Sebelius Goes from ‘Will Get Covered’ to ‘Can’ to ‘May’

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Kathleen SebeliusTuesday morning, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius announced on Twitter:

Big news! Nearly 6 in 10 uninsured Americans will #GetCovered for less than $100/month starting Jan 1 #Obamacare #ACA pic.twitter.com/RimQkFIuPJ

— Kathleen Sebelius (@Sebelius) September 17, 2013

However, while Sebelius’s claim sounds like a sure thing (“will” get covered,) the accompanying graphic is somewhat less unequivocal, employing the phrase “can”get covered. But the truth is even one additional step removed…

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: CIA Employee who Refused to Sign Non-Disclosure Agreement on Benghazi Suspended

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

A CIA employee who refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting him from speaking out about last year’s deadly terror attack in Benghazi, Libya has been suspended and forced to hire an attorney, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) said Monday that his office received an anonymous call about the employee’s suspension, the Free Beacon reported. Wolf previously revealed that Benghazi survivors had been forced to sign non-disclosures in a speech on the House floor in July.

“The reports on the NDA are accurate. We’re getting people who call,” Wolf said at an event launching the new Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi…

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Undocumented LA County Parents On Pace To Receive $650M In Welfare Benefits

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Photo Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty

Photo Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty

A projected $650 million in welfare benefits will be distributed to illegal alien parents in 2013, county officials said Monday.

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich announced the latest figures from the Department of Public Social Services, which showed more than $376 million in CalWORKs benefits and food stamps combined have been distributed through July to illegal alien parents for their native-born children.

Approximately $54 million in welfare payments are issued each month…

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U.S. Attorney Wants to Take Away Corrupt Politicians’ Pensions

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Photo Credit: SETH WENIG/AP

Photo Credit: SETH WENIG/AP

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has had enough of corrupt politicians breaking the law — then collecting their taxpayer-funded pensions from jail, parole or scandal-induced retirements.

The prosecutor Tuesday took the unprecedented step of notifying three indicted New York pols that he plans to go after their pensions if they’re convicted.

While New York state law allows public officials to collect their pensions even after they’ve been convicted of felonies, the federal prosecutor says he has a way to get some of that money back.

He filed notices of forfeiture Tuesday targeting State Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens) and Assemblyman Eric Stevenson (D-Bronx), who all stand to collect pensions paid by the same taxpayers they’re accused of robbing.

Smith faces charges for allegedly paying off Republican operatives to help him get on the ballot in an ultimately abandoned run for mayor. Halloran and Stevenson are charged with pocketing thousands of dollars in bribes.

Read more from this story HERE.

Inspector General: Dept. of Justice Is Misreporting Terror Statistics

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A follow-up to a 2007 audit released Monday by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that DOJ did not accurately report terrorism-related statistics in 24 of the 26 categories auditors reviewed.

“For purposes of this audit, we considered the misreporting of a statistic as significant if the statistic was either overstated or understated by 10 percent or more,” the report stated.

The follow-up audit casts new doubt on the “number of terrorism-related cases filed, the number of defendants convicted at trial or by guilty plea, and the number of defendants sentenced to prison” previously reported by DOJ.

“These inaccuracies are important because Department management and Congress need accurate terrorism-related statistics to make informed budgetary and operational decisions,” the audit states.

Major inaccuracies in “terrorism-related statistics” were reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA), and the DOJ’s Criminal Division.

Read more from this story HERE.

Navy Yard Dropped Its Guard, Pentagon Inspector General Says

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Photo Credit: Evan Vucci

Photo Credit: Evan Vucci

A soon-to-be-released government audit (Now public, see here) says the Navy, in an attempt to reduce costs, let down its guard to risks posed by outside contractors at the Washington Navy Yard and other facilities, a federal official with access to the report tells TIME.

The Navy “did not effectively mitigate access-control risks associated with contractor-installation access” at Navy Yard and other Navy installations, the report by the Department of Defense Inspector General’s office says. Parts of the audit were read to TIME by a federal official with access to the document.

The risks resulted from an attempt by Navy officials “to reduce access-control costs,” the report finds.

The audit comes as questions are emerging about how the alleged perpetrator, or perpetrators, of the attack at Navy Yard in Washington on Monday gained access to the facility. At least 13 people are dead in the attack, including the alleged attacker, Aaron Alexis.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Cops at Ohio State Have an Armored Fighting Vehicle Now

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Photo Credit: Reddit

Photo Credit: Reddit

The Ohio State University Department of Public Safety has acquired an armored military vehicle that looks like it belongs in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Gary Lewis, a senior director of media relations at OSU, told The Daily Caller via email that the “unique, special-purpose vehicle is a replacement” for the “police fleet.” He called the armored jalopy “an all-hazard, all-purpose, public safety-response vehicle” with “obviously enhanced capabilities.”

