IRS Watchdog: $67 Million Missing from Obamacare Slush Fund

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Photo Credit: thomasmoresociety

Photo Credit: thomasmoresociety

The IRS is unable to account for $67 million spent from a slush fund established for Obamacare implementation, according to a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report released today.

The “Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund” (HIRIF) was tucked into Obamacare in order to give the IRS money to enforce the tax provisions of the healthcare law. The fund, totaling some $1 billion of taxpayer money, was used to roll out enforcement mechanisms for the approximately 50 tax provisions of Obamacare.

According to the report: “Specifically, the IRS did not account for or attempt to quantify approximately $67 million [from the slush fund] of indirect ACA costs incurred for Fiscal Years 2010 through 2012.”

The report also found several other abuses of taxpayer funds…

Read more from this story HERE.

Vatican Official: Pelosi Shouldn’t Receive Communion

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Photo Credit: Leader Nancy Pelosi

Photo Credit: Leader Nancy Pelosi

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke said that Nancy Pelosi should be denied communion because her support of abortion is in conflict of her Catholic faith. He took particular issue with the minority leader’s refusal to comment on abortionist and murderer Kermit Gosnell because she said “as a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground” for her.

“To say that these are simply questions of Catholic faith which have no part in politics is just false and wrong,” Cardinal Burke said in an interview with The Wanderer, a Catholic newspaper. “This is a person who obstinately, after repeated admonitions, persists in a grave sin — cooperating with the crime of procured abortion.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Top 5 Moments From Ted Cruz’s Epic Hours Long Anti-ObamaCare Speech

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Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Tea party conservative Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) stood tall against President Barack Obama’s health care law on Tuesday, vowing to speak until he could “no longer stand” in a bid to prevent Senate Democrats from restoring the Obamacare funds that the U.S. House voted to strip.

“I rise today in opposition to Obamacare,” Cruz said at 2:41 p.m. ET. He referred to the law as a job killer and a “liberal train wreck.” Seven hours later, he was still going strong.

Here are the top 5 moments from Cruz’s epic anti-Obamacare speech on the Senate floor…so far:

5. CRUZ COMPARES CONGRESS TO THE WWF
“It’s wrestling matches where it’s all rigged, the outcome is pre-determined. They know in advance who’s going to win and lose and it’s all for show!

4. #DEFUNDOBAMACAREBECAUSE: TED CRUZ READS YOUR TWEETS

In addition to the #DefundObamacareBecause hashtag that was trending on Twitter Tuesday, Sen. Cruz also noted that the #MakeDCListen was also gaining steam.

Cruz read a sampling of #DefundObamacareBecause tweets on the Senate floor on Tuesday, allowing the Americans to be directly involved in his effort to defund Obamacare.

Read more from this story HERE.

Meet the Man who Caught Cop on Camera Forcibly Removing his Pro-Gun Sign… And why his Attorney Says it Could be a ‘Really Big Deal’

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Photo Credit: Jon Gibson

Photo Credit: Jon Gibson

The man who caught a police officer on camera removing his pro-Second Amendment sign from his front yard says his “First Amendment rights are being stifled” — and he takes his constitutional rights very seriously.

Jon Gibson, of Lake Lincolndale, N.Y., told TheBlaze in an exclusive interview on Tuesday that he has retained an attorney and they are “considering our options moving forward.” His attorney, Richard Bombardo, said there is a potential case for “criminal trespassing, vandalism and larceny,” pending additional findings.

As TheBlaze reported on Monday night, Gibson was fed-up after his pro-gun sign was removed from his front yard for the third time. In response, he set up a hunting “trail camera” to catch the suspected thief when he or she came to take the sign for the fourth time.

He was shocked when he reviewed the images and discovered that a police officer with the Somers Police Department was responsible. Somers, N.Y., is a town located about 5 miles from Gibson’s home. However, the Somers police and fire departments serve his area.

Read more from this story HERE.

Miller Applauds Senators for Filibuster to Stop Obamacare, Calls on Alaskans to Join the Cause

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joe_millerFairbanks, Alaska. September 24, 2013 — Joe Miller today applauded Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee for their filibuster to stop funding for Obamacare.

