Ben Carson: White House Wanted Apology for ‘Offending’ Obama (+video)

/16 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: The Daily Caller / Grae Stafford

Photo Credit: The Daily Caller / Grae Stafford

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson says the White House wanted him to apologize for “offending” President Obama after he famously delivered a conservative message at the National Prayer Breakfast last year.

Carson, the former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, recalls the events surrounding his 2013 speech in his new book, One Nation: What We Can All Do To Save America’s Future. The Daily Caller obtained an advance copy of the book, which is set for release May 20.

“He did not appear to be hostile or angry,” Carson writes of Obama, “but within a matter of minutes after the conclusion of the program, I received a call from some of the prayer breakfast organizers saying that the White House was upset and requesting that I call the president and apologize for offending him. I said that I did not think that he was offended and that I didn’t think that such a call was warranted.”

Conservatives rallied around Carson last year after his remarks, made from a podium as Obama sat just feet away. In his speech, he railed against “political correctness” and offered specific ideas for health care reform.

Read more from this story HERE.

EPA’s Secret Gas Chamber Experiments: A Deceitful Failure

/16 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

A man — we’ll call him “Subject No. 1” — had a clear plastic pipe stuck into his mouth with his lips sealed around it, while the diesel exhaust from a parked truck outside the gas chamber was mixed with particulate matter and pumped straight into his lungs. The pumped mixture level was 135 times the mean diesel truck emissions exposure in the United States.

Scientists Andrew Ghio, Jon Sobus, Joachim Pleil and Michael Madden, with laboratory director Wayne Cascio, administered this toxic mix of diesel and particulate matter to 41 people. In all, they gassed 81 subjects with various mixes of diesel, particulate and ozone in five different experiments — tagged with the science fiction-like names Omegacon, Xcon, Kingcon, Depoz and Lamarck.

No, these are not mad scientists from some 1930s D-list horror movie; they’re employees of the Environmental Protection Agency who used human subjects in an air pollution test chamber at the EPA’s Human Studies Facility in Chapel Hill, N.C., in 2010 and 2011.

The consent form that volunteers signed for the Omegacon cocktail pumped into Subject No. 1 lacked the warning that particulate exposure can cause death in older people with cardiovascular disease. EPA accepted a 58-year old woman with Stage 1 hypertension, premature atrial contractions, osteoarthritis, gall bladder removal and a family history of heart disease. EPA’s scientists were humane enough to turn off the gas when she suffered atrial fibrillation, and hospitalized her overnight for observation.

The quintet of EPA gas chamber experimenters were producing risk assessment studies ordered by then-agency head Lisa Jackson to justify the Obama administration’s push for crushing new clean air regulations, which they claimed would prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths each year by reducing emissions.

Read more from this story HERE.

EPA Concedes: We Can’t Produce All the Data Justifying Clean Air Rules

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: CNSNews.com / Penny Starr

Photo Credit: CNSNews.com / Penny Starr

Seven months after being subpoenaed by Congress, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy conceded that her agency does not have – and cannot produce – all of the scientific data used for decades to justify numerous rules and regulations under the Clean Air Act.

In a March 7th letter to House Science, Space and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), McCarthy admitted that EPA cannot produce all of the original data from the 1993 Harvard Six Cities Study (HSC) and the American Cancer Society’s (ACS) 1995 Cancer Prevention Study II, which is currently housed at New York University.

Both studies concluded that fine airborne particles measuring 2.5 micrograms or less (PM2.5) – 1/30th the diameter of a human hair – are killing thousands of Americans every year.

These epidemiological studies are cited by EPA as the scientific foundation for clean air regulations that restrict particulate emissions from vehicles, power plants and factories.

The agency has recently come under fire for exposing volunteers to concentrated levels of particulate matter without informing them of the risks, a practice Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), chairman of the House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, called “despicable.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Medicaid Paid $12 Million for Deceased People in Illinois

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Ano Lobb

Photo Credit: Ano Lobb

The Illinois Medicaid program paid an estimated $12 million for medical services for people listed as deceased in other state records, according to an internal state government memo.

