Video: The New Power Triangle

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Barack Obama, to hear his advisers tell it, has finally found The One he has been looking for: John McCain.

“We have been looking literally for years for someone we can cut deals with, and finally someone has stepped up,” a White House official said. West Wing aides say they now talk with McCain roughly every other day.

McCain, to hear fellow Republicans tell it, has finally found The Two he has needed to make such conversations worth the bother: Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat who can actually get things done in the Senate, and Denis McDonough, a White House chief of staff who actually cares what senators say and think and do.

While Obama and party leaders clash endlessly and hopelessly, these three men are showing it is possible to put aside political and personal grievances to get consequential stuff done, even in Washington’s currently twisted state.

They would never say it this way, but more often than not, they do it by going around those party leaders — their bosses — who seem stuck in fights they will never be able to end.

Read more from this story HERE.

And You Thought the NSA was Bad: Obamacare Data Hub a ‘Honey Pot’ for Leftist ID Thieves, Warn Critics (+videos)

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Photo Credit: National Review Obamacare’s Branch of the NSA

By John Fund. President Obama has had a poor record of job creation, but at least one small economic sector is doing well: community organizing.

The Department of Health and Human Services is about to hire an army of “patient navigators” to inform Americans about the subsidized insurance promised by Obamacare and assist them in enrolling. These organizers will be guided by the new Federal Data Hub, which will give them access to reams of personal information compiled by federal agencies ranging from the IRS to the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration. “The federal government is planning to quietly enact what could be the largest consolidation of personal data in the history of the republic,” Paul Howard of the Manhattan Institute and Stephen T. Parente, a University of Minnesota finance professor, wrote in USA Today. No wonder that there are concerns about everything from identity theft to the ability of navigators to use the system to register Obamacare participants to vote.

HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius wasn’t satisfied with the $54 million in public funds allocated for navigators this year, so she tried to raise money from health-industry executives for Enroll America, the liberal nonprofit group leading the PR push for Obamacare. She had to retreat under withering criticism that she was shaking down companies that were dependent on government, a clear conflict of interest.

Because 34 states have declined to set up their own insurance “exchanges,” the job of guiding exchange enrollees in those states has been left to Washington. The identity of the groups who will get the Sebelius grants isn’t yet known, but Politico reports they are likely to include Planned Parenthood, senior-citizen advocacy organizations, and churches. Read more from this story HERE.

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Obamacare data hub a ‘honey pot’ for ID thieves, warn critics

By Paul Bedard. The data hub President Obama’s health care team is creating to exchange personal health and financial information on Obamacare users will be a ripe target for computer hackers and identity thieves, charge critics who claim it hasn’t been tested for security flaws.

“It’s the greatest collection of private identification information ever assembled on Americans that will be put into one place,” said Rep. Patrick Meehan, who chairs a House cybersecurity subcommittee. “It is every bit of sensitive information one would need to know to completely take over the identification of a person,” said the Pennsylvania lawmaker.

The Obamacare data hub, he added, “creates a honey pot and the day that it goes online it is going to be a target for hackers and others and they are unprepared to protect the system.”

At an oversight hearing last week, administration officials said that the hub, still under creation, will be used to verify Obamacare applications. It will share information among federal agencies, like the IRS, and state agencies. A separate system will keep store key information such as income, Social Security numbers, email addresses, and even pregnancy status of Obamacare users.

Officials called on the public and Congress to “trust” that the information will be protected from hackers, but several lawmakers balked. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesMidlands Voices: Stop Obamacare in its tracks

By Ben Sasse. The author has served as chief of staff for the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy and as assistant U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush. Currently president of Midland University, he has been exploring a U.S. Senate candidacy.

Obamacare is a ticking time bomb for Democrats in the 2014 elections. Nobody knows this better than President Barack Obama, which is why over the Fourth of July holiday weekend he unilaterally decided to delay its controversial employer mandate provision until after the midterm elections.

