McCain: We’ll Try to Pass Immigration Changes After GOP Primaries

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Photo Credit: AFPSen. John McCain (R-AZ) gave the clearest indication that proponents of comprehensive immigration reform may make their final–and strongest–push to get legislation passed next year after House Republicans make it through their primaries.

“I think conventional wisdom is that time is not on our side,” McCain told reporters on Monday after an event in Chicago. “But there are a number of members of Congress who have primaries and when those primaries are done, they may be more inclined to address the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.”

President Barack Obama has urged Congress to pass immigration reform legislation this year. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is reportedly going to bring legislation to the floor within the next month and other House Republican leaders have indicated support for piecemeal pieces of legislation that can make it to conference with the Senate, where proponents and opponents of immigration reform had said a pathway to citizenship will prevail.

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Sean Penn: ‘I Think It’s A Good Idea’ to Have Ted Cruz Committed (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP“There’s a mental health problem in Congress,” says actor and liberal activist Sean Penn. The president could solve the problem “by committing them by executive order,” Penn told CNN’s Piers Morgan Monday night.

Asked if Penn would have “people like Ted Cruz” committed, Penn said, “He is my American brother. I won’t — I think we should take care of him, he is in, he’s the trouble.”

“Well, actually have him committed,” Morgan followed up.

“Yeah, I think it’s a good idea,” Penn said.

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McCaskill Demands Explanation Over Staged Arrival Ceremonies for Fallen Soldiers

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Photo Credit: AP2011Sen. Claire McCaskill is pressing the Pentagon for answers following reports — and an admission by the U.S. Department of Defense — that it staged “arrival ceremonies” for fallen soldiers.

“This is even more evidence that these recovery efforts are suffering from systematic problems and a lack of coordinated leadership,” McCaskill said in a statement. “Families in this community just want officials to be honest and forthright about the government’s efforts – instead, what they’re often getting is false hope and fake ceremonies.”

Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command — a unit in the Defense Department — has been holding arrival ceremonies for seven years, with flag-draped coffins being carried off cargo planes as though they held the remains of American troops that had just been returned, according to an initial investigation by NBC News. However, the remains typically were on site before each ceremony began, at a lab where they were undergoing analysis. The report focused on ceremonies at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.

“These ceremonies, which have been held numerous times over the past seven years, reportedly represented to veterans and families that the remains had been recently recovered and were arriving in the United States for the first time,” McCaskill wrote in her Oct. 25 letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Following the report, the Pentagon acknowledged that the ceremonies were more of a “pre-planned” memorial than a series of actual events unfolding. The Pentagon also confirmed allegations that planes used in the ceremonies at the military base in Hawaii couldn’t even fly and were towed into position.

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Democrat Aide Does About-Face on Obamacare

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Photo Credit: WND After defending Obamacare from the vilest of insults from angry citizens, a former Democrat congressional aide says that she’s finally given up and admitted that she was wrong.

What prompted the turnabout?

Sue Klinkhamer is one of an estimated millions who, contrary to President Obama’s famous promise, has received, or is about to receive, a policy-cancellation notice.

After getting hers in the mail, she fired off an email to her former boss, Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., and other Democratic colleagues, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Klinkhamer wrote: “I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print.”

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DHS Approves Over 80% of DREAMers Who Apply for Legal Status

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Photo Credit: APThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has approved over 80 percent of young illegal immigrants who have applied for its Deferred Action program, an administrative version of the DREAM Act.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said they have granted legal status to 474,000 of the 580,000 illegal aliens who have applied.

“Last June, DHS announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals process, allowing young people who meet the guidelines to seek a two year provisional legal status to remain in the United States,” wrote Maria Odom, the ombudsman for USCIS, on Oct. 24.

“Our office played a key role in this effort by assisting with individual cases, sharing stakeholder feedback with USCIS and suggesting improvements to the application process,” she said.

“Already, more than 580,000 individuals have requested deferred action, and after a thorough review of each of those cases, including a background check, more than 474,000 requests have been approved, allowing these young people to continue to contribute to the country they call home.”

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Report: Obama Knew He Was Lying About Keeping Your Insurance

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Photo Credit: APIn a blockbuster report on Monday, sources told NBC News that at least half to three quarters of those who buy individual insurance will have that insurance cancelled by their insurers over the next year thanks to changes mandated by Obamacare. A huge number of the people forced off their current insurance will have “sticker shock,” the sources said. What’s more, President Obama knew all that even as he campaigned on the promise that if you liked your insurance, you could keep it: “the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.”

Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates has been a supporter of Obamacare, but stated, “This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either.” On Monday, White House spokesperson Jessica Santillo said that people might have to pay more for insurance, but that their insurance would be better: “One of the main goals of the law is to ensure that people have insurance they can rely on – that doesn’t discriminate or charge more based on pre-existing conditions. The consumers who are getting notices are in plans that do not provide all these protections – but in the vast majority of cases, those same insurers will automatically shift their enrollees to a plan that provides new consumer protections and, for nearly half of individual market enrollees, discounts through premium tax credits.”

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More Obamacare Heartache: Tally Rises for Americans Losing Their Health Insurance

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Photo Credit: heritage.orgBy Marguerite Bowling.

The hype and dream are fizzling out with the Administration’s big promise on Obamacare—that every American who liked his or her health plan could keep it. According to a new tally, nearly 1.5 million customers in the individual insurance market have lost their current health plans.

They’re losing coverage that many of them liked, with one woman in Florida saying the new option under Obamacare would cost her more than 10 times what she currently pays in monthly premiums. David Hogberg breaks down the insurance cancellations to date at the National Center for Public Policy Research:
-800,000 in New Jersey.

-119,000 from Blue Shield in California.
-160,000 from Kaiser in California.
-300,000 in Florida.
-24,000 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
-13,000 in central and eastern Pennsylvania.
-76,000 from CareFirst in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia…

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Photo Credit: westernjournalism.comWhite House Extends ObamaCare Enrollment Period

Americans now have an additional six weeks in which to enroll for a government-mandated healthcare plan without incurring penalty charges.

In the wake of ObamaCare’s rising unpopularity and a website that does not function for the vast majority of users, White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed Monday that the enrollment deadline has been extended to March 31. Last week, Carney indicated the administration would work to fix the litany of issues plaguing healthcare.gov.

After sending Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on a whirlwind tour to put a positive spin on the site’s malfunctions, the Obama administration apparently decided damage control was not working.

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Arrival of Obamacare Puts Focus on IRS Tax-Credit Scandal

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Photo Credit: APThere’s no doubt congressional investigators have their hands full probing allegations the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative non-profit groups. But now a different IRS scandal — involving the chronic, ongoing, mind-bogglingly wasteful mismanagement of a popular tax credit program — demands Congress’s attention because it has taken on new importance with the arrival of Obamacare.

The program is the Earned Income Tax Credit, through which the federal government gives out between $60 billion and $70 billion to low-income working Americans each year. It’s known as a “refundable” tax credit, but it is basically a transfer payment, in which the IRS sends a check — perhaps even $5,000 every year — to workers who have little or no tax liability.

The problem is, the IRS does little to determine whether recipients actually qualify for the money. A recent report by the IRS inspector general says the agency has given out somewhere between $110 billion and $132 billion in improper Earned Income Tax Credit payments in the last decade. In that time period, between 21 and 30 percent of tax credit payments went to people who didn’t qualify for them.

That is bad enough. But what infuriates lawmakers is that the IRS refuses to do anything about it. Agency officials told the inspector general they couldn’t fix the problem because the tax credit program is very complicated, and also because they are afraid vigorous enforcement would discourage legitimately qualified recipients from applying for credits. And the IRS is not only not working to reduce improper payments, it is refusing to report those payments to Congress as required. The bottom line, in the words of inspector general Russell George: “The IRS is unlikely to achieve any significant reduction in Earned Income Tax Credit improper payments.”

Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has heard that before. “The IRS has repeatedly ignored the fraud and abuse in the Earned Income Tax Credit program, which has already cost Americans over $100 billion,” Camp said in a statement Monday. “Americans should be confident that their tax dollars are being used properly, but that confidence has been shattered by the blatant disregard this agency has shown for monitoring refundable tax credits and better protecting taxpayers.”

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Democrat Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein Calls for ‘Major Review’ of NSA Spying and Says it’s a ‘Big Problem’ if Obama was Unaware

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Photo Credit: APThe U.S. Senate’s top foreign intelligence official said Monday in a scathing statement that she is ‘totally opposed’ to spying of the sort that has gotten the Obama administration into hot water this week.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who chairs the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, seemed miffed at the idea that she and her colleagues were out of the loop when the president’s men conducted surveillance on foreign leaders in Europe and Latin America.

And she said President Obama’s lack of knowledge about monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phones going back to 2002 posed ‘a big problem.’
So she’s tightening the leash.

‘The White House has informed me that collection on our allies will not continue, which I support,’ said Feinstein.

‘But as far as I’m concerned, Congress needs to know exactly what our intelligence community is doing. To that end, the committee will initiate a major review into all intelligence collection programs.’

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Feds Confiscate Investigative Reporter’s Confidential Files During Raid

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed.

In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter.

A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.

The document notes that her husband, Paul Flanagan, was found guilty in 1986 to resisting arrest in Prince George’s County. The warrant called for police to search the residence they share and seize all weapons and ammunition because he is prohibited under the law from possessing firearms.

But without Hudson’s knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said.

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