Begich, Other Senate Dems Join Call to Delay ObamaCare Mandate Amid Website Failures

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Photo Credit: APSeveral Democratic senators are calling on the Obama administration to delay enforcement of the health care law’s individual mandate, joining their Republican colleagues in saying it would be unfair to penalize Americans for failing to buy insurance when the primary sign-up website doesn’t work.

The Democratic dominoes began to fall quickly Wednesday, after Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., circulated a letter urging President Obama to extend enrollment beyond March 31, 2014.

Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., in a statement released late Wednesday, said: “I believe, given the technical issues, it makes sense to extend the time for people to sign up.”…

The White House, while defending the health care law and vowing to fix the problems with the website, has not explicitly ruled out the possibility of delaying the individual mandate. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, also backed Shaheen’s call in a written statement Wednesday.

“I have repeatedly said this law is not perfect and have proposed changes to make it work for Alaska families and small businesses,” he said. “Given the recent website issues, I also support extending open enrollment season. I want to work with the administration to ensure that individuals are not unfairly penalized if technical issues with the website continue.”

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What If They Gave a Shutdown and No One Cared?

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Photo Credit: TownHall The shutdown/debt limit imbroglio wasn’t a defeat. Defeats leave the losers feeling defeated. But the designated losers, the conservative base of the GOP – which, more accurately, now is the GOP – is more eager and excited than it has been in a long time.

Why? Someone fought. Finally.

Sure, we didn’t win the repeal of Obamacare. The only people talking about actually repealing Obamacare as a direct result of the tactical moves of recent weeks were the doddering dinosaurs and their media accomplices trying to put out the notion that Ted Cruz and his band of merry marauders had suckered us numbskull conservatives with promises of total victory right here and right now.

Being very familiar with the Constitution, we realize that it’s kind of difficult to pass a law when we only hold the House. We’re clear on that. We were always clear on that. What Ted Cruz did – and what the go-along, get-along gang of Republican stegosauruses hate – is that he fought. He fought. There’s a huge value to drawing a line, to taking a stand, to rallying the troops.

Real leaders – which the GOP establishment lacks – know that. We’ve had two presidential elections in a row with a demoralized base. That’s bad. Just ask Presidents McCain and Romney.

This whole thing really had little to do with Obama and the Democrats and, in the short term, even with Obamacare. This was really about the war between the growing conservative majority in the GOP and the dying GOP establishment minority. It’s a war that must be fought, and which we should welcome. And it’s a war we conservatives will win.

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Sebelius: I’m Not Signing Up for Obamacare (+video)

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Photo Credit: US Mission GenevaIn an interview with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta Tuesday night, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she won’t be enrolling in the problem-plagued health insurance system that she was charged to implement.

“I have created an account on the site. I have not tried signing up, because I have insurance,” she told Gupta.

But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says government officials like Sebelius should be required to live under the same laws they impose on everyone else.

Paul is now plugging a constitutional amendment that states, “Congress shall make no law applicable to a citizen of the United States that is not equally applicable to Congress.” The amendment also contains two provisions that apply that same principle to the Executive Branch and Judicial Branch of the federal government.

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Identity Theft Russian Roulette: Healthcare.gov Refers Users to Uncertified Navigators and Assisters

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Obamacare includes a requirement that all marketplaces prepare “Navigators,” “In-Person Assisters,” or “Certified Application Counselors.” These organizations and individuals are supposed to be trained to help Americans – should they desire assistance with the process – apply for and purchase insurance plans through the Obamacare marketplaces.

However — and inexplicably, as the cause of this situation is not being made available to the public — people seeking assistance will be presented with search results from a database that includes individuals and organizations which are simply not certified to help.

Citizens of the 34 states that chose not to create their own exchange (and thus must use the federal Healthcare.gov website) can search for application assistance at LocalHelp.Healthcare.gov. On this page, users are prompted to enter their location. Users then will receive search results comprising the entities available to assist in the users’ respective areas.

See below for a screen shot of this service in action — I entered “Illinois”, and I then received 558 search results consisting of Illinois’ navigator/assister/counselor contact information:

Photo Credit: pjmedia.com

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Pakistani PM Pleads with Obama to Put an End to Drone Strikes

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Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/APPakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif added to growing international pressure over US drone killings on Wednesday by calling on Barack Obama to end all strikes in his country.

At the end of a long-awaited US trip designed to smooth growing tensions between the US and Pakistan, Sharif told reporters that he had “emphasised the need to end such strikes”, which are estimated to have killed between 2,525 and 3,613 people in Pakistan since 2004.

But a 2,500-word joint statement issued by the White House after the one-on-one meeting in Washington and attributed to the two leaders did not mention drone attacks, referring only to a need to respect “sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

It said President Obama also “conveyed appreciation for Pakistan’s internal and regional security challenges”. Both leaders refused to take questions at the end of their two-hour meeting in the Oval Office.