No wonder: The $2,000 per-worker fine is disastrously unpopular. Already, employers are laying off workers and dramatically cutting others’ hours in an effort to skirt the new penalty. The fact that this perfectly predictable development surprises many in Washington only underscores that they didn’t really read this 2,300-page monstrosity before they passed it.

Desperate for any appearance of victory, Republican leaders have decided to match the president’s delay with one of their own: proposing legislation to delay for a year the mandate for individuals. Perhaps useful, perhaps not. Well-meaning people can differ about legislative strategy.

But if Republicans don’t have a larger plan to actually oppose this unprecedented power grab in a way the American people will understand, then they will have given up the ghost on actually turning back the slew of new job-killing bureaucracies. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesGOP Senator says coalition to block and defund Obamacare is growing, names names

By Becket Adams. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told TheBlaze Monday he has recruited more than a dozen Senate Republicans to help him defund President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law.

Fifteen Republican senators, including Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ted Cruz (Texas), John Cornyn (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.), James Inhofe (Okla.), David Vitter (La.), Roger Wicker (Miss.), John Thune (S.D.), and Chuck Grassley (Iowa), will block a continuing resolution to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30 if it includes funding for Obamacare, Lee said.

“The president has said that he’s not willing and not able to enforce Obamacare as it was written,” Sen. Lee told TheBlaze in a phone interview. “And so he has chosen instead to enforce this law selectively.”

“He has picked out two things that he has said he won’t enforce. One is the employer mandate and the other is the requirement that the government obtain some kind of proof for those who are claiming eligibility for Obamacare exchange subsidies,” he added.

The senator continued, arguing that the president “doesn’t have the power” to selectively enforce and amend laws passed by Congress. Read more from this story HERE.

George Zimmerman Rescues Family of Four After SUV Topples on Florida Highway (+videos)

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Photo Credit: APBy Philip Caulfield. George Zimmerman helped rescue a family from an overturned car after an accident in Florida, four days after he was acquitted of murder, police said.

Zimmerman was one of two men who helped free four family members trapped in an overturned blue Ford Explorer after it crashed on a highway in Sanford around 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office said.

Two parents and two children were riding in the truck when it flipped near the intersection of I-4 and Route 46, authorities said.

After spotting the wreck and pulling over, the 29-year-old volunteer watchman grabbed a fire extinguisher from his car and checked for signs of a blaze before freeing the family, Sean Vincent, a spokesman for his legal team, told the Daily News.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APGeorge Zimmerman rescues family from truck crash last week, police say

By Fox News. George Zimmerman, who has not been seen publicly since his acquittal in the murder of Trayvon Martin earlier this month, surfaced last week to rescue an unidentified family trapped in an overturned vehicle on a Florida highway, police said Monday.

Sanford Police Department Capt. Jim McAuliffe told Fox News that Zimmerman, 29, was identified by a crash victim as the man who pulled him from the mangled vehicle.

“George Zimmerman pulled me out,” firefighters were told by the unidentified driver, according to McAuliffe.

The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office said the single-car accident occurred July 17 at approximately 5:45 pm. and involved a blue Ford Explorer SUV that had left the road and rolled over.

The sheriff’s office said there were four occupants inside — two parents and two children. There were no reports of injuries. Read more from this story HERE.

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Rush Limbaugh predicts how the ‘insane’ left will react to Zimmerman rescuing family after car accident

By Jason Howerton. On his radio show Monday, Rush Limbaugh reflected on reports indicating that George Zimmerman emerged out of hiding last week to help rescue a family involved in a car accident. The story is so incompatible with the way Zimmerman has been portrayed in the media that Limbaugh wondered “how long is it going to be before the story gets out that the whole accident was scripted and planned?”

“If it’s not already out there, it’s going to be a running theme,” he said. “I’m telling you, the left is insane…This just can’t be — Zimmerman, a hero? The Zimmerman haters are going to say that this whole thing was staged.”

Listen to the audio via the Daily Rushbo below:

Read more from this story HERE.