“I applaud Ted Cruz and Mike Lee for standing up for the American people,” said Miller. “This is the moment of truth. Most Republicans ran on opposition to this “train wreck,” and now we’ll have an opportunity to see if they did so in good faith.”

Senator Mark Begich was the 60th and deciding vote on Obamacare, and has laughed off the question of whether he would vote to defund it. We’ll see if he’s laughing in November of 2014.

Miller’s declared primary opponent claims to support defunding Obamacare. But when asked by a Politico reporter whether he would “risk shutting down the government to defund the Affordable Care Act,” Mr. Treadwell responded:

“Do I like this kind of tactic? No, I believe that you need to have bipartisan conversation and sit down.”

As Senator Ted Cruz has reminded us, it took a whole lot of bipartisanship to get us $17 trillion into debt. “The need of the hour is to have more Senators and Representatives in Washington committed to holding Barack Obama accountable and offering real solutions to our nation’s daunting fiscal challenges, not to send reinforcing statist enablers and diplomats bent on negotiating our terms of surrender,” said Miller.

While others offer the charade of meaningless online petitions, Joe Miller is the only candidate who is willing to embrace the accountability of signing the Senate Conservatives Fund pledge to Defund Obamacare. Joe is calling on all Alaskans who stand in opposition to Obamacare to contact their senators and urge them to stand with Ted Cruz and Mike Lee in this important time. Senator Mark Begich: (877) 501-6275/Senator Lisa Murkowski: 202-224-6665

Obama at the UN: Still Absent on Freedom and Democracy

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

In his speech today at the United Nations, President Obama continued his administration’s odd and somewhat schizophrenic policy with respect to freedom, human rights, and democracy.

In general, in principle, he is all for it. He said the United States “will continue to promote democracy, human rights, and open markets, because we believe these practices achieve peace and prosperity” though he also made clear that to him, this is not a “core interest” of the United States. He does mention in passing that we see “young people everywhere…who are eager to join the cause of eradicating extreme poverty, combating climate change, starting businesses, expanding freedom and leaving behind the old ideological battles of the past.” (Of course, one of those key ideological battles was precisely about freedom.) And Mr. Obama explains that “although we will be wary of efforts to impose democracy through military force, and will at times be accused of hypocrisy or inconsistency – we will be engaged in the region for the long haul. For the hard work of forging freedom and democracy is the task of a generation.”

Now this is very general. How does it apply when we deal with actual American foreign policy in a particular country? It does not.

The president said in this speech that “America’s diplomatic efforts will focus on two particular issues: Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Americans’ Belief That Gov’t Is Too Powerful at Record Level

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Six in 10 Americans (60%) believe the federal government has too much power, one percentage point above the previous high recorded in September 2010. At least half of Americans since 2005 have said the government has too much power. Thirty-two percent now say the government has the right amount of power. Few say it has too little power.

america's perception

These most recent data come from Gallup’s Governance survey, conducted Sept. 5-8. The 7% who feel the government has too little power has been mostly steady since Gallup started tracking the measure regularly in 2002.

Republicans and Democrats Divided on Views of Government

This new high encompasses Republicans (81%), who are now more likely than at any time since 2002 to say the government has too much power, and Democrats (38%), who now are more likely to say this than at any time since President Barack Obama took office in 2009.

Read more from this story HERE.

Top Democratic Senator Calls for Scrapping Key Snooping Patriot Act Section

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Photo Credit: Susan Walsh

Photo Credit: Susan Walsh

The Senate’s senior lawmaker said Tuesday that its time to end the Patriot Act power that the intelligence community has relied on to collect all Americans’ phone records, saying it isn’t making the country safer.

“In my view, and I’ve discussed this with the White House, the Section 215 collection of Americans’ phone records must end,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and chairman of the SenateJudiciary Committee. “It is not making America safer and the government has not made its case this is an effective counterterrorism tool.”

Speaking at Georgetown Law Center, Mr. Leahy said he would hold a classified briefing this week and call an open hearing next week to try to look at the issues at stake.

The intelligence snooping has come under scrutiny since leaks earlier this year exposed that the U.S. government was collecting the time and phone numbers of calls made in the U.S., as well as combing through other electronic communications.

Since then, the intelligence community has admitted it has repeatedly broken its own rules — though officials say they have caught themselves and have generally not found any intentional efforts to abuse the programs.

