Parallels to ObamaCare Site Woes Seen as Vets Try to Get Benefits Online

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Photo Credit: REUTERSThe glitches and other problems with the ObamaCare website that sparked a national firestorm are similar to those military veterans using the federal government’s online benefits system have routinely faced for about the past 18 months.

Eric Jenkins, a veteran and American Federation of Government Employees representative, recently told Congress that during January the Veterans Benefits Management System crashed about once a week with downtimes ranging from one hour to multiple days.

“The constant … technical issues and frequent shutdowns make it difficult for me and others to serve veterans,” Jenkins told a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee.

The $537 million system went online in fall 2012 at a Department of Veterans Affairs office in New England and is now in all 56 regional offices.

The change to a paperless system was a major part of the Veterans Affairs’ goal of eliminating a massive backlog of compensation claims by 2015, with 98 percent accuracy.

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Pew Study: Christians Are The World’s Most Oppressed Religious Group

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Photo Credit: CNSRestrictions, harassment, and intimidation towards people who practice their religion increased in every major region of the world in 2012 except the Americas, with Christians the major target, says a new report by the Pew Research Center.

“Muslims and Jews experienced six-year highs in the number of countries in which they were harassed by national, provincial or local governments,” the study found, but Christians continue to be the world’s most oppressed religious group, with persecution against them reported in 110 countries.

A recent report by the Christian group Open Doors noted that “North Korea remains the world’s most restrictive nation in which to practice Christianity,” followed by Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Maldives, Pakistan, Iran and Yemen.

More than “5.3 billion people (76% of the world’s population) live in countries with a high or very high level of restrictions on religion,” Pew noted, “up from 74% in 2011 and 68% as of mid-2007.”

A fifth of the world’s nations (20%) also experienced religious terrorism or sectarian violence in 2012, Pew researchers found, which was “up markedly from 2007 (9%).”

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Obama Split 500,000 American Families to Legalize Illegals Before 2012 Election

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesPresident Barack Obama’s 2012 unilateral legalization of 500,000 young illegal immigrants helped him win the 2012 election — at the cost of splitting 500,000 innocent, law-abiding American families for months on end, according to a New York Times article.

The ruthless political calculation was buried deep in the low-key article, which was published on page 20 of the local “New York edition” of the national newspaper.

Obama directed officials to award work-permits to the illegal immigrants, preventing them from preparing green cards for Americans’ foreign-born spouses and children.

One American, Jessica Veltstra, applied last March to bring over her Dutch husband. “But he is still in the Netherlands, and she is rooming with relatives in New Jersey, unable to make plans,” the New York Times reported.

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A Benghazi Father’s Message For the Son Who Was Left Behind

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Photo Credit: APOn September 11, 2012 — 11 years after Al Qaeda launched an attack against the U.S. — the American Embassy compound in Benghazi, Libya was attacked. In the ensuing gunfight, four Americans died — including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Lost amongst the blame game and politicking that played out over the internet and cable news was the fact that these men came from families. They had lives. They were somebody’s son.

Charles Woods lost his son, Ty , on Sept. 11, 2012.

Invited to the State of the Union as the guest of Oklahoma Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine, Woods is a father seeking closure and the truth about what happened to his son.

His son, Ty, was a former Navy SEAL and a private security contractor in Benghazi. He had been described by his compatriots as an “Alpha SEAL” — the SEAL other SEALs sought to emulate — and in a wood-paneled room, in the heart of the nation’s capitol on the day following President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, his soft-spoken father glowed with pride as he spoke about him.

Recounting the upbringing that Ty had, Woods explained: ”He was just an ordinary guy, but in his life nothing was done halfway… He was a very independent young man. We would give him a .22 or a BB gun and he’d be gone all day… He was really made to be a Navy SEAL.”

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Rising Percentage of Americans Renouncing US Citizenship

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Photo Credit: Forbes America is a great land and lures immigrants worldwide, yet record numbers of U.S. citizens and permanent residents are giving up their citizenship or residency. For all the immigrant arrivals the trickle the other direction is increasing. The number is still small, with the “published” expatriates for the quarter 630 for the last quarter of 2013.

That brings the total number to 2,999 for all of 2013. The previous record high for a year was 1,781 set in 2011. It’s a 221% increase over the 932 who left in 2012. You can call it a shaming or a public record, but the Treasury Department is required to publish a quarterly list of Americans who renounced their U.S. Citizenship or terminated their long-term U.S. residency. The public outing puts Americans on notice who relinquished their rights.

Those seem like tiny numbers, yet the total thus far for 2013 is 2,369. See Number of Taxpayers Who Renounced U.S. Citizenship Skyrockets to All-Time Record High, quoting Andrew Mitchel. Under U.S. tax law, it is not relevant why someone expatriates. Whether the expatriation was motivated by tax avoidance or something else used to matter, but the law was changed in 2004.

