Postal Worker Appears on Price is Right, Convicted of Disability Fraud (+video)

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A former Fayetteville postal carrier who was receiving worker’s compensation payments after injuring herself on the job pleaded guilty to fraud in federal court Monday.

Cathy Wrench Cashwell’s claim that she couldn’t lift mail trays into a truck due to a 2004 on-the-job shoulder injury was called into question in September 2009 when she appeared on “The Price is Right” and spun the “big wheel” twice.

According to an indictment filed in September 2012, Cashwell “raised her left arm above her head and gripped the handle with her left hand.” On a second spin, she “raised both arms above her head and gripped the same handle with both hands.”

In August 2010, the indictment alleges, Cashwell and her husband went ziplining as part of a Carnival Cruise vacation. She was also seen lifting and carrying furniture and bags of groceries with both arms on two different occasions in 2011.

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Most Uninsured Don’t Know if they’ll use Obamacare, Most in US Think Healthcare Will Suffer

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Photo Credit: CNBC

There’s no assurance folks will be buying insurance under Obamacare, and that could spell trouble for the Affordable Care Act.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans who currently lack health insurance don’t know yet if they will purchase that coverage by the Jan. 1 deadline set by the ACA, a new survey revealed Monday.

And less than half of those in the survey released by InsuranceQuotes.com think they’ll get better health care after Obamacare takes full effect. Nearly 50 percent believe the ACA will make it more difficult for them to get tests and procedures done in a timely manner, according to the phone survey of 1,001 adult Americans conducted in early May.

And a whopping 68 percent of low-income Americans aren’t sure they qualify for tax credits that would subsidize their purchase of health insurance—despite they fact that they almost invariably will qualify, the survey found. That population is most likely to benefit from government subsidies under the health-care reform law.

Laura Adams, senior insurance analyst at InsuranceQuotes.com, said public uncertainty about Obamacare—particularly a lack of commitment to signing up—could end up driving up health-insurance costs under the program because not enough healthy people will participate to offset benefits payouts.

Read more from this story HERE.

Campaign Manager Indicted in Growing Email Scandal in New Mexico

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

A former campaign manager for New Mexico governor Susana Martinez was indicted in federal court Thursday on 12 counts of illegally intercepting emails intended for members of Martinez’s 2010 campaign, including some sent to Martinez herself. Now, some are questioning whether the current Democratic attorney general (and a potential opponent for Martinez in the Republican’s reelection bid next year) and a liberal activist connected to Bill Richardson, Martinez’s Democratic predecessor, were involved in the distribution of some of those illegally obtained emails.

Jamie Estrada, who first joined the Martinez’s campaign staff in July 2009, was fired in December of that same year for, among other reasons, accessing Martinez’s personal email, a New Mexico Republican tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Estrada later failed to win an appointment in the new Martinez administration in 2011. According to the indictment, Estrada was contacted in July 2011 by a member of the Martinez campaign requesting a username and password to the campaign’s Internet domain, susana2010.com, for the purposes of renewing the domain contract. Estrada reportedly refused to provide the information and, as a federal investigation later found, used the information to renew the domain himself under a false name, even while the Martinez campaign had exclusive rights to renew the contract.

After renewing the domain, Estrada altered the settings so that incoming emails sent to susana2010.com addresses (that is, to former Martinez campaign staffers) were redirected to a Gmail account Estrada had created. The intended recipients of those emails, which included Martinez, never received those emails. Many of these contained private, sometimes sensitive information: receipts from Martinez’s purchases of songs on iTunes, a staffer’s bank statement, and confirmation of an online purchase by Martinez of several pairs of underwear.

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Struggle for China Continues

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Deng’s economic reforms … opened China to foreign investment and freed thousands of Chinese students to travel abroad, exposing them to the subversive influence of Western ideas. Deng knew the risks he was taking, given the dramatic events unfolding in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Yet, he bravely pushed forward.

The Chinese people responded enthusiastically to Deng’s initiatives. In the spring of 1989, millions gathered peacefully to support his program and urge further political reforms. Led at first by students, the demonstrations soon drew in peasants, workers, professionals, people from across Chinese society. They called for evolutionary change, not political revolution.

But frightened Communist Party hardliners knew that real political reform would lead China inexorably along a democratic path and end their monopoly on power. The symbol the students erected in Tiananmen Square, the paper-mache Goddess of Democracy with torch held aloft, bore an unmistakable resemblance to America’s Statue of Liberty.

