Columnist.
How do you spell "sidesplitting chutzpah"? In New York's 22nd congressional district, it's spelled: R-I-C-H-A-R-D H-A-N-N-A. He's the liberal GOP incumbent trying to cling to public office by smearing the Marine mom, small-business owner, lawyer and conservative state assemblywoman poised to take his seat next week. Claudia Tenney is as rock-solid of a Republican as they come: pro-life, pro-limited government, pro-Second Amendment, pro-entrepreneur, pro-American worker. As one of New York's top conservative legislators, Tenney has been unafraid to challenge the powers that be in both political parties. As an attorney, she has fought valiantly against cronyism and corruption. She has opposed the New York Democratic machine on everything from in-state tuition discounts for illegal aliens to taxpayer slush funds to dirty casino-government deals.
As Obama administration officials pivot like haywire jewelry-box ballerinas to divert attention away from the nationwide Veterans Affairs disgrace, a reader who has been fighting the system urged me to urge Capitol Hill and the American public to stay focused. This former Special Forces soldier and medic served his country for 25 years. He worked in the health care field managing military field medical clinics. "I know how health care is supposed to run, even in austere or low-budget environments," he says. And in his nightmarish, ongoing experience, the VA is an epic, deadly, monstrous failure. He minces no words: "They're getting billions of dollars, and they treat veterans like s-t. There's no accountability, no buy-in, among civilian unionized employees. We mean nothing to them. It's like going to the DMV for your health care."
Panicked liberals and crony Republican elitists agree: Tom Tancredo would be bad for their Big Government and Big Business rackets. That's exactly why I support him in Colorado's June 24 GOP primary election for governor. A fear-mongering ad campaign by the left-wing group "ProgressNow," which is funded by billionaire George Soros, hyperventilated last week that "Tancredo believes Obamacare is a scam." Gasp! "Scam" is putting it politely, of course. Billions of dollars have been wasted on defunct and dysfunctional Obamacare health exchanges. Criminals, illegal aliens and con artists have been hired as "navigators" to sign up Obamacare enrollees (a.k.a. future Democratic voters). And millions of Americans of all backgrounds, including my family, have had their plans canceled thanks to the costs and regulatory burdens of the law. Workers have seen their wages and hours cut; employers, especially small and family-owned businesses, have been forced to drop coverage.
A source tipped me off last week to a curious occurrence: It seems that two planeloads of illegal aliens were recently shipped to Massachusetts. The first reportedly landed at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford. According to my tipster, approximately 160 illegal immigrants arrived on that flight and stayed nearly a week before being transferred to a Department of Homeland Security site and then released. The second flight reportedly was diverted from Hanscom to Boston's Logan Airport this past weekend. I am told that both Massachusetts and New Hampshire officials were on hand. I reached out to Hanscom AFB for confirmation, but did not receive a call back by my deadline. Question: How many other military bases are stealthily being used to redistribute, house, process and release illegal border crossers?
Ten years ago this month, U.S. Marine Wassef Ali Hassoun disappeared from Camp Fallujah in Iraq. After a five-month military investigation, he was charged with desertion and theft, brought back to Virginia's Quantico Marine base and then transferred to North Carolina's Camp Lejeune for trial. Yet, a full decade later, Hassoun is as free as a bird. The accused deserter's whereabouts are unknown. No trial ever began. No punishment ensued. And our leaders in Washington don't seem to be doing a thing about this. Hassoun was born in Lebanon and immigrated with his family to Utah in 1999. A few years later, he joined the Marines as an Arabic translator. On June 20, 2004, Hassoun bailed on guard duty at his base in Fallujah. He took his military-issued gun and his Muslim prayer rug. Military records obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune showed that he was "torn between military loyalty and his Muslim beliefs."
Five years ago, I publicly raised questions about Bowe Bergdahl's desertion from Blackfoot Company, 1-501 Infantry (Airborne), 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division. A few weeks after his so-called "capture" in late June 2009, three conflicting accounts surfaced: U.S. officials told the Associated Press Bergdahl had "walked off" the base with three Afghans; the Taliban claimed on its website that "a drunken American soldier had come out of his garrison" and into their arms; and Bergdahl claimed in his Taliban "hostage video" that he had "lagged behind a patrol" before being captured. I asked on my blog: Were the AP's sources mistaken? Or is the disturbing first account the right one? What about the "three Afghans" Pfc. Bergdahl reportedly "just walked off" with after his shift? Who are they? What's going on?
