newsletter

ABC News: Vet Finally Gets VA Appointment, Two Years After His Death The Department of Veteran Affairs is apologizing for finally responding to a hospital appointment request letter, two years too late. Suzanne Chase of Acton, Massachusetts, has been working to put the pain of losing her husband, Douglas Chase, to brain cancer, almost two years ago. In 2012, a year after her husband’s diagnosis, Chase attempted to move his care in Boston to a nearby veteran’s hospital in Bedford....

From The Hill: Erwin Chemerinsky is a passionate liberal and a distinguished scholar and dean. We have been opposing counsel before the Supreme Court, and I consider him a friend.Sadly, last week he wrote a column in the Hill that called me a liar and attacked my effort to defend the First Amendment from Democrats who are seeking to regulate political speech.It is unfortunate that public debate has descended to the point that such personal insults are commonplace.It is particularly unfortunate...

From Jerusalem Post: Hamas must be expelled from civil society, and America should do everything it can to support Israel for as long as it takes to find the terrorists and ensure justice is carried out.On Monday, June 30 the bodies of three Jewish teenagers – Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrah – were found by the IDF not far from the bus stop where they were kidnapped on June 12. Reports tell us they were shot shortly after their abduction.This grim circumstance shows...

The persistent march of terrorists and tyrants around the globe gives us reason to reflect on the precious gift of freedom we have been given and must continue to safeguard. In signing the Declaration of Independence, 238 years ago, our Founding Fathers defied an intolerable King and proclaimed a God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those men signified to the world that, although they yearned for peace, they would not submit to despots. Their demand for liberty offered...

The Wall Street Journal: What’s ‘Success’ in Lowering Health-Care Premiums During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly promised that his health care plan would “cut costs” and “lower premiums” by $2,500 per year for the average family. Now that Obamacare is coming into effect, supporters have shifted their talking points: the law will lower premium increases relative to what they  have been without the law—a tougher metric...

The Federalist: 12 Reasons Why Medicaid Expansion Is A Terrible Idea Medicaid doesn’t actually improve health outcomes. Medicaid promises people health coverage, but often denies them access to quality doctors. Expanding Medicaid without reform accepts a broken status quo that fails patients and taxpayers. Obamacare’s expansion is a one-size-fits-all, all-or-nothing approach. Medicaid expansion could increase the cost of private health care. Medicaid expansion crowds out other...

Reason: FDA to Save Us From Scourge of Wood-Aged Artisanal Cheese As part of a new push to enforce certain aspects of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), passed in 2011, the agency announced that it will no longer allow cheesemakers to use wooden boards in the aging process. Traditionally, the FDA has mostly deferred cheese inspections to the states. But the FDA recently inspected several New York cheesemakers and cited them for using wooden surfaces to age cheeses. …Many of the...

From Breitbart: Americans are naturally eager to end the long war in Afghanistan, but that does not mean we should dismiss the threat that violent terrorist groups, such as the Taliban, pose to our nation.Without any consultation with Congress, the Obama Administration plunged into negotiations with terrorists to release five terrorist leaders in exchange for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. The men released from Guantanamo Bay, the “Taliban 5,” were all high-level officials in the...

Washington Post: GOP has claimed control of Va. Senate, forced Democrats to cave over Medicaid impasse Virginia Republicans snatched control of the state Senate on Monday, immediately ending a budget stalemate by pushing Democrats to agree to pass a spending plan without Medicaid expansion, Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s top priority. The power shift forced Senate Democrats to yield after a protracted standoff that had threatened to shut down state government in less than a month, according to...

USA Today: More patients flocking to ERs under Obamacare [Similar to how the state of Mass. experienced greater ER volume after its insurance reforms, so too will hospitals around the country as a result of Obamacare] It wasn't supposed to work this way, but since the Affordable Care Act took effect in January, Norton Hospital has seen its packed emergency room become even more crowded, with about 100 more patients a month. That 12 percent spike in the number of patients — many of whom...

From The Wall Street Journal: For two centuries there has been bipartisan agreement that American democracy depends on free speech. Alas, more and more, the modern Democratic Party has abandoned that commitment and has instead been trying to regulate the speech of the citizenry. We have seen President Obama publicly rebuke the Supreme Court for protecting free speech in Citizens United v. FEC; the Obama IRS inquire of citizens what books they are reading and what is the content of their prayers;...

Politico: The VA's Socialist Paradise For the left, the Department of Veterans Affairs is how health care is ideally supposed to work. No insurance companies, no private doctors, no competition — just the government and the patient. Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist, has held up the VA as a model for the entire country [a "huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform…yes, this is 'socialized medicine."] The Washington Monthly ran a...

The Los Angeles Times: Federal funds earmarked to offset Affordable Care Act insurer losses The Obama administration has quietly adjusted key provisions of its signature healthcare law to potentially make billions of additional taxpayer dollars available to the insurance industry if companies providing coverage through the Affordable Care Act lose money. The move was buried in hundreds of pages of new regulations issued late last week. It comes as part of an intensive administration effort to...