldelson said the Obama administration may decide to let policyholders keep their coverage for an additional three years but refused to confirm if a decision had already been made on the subject.

Avalere Health is a market analysis firm, but Mendelson said his company was not advising the administration on exchange policy. He said he has had informal discussions with administration officials about the extension, but he didn’t identify them.

Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the administration was “continuing to examine all sorts of ways to provide consumers with more choices and to smooth the transition as we implement the law.”

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Video: Leno’s Star-studded Farewell From ‘The Tonight Show’ for Second Time

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NBC/Universal“I don’t like goodbyes; NBC does,” Jay Leno said in his latest last opening monologue, as he bid farewell to “The Tonight Show” — again — on Thursday night.

Characteristically, Leno wasn’t particularly maudlin or sentimental at first, at least compared to Johnny Carson’s “very heartfelt goodnight” that preceded Leno’s briefly interrupted stint as Carson’s successor.

In the closing moments, however, when it was just him at the desk, Leno did choke up, calling “The Tonight Show” “the greatest 22 years of my life,” talking about losing his parents in the first few years the show was on, and how the staff had become his family. Leno even quoted Carson’s sign-off, while saying he was “excited” for his successor, Jimmy Fallon.

“It really is time to go,” he said.

The role of honoring Leno fell largely to Billy Crystal, who lauded him as “America’s night light;” proceeded to reminisce about the early, hungry days of their 40-year relationship and careers; then treated Leno to a surprise rendition of a particularly appropriate song from “The Sound of Music,” performed by multiple stars, among them Oprah Winfrey.

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GOP Senators Send Letter to Obama Demanding Benghazi Explanation

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThree Republican senators have sent a letter to President Barack Obama demanding answers to questions his interview with Bill O’Reilly raised about the Benghazi attack.

In the letter, Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, and John McCain of Arizona tell Obama that his interview “raises more questions than it answers,” and lay out some of the issues they want clarified.

The letter notes that Obama told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly in the interview broadcast in two parts on Sunday and Monday that what “became clear was that the security was lax, that not all the precautions that needed to be taken were taken.”

The bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report concluded that the intelligence community provided “ample strategic warning” that Americans in Benghazi were at risk, the lawmakers wrote, yet Obama’s State Department ignored those warnings and failed to either increase security sufficiently or close the diplomatic facility.

The lawmakers also asked why then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on all five Sunday talk shows and said the United States had a strong security presence that was both “substantial” and “significant.”

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Watch Bill Nye and Ken Ham Clash Over Evolution, Noah’s Ark and the Earth’s True Age in Nearly 3-Hour Debate

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Photo Credit: YouTubeThe long anticipated face-off between “Science Guy” Bill Nye and creationist Ken Ham unfolded Tuesday night live from the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky. During the nearly three-hour debate, Nye essentially defended evolutionary theory, while Ham doubled down on central Biblical tenets.

An aura of respect was maintained throughout most of the dialogue, though the two did occasionally caustically address one another on matters pertaining to evolutionary significance.

In his opening remarks, Ham, who called the central debate between the two parties one centered on “worldviews and starting points,” charged that “the word science has been hijacked by secularists.”

To prove that scientists can hold diverse theological views, he went on to provide numerous examples of revered scientists who reject evolution and embrace Biblical creation. Among them: Dr. Raymond Damadian who invented the MRI as a tool for making medical diagnoses.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a creationist or an evolutionist. You can be a great scientist,” he said.

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General: Supposed Anti-Group Incites Hatred and Violence Against Christian Organizations in U.S.

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Photo Credit: WNDLt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, the executive vice president for the Family Research Council, is blasting the Southern Poverty Law Center for still maintaining – a year after it was linked to a domestic terror case – an online feature that identifies the family group as a “hate” organization.

In an exclusive commentary on WND, Boykin notes that attacker Floyd Corkins II picked the FRC as a target – he testified he went there wanting to kill as many people as possible – through the SPLC feature.

That organization described FRC as a “hate” group even though it “actually is a pro-family organization championing faith, family and freedom,” Boykin wrote.

“It is the intention of the SPLC to fix animus and hostility on the organizations it places on its Hate Map,” Boykin wrote. While some are “racist or supremacist” groups, the map also includes those who simply “oppose liberalized standards of sexualized morality and the redefinition of marriage.”

“There is no resemblance of such groups to violent, extremist organizations. But, that is the point. The SPLC wants to associate groups that have voiced moral objections to same-sex marriage with groups like the Skinheads. It is a powerful campaign of defamation, bullying, and destruction.”

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Administration Eases Restrictions on Asylum Seekers with Loose Terror Ties

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Photo Credit: APThe Obama administration has unilaterally eased restrictions on asylum seekers with loose or incidental ties to terror and insurgent groups, in a move one senator called “deeply alarming.”

The change, approved by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Secretary of State John Kerry, was announced Wednesday in the Federal Register. It would allow some individuals who provided “limited material support” to terror groups to be considered for entry into the U.S.

Supporters of the change, including Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., argued that the current ban on anyone who has ever aided terrorists has unfairly blocked thousands of refugees.

“The existing interpretation was so broad as to be unworkable,” Leahy said in a statement. “It resulted in deserving refugees and asylees being barred from the United States for actions so tangential and minimal that no rational person would consider them supporters of terrorist activities.”

But critics say despite the good intentions, the change raises security concerns, particularly after a report published Thursday on asylum fraud.

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GOP Thwarts New Try to Restore Unemployment Benefits

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Photo Credit: Reuters Senate Republicans narrowly blocked the advance of legislation to restore benefits for the long-term unemployed on Thursday for the second time in less than a month, and Democrats said they intended to call yet another vote on the issue.