Read more from this story HERE.

Conservative Group: Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn ‘Turncoats’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A conservative political action committee on Tuesday slammed two of the Senate’s top Republicans as “turncoats” who have “surrendered” on the health care fight.

“Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn have surrendered to Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and the Democrats,” charged an email blast from the Senate Conservatives Fund. “More importantly, they have surrendered to Obamacare — the biggest job killer in America.”

The email took McConnell (R-Ky.) and Cornyn (R-Texas) to task over their declining to block a House-passed spending measure that would defund Obamacare. Some conservatives, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), are opposed to moving that bill forward, arguing that the process for doing so would allow Senate Democrats to remove defunding language from the bill. But McConnell’s and Cornyn’s offices have signaled that they won’t join attempts to thwart the bill.

“Sen. McConnell supports the House Republicans’ bill and will not vote to block it, since it defunds Obamacare and funds the government without increasing spending by a penny,” a spokesman for McConnell said in a statement on Monday . “He will also vote against any amendment that attempts to add Obamacare funding back into the House Republicans’ bill.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Time for a Million Muslim March on Washington to Protest the Violence

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

Photo Credit: Irish Central

In the wake of the horrific Muslim terror attack in Kenya, the “religion of peace” is starting to get a black eye.

I was speaking to a friend the other day, who was once married to a Muslim and has close ties to the worldwide Muslim community. We both agree that the Muslims we personally know are kind decent people and not at all associated with the daily jihad violence seen around the world. They abhor the crazies amongst them.

The worlds 1.2 billion Catholics have one spokesman who can support or condemn policy and speak out for them. They have a pope and his message is mostly of kindness and compassion for each other.

But Muslims have no main leader to speak for them and as a result, the ones among them who preach a brand of hatred and violence seem to grab the attention of the media.

In the latest round of senseless violence:

The storming of a “western” shopping center in Nairobi Kenya by Muslim extremists resulted in the slaughter of every non Muslim they could put their gun sights on….72 dead so far. Alarmingly, it seems that among the Muslim terrorists who attacked the mall, were American Muslims recruited from Minnesota and Maine. Minnesota is known to have a large Muslim Somali community, and they are reportedly recruited to take part in terrorist activity.

While the Kenya attack was occurring, in another part of the world a pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up outside a 130-year-old Anglican church in Pakistan. The bombings were timed for Sunday Mass, killing at least 78 people in the deadliest attack on Christians in the predominantly Muslim country.

Ongoing attacks on Christians by Muslim Brotherhood adherents have resulted in churches getting torched and countless Christians murdered in Egypt. See: There Is a Bulls eye on the Back of Every Christian Living in Egypt.

In the Syrian civil war, Muslim “rebels” have systematically targeted Christian towns, destroying them and killing the inhabitants.

Violent oppression of Christians has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations, especially in Africa and the Middle East. In some countries it is government sanctioned violence that burns down churches and imprison parishioners.

In others countries, groups and vigilantes take matters into their hands by murdering Christians and driving them out of regions they have called home for centuries. Read more: Heads roll as the religion of “turn the other cheek,” meets the religion of “peace”

According to the latest State Department report on worldwide terrorism, there were 6,771 terrorist attacks in 2012, fueled by an upsurge in state sponsored terrorism by Iran. See: What 2012 Terrorism Statistics Reveal.

America is still jittery after getting another wake up call when Boston was bombed by Jihadists during the historic Boston Marathon.

Many people are starting to question why peaceful Muslims tolerate this violence being waged on Muslim and non Muslim in the name of their religion. There is no other religion in the world that is surrounded by such violence under its banner.

America is the most religiously tolerant country in the world and accepts all sorts of different beliefs…..As long as they are not violent towards us. We know that all Muslims are not terrorists, but it seems that most of today’s terrorists are Muslim.

America and the worlds tolerance is being stretched thin by one atrocity after another being waged under the banner of a religion. Even though the percentage of the extremists among Muslims is small, it is painting the whole religion with a violent paintbrush.

It is time for leaders among the Muslim faithful to step forward and condemn the violence. It would be totally appropriate and appreciated by the world to see a massive show of condemnation of this violence. A symbolic way to show it would be a million Muslim march on Washington DC… Americans of every stripe would gladly join in a show of solidarity.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.