The memo dated Friday, which The Associated Press obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, says the state auditor compared clients enrolled in the Medicaid database last June with state death records dating back to 1970. Auditors identified overpayments for services to roughly 2,900 people after the date of their deaths.

The heads of the departments of Healthcare and Family Services and Human Services, the two state agencies involved with Medicaid payments, outline steps to fix the problem in the memo to their senior staffs.

The memo states that more than $7 million has been recovered and the rest is expected to be recouped by year’s end.

Sen. Dale Righter, a Republican from Mattoon and the Senate GOP’s point person on Medicaid reform, said the finding was further evidence that Democrats’ arguments that they have done all they can to clean up the Medicaid rolls is “empty rhetoric.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Newly Released Clinton Document Describes Internet as ‘Right Wing’ Tool of ‘Conspiracy Commerce’

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

The White House counsel’s office and Democratic National Committee produced the report, which explains how “Republican staffers surf the Internet,” and describes it as “one of the major and most dynamic modes of communication.”

“The Internet can link people, groups and organizations together instantly,” the report reads. “Moreover, it allows an extraordinary amount of unregulated data and information to be located in one area and available to all. The right wing has seized upon the internet as a means of communicating its ideas to people. Moreover, evidence exists that Republican staffers surf the internet, interacting with extremists in order to exchange ideas and information.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Pope Pelosi Washes Feet of Immigrants

/8 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Leah Millis, San Francisco Chronicle

Photo Credit: Leah Millis, San Francisco Chronicle

Pelosi assists in Holy Week foot-washing ritual

By SF Gate.

To “honor the dignity and work of immigrants,” Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi helps Bishop Marc Andrus wash the feet of two children Thursday at Saint John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in San Francisco.

Pelosi also used the occasion to talk about passing HR15 – bipartisan immigration legislation that her office says would “reduce the deficit by nearly $1 trillion, secure our borders…

Read more from this story HERE.

____________________________________________________________________________

Bozell: Pelosi’s Mimicry of Pope Is ‘Sickening and Shameful,’ ‘Sacrilegious’

By Craig Bannister.

Conservative leader and Catholic L. Brent Bozell III today blasted Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for mimicking the pope’s Holy Week foot-washing tradition while touting her immigration reform legislation:

“I am a Catholic and I am offended at Minority Leader Pelosi’s continued abuses of the Catholic Church’s teachings and traditions. As a Catholic who has watched Ms. Pelosi champion one anti-Catholic cause after another, I believe this to be sacrilegious.

“Christ taught the washing of the feet as an act of utter humility, while she turned a sacred religious tradition into a grandstanding political publicity stunt. Ms. Pelosi’s politicizing of Holy Week is sickening and shameful.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Barack Obama Signs Ted Cruz Iran Diplomat Bill

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Tal Kopan.

Sen. Ted Cruz’s bill to forbid an Iranian diplomat from entering the U.S. got President Barack Obama’s signature Friday, though the president noted he still considers the law “advisory.”

The law spearheaded by the typically polarizing Texas Republican was a rare moment of consensus in D.C.: Obama’s sign-off follows unanimous passage in the Senate and House last week.

The bill would tweak existing law to prohibit entry to the U.S. to anyone who has engaged in terrorist activity against the U.S. or its allies in the past, a move triggered by Iran’s selection of Hamid Aboutalebi, who was involved in the 1979 taking of Americans hostage in Tehran, as its U.N. ambassador.

Read more from this story HERE.

_________________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Trump Donates to Ted Cruz PAC

By Sharon Churcher.

Real estate mogul and entertainment personality Donald Trump gave $5,000 to Sen. Ted Cruz’s leadership PAC in January, according to newly released campaign records.

The Hill reported that Trump’s donation to the tea party-backed Texas Republican — the maximum allowed per election cycle — is the latest indication that the men are becoming political allies.

The relationship between the pair got off to a bumpy start. Last August, Trump said he wasn’t sure whether Cruz could be president because he was born in Canada.

