Medicare Paid for Meds after Patients Were Dead

Photo Credit: AP / Manuel Balce CenetaCall it drugs for the departed: A quirky bureaucratic rule led Medicare’s prescription drug program to pay for costly medications even after the patients were dead.

That head-scratching policy is now getting a second look.

A report released Friday by the Health and Human Services Department’s inspector general said the Medicare rule allows payment for prescriptions filled up to 32 days after a patient’s death — at odds with the program’s basic principles, not to mention common sense.

“Drugs for deceased beneficiaries are clearly not medically indicated, which is a requirement for (Medicare) coverage,” the IG report said. It urged immediate changes to eliminate or restrict the payment policy.

Medicare said it’s working on a fix.

Read more from this story HERE.

Democrats: Vote or We’ll Kick Your A**

Photo Credit: Getty ImagesDemocrats are telling voters that they had better head to the polls — or else.

The New York State Democratic Committee is bullying people into voting next week with intimidating letters warning that it can easily find out which slackers fail to cast a ballot next Tuesday.

“Who you vote for is your secret. But whether or not you vote is public record,” the letter says.

“We will be reviewing voting records . . . to determine whether you joined your neighbors who voted in 2014.”

It ends with a line better suited to a mob movie than a major political party: “If you do not vote this year, we will be interested to hear why not.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Despite Pentagon Objections, Fox News Will Air Interview With SEAL Who Killed Bin Laden

Photo Credit: Getty ImagesInsiders at Fox News Channel said Friday that a two-day documentary featuring an interview with the Navy SEAL who killed Osama Bin Laden will air as scheduled despite objections from the Pentagon.

On Wednesday, Fox News announced that a show called The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden hosted by Washington correspondentPeter Doocy was scheduled for Nov. 11 and Nov. 12, but on Friday the Pentagon toldBusiness Insider that the SEALs and former SEALs who were participants do not have permission to discuss the classified 2011 mission.

The government has never identified the Navy SEALs who killed Bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks of 2001, though they were profiled in the 2012 movie Zero Dark Thirty, which was controversial for its insinuation that waterboarding was an effective tool in gathering intelligence.

Read more from this story HERE.

Court Rules Police Can Force Users to Unlock iPhones With Fingerprints, But Not Passcodes

A Circuit Court judge in Virginia has ruled that fingerprints are not protected by the Fifth Amendment, a decision that has clear privacy implications for fingerprint-protected devices like newer iPhones and iPads.

According to Judge Steven C. Fucci, while a criminal defendant can’t be compelled to hand over a passcode to police officers for the purpose of unlocking a cellular device, law enforcement officials can compel a defendant to give up a fingerprint.

The Fifth Amendment states that “no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which protects memorized information like passwords and passcodes, but it does not extend to fingerprints in the eyes of the law, as speculated by Wired last year.

Read more from this story HERE.

NY State Blesses ‘Incest’ Marriage Between Uncle, Niece

Photo Credit: ShutterstockThe state’s highest court has toppled a cultural taboo — legalizing a degree of incest, at least between an uncle and niece — in a unanimous ruling.

While the laws against “parent-child and brother-sister marriages . . . are grounded in the almost universal horror with which such marriages are viewed . . . there is no comparably strong objection to uncle-niece marriages,” Tuesday’s ruling reads.

Judge Robert Smith of the Court of Appeals wrote that such unions were lawful in New York until 1893 and Rhode Island allows them.

The decision stems from a case brought by Vietnamese citizen Huyen Nguyen, 34, a woman who had appealed a ruling by an immigration judge.

The judge had tried to boot her from the United States after declaring that her 2000 marriage in Rochester to her mother’s half-brother was invalid.

Read more from this story HERE.

More Judges Resign, Give Up Careers Over Homosexual Marriage Mandate

Photo Credit: Christian PostBy Samuel Smith.

Since gay marriage was legalized in North Carolina on Oct. 10, at least six North Carolina judges have resigned from their benches because they do not want to go against their Christian faith and conduct wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples.

While it was reported last week that Rockingham County magistrate John Kallam Jr. and Swain County magistrate Gilbert Breedlove resigned from their positions because of the legalization of gay marriage, media reports have surfaced indicating that at least four other magistrates have done the same.

All six magistrates, Kallam, Breedlove, Bill Stevenson (Gaston County), Tommy Holland (Graham County), Gayle Myrick (Union County) and Jeff Powell (Jackson County) say they are waiting on God to give them direction in starting the next phases of their lives.

Stevenson is the latest judge to have publicized that he has stepped down from his position citing religious conflicts with the newly passed North Carolina marriage law.

Although reports surfaced only just this week that Stevenson had resigned, he issued his resignation on Oct. 16, just six days after same-sex marriage was legalized in the state.

Read more from this story HERE.

________________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: The New American N.C. Judge Resigns Rather Than Perform Same-sex “Marriages”

By Dave Bohon.

A longtime North Carolina judge has resigned his position rather than be forced to perform same-sex marriages against his Christian convictions. Swain County Magistrate Judge Gilbert Breedlove, in office since 1990, resigned October 20, citing the October federal court ruling that struck down North Carolina’s voter-passed constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between a man and a woman.

“It was my only option,” the 57-year-old Breedlove told the Asheville, N.C., Citizen-Times newspaper. “We were directed we had to perform the marriages, and that was just something I couldn’t do because of my religious beliefs.”

Breedlove, who became an ordained minister in 1997, said that “I was Christian when I started. Then the law didn’t require me to perform something that was against my religious belief. Now that law has changed its requirements.”

The former Marine Corps staff sergeant, whose main source of income was his position as magistrate, pointed out that “the whole Bible from front-to-end states that a marriage is between a man and a wife. Any other type of sexual activity other than that is what is defined as fornication.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Judicial Watch: Obama May Have Been Elected With Illegal Votes

By Judicial Watch.