Since then, the tax and other consequences do not depend on why one leaves. Yet after Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin departed permanently for Singapore with his Facebook IPO riches, there was an angry backlash. Mr. Saverin’s post-Facebook fly-away prompted such outrage that Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey introduced a bill to double the exit tax to 30% for anyone leaving the U.S. for tax reasons.

So far, that bill remains unpassed. Meantime, are people following Tina Turner’s lead? No, and not Eduardo Saverin’s either. Most expatriations are probably motivated primarily by factors such as family and convenience. Many people like Ms. Turner have built a life somewhere else and may not plan to need a U.S. passport.

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GOP Objects to Obama Administration Easing Immigration Rules for Terror Supporters

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe Obama administration’s use of an executive directive to ease the rules for people trying to enter the United States or stay in the country even though they have given “limited” support to terrorists or terror groups is causing problems for Republicans working on immigration reform.

“President Obama should be protecting U.S. citizens rather than taking a chance on those who are aiding and abetting terrorist activity and putting Americans at greater risk,” says Virginia GOP Rep. Robert Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and part of the GOP House leadership team working on immigration reform.

He and other Republican lawmakers argued that the administration is relaxing rules designed by Congress to protect the country from terrorists.

And Missouri GOP Sen. Roy Blunt on “Fox News Sunday” repeated the concerns of fellow Republicans and others about Obama repeatedly saying that “he can use his pen and his telephone” to work around Congress.

The change is one of Obama’s first actions on immigration since he pledged during his State of the Union address last month to use more executive directives.

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Soldiers Say Intel Tool Is Too Difficult: Congress Cuts Funds for Army’s System

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Photo Credit: Rahmat GulAn internal memo from the U.S. command in Afghanistan says soldiers are voicing strong complaints about the Army’s battlefield intelligence network, for which Congress just slashed spending by 60 percent.

The $28 billion Distributed Common Ground System is too slow and unstable and hurts operations in some cases, say intelligence officers who rely on the computer network to collect and quickly dispense data on hard-to-find insurgents and the homemade bombs they plant.

The “official use only” memo issued in November was in the form of a survey of four combat and support units in Afghanistan.

Soldiers with the 130th Engineer Brigade said that, after training, “the system is still too complex and overwhelming for most to use.”

“DCGS continues to be unstable, slow, not friendly and a major hindrance to operations at the [battalion] level and lower,” the brigade said.

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North Korea Rescinds Invitation for U.S. Official to Discuss Kenneth Bae’s Release

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Photo Credit: Fox News The North Korean government has rescinded an invitation for a senior State Department official to visit the isolated nation to discuss the release of American and Christian missionary Kenneth Bae, a State Department source told Fox News on Sunday.

North Korea apparently made the decision to prevent a visit from Robert R. King, the special envoy for North Korean Human Rights issues, in light of military exercises planned for later this month between the United States and South Korea, with which North Korea technically remains in a state of war following the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

“We are deeply disappointed by the (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s) decision – for a second time – to rescind its invitation for Ambassador King to travel to Pyongyang to discuss Kenneth Bae’s release,” the State Department official said. “We again call on the DPRK to grant Bae special amnesty and immediate release as a humanitarian gesture so he may reunite with his family and seek medical care. We will continue to work actively to secure Mr. Bae’s release. Per our long-standing offer, we remain prepared to send Ambassador King to North Korea in support of Mr. Bae’s release.”

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All American Credit Cards Will Disappear In 2015 And Be Replaced With This New Tech

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Photo Credit: instagram/ericabibi_These credit cards are dinosaurs.

Every credit card in the U.S. will be replaced by October 2015 with new cards that contain the chip-and-PIN technology that the rest of the world has had for years, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Both Visa and MasterCard are committed to the switch, which will render extinct the plastic in your wallets and purses right now.

No more black magnetic stripes; no more signing on the dotted line.

Americans who have traveled to Europe in recent years will know that the U.S.’s credit card system is embarrassingly old-fashioned by comparison. It’s often difficult to use American credit cards abroad because the Europeans abandoned magnetic stripes and signatures years ago — they were too easily hacked. Credit and debit cards in the U.S. are about 10 years behind the rest of the world.

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Tech Fears Shadow Campaign to Seize Global Control of Internet

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesFearing a power grab for control of the Internet, members of the tech industry are pleading with Congress to pay attention to the domain name expansion that is underway at a little-known nonprofit.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), led by its CEO Fadi Chehade, last year began rolling out thousands of alternatives to the traditional .com ending used by most websites. New endings using the Latin alphabet, such as .clothing and .singles, became available in January, and hundreds of others are on the way.

ICANN says it is focused on making the Internet more broadly available and has prioritized creating domain names in languages such as Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic.

But critics say the nonprofit betrayed broader ambitions last year when it endorsed a statement calling for the globalization of ICANN and other domain name technical work that is currently managed by the United States.

By signing the statement, Chehade put “a target on ICANN’s back,” said Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice.

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