Harry Reid: Mitch McConnell ‘Tried to Make Love to the Tea Party and They Didn’t Like It’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: APSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid is enjoying the possibility of a tea party backed challenger to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“He tried to make love to the tea party and they didn’t like it,” Reid quipped about McConnell to at an event hosted by the pro-Obama nonprofit Organizing for Action.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke after Reid, saying that President George Washington warned about political parties who were at war with their own government

Read more from this story HERE.

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Harry Reid says nuclear option still on the table

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday that the “nuclear option” is still on the table if Republicans move to block more executive branch nominees.

The procedural move that would end filibusters of President Barack Obama’s nominees with a simple majority “can always come back,” Reid said at an event hosted by the pro-Obama non-profit Organizing for Action.

The Senate reached a last-minute deal last week to avoid the nuclear option. Since the deal, the Senate approved Richard Cordray’s nomination to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Gina McCarthy to serve as EPA administrator; Tom Perez as Labor secretary, among other nominees. Read more from this story HERE.

Charles Krauthammer Takes On Sally Kohn: Detroit is Not A GOP Failure, ‘It’s Been Run by The Democrats for 60 Years’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeBy Jason Howerton. Charles Krauthammer hit back at liberal pundit Sally Kohn after she claimed conservatives will “try to use Detroit falsely as an example to push more austerity.” Kohn’s comments fall in line with those of a number of liberal and progressive commentators who are seemingly attempting to pin Detroit’s collapse on GOP policies, despite the fact that the city has been run by Democrats and progressives for decades.

That’s the point that Krauthammer hammered home.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: ReutersDetroit bankruptcy raises concerns about other US cites under huge retiree debt

By Fox News. The recent bankruptcy filing in Detroit is raising red flags about other major U.S. cities also dealing with billions in under-funded retiree benefits, prompting the question — who might be next?

Just last week, Chicago’s credit rating was downgraded as a result of its $19 billion in under-funded pension liabilities.

Moody’s Investors Service called the liabilities “very large and growing” and warned that Chicago, the country’s third-largest city, faces a “tremendous strain’’ in trying to meet future funding requirements and public safety demands.

A similar scenario, though decades in the making, largely doomed Detroit, whose average police response time has grown to more than 50 minutes.

And like Michigan, which appears in no position to bail out Detroit, Illinois is dealing with its own $97 billion pension shortfall. Read more from this story HERE.

Southwest Flight Crash-Lands At New York’s LaGuardia Airport (+video)

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Ten injured as plane crash lands without after nose landing gear COLLAPSES as it lands at New York’s LaGuardia Airport

By Michael Zennie. A jetliner has crash-landed at New York’s LaGuardia Airport after its nose landing gear collapsed as it touched down on the tarmac this evening.

Ten people aboard the Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700 were hurt. Six had to be taken to a local hospital. The rest were treated at the scene. The extent of their injuries were not known, though they are believed to have been minor. Four passengers also suffered panic attacks after the landing.

Southwest Flight 345 was bound for New York City from Nashville, Tennessee. It was carrying 144 passengers – including a baby – and six crew members.

Aviation officials halted all takeoffs and landings at LaGuardia after the crash about 5.45pm on Monday. The Federal Aviation Administration said held all flights to LaGuardia for over an hour – delaying thousands of fliers.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Reuters NYC Public Advocate threatens to prevent Saudi Arabian Airlines from landing at JFK

By Fox News. New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio tells FoxNews.com that he’ll work to prevent Saudi Arabian Airlines from landing at JFK and other American airports if the carrier does not change its policy of barring Israelis from flying — even when passengers are simply looking to transfer in Saudi Arabia to another country.

“When Saudi Airlines flies from our airports, it needs to follow our laws. Discrimination based on national origin is illegal. We’re going to take steps to see Saudi Airlines’ lease at JFK pulled until it respects the rights of Israeli nationals,” said de Blasio, a mayoral candidate who first helped expose the airline’s practices.

Federal law says an “air carrier or foreign air carrier may not subject a person in air transportation to discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex or ancestry.” Conditions of the airline’s leases and agreements to operate at airports, such as JFK, could be terminated if the law is broken.

