VA Hospital Axed Veteran Programs While Approving $1 Million In Bonuses

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Larry DowningThe Memphis Veteran Administration (VA) Medical Center approved over $1 million in bonuses months before closing a therapeutic aquatic pool citing a lack of funds.

The Memphis VA Medical Center handed out $1,005,644 in bonuses for its approximately 2,000 employees in fiscal year 2010, according to data provided to The Daily Caller by Sandra Glover, the communications officer for Veteran Integrated Services Network (VISN) 9, which includes the Memphis VA Medical Center. Glover told TheDC that cost factored into the decision to close the therapeutic aquatic pool in July 2011.

In a statement prepared for TheDC, Glover said that bonuses and capital improvement projects come from separate pools of money, and that the VA outsources aquatic care to veterans at VA expense.

“The Memphis VA Medical Center is committed to honoring veterans with safe, high quality, accessible care earned through their service to the country,” the statement reads. “By law, funds for specific purposes cannot be used for anything other than what they’ve been appropriated for. It is a management decision to consider the cost benefit of maintaining programs and services within the organization.”

“No veteran has been denied services as a result of the closure of the therapeutic pool closure,” the statement continued. “Any patient that requires aqua therapy as a result of their plan of care will be referred to an accredited aqua therapy program in the private sector at VA expense.”

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What Voter Fraud? Study Finds More Than 35K Incidents of ‘Double Voting’ In North Carolina In 2012

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Photo Credit: IJ Review Opponents of Voter ID laws may continue to say that voter fraud is not real, or that you are more likely to be taken by a UFO than to find voter fraud, but unfortunately for them, facts don’t lie.

The North Carolina Board of Elections has found that there were 35,570 instances of “double voting” in the state in 2012, according to National Review. These voters shared the same first and last names and dates of birth with people who voted in other states in the same election.

Another 765 North Carolinians shared the same names and last four digits of their Social Security number with voters elsewhere.

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Executive Power Grab: Obama to Announce New Plans Forcing Electricity Rates to Skyrocket (+video)

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Photo Credit: TownHall When President Obama ran for office in 2008, he promised he’d implement new policies that would force electricity rate to “necessarily” skyrocket.

Here we are six years later and President Obama is set to announce new, major regulations on power plants in the name of climate change. The New York Timesis calling it the boldest move ever made by a president to address the issue.

The Obama administration is set to announce a rule Monday to limit carbon emissions in thousands of fossil-fuel burning plants across the country, a cornerstone of President Obama’s climate-change agenda and his first-term promise to reduce such emissions by 17 percent by 2020.

The Environmental Protection Agency will ask existing plants to cut pollution by 30 percent by 2030, according to people familiar with the proposal who shared the details with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, since they have not been officially released.

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Pentagon Wrestles with Bogus Climate Warnings as Funds Shifted to Green Agenda

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Photo Credit: DoD photo by Glenn FawcettTen years ago, the Pentagon paid for a climate study that put forth many scary scenarios.

Consultants told the military that, by now, California would be flooded by inland seas, The Hague would be unlivable, polar ice would be mostly gone in summer, and global temperatures would rise at an accelerated rate as high as 0.5 degrees a year.

None of that has happened.

Yet the 2003 report, “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” is credited with kick-starting the movement that, to this day and perhaps with more vigor than ever, links climate change to national security.

The report also became gospel to climate change doomsayers, who predicted pervasive and more intense hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts.

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Veterans See Red as Jane Fonda Tapped to Speak to UCLA Grads

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Photo Credit: APVietnam veterans in California are furious all over again with Jane Fonda, after the actress was chosen to speak this month at a UCLA graduation ceremony.

Fonda, who in 1972 traveled to Hanoi, Vietnam, to meet with enemy soldiers and called American soldiers “war criminals,” has been picked to be the graduation speaker at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television’s commencement ceremony on June 13.

“We hate her,” Nick Callas, 67, president of the Santa Clarita chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, told FoxNews.com. “We won’t ever see any of her movies or support anything she did. It makes me sick to see her get this kind of recognition.

It was Fonda’s journey to Vietnam, as American soldiers were dying in the jungles of Southeast Asia and the nation was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the war, that veterans like Callas will never forget — or forgive. Fonda famously posed near a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. Although she has apologized since, many veterans believe she helped lift the enemy’s spirits while demoralizing those of young Americans.

The actress told Oprah Winfrey in 2013 she made an “unforgivable mistake,” saying she was taken to a North Vietnam military site during the last day of her visit, despite her objections.

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Police Arrest Man Wanted in FBI Explosives Case

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Photo Credit: AP / FBIA San Francisco social media maven and former political consultant who was wanted on suspicion of possessing explosives has been taken into custody after a three-day manhunt.

