The US Senate has advanced the health care bill as expected. All it took was corruption and bribery to get the votes. And to think, a few of you out there actually thought your rights weren’t for sale.
The Democratic Party’s decades-long push to remake the U.S. health care system cleared a major hurdle early Monday morning, with the Senate voting to advance a massive $871 billion bill to extend coverage to nearly all Americans and tighten regulations on private insurers.
Less than two days after releasing a bill with 383 pages of changes, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) corralled his politically diverse caucus and delivered the 60 votes necessary for the most crucial test vote in the legislative process so far — effectively assuring the reform package will clear the Senate later this week.
The final tally was a straight party-line vote, 60-40. All Democrats and two independents voted yes and all Republicans voted no – and each side bitterly accused the other of trying to thwart true reform through petty gamesmanship.
DC is still looking for one Democrat who’s actually read the bill.
Further proof that the Republicans who were ok with nominating someone with this guy’s views, and then were ok with that candidate dropping out to endorse this guy, need to be removed.
Bill Owens won the recent election in NY by lying to his constituents, and saying he would not support Pelosicare. It took just one hour to break four of his promises.
The Democrats have sunk to a new low. It took months for the country to finally realize that Democrats weren’t going to fulfill any of their platform promises when they took over Congress beyond minimum wage. However, Owens has raised the bar by admitting he lied just an hour after being sworn in.
Owens indicated in a press release that he was now in favor of the bill in direct contrast to his earlier position during his campaign.
During his campaign for Congress, Mr. Owens assured voters that he felt the public option had no place in the health care reform bill. Contrary to that position, Mr. Owens now indicates that he intends to vote in favor of the bill even though it now contains a public option.
Buried in the thousands of pages of the health care bills drafted by Democrats in the House and Senate is a provision to protect insurance companies from legal accountability for benefit decisions that cause injury or death to patients, Republicans warned on Wednesday.
“You can sue your doctor for malpractice if he makes a mistake practicing medicine, but you cannot sue your insurance company when it makes a medical decision,” Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) said at the press conference near the steps of the Capitol. “That’s just wrong.”
Three million Americans are being forced to answer intrusive questions about their private lives under threat of home visits and fines by the government in the guise of The American Community Survey.
The survey, which is sent to 3 million random homes each year, is in addition to the census but demands far more invasive information from citizens, such as how many times they have been married, if they have a toilet that flushes, and how much is left outstanding on their mortgage.
According to one North Texas resident, “The questionnaire also wants answers about where she works, how much money she makes, and what time she leaves for work each day – the hour and minute! “I thought it was intrusive. I don’t have a high regard for the federal government collecting this information anyway,” the woman told CBS 11 News. “You don’t know what they’re going to do with it.”
“Why do they need to know this? They don’t, in my opinion,” the woman said, before further stating that she thinks the personal questions are un-American. “Do they really need to know if we have a mortgage and whether this house is free and clear? That’s intrusive.”
The U.S. Census Bureau claims the survey helps them “determine where to locate services and allocate resources.”
If the person refuses to respond to the the survey or merely skips one question, then the Census Bureau promises that they will be fined and harassed until they do, a process that includes telephone calls and home visits.
However, it’s all hot air as no one has ever been charged with a crime for refusing to answer the ACS survey, and indeed several members of Congress have denounced the invasive questions as a violation of the Right to Financial Privacy Act.
It is a blatant violation of the 5th Amendment, but the government won’t ever let a little, insignificant thing like the US Constitution get in the way of data mining.
Here’s how common sense works: a company should not be able to dictate how a state governs itself. Even libs get that one.
Here’s how the US Constitution works: states have the right to enact their own laws.
Here’s the gray area: while Delaware is legally able to allow sports betting … they are trying to allow betting they didn’t used to allow before federal law trampled upon state’s rights.
So, the NFL is suing the state to prevent the state from allowing sports betting.
The NFL joined the three other major pro sports leagues and the NCAA in suing Delaware on Friday, seeking to block the state from implementing sports betting.
Delaware’s sports betting plan “would irreparably harm professional and amateur sports by fostering suspicion and skepticism that individual plays and final scores of games may have been influenced by factors other than honest athletic competition,” the leagues and the NCAA say in a lawsuit filed in federal district court in Delaware.
Congress banned sports betting in 1992 but grandfathered four states — Delaware, Nevada, Montana and Oregon — that already had offered it. But the lawsuit argues that Delaware’s plan to allow single-game betting would violate the legislation because the state has never previously offered single-game betting.
Under the ’92 law, the leagues and the NCAA said, a state like Delaware may only reintroduce sports betting if it had been conducted between 1976 and 1990.
The NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA, NHL and NCAA also argue that Delaware’s plan is illegal because it allows betting on all sports, going beyond the professional football betting program that constituted the state’s brief failed experiment in 1976.
We’ve been engaged in a full fledged war of free speech since shortly before the election with Obama’s censorship of radio and TV stations and reporters. Now we have some serious problems that go beyond the DHS report on conservatives.
A written exam administered by the Pentagon labels “protests” as a form of “low-level terrorism” — enraging civil liberties advocates and activist groups who say it shows blatant disregard of the First Amendment.
The written exam, given as part of Department of Defense employees’ routine training, includes a multiple-choice question that asks:
“Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorism?”
— Attacking the Pentagon
— IEDs
— Hate crimes against racial groups
— Protests
The correct answer, according to the exam, is “Protests.”
“Its part of a pattern of equating dissent and protest with terrorism,” said Ann Brick, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained a copy of the question after a Defense Department employee who was taking the test printed the screen on his or her computer terminal.
“It undermines the core constitutional values the Department of Defense is supposed to be defending,” Brick said, referring to the First Amendment right to peaceably assemble.
I hate writing this post. I really do. The idea that I have to write about the disgraceful actions of the relatives of the Flight 93 victims is stomach turning.
Most of the remains from the tragedy on Sept. 11, 2001, were never recovered, making the bowl-shaped crash site in the western Pennsylvania countryside an unofficial cemetery and, for surviving relatives, sacred ground.
But efforts to buy property for a national Flight 93 memorial have bogged down in federal red tape and a protracted land dispute, angering family members and risking plans to hold a dedication ceremony on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The delays have prompted an advocacy group, Families of Flight 93, to ask President Bush to personally intervene during his final weeks in office to allow the federal government to seize the land needed for the memorial and to allocate part of the money for the project.
Excuse me, I threw up a little in my mouth.
I think everyone would love to see a memorial for the victims of Flight 93. Undoubtedly, we’d prefer the memorial on the site of the tragedy. Is memorializing the victims of one tragedy worth creating another tragedy?
This land is privately owned by a company who is willing to sell it for a fare market value, but they haven’t been offered that yet. Frankly, it shouldn’t matter if they never wanted to sell the land … it’s theirs! For the relatives of Flight 93 victims to demand that the federal government steal land from a private land owner is a travesty, and it dishonors the memories of their loved ones.
The passengers of Flight 93 didn’t just fight back to save their own lives. They fought back against the terrorists to uphold American ideals. Ideals like freedom, liberty, and private property. How would Todd Beamer react to this group asking the government to use eminent domain to seize privately owned land in order to build him a memorial? Somehow, I doubt Mr. Beamer would be in favor of such treachery.
The Flight 93 group, and the federal government need to cease their selfish, grandiose land grab. There is no honor in what they are doing. Only dishonor for the flight that fought back.
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