But at a February Republican Party dinner at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, the tycoon called Cruz a “very special guy” and defended his 21-hour filibuster on the Senate floor over Obamacare.

“One of the reasons I like Ted Cruz so much, is that he’s not controversial,” he said, to laughs from the audience.

Read more from this story HERE.

Jim DeMint: ‘Big Government Benefits the Rich’

/0 Comments/in , /by

FRONT COVER-FALLING IN LOVE WITH AMERICA AGAIN-JIM DEMINT_2When the Census Bureau released its most recent ranking of the U.S. communities with the highest median household incomes, seven of the nation’s ten wealthiest counties were in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

In an interview about his new book, Falling in Love With America Again, Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint told CNSNews.com he had a theory that might explain this. “[B]ig government benefits the rich and big business,” he said.

In the book, DeMint describes the cozy, symbiotic relationship that often exists between people working for the federal government and people representing big business.

“In Washington,” DeMint wrote, “it’s a rule of thumb that government staffers charged with overseeing an industry want to go to work for that industry one day, for a huge raise. ‘Cashing in,’ it’s called, or ‘moving to K Street’ (the downtown Washington artery that’s synonymous with the lobbying business).”

Here, from his interview with CNSnews.com, is DeMint’s explanation of how people come to Washington to do public service and end up getting rich:

Read more from this story HERE.

Boehner Reassures GOP Donors: I’m “Hellbent” on Passing Immigration Reform this Year

/8 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: HotAir

Photo Credit: HotAir

A big gamble if true, but not a crazy one. He’s betting that nothing the GOP does, up to and including amnesty, will enrage grassroots conservatives so much that they’re likely to stay home in protest in November because of it. Anger at ObamaCare trumps all. When the dust settles, after a week or two of talk radio calling Boehner a traitor for passing an immigration bill and vowing to go third party, everyone will swallow hard and decide that they have no choice but to vote for the GOP anyway in the name of stopping O-Care. The redder the Senate turns next year, the greater the odds of repeal in 2017. Although if they’d sell you out on immigration, I’m not sure why you’d think they won’t sell you out on that too when the time comes.

As much as I suspect an immigration deal under these circumstances will inevitably be terrible, I also think Boehner’s bet is a shrewd one. In fact, I’ll place a bet of my own: If they pass something along the lines of the Gang of Eight bill and I end up writing a bunch of posts in October exhorting people to boycott the midterms because of it, some commenters will be calling me a traitor.

Speaker John Boehner and other senior House Republicans are telling donors and industry groups that they aim to pass immigration legislation this year, despite the reluctance of many Republicans to tackle the divisive issue before the November elections.

Many lawmakers and activists have assumed the issue was off the table in an election year. But Mr. Boehner said at a Las Vegas fundraiser last month he was “hellbent on getting this done this year,” according to two people in the room…

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Ridiculous’: Administration Punts On Keystone, Obama Faces Dem Revolt

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

By Fox News.

The Obama administration once again has punted on a final decision for the Keystone XL pipeline, announcing ahead of the holiday weekend it is extending a key review period indefinitely — a move that could push off a determination until after the midterm elections.

Republicans, as well as red-state Democrats who want the proposed Canada-to-Texas pipeline approved, slammed the administration for the delay. Democrats even threatened to find ways to go around the president to get the project approved.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous that this well over five year long process is continuing for an undetermined amount of time,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said in a statement.

Republican Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry called the decision “shameful,” noting that another spring construction season will come and go without the project.

The administration had been in the middle of a 90-day review period for federal agencies assessing an environmental study from the State Department.

Read more from this story HERE.

_____________________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: IJ Review

Photo Credit: IJ Review

A San Francisco Billionaire Just Bought Obama and Delayed the Keystone XL Pipeline

By Soopermexican.

While the media is obsessed with the Koch brothers this campaign season, a billionaire hedge fund manager from San Francisco just bought off the White House to the tune of $100 million in order to delay the Keystone XL pipeline decision.

Read more from this story HERE.