A large number of non-citizens cast ballots in U.S. elections and it’s possible that the illegal votes were responsible for President Obama’s 2008 victory, according to an in-depth academic study that confirms Judicial Watch’s assessment that foreign nationals have helped Democrats steal elections.

Non-citizens tend to favor Democrats and Obama won more than 80% of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 sample gathered by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), a large-scale academic survey project operated by teams of researchers from across the country. In fact, enough ineligible voters cast ballots in 2008 to conceivably account for Democratic victories in a few close elections, CCES researchers found. A respected Ivy League professor is coordinator of the CCES which has produced national sample surveys, stratified by state and type of district, in every federal election since 2006. This allows the optimal study of congressional and state races as well as an ideal setting for understanding the relationship between the congressional and presidential elections.

The CCES is an esteemed and highly respected operation that recently published shocking information, gathered from big social science survey datasets, that supports Judicial Watch’s work in this area. In 2012 JW launched the Election Integrity Project, a widespread legal campaign to clean up voter registration rolls and support election integrity measures across the country. Our investigations immediately uncovered data that proved voter rolls in a number of states—including Mississippi, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, Florida, California and Colorado—contained the names of individuals who are ineligible to vote.

Read more from this story HERE.

___________________________________________________________________________

Massive Non-Citizen Voting Uncovered in Maryland

By Bryan Preston.

An election integrity watchdog group is suing the state of Maryland, alleging that it has discovered massive and ongoing fraudulent voting by non-U.S. citizens in one county. But because of the way that the non-citizens are able to cast votes in elections, the fraud is likely happening in every single county and subdivision across the state. The group believes that the illegal voting has been happening for years.

The group, Virginia Voters Alliance, says that it compared how voters in Frederick County filled out jury duty statements compared with their voting records. The group’s investigation found that thousands of people in Frederick County who stated that they are not U.S. citizens on jury duty forms went on to cast votes in elections. Either they failed to tell the truth when they were summoned for jury duty, or they cast illegal votes. Both are crimes. The same group previously found that about 40,000 people are registered to vote in both Virginia and Maryland.

It is a federal crime to cast votes if you are not legally eligible to vote. Non-citizens, whether in the country legally or not, are prohibited from voting in most local and all state and federal elections. Yet the VVA investigation found that hundreds of non-citizens have been voting in Frederick County, Maryland. One in seven Maryland residents are non-U.S. citizens.

Read more from this story HERE.

___________________________________________________________________________

Non-Citizens Are Voting

By John Fund.

Could non-citizen voting be a problem in next week’s elections, and perhaps even swing some very close elections?

A new study by two Old Dominion University professors, based on survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, indicated that 6.4 percent of all non-citizens voted illegally in the 2008 presidential election, and 2.2 percent in the 2010 midterms. Given that 80 percent of non-citizens lean Democratic, they cite Al Franken ’s 312-vote win in the 2008 Minnesota U.S. Senate race as one likely tipped by non-citizen voting. As a senator, Franken cast the 60th vote needed to make Obamacare law.

North Carolina features one of the closest Senate races in the country this year, between Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan and Republican Thom Tillis. So what guerrilla filmmaker James O’Keefe, the man who has uncovered voter irregularities in states ranging from Colorado to New Hampshire, has learned in North Carolina is disturbing. This month, North Carolina officials found at least 145 illegal aliens, still in the country thanks to the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, registered to vote. Hundreds of other non-citizens may be on the rolls.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hagel: ‘Climate Change Presents Security Issues for Us’ (+video)

Photo Credit: AP / Manuel Balce CenetaDefense Secretary Chuck Hagel expressed hope Wednesday that next week’s midterm election would deliver an outcome that enables Congress to “work together,” in order to deal with critical security issues, including “global warming.”

Hagel, speaking at the the Washington Ideas Forum, argued that climate change presents significant security challenges.

“From my perspective, within the portfolio that I have responsibility for – security of this country – climate change presents security issues for us.”

He cited as an example melting glaciers in the Arctic, saying that was having an effect on exploration for oil, natural gas and minerals.

“As the oceans increase it’ll affect our [military] bases, it’ll affect islands, it’ll affect security across the world,” he said. “So, just from my narrow perspective, what I have responsibility for, that’s happening now, and we have to be prepared for that.”

Read more from this story HERE.

NAACP Requires Marchers Protesting North Carolina Voter ID Law TO SHOW PHOTO ID

Photo Credit: Daily CallerNorth Carolinians marching to protest voter-ID laws must present a valid photo ID to participate in an NAACP-hosted protest against voter-ID laws in Raleigh on Saturday.

The central claim among the protesters is that the voter-ID laws disenfranchise certain segments of the voting population, particularly minority voters and poor voters.

According to official NAACP flyers passed out at the rally, protesters must carry the precise kind of ID that they would be expected to present at the voting booth.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cardinal Burke: Neither Bishops Nor Pope Can Change Christ's Teaching on Marriage

Photo Credit: APCan a pope change Catholic teaching on marriage?

When the synod of bishops that Pope Francis has called to discuss the family was meeting in Rome earlier this month, someone not particularly familiar with the Catholic faith might have presumed the answer was yes.

The synod, for example, released a midterm report with a section headed: “Positive aspects of civil unions and cohabitation.”

Yet the Catholic Catechism states: “The Lord Jesus insisted on the original intention of the Creator who willed that marriage be indissoluble.” The Catechism cites Chapter 10 of the Gospel of Mark as one source for this teaching.

“The Pharisees approached and asked, ‘Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife?’ They were testing him,” says the Gospel of Mark.

Read more from this story HERE.