“We’re one Republican vote away from restoring unemployment benefits for 1.7 million Americans,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

The White House called the outcome disappointing.

The measure called for a three-month renewal of an expired program that provided up to 47 weeks of federal benefits when state-paid aid runs out, generally after 26 weeks. The cost was estimated at slightly more than $6 billion over a decade. It would have been offset by lowering pension obligations for some companies, a step that would have increased their taxable income.

The vote was 58-40, two shy of the 60 that backers of the measure needed to prevail. That understated the measure’s true support, because Reid sided with opponents at the last minute in a maneuver that will permit him to have the issue reconsidered under the Senate’s rules.

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ACLJ Chief Counsel: Very Possible IRS Targeting Impacted 2012 Election (+video)

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Photo Credit: APBy Tony Lee.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law & Justice, said it was “very well possible” that the IRS’s targeting and harassment of conservatives and Tea Party groups impacted the 2012 presidential election between President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

Testifying before a House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs hearing Thursday to discuss the IRS’s targeting of conservatives, Sekulow, whose organization is representing some Tea Party groups that were targeted, was asked by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) whether he felt that the targeting changed or impacted the 2012 election.

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Not a Smidgen of Corruption? Cleta Mitchell Rattles Off A Litany Of IRS Criminal Offenses

By Debra Heine.

As I was watching the explosive IRS targeting hearing, this morning, I was reminded of Speaker Boehner’s words from eight and a half months ago. “My question isn’t about who is going to resign. My question is who’s going to jail over this scandal?”

Since then, the Obama administration has gone from an initial “outrage” phase to a “phony scandal” phase, to the current old news/”what difference does it make” phase in which they think enough time has passed that they can push IRS rules on 501 (C) (4) groups that codify into law the what the IRS did to target Obama’s political opponents. And now the president feels comfortable enough to say, there’s not “a smidgen of corruption” in the IRS scandal that targeted his political opponents. That a president would say such a thing while there is an ongoing DOJ investigation, (albeit a sham investigation) should set anyone’s spidey sense a-tingling, I don’t care who you are.

“This scandal is not over,” said Washington Attorney Cleta Mitchell, who’s representing about a dozen of the targeted tea party groups. She rattled off a number of criminal offenses that have been committed in what she called, “this very ugly episode”:

“The lying has not stopped. There are lies upon lies in this ugly episode. The Commissioner of the IRS lied to Congress in March 2012 when he said there was absolutely no targeting, Mitchell declared, making sure to note that, “lying to Congress is a crime.”

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Photo Credit: CNS News Witness at IRS Hearing: ‘I Will Not Retreat; I Will Not Surrender’

By Melanie Hunter.

King Street Patriots founder Catherine Engelbrecht, one of many conservatives who claim they were unfairly targeted by the IRS when applying for tax-exempt status, told Congress Thursday that she is “more determined ever than before to stand before you and to all of America and say that I will not retreat.”

“Know this,” she said, “my experiences at the hands of this government in the last five years have made me more determined ever than before to stand before you and to all of America and say that I will not retreat. I will not surrender. I will not be intimidated, and I will not ask for permission to exercise my constitutional rights.”

Engelbrecht said shortly after founding and leading True to Vote and King Street Patriots, she was visited by law enforcement agencies and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), even though outside of filing their tax returns, she and her husband never dealt with any government agency in nearly two decades of running their small business.

“We had never been audited. We had never been investigated, but all that changed upon submitting applications for the non-profit statuses of True the Vote and King Street,” she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee.

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Video: Andrea Mitchell Warns Keystone Pipeline Would Ruin Obama’s ‘Climate Change Legacy’

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Photo Credit: MRC On her 1 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Monday, host Andrea Mitchell warned that President Obama would endanger his reputation with left-wing environmentalists if he dared to approve the Keystone Pipeline: “It goes very much against the legacy, the climate change legacy of not only Barack Obama, but [Secretary of State] John Kerry has spent his whole life devoted to working on these environmental issues and all of his allies are really against this.” [Listen to the audio]

Mitchell began by observing that a new State Department report on the proposed oil pipeline “basically said there is going to be a bad effect on climate change whether they build this pipeline or not” and would give “some political cover to the President and Secretary Kerry if they want to go the route of building the pipeline.”

On Friday’s NBC Nightly News, Mitchell hyped environmentalist opposition to the project and efforts to discredit the newly-released study.

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Predator Drone Used to Arrest American Ranch Family

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Kirsty WigglesworthA Predator drone designed to catch terrorists in Afghanistan was used to track a recalcitrant North Dakota rancher and his sons accused of cattle thieving and monitor them to see when they were unarmed and alert the police in a case believed to be the first where an American citizen was arrested with the aid of a drone.

On Jan. 14, 2014, Rodney Brossart was acquitted of stealing cattle and criminal mischief, but convicted of terrorizing police (a conviction he is appealing) and sentenced to three years in prison with all but six months suspended.

This all stems from an incident on June 22, 2011, when six cattle from a neighboring property wandered onto Brossart’s ranch. Brossart found the cattle and, not knowing to whom they belonged, penned them in an area known as the “missile site.”

Brossart refused to return the cattle without remuneration (which he is entitled to under state law), but the police asserted that Brossart needed to return the cattle to the neighbor under estray laws.

According to the North Dakota statute on estrays or stray animals (Chapter 36-13), a person may take possession of a stray animal when it is on their property if it does not know who owns it. Once the owner is identified, the person shall notify the county sheriff or chief brand inspector. The person who takes possession of an estray may charge for actual damage done to the person’s crops or property by the estray as well as costs incurred for the care and feeding of the estray.

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