Deng was China’s paramount leader in name and in fact. He had bested the old-line Communists who opposed his economic reforms and was now at the peak of his popularity and power. As Party leader, he enjoyed the loyalty of the People’s Liberation Army. The entire nation was poised to take the next historic step with him.

But then Deng flinched, disastrously. He would not cross the democratic Rubicon, and ordered the People’s Army to violate its sacred tradition of never turning its guns on the Chinese people. The attacks in Tiananmen Square and in other cities killed thousands of demonstrators and denied subsequent generations of Chinese their long-sought chance for equal democratic citizenship in the international community.

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Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Government Imprisons 43 Pro-Democracy Activists

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Photo Credit: Zuma Press

A Cairo court on Tuesday sentenced 43 democratic activists to up to five years in prison. The charges include operating illegal nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and receiving foreign funds without permission. Egypt’s spiral down continues.

Robert Becker of the National Democratic Institute is the only American citizen who remained in Egypt to face the charges. He and four others were given a two-year sentence. Twenty-seven other foreign employees were sentenced in absentia to five years each, while 11 Egyptians received one-year suspended sentences.

The 43 worked for such nonsubversive outfits as Freedom House, the International Center for Journalists and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Working for unlicensed NGOs is illegal under Egypt’s 2002 Associations Law. The statute, a relic of the Mubarak era, was applied selectively in pre-revolution Egypt, mainly to squelch the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

By Matt Cover. In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.

Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS.

The IRS’s assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.

The examples point to families of four and families of five, both of which the IRS expects in its assumptions to pay a minimum of $20,000 per year for a bronze plan.

“The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000,” the regulation says. Read more from this story HERE.

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Two-Thirds of Americans Don’t Know If They Will Insure Under Obamacare

By Dan Mangan. There’s no assurance folks will be buying insurance under Obamacare, and that could spell trouble for the Affordable Care Act.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans who currently lack health insurance don’t know yet if they will purchase that coverage by the Jan. 1 deadline set by the ACA, a new survey revealed Monday.

And less than half of those in the survey released by InsuranceQuotes.com think they’ll get better health care after Obamacare takes full effect. Nearly 50 percent believe the ACA will make it more difficult for them to get tests and procedures done in a timely manner, according to the phone survey of 1,001 adult Americans conducted in early May.

And a whopping 68 percent of low-income Americans aren’t sure they qualify for tax credits that would subsidize their purchase of health insurance—despite they fact that they almost invariably will qualify, the survey found. That population is most likely to benefit from government subsidies under the health-care reform law.

Laura Adams, senior insurance analyst at InsuranceQuotes.com, said public uncertainty about Obamacare—particularly a lack of commitment to signing up—could end up driving up health-insurance costs under the program because not enough healthy people will participate to offset benefits payouts. Read more from this story HERE.

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ObamaCare Bait and Switch: The truth about those rate increases in Oregon and California

By The Wall Street Journal. Liberals have spent years claiming that “rate shock” under the Affordable Care Act—the 20% to 30% average spike in insurance premiums that every independent analyst projects—is merely the political imagination of Republicans and the insurance industry. So they immediately claimed victory when California reported last month that the plans that will be available on the state’s new insurance exchange next year would be cheaper than they are today.

Except now it emerges that California goosed the data to make it appear as if ObamaCare won’t send costs aloft as the law’s regulations and mandates kick in. It will, by a lot. And now liberals have suddenly switched to arguing that, sure, insurance will be more expensive but the new costs are justified. Needless to say that was not how Democrats sold health-care reform.

California reported that the rates would range from 2% above to 29% below the current market. “This is a home run for consumers in every region of California,” said Peter Lee, the director of the state exchange. “These rates are way below the worst-case gloom-and-doom scenarios we have heard.”

But Mr. Lee and his fellow regulators were making a false comparison. They weren’t looking at California’s lightly regulated individual insurance market that functions surprisingly well. They were comparing ObamaCare insurance to the state’s current small-business market where regulations similar to ObamaCare have already been imposed.

In other words, California wasn’t comparing apples to apples. It wasn’t even comparing apples to oranges. It was comparing apples to ostriches. Read more from this story HERE.

Widow: Somebody Wanted to Kill My Husband, Sniper Chris Kyle; There’s More to this Story

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Military legend Chris Kyle’s beautiful and articulate widow, who recently spoke at the NRA’s annual convention, dropped a bombshell yesterday during her NBC interview with Lester Holt.

