Drivers Stopped at Police Roadblock Asked for Saliva, Blood (+video)

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Photo Credit: Newsbie Pix/flickrSome drivers along a busy Fort Worth street on Friday were stopped at a police roadblock and directed into a parking lot, where they were asked by federal contractors for samples of their breath, saliva and even blood.

It was part of a government research study aimed at determining the number of drunken or drug-impaired drivers.

“It just doesn’t seem right that you can be forced off the road when you’re not doing anything wrong,” said Kim Cope, who said she was on her lunch break when she was forced to pull over at the roadblock on Beach Street in North Fort Worth.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is spending $7.9 million on the survey over three years, said participation was “100 percent voluntary” and anonymous.

But Cope said it didn’t feel voluntary to her — despite signs saying it was.

Read more from this story HERE.

Martin Bashir Apologizes for Dirty, Disgusting Slam at Sarah Palin

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Photo Credit: REUTERSWhen I first saw a headline about what Martin Bashir said, I figured it must be exaggerated.

No responsible cable news host would call for defecating on a public figure. That’s just beyond the pale, right?

But that’s exactly what Bashir did on his MSNBC show, while spewing venom at Sarah Palin.

He made an abject apology yesterday, and we’ll get to that in a moment.

I’ve long been amazed by Bashir’s brand of name-calling. He despises Republicans, we get it. But the highly personal nature of his assaults, while delivered in an erudite British accent, stands out even by the loose standards of cable news.

Read more from this story HERE.

NBC’s David Gregory Does Not Allow Pelosi to Pivot Away from Her ObamaCare Promise (+video)

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In case you missed Meet the Press Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was confronted by host David Gregory about a promise she made in 2009, similar to the guarantee made by President Barack Obama, that Americans could keep the plans they have under Obamacare.

Then-Speaker of the House, Pelosi said “if you like [the health plan] you have, and you want to keep, you have the choice to do that.” Gregory noted that President Obama has held himself “accountable” for making such a claim and asked Pelosi, who had a blank look on her face after seeing the clip, if she was accountable for a promise that has been proven false as millions of Americans have lost their health plans.

She had no real defense and pivoted to talking points, hoping that Gregory would allow her to deflect from the issue. He didn’t, and hilarity ensued.

“Well, it’s not that it’s not correct, it’s that if you want to keep it and it’s important for the insurance company to say to people, this is what your plan does, it’s doesn’t prevent you from being discriminated against on the basis of preexisting conditions, lifetime limits, annual limits,” Pelosi said before Gregory cut her off.

Read more from this story HERE.

SNL Offers Solution to Barack Obama’s Second Term Blues (+video)

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President Obama’s second term troubles are becoming part of the cultural landscape — witness a comedy bit on last night’s Saturday Night Live.

SNL ran a parody television ad for “Paxil,” an anti-depressant designed to be “strong enough for an embattled second term.”

The ad, featuring Obama impersonator Jay Pharoah, lists a number of “symptoms,” including Benghazi, the NSA, the IRS — and, of course, “Obamacare website problems.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Americans Don’t Think Health Care is Government Responsibility

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Photo Credit: Thinkstock ImageFifty-six percent of American adults say it’s not the federal government’s responsibility to ensure everyone in U.S. has health insurance, according to a new poll from Gallup.

Just 42 percent believe it is the responsibility of the government, the lowest number recorded since Gallup began tracking the opinions in 2000.

Photo Credit: Gallup

Read more from this story HERE.

No. 2 House Dem: Obamacare Attempt to Change ‘Value System in Our Country’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: APRep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.). the assistant House Democratic leader, said on CNN’s “State of the Union With Candy Crowley” on Sunday the Obamacare is an attempt to change a “value system in our country.”

“The fact of the matter is, this is a rollout problem, this is not a values problem. And I think that if we were to look at what we’re attempting to do with the Affordable Health Care Act, you will know that what we’re trying to do is change a value system in our country.”