Like millions of other American parents, my husband and I received a warning letter from the BMI police last week. Our active, healthy 8th-grade daughter is "very lean," according to her school-administered "Fitnessgram." The national student body monitors think this is a public health problem. The obesity report card lectured that because our daughter's body-mass index is "very low," we "should make certain" that she "is eating a healthy diet that includes the appropriate number of calories." Thanks, geniuses. We had no idea such measurements were taking place, and we wondered whether we were alone in objecting to this unsolicited Nanny State dispatch. We're not.
Behold Canada and America. One country supports the efforts of a U.S. special forces soldier's widow to hold accountable the jihadist who killed her husband and the father of her two young children. The other country helped free that jihadist from Guantanamo Bay in a shady deal that appeased his far-left allies. Guess which side President Obama's on. The widow is Tabitha Speer. Her children are Taryn and Tanner. Their husband and father was an American hero: Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, a 28-year-old medic with the U.S. Special Forces. As I reported in my syndicated column 11 years ago, Speer died in Afghanistan during an ambush by al-Qaida operatives. The remorseless Islamic zealot who lobbed the fatal grenade that killed Speer in 2002: 15-year-old Omar Khadr.
A government that fails to secure its borders is guilty of dereliction of duty. A government that fails to care for our men and women on the frontlines is guilty of malpractice. A government that puts the needs of illegal aliens above U.S. veterans for political gain should be prosecuted for criminal neglect bordering on treason. Compare, contrast and weep: In Sacramento, Calif., lawmakers are moving forward with a budget-busting plan to extend government-funded health insurance to at least 1.5 million illegal aliens.
Look out, everyone: The nation's school lunch lady, Michelle Obama, is mad. With her federal nutrition program under fire across the country and now on Capitol Hill, Mrs. Obama put out a "forceful" call to arms this week to "health activists," according to The Washington Post. She's cracking the whip. Her orders are clear: There must be no escape. The East Wing and its sycophants zealously oppose any effort to alter, delay or waive top-down school meal rules. Big Lunch must be guarded at all costs. Progressives blame kid-hating Republicans and greedy businesses for the revolt against Mrs. Obama's failed policies. But the truth is right around the corner in your students' cafeterias. Districts are losing money. Discarded food is piling high. Kids are going off-campus to fill their tummies or just going hungry.
At least 40 American veterans are dead thanks to bureaucratic delays at Veterans Affairs clinics. But you wouldn't know it from VA Secretary Gen. Eric Shinseki's bland and bloodless demeanor at a Senate hearing Thursday. He droned on like an apathetic office manager fielding complaints about the copier being jammed. Shinseki told the Senate panel he "can't remember" getting warnings from federal watchdogs last fall about ghost clinics and double-scheduling schemes. He said he was "not aware" of explosive book-cooking allegations like the ones at a Fort Collins, Colo., VA facility, where employees were ordered to make their records show that veterans got appointments within 14 days of the day requested, whether or not it was true.
When Obamacare operatives aren't busy trashing the private health insurance market and squandering billions on useless technology, they're busy ... being idle. File the latest example of government health care profligacy under "Caution: Your tax dollars not at work." According to at least one Obamacare paper-pusher, employees at an application-processing center in Wentzville, Mo., are getting paid to sit around and do nothing. Investigative reporter Chris Nagus of the St. Louis television station KMOV News 4 spoke to the whistleblower. "They want to hire more people even though we still don't have work to keep the people that we have busy," the worker revealed. "There are some weeks that a data entry person would not process an application."