When asked whether she thought her hero husband, with 160 confirmed sniper kills, was immune from harm, Taya Kyle didn’t hesitate: “I was always in fear for his life,” even while he was at home in the U.S.

She went even further when Holt asked her about Chris’s murder. Mrs. Kyle said that there were “deeper issues” about the murderer, veteran Eddie Ray Routh, that Chris had not been told of. She said – choosing her words very carefully – that this “was a case of Chris not having all the information about someone who had more to his story.”

All IRS Agents Still Covering for DC Bigwig Who Directed Persecution of Conservative, Tea Party Groups (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

The watchdog who exposed the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups testified Monday that nobody in the Ohio office being blamed for the scandal would tell his investigators who directed the program, as the new IRS chief vowed to “get to the bottom” of that growing question.

Nearly a month after the scandal broke, the issue of who directed agents in Cincinnati to single out Tea Party and other groups is perhaps the most glaring unanswered question. Inspector General J. Russell George, at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing, revealed Monday that his audit of the agency tried — unsuccessfully — to get to the root of the targeting.

“We did pose that question and no one would acknowledge who, if anyone, provided that direction,” he said…

George later testified that the scandal itself is “unprecedented.” He cited past attempts by the Nixon administration to use the IRS for inappropriate purposes, but said this program was unprecedented.

Read more from this story HERE.

Restaurant Tells Woman who Ran into Male Cross-Dresser in Ladies Room to Use Men’s Room (+video)

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Photo Credit: CBS

By Todd Starnes. A Nashville woman who found herself face-to-face with a “big, burly” cross-dresser in the ladies room of a family restaurant felt her horror turn to anger after a restaurant manager suggested she try the men’s room.

Transgendered people in several states have been fighting for the right to use public restrooms that correspond with whatever sex they consider themselves, with lawmakers in California and Massachusetts providing support for the idea. But David Staton, whose wife had the disquieting run-in while eating out at Amerigo, a restaurant in the country music capital, has a simple solution.

“There needs to be some sort of law that says if you are born a man with man-parts, you go to the men’s bathroom,” said Staton.“In a family restaurant, men should go to the men’s room and women should go to the women’s.”

Amerigo owner Doug Hogrefe confirmed to Fox News that the incident occurred and apologized to the couple.

“Amerigo does not have a policy regarding questioning its guests about gender identity in our restrooms,” he said. “In my 20-plus years in the restaurant industry, this is also the first time something like this has come up.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Transgender Teen Voted Prom Queen At Middleboro High

By Lauren Leamanczyk. Cody Tubman had a dream prom night, the perfect dress and then the crown to go with it.

Cody was voted prom queen of Middleboro High School.

“I was all smiles,” Cody says laughing. “We were standing there and they announced I was prom queen. So I was like ‘oh yay, so exciting,’ But it was kind of surprising.”

It was surprising because Cody is transgender.

She was born a boy but she started dressing as a girl when she was a freshman in high school. She says she feels more confident and comfortable in her body. Read more from this story HERE.

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‘Transgender’ person reveals how he served as part of Navy SEAL Team Six for 20 years before retiring and leaving his male self behind

Photo Credit: Daily Mail


By Meghan Keneally. A former Navy SEAL has written a book about the 20 years that they spent in the elite squad before living life as a woman.

Kristen Beck was called Chris while she served in the famous Navy SEAL squad, one team of which gained international recognition for being the ones who killed Osama bin Laden.

As Chris, Beck served for 20 years in SEAL team 6 and retired just months before the May 2011 raid on bin Laden’s compound.

During her time in the military, Beck went on 13 deployments- including seven in combat zones- and earned both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

Now she is detailing her multi-year process in transitioning from living life as one of the world’s most highly-skilled soldiers to that of her female personality that feels like more of a matched fit to her mental and emotional personality. Read more from this story HERE.

Beck: Obama’s People ‘are Liars’ and Here’s the Then-and-Now Obama Videos to Prove It

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Photo Credit: AP

Those who closely follow current events may often find themselves hearing a politician making a claim, but swearing they heard them say the exact opposite a month, a year, or even a decade ago.

That’s because, many times, they did.

Tuesday night on TheBlaze TV, Glenn Beck aired a segment documenting a number of apparent lies and falsehoods being pushed by the current administration, though he was clear that GOP leaders have done the same.


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Read more from this story HERE.