Clyburn didn’t elaborate on the nation’s “values system.” Instead, he talked about policy cancellations, which are nothing new to him:

“I’ve been hearing from constituents for the entire 21 years I’ve been in the Congress about cancellation letters that they’ve been getting from insurance companies as soon as a child is born with diabetes, cannot get on your health care policy, gets sick, go for your second treatment you get a cancellation letter, you limit your benefits, you get annual benefits — a cancellation letter from your insurance company.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Levin: ‘If This Is Not an Impeachable Offense, Then What Is?’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: markn3tel/flickr“If this is not an impeachable offense, then what is?,” Mark Levin asked his audience after playing clips of President Barack Obama repeatedly telling Americans they could keep their health care plans under Obamacare.

On his Friday radio program, Levin proposed the question after playing a clip of Obama saying “You can keep your plan” on 36 separate occasions:

“I have a question for you, it is a perfectly legitimate question,” said Levin. “This man and his party have destroyed healthcare for millions of Americans. You folks are not gonna get it back unless this entire system is withdrawn. Millions more of you are gonna fall under the same trap…

Read more from this story HERE.

Census Department Faked Unemployment Data to Help Obama Win 2012 Election

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Photo Credit: UPIIn the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.

And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it.

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy.

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.

Read more from this story HERE.

Department of Defense Reports False Data to Conceal Billions in Waste and Fraud

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/TIM SHAFFERLinda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career inserting phony numbers in the U.S. Department of Defense’s accounts.

Every month until she retired in 2011, she says, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio, office of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Pentagon’s main accounting agency. Using the data they received, Woodford and her fellow DFAS accountants there set about preparing monthly reports to square the Navy’s books with the U.S. Treasury’s – a balancing-the-checkbook maneuver required of all the military services and other Pentagon agencies.

And every month, they encountered the same problem. Numbers were missing. Numbers were clearly wrong. Numbers came with no explanation of how the money had been spent or which congressional appropriation it came from. “A lot of times there were issues of numbers being inaccurate,” Woodford says. “We didn’t have the detail … for a lot of it.”

The data flooded in just two days before deadline. As the clock ticked down, Woodford says, staff were able to resolve a lot of the false entries through hurried calls and emails to Navy personnel, but many mystery numbers remained. For those, Woodford and her colleagues were told by superiors to take “unsubstantiated change actions” – in other words, enter false numbers, commonly called “plugs,” to make the Navy’s totals match the Treasury’s.

Jeff Yokel, who spent 17 years in senior positions in DFAS’s Cleveland office before retiring in 2009, says supervisors were required to approve every “plug” – thousands a month. “If the amounts didn’t balance, Treasury would hit it back to you,” he says.

Read more from this story HERE.

In Bold Move, Alaska’s Governor Stands Up to Chamber of Commerce, AFN, and Obama, Says No to Medicaid Expansion

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Photo Credit: AP/Mark ThiessenAlaska Gov. Sean Parnell (R) said Friday his state will not expand Medicaid under President Obama’s signature health-care law after a report estimated it would cost the state about $200 million over seven years.

“I believe a costly Medicaid expansion, especially on top of the broken Obamacare system, is a hot mess,” Parnell said at a news conference on Friday. “The bottom line is: Obamacare failed to launch, is failing to deliver on its promises, and remains in disarray. We simply cannot bail out this failed experiment by expanding Medicaid.”

Groups ranging from the Alaska Chamber of Commerce to the Alaska Federation of Natives and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium had pushed Parnell to move toward expanding Medicaid. But Parnell, who is seeking reelection in 2014, won praise from state Republicans, who oppose expansion.

Expanding Medicaid in Alaska would have made about 40,000 residents with an income of 138 percent of the federal poverty level or less eligible for coverage. The federal government would have initially provided 100 percent of the costs of an expansion, dropping to 90 percent by 2020.

But the federal government would have covered more of the costs in Alaska than in other states, because the federal government covers 100 percent of the costs for Native Americans in Alaska, according to the Anchorage Daily News. About 17,000 of the 40,000 who would have been eligible under the expansion are Alaska Natives.

Read more from this story HERE.