All politics is local. So Republican politicians with national ambitions better pay attention to what grassroots parents are saying and doing about the federal education racket known as Common Core. In bellwether Indiana this week, anti-Common Core activists won a pair of pivotal electoral victories against GOP Gov. Mike Pence. Pence's attempt to mollify critics by rebranding and repackaging shoddy Common Core standards is fooling no one. Tuesday's Republican primary elections in the Hoosier state resulted in the landslide defeat of two establishment incumbents running for statewide re-election. Pence had endorsed GOP State Rep. Kathy Heuer over challenger Christopher Judy. Pence's Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann had endorsed GOP State Rep. Rebecca Kubacki over challenger Curt Nisly. The incumbents enjoyed the support of the Common Core-promoting U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Hollywood is sick, sick, sick. Behind its curtain of holier-than-thou progressivism, the entertainment world's top A-list stars have engaged in the most depraved sexual abuse against vulnerable children and teens, according to a growing number of victims. After years of cover-up, the institutional scandal is exploding. Finally. The latest alleged atrocities involve "X-Men" director Bryan Singer and at least three other power players in the business: veteran television executive Garth Ancier, former Disney executive David Neuman and producer Gary Goddard. Last month, former child actor and model Michael Egan filed civil suits against the men, alleging that they passed around underage boys "like pieces of meat at sex parties" in the late 1990s. Egan's X-rated lawsuit exposes a cabal of alleged predators who plied young boys and teens with hard drugs and alcohol before sexually assaulting them.
Hannibal Lecter. Freddy Kreuger. Jason Voorhees. Charles Manson. Jeffrey Dahmer. Ted Bundy. Hollywood loves a homicidal monster. But what happens when an evil being exposes the monstrosities of malign government neglect and deadly ideology? Crickets. Tinseltown couldn't conjure a bigger nightmare than true-life Philadelphia serial killer Kermit Gosnell. He preyed on hundreds of poor minority women. He systematically executed hundreds of healthy, living, breathing, squirming, viable babies by stabbing them in their necks and severing spinal cords with scissors and knives. This twisted murderer kept baby feet in specimen jars, which he crammed into the grisly refrigerators of his filthy "clinic." For "research."
This weekend on "Fox News Sunday," anchor Chris Wallace credited his guest, Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, with leading the nation as the "first state to fall out of the Common Core national education standards." If only it were true. Wallace didn't do his homework. And presidential aspirant Pence was too busy daydreaming about 2016 to correct him. Reality check: Last week, Pence faced the anger of hundreds of Indiana parents, educators and activists at a public Indiana Business Roundtable meeting to discuss his phony charade. The protesters openly booed Pence's derision of critics as out-of-staters and elitists. They roared their disapproval when he claimed that his "new" standards were superior and homegrown.
The Obama administration doesn't have watchdogs. It has whitewash puppies. The president's Chicago bullies have defanged true advocates for integrity in government in D.C. from day one. So the latest report by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Operations Committee on corruptocrat Charles K. Edwards, the former Department of Homeland Security inspector general, isn't a revelation. It's confirmation. Investigators found that Edwards compromised the independence of his office by socializing and sucking up to senior DHS officials. "There are many blessings to be thankful for this year," the sycophantic Edwards wrote to the DHS acting counsel on Thanksgiving 2011, "but one of the best is having a friend like you." Geez, get them a room.
I've always thought entrenched left-wing journalists in Washington needed their heads examined. Much to my satisfaction, it appears the corporate media bosses of at least one Beltway anchor now agree. According to The Washington Post this week, NBC News hired a "psychological consultant" to examine why flailing "Meet the Press" moderator David Gregory has been bombing in the ratings. The overpriced shrinks (NBC prefers the euphemism "brand consultants") came from the New York-based brand fixer-upper Elastic Strategy.
Zeituni Onyango, President Obama's illegal alien aunt, died this week of cancer and other complications. I hope she rests in peace. America, however, should be up in arms. Auntie Zeituni is an enduring symbol of all that is wrong with this country's immigration "policy" -- or rather, its complete lack of a coherent, enforceable system of laws and rules that puts the national interest first. She was a beneficiary of the welfare state run amok, enabled by bipartisan fecklessness. To the bitter end, she bit the hand that fed her with predictable ingratitude and metastatic entitlement.
I have created a new species designation for the female Democrats who play hypocritical gender politics on behalf of Barack Obama. They're genderhawks. You remember the term "chickenhawk," don't you? During the Bush years, anti-war activists and journalists hurled the ad hominem epithet at anyone who supported military action against our enemies but hadn't personally served. I say let's give 'em a dose of their own tactical medicine.