Federal agents and the San Francisco police said they captured Ryan Kelly Chamberlain II, 42, on Monday afternoon shortly after announcing that they had found his car near Crissy Field, just south of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Though Chamberlain was considered armed and dangerous, FBI spokesman Peter Lee said Monday that he did not seem to pose an immediate threat to public safety.

“Anyone who has the means, methods and access to make a bomb should be considered armed and dangerous,” Lee said before the arrest.

A law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter said Chamberlain was spotted in his white car around 6:22 p.m. Monday.

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Hillary’s Failed Benghazi Spin

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard Hillary Clinton is right about Benghazi—or at least she’s right about one thing.

According to a story by Maggie Haberman about the Benghazi chapter in Clinton’s forthcoming book Hard Choices, the former secretary of state contends that some of her critics have badly mischaracterized the now infamous question she asked at a January 23, 2012, congressional hearing: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

She’s right, they have. The question, which came in the middle of a heated back-and-forth with U.S. senator Ron Johnson, was not so much a declaration of indifference as it was an attempt to redirect the questioning from its focus on the hours before the attacks to preventing similar attacks in the future.

But beginning with her bizarre analogy to explain that question, Clinton’s attempt to spin Benghazi—at least as insofar as the Politico piece represents it—is highly misleading.

Clinton writes: “My point was simple: If someone breaks into your home and takes your family hostage, how much time are you going to spend focused on how the intruder spent his day as opposed to how best to rescue your loved ones and then prevent it from happening again?”

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Photo Credit: APTed Cruz: Hillary more obsessed with ‘right-wing-conspiracy’ than Benghazi terrorists

By Tony Lee.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for obsessing about the so-called “right-wing conspiracy” more than the terrorists who murdered four Americans in Benghazi in 2012.

In the Benghazi chapter of her new book, Clinton still blames the YouTube video for the terrorist attacks and dismisses Americans who want answers about what may have been her lowest moment as Secretary of State.

“She’s more focused on blaming the so-called vast right-wing conspiracy than on the terrorists,” Cruz said on ABC’s This Week. “The truth shouldn’t be partisan, and there’s a pattern in this administration.”

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EPA to Seek to Cut Power Plant Carbon by One-Third

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Photo Credit: AP / Matthew BrownThe Obama administration on Monday will roll out a plan to cut earth-warming pollution from power plants by 30 percent by 2030, setting in motion one of the most significant actions to address global warming in U.S. history.

The rule, which is expected to be final next year, will set the first national limits on carbon dioxide, the chief gas linked to global warming from the nation’s power plants. They are the largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S., accounting for about a third of the annual emissions that make the U.S. the second largest contributor to global warming on the planet.

The regulation is a centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s plans to reduce the pollution linked to global warming, a step that the administration hopes will get other countries to act when negotiations on a new international treaty resume next year.

Despite concluding in 2009 that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, a finding that triggered their regulation under the 1970 Clean Air Act, it has taken years for the administration to take on the nation’s fleet of power plants. In December 2010, the Obama administration announced a “modest pace” for setting greenhouse gas standards for power plants, setting a May 2012 deadline.

Obama put them on the fast track last summer when he announced his climate action plan and a renewed commitment to climate change after the issue went dormant during his re-election campaign.

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NSA Steps Up Digital Image Harvesting

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Photo Credit: Fox News The National Security Agency is, through its global surveillance program, increasingly gathering electronic images for its facial-recognition program, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

The spy agency has relied more on facial-recognition technology in the past four years as a result of new software that can process the flood of digital communications such as emails, text messages and even video conferences, according to the documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

NSA officials think the new technology will revolutionize how they find intelligence targets around the world, the newspaper reports.

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Ted Cruz Wins Presidential Straw Poll at Republican Leadership Conference

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Photo Credit: CNNTed Cruz, R-Texas, has won another straw poll, boosting his national profile and elevating his name among potential 2016 presidential contenders.

The firebrand freshman senator and tea party favorite was among a handful of 2016 hopefuls speaking at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans this week.

Cruz finished in first place in the annual conference’s presidential straw poll at 30.33%. Dr. Ben Carson, a Fox News commentator and conservative activist, finished in second with 29.38% while Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, was third with 10.43%.

Fox News host and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Texas Governor Rick Perry rounded out the top five, at 5.06% and 4.90%, respectively.

Neither Carson nor Paul spoke at the conference, but their support was a show of confidence by the traditionally more conservative crowd. The annual meeting of activists features of who’s who of big-name Republican politicians. It is an important appearance for potential presidential candidates to make.

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