In prepared remarks, Obama acknowledged that there will “inevitably be some tensions … and some misunderstandings between our two countries” but insisted the US-Pakistan relationship will continue to be a “source of strength”.

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Obama to Go On Post-Shutdown Fundraising Blitz for Democrats

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Photo Credit: Intel PhotosPresident Obama plans to be the star guest for at least eight fundraising events around the country over the next five weeks for House and Senate Democrats, sources say.

The aggressive cross-country trip comes after a government shutdown battered Republican approval ratings and raised Democratic hopes of keeping control of the Senate and winning back the House for Obama’s final two years in office.

Obama enjoyed having his party wield power during his first two years in office, and seeing Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) return to the House Speakership would dramatically increase his sway while limiting his days as a lame-duck president.

The fundraising push starts Friday in New York with events for House Democrats and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The president will then head to Boston for another House Democratic fundraiser on Oct. 30, before traveling early next month to Miami and Philadelphia to raise money at two events for Senate Democrats.

Obama will then head to Seattle and San Francisco to raise money for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the fundraising arm of House Democrats.

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Army Chief: Just 2 Brigades Combat-Ready

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Photo Credit: REUTERSArmy Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno revealed this week that just two Army brigades are combat-ready, with budget cuts hampering the military’s ability to train its own troops.

The startling comments were made Monday at the Association of the U.S. Army conference. Odierno and Army Secretary John McHugh both addressed the fallout from the budget cuts, as well as the recent partial government shutdown, and appealed to lawmakers to restore some stability to military funding.

“Functioning like this is just dysfunctional,” Odierno said.

He said that after the sequester kicked in, “we had to stop training basically” in the last six months of the year. He said the recently passed stopgap funding bill has further reduced the Army’s ability to train, and warned that the recurring budget battles in Washington could have serious consequences for America’s fighting force.

“So the worst-case scenario is you ask me deploy thousands of soldiers somewhere, and we have not properly trained them to go, because we simply don’t have the dollars and money,” he said.

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A War That Might Happen

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Photo Credit: National Review Conservatives with long memories had to laugh at the recent New York Times front-page headline: “Fiscal Crisis Sounds the Charge in GOP’s ‘Civil War.’”

That diagnosis largely hangs on the judgment of 1970s New Right direct-mail impresario Richard Viguerie, whose ears have been ringing with the thunder of Fort Sumter for a quarter-century.

Within a week of Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration, Viguerie was denouncing the Gipper as a traitor to the cause. The Associated Press ran a story headlined “Conservatives Angry with Reagan.” Viguerie was the centerpiece: “Almost every conservative I have talked to in the last two months has been disappointed in the initial appointments to the Reagan Cabinet.”

By July of that year, the Washington Post ran a news story, “For Reagan and the New Right, the Honeymoon Is Over,” which included many anti-Reagan barbs. After the 1990 midterms, Viguerie told USA Today, “You just heard the opening shots of a civil war within the Republican Party.”

Then again, just because Viguerie is predicting something doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I’ve always loved the story of the British intelligence officer whose career spanned the first half of the 20th century: “Year after year the worriers and fretters would come to me with awful predictions of the outbreak of war. I denied it each time. I was only wrong twice.”

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Is this the Proper American Muslim Response to Jihad in America?

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Photo Credit: kudusyolu_qudswayOn Friday, October 11, a Muslim convert who calls himself Hasan Abu Omar Ghannoum was taken off a terror-bound bus in California and arrested for aiding and abetting the jihadi group al-Qaeda. Another Muslim busted for jihad in America.

This is hardly new or unique. We see these reports daily. Muslims and converts to Islam wage jihad in the cause of Islam. They cite the Quran, chapter and verse. Muslims worldwide continue the 1,400-year-old war to impose Islam across the world — all citing the same Islamic texts and teachings.

There is a problem in Islam.

So what is the response of the Muslim community?

On the same day that Hassan Abu Omar Ghannoum was arrested, the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California issued a statement: “We share the collective concern for the safety of our communities and security of our nation.” However, it went on to say: “We ask that law enforcement officials and members of the media refrain from assuming that the alleged criminal’s wrongful conduct, if any, was a product of his self-proclaimed faith or associations with members of the southern California Muslim community.”

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Report: NSA Spied on 124 Billion Phone Calls in One Month

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The National Security Agency recorded information about more than 124 billion phone calls during a 30-day period earlier this year, including around 3 billion calls from U.S. sources, according to a tally from top-secret documents released by multiple news outlets.

Documents revealing details about the NSA’s Boundless Informant program show that information regarding billions of phone calls and computer communications was collected by the agency from across the world.

Boundless Informant “allows users to select a country on a map and view the meta data volume and select details about the collections against that country,” according to the Guardian, which first reported on the top secret program earlier this year.

Multiple leaked screenshots of the Boundless Informant program show that information on around 124.8 billion phone calls were collected in just 30-days this year, according to documents released by the Guardian and other news sites.

The documents provide a window into the sheer volume of data being collected by the NSA as late as March of this year, according to the Guardian.

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