For its part, Saudi Arabian Airlines is citing lack of diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel for the airline barring Israeli passengers. Read more from this story HERE.

Newly-Retired CENTCOM General Asks Why Iran was Allowed to Get Away With Assassination Attempt on US Soil (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeThe U.S. made a serious mistake by not responding more assertively to an alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States in a bomb attack on a popular Washington restaurant, just-retired CENTCOM commander James Mattis said Saturday.

At an October 2011 press conference Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that Iran’s government had attempted to use a Mexican drug cartel to arrange the killing of the Saudi official, Adel Al-Jubeir, while dining at Cafe Milano in Georgetown. An Iranian-American living in Texas, Manssor Arbabsiar, and Iranian al-Quds force offifical Gholam Shakuri were charged with conspiring to carry out the bombing—which the U.S. officials said was headed off with the help of an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency informant.

“When we finally caught them in the act of trying to kill Adel, we had a beleaguered attorney general, a fine man but beleaguered politically, stand up and give a legal argument that frankly I couldn’t understand,” Mattis said at the Aspen Security Forum. “We caught them in the act and yet we let them walk free.”

Without being specific, Mattis suggested Iran should have suffered some more serious consequence for being behind the alleged plot.

“Frankly, I‘m not sure why, again, they haven’t been held to account,” he said. “They have been basically not held to account….I don’t know why the attempt on Adel wasn’t dealt with more strongly.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Jesse Ventura Lawsuit vs. Murdered Navy SEAL Can Move Forward, Judge Says (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsJesse Ventura’s lawsuit against “American Sniper” author Chris Kyle — purportedly the deadliest-ever American servicemen — can proceed with the war hero’s widow as a substitute defendant, a judge has ruled.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan reportedly wrote in his decision concerning Ventura’s defamation suit, “(if) a party dies and the claim is not extinguished, the court may order substitution of the proper party.”

Boylan subsequently named Taya Kyle, executor of her husband’s estate, as replacement defendant, the StarTribune of Minneapolis reports.

Ventura, whose resume includes noted turns as Minnesota governor, WWF wrestler, Navy SEAL, and Hollywood actor, sued Kyle over an unflattering anecdote the sniper slipped into his 2012 book.

Specifically, Kyle alleged that during a 2006 tete-a-tete, the duo duked it out at a California bar after Ventura badmouthed the second Iraq War, the United States, in general, as well as then-President George W. Bush.

Read more from this story HERE.

McCain Says ‘Controversial’ Stand Your Ground State Laws Need Review (+video)

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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sunday urged states to review their “stand your ground” laws amid a widening debate over the Trayvon Martin verdict and racial profiling.

About two dozen states have laws that allow individuals to act in self defense during a conflict without attempting to retreat, including Arizona. A Florida jury’s acquittal of George Zimmerman in Martin’s killing has renewed debate over those statutes.

McCain said he “trusts the judgment” of the jury that acquitted Zimmerman, but said that “stand your ground” rules need a second look.

Read more from this story HERE.

Thousands Rally to Support Police Photographer Who Leaked Alleged Bomber Photos to Media (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe Massachusetts State Police photographer who may lose his job after leaking photos of accused Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is receiving an outpouring of support on social media, with thousands on Facebook calling for him to be reinstated.

A Facebook page called “Save Sgt. Sean Murphy” has received nearly 35,000 “likes,” with many commenting Murphy made the right decision in leaking the photos of Tsarnaev bloodied while surrendering to authorities, The Boston Herald reports.

“Sean Murphy should be commended not condemned … he and those who brought this to a conclusion should be honored and not harassed … kudos and thank you,” one user said according to the Boston Herald.

Murphy faces a hearing to determine if he will be suspended until an internal investigation is complete. He was relieved of duty for one day after he released the photos to Boston Magazine in response to a controversial image on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

The photos show a downcast, disheveled Tsarnaev with the red dot of a sniper’s rifle laser sight boring into his forehead. They were taken when Tsarnaev was captured April 19, bleeding and hiding in a dry-docked boat in a Watertown backyard.

Read more from this story HERE.