Lewis did not specify exactly what previous mode of transport was replaced.

He noted that the vehicle was “acquired at no cost from Military Surplus.” He also bragged that it has “extremely low miles and is in nearly new condition” but elaborated no further concerning the acquisition.

“We are in the process of making it usable for our needs in an urban campus environment,” Lewis explained. “Specifically we are removing the top turret and repainting.”

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Lake Roosevelt Park Ranger Shot Man Near Son, Family Says

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Photo Credit: Lee Cannon

Photo Credit: Lee Cannon

The Kettle Falls man shot by park rangers at a campground over the weekend had been standing alongside his 9-year-old son when the bullet tore into his torso, family members say.

Few details of the shooting have been disclosed by the National Park Service or investigators with the Washington State Patrol.

The shooting injured Casey Hartinger, 43. It happened after a Saturday night confrontation between rangers and another man who owns a houseboat that was moored at the Kettle River Campground within the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area.

At least one park ranger boarded the houseboat in response to a noise complaint.

It’s unclear what prompted a ranger to open fire on Hartinger, 43, who was released Monday from Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center, apparently without being arrested. However, the owner of the houseboat, 41-year-old Michael J. Sublie, faces possible federal charges of interfering with law enforcement.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pew Survey: 53% of Americans Disapprove of Obamacare, Highest Negative Since Law’s Passage

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Pew Research Center survey found that public views of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act “are as negative as ever, and many are unaware of the elements of the law that will be going into place.”

According to the survey, “opinions are now as negative as they have been at any point since the bill’s passage,” as 53 percent of Americans disapprove of the regulation-ridden health care law, commonly known as “Obamacare,” while 42 percent approve.

The survey was conducted less than a month before the law’s health insurance exchanges open on October 1st.

Those who are uninsured are “as likely to disapprove (46%) as approve (49%) of the law,” Pew found.

And while 39 percent of the public say that Democrats have a better handle on health care, 40 percent now believe that Republicans “would do the better job dealing with health care.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Another Mass Shooting….In a Gun Free Zone

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

Photo Credit: Irish Central

On a naval base where it is against the rules to carry weapons and in a city with some of the strictest gun laws in the US, a gunman chooses to disobey their rules and gun down a dozen victims.

The shooting at the Washington Naval Yard in Washington DC today, follows a familiar pattern in mass shooting history: The gunman finds a location where he knows his victims cannot shoot back and he can attain maximum mayhem.

Today that resulted in 12 innocent people shot dead and others left wounded.

No matter what the motives behind this shooting, whether it is terrorist related, a grievance, or just a mental case on a rampage, this incident shows it is time to stop disarming or making it almost impossible for law abiding citizens to be armed.

Most people would think a military installation would be a poor choice for a gunman to find unarmed, defenseless victims. After all most of our military personnel are trained in the use of firearms and are trusted to use those weapons in the defense of our country.

But most US soldiers on military bases are not allowed to carry weapons, except for the military police who are usually stretched thin. Regulations forbid military personnel from carrying their personal firearms and make it almost impossible for commanders to issue firearms to soldiers in the U.S. for personal protection.

It seems the government has decided it can’t trust its own service members.

This same idiotic mindset made it possible for Major Nidal Hassan at the Fort Hood Army base to leisurely slaughter 13 and wound over 30 in a room full of unarmed soldiers, before armed base police arrived.

The knee jerk reaction to this latest shooting will be to call for more gun control laws, but ask Chicago and Washington DC how those extremely strict gun laws are working out.

Obviously if military personnel/employees had been trusted to carry side arms on military bases, the death toll in these mass shootings would have been far less, or the incidents never would have been attempted.

Obviously, if law abiding citizens, including educators, had been armed during recent tragedies in Aurora Colorado, Sandy Elementary and Fort Hood, perhaps these and other tragedies could have been averted. See Mother Jones article: US Mass Shootings, 1982-2012: Data From Mother Jones’ Investigation.

John Lott wrote a book titled: “More Guns, Less Crime.” In it he has statistics where gun laws have been liberalized and ordinary law abiding citizens were encouraged to own and carry firearms, crime is reduced,,,…mass shootings are almost unheard of.

“Violent crime rates go down when states pass “shall issue” concealed carry laws. He presents the results of his statistical analysis of crime data for every county in the United States during 29 years from 1977 to 2005. The book examines city, county and state level data from the entire United States and measures the impact of 11 different types of gun control laws on crime rates.”

Perhaps its time to examine a radical idea and make it easier for the law abiding US citizen to carry a personal firearm, than it is for the criminals who routinely prey on them.

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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.