Columnist.
It's confirmed: The "F" in John. F. Kerry stands for "Feckless." Women around the world no longer need to wonder whether America's secretary of state will stand boldly with them in defense of their basic rights. He won't. On Monday, Kerry was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Anyone with a phone or an Internet connection inside and outside the country knows what's been going on there. The kingdom has been rocked by women of all ages protesting the Muslim nation's retrograde ban on female drivers. Over the past two weeks, the protesters and their supporters have taken to social media to pressure the oppressive sharia-enforcing regime. It is the only country in the world that won't allow its women -- 20 million of them -- to obtain driver's licenses.
Now that true horror stories of Obamacare's wrecking ball are finally reaching the public, the White House doesn't like "anecdotes." Live by tale-telling; die by tale-telling. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney huffed that stage-four gallbladder cancer survivor Edie Littlefield Sundby's personal account in The Wall Street Journal of seeing her health insurance plan canceled and her access to doctors cut off was "sensational." Not a shred of compassion for her predicament. No sorrow for her loss. Must. Attack. Messenger.
While her husband's signature health care law goes up in flames, first lady Michelle Obama is reveling in the success of her East Wing pet project, the "Let's Move" initiative. But ignore the do-gooder dressing. Mrs. Obama doesn't care about your children. What we have here is a textbook case of Washington influence peddling, which the Obamas so vigorously condemned a long time ago and far away.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is allergic to the truth. She is the ruthless enforcer of Obamacare's Jenga tower of lies upon lies upon lies. Now that this fatally flawed government edifice is collapsing, you can expect Sebelius to do what she has done her entire career: blame, bully and pile on more lies. Three years ago, when insurers and other companies had the audacity to expose Obamacare's damage to their customers and workers, Sebelius brought out her brass knuckles. Remember? As I reported at the time, the White House coordinated a demonization campaign against Anthem Blue Cross in California for raising rates because of the new mandate's costs. Obama singled out the company in a "60 Minutes" interview, and Sebelius sent a nasty-gram demanding that Anthem "justify" its rate hikes to the federal government.
Why does the White House need a private-sector "tech surge" to repair its wretched Obamacare website failures? Weren't all of the president's myriad IT czars and their underlings supposed to ensure that taxpayers got the most effective, innovative, cutting-edge and secure technology for their money? Now is the perfect time for an update on Obama's top government titans of information technology. As usual, "screw up, move up" is standard bureaucratic operating procedure.
Dr. Nicholas DiNubile, a Philadelphia orthopedic surgeon, has a timely reminder for everyone encountering the federal health care exchange meltdown: "If you think signing up for Obamacare is a nightmare, ask your doctor how the EMR mandate is going." Bingo.
As an outspoken critic of the federal academic standards scheme known as Common Core, I'd like to offer some friendly advice to opponents. Stop insulting. Stop digging. Stop projecting. Start listening. Central planners in Washington have been caught off-guard by the grassroots revolt against the national standards/testing/curriculum juggernaut. Real input from the hoi polloi was never a part of the grand implementation process. So when parents and educators in dozens of states started challenging the privacy intrusions posed by and the constitutionality, cost, quality and validity of Common Core, its architects went on the attack.
Testing, 1, 2, 3, testing. Jihadists never go on furlough. While shutdown theater preoccupies Washington, terror plotters remain on the clock. The question is: Will America keep hitting the post-9/11 snooze button? At Los Angeles International Airport, two dry ice bombs exploded this week, and two others were found in a restricted area of the airport. According to the Los Angeles Times, the devices "appeared to be outside the terminal near planes where employees such as baggage handlers and others work on the aircraft and its cargo."
Behold the Hollywood bubble. This week, actress Olivia Wilde starred in an Obamacare propaganda video targeting young people. "You can sign up for health care online in 10 minutes," her co-propagandist chirped as she cheered. Cue the laugh track. Back on planet Earth, Americans nationwide are still struggling with the $634 million online health care exchange nightmare. One reader asked me to share his story. Like me and 22 million other citizens in the private individual market for health insurance, he recently received his You Can't Keep It cancellation notice. Here's what happened when he went online to find alternatives.
Could this be the end of Monument Syndrome? Across the country, ordinary Americans are rising up in revolt against the old Washington tactic of closing public parks and memorials during selective government "shutdowns" to score political points. Tax-paying tourists are tossing off the orange traffic cones and "Barrycades." Enough is enough. The movement started with waves of World War II veterans who flew to D.C. last week as part of the Honor Flight Network. (The nonprofit group brings our surviving heroes to visit the memorials that honor their service and sacrifice.) The vets and volunteers breached the fences last week, exposing the tone-deaf tactics of President Obama's Spite House. Honor Flight visits continue this week, and more vets vowed to defy the cynical closures.
The families of two slain Marines from Camp Bastion finally got some answers this week. But their battle for full accountability in the 9/14/12 Taliban attack is far from over. Two top U.S. military leaders will get early retirement and full pensions for their fatal negligence. But one American mom wants to know: What about the British? And what about the rest of our troops on vulnerable coalition-run bases around the world?
Welcome to ObamaWreck! Americans nationwide spent Tuesday struggling with the much-hyped "Affordable Care Act" health insurance exchanges. Server meltdowns, error messages and security glitches plagued the federal and state government websites as open enrollment began. But when taxpayers discover exactly who will be navigating them through the bureaucratic maze, they may be glad they didn't get through. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius controls a $54 million slush fund to hire thousands of "navigators," "in-person assisters" and counselors, who are now propagandizing and recruiting Obamacare recipients into the government-run exchanges. As I warned in May, the Nanny State navigator corps is a serious threat to Americans' privacy. Background checks and training requirements are minimal to nonexistent. A history of fraud is no barrier to entry.
It's elementary. Public education bureaucrats do the darnedest, stupidest things. Clever kids are ready, willing and able to capitalize on that costly stupidity in a heartbeat. Within days of rolling out a $30 million Common Core iPad program in Los Angeles, for example, students had already hacked the supposedly secure devices. The Los Angeles Times reports that the disastrous initiative has been suspended after students from at least three different high schools breached the devices' security protections. It was a piece of iCake. The young saboteurs gleefully advertised their method to their friends, fellow Twitter and Facebook users, and the media.
Like an estimated 22 million other Americans, I am a self-employed small-business owner who buys health insurance for my family directly on the individual market. We have a high-deductible PPO plan that allows us to choose from a wide range of doctors. Or rather, we *had* such a plan.
This is priceless. Former Fla. GOP Gov. Jeb Bush, consummate politician and 2016 presidential aspirant, has now bitterly accused opponents of his federal education schemes of possessing "purely political" motives. Projection, anyone? Having previously suggested that critics of the so-called Common Core standards program are crazy, ignorant and lying, Bush piled on at a National Press Club appearance this week. Jeb the Insult Comic Dog did not hold back. Not only is the growing anti-Fed Ed movement of parents, teachers, school board members, academics, privacy advocates and state legislators of all stripes "purely political," Bush sniped, but the Common Core backlash that's causing him conniption fits is also opposed to academic excellence.
Forget gun control. America needs government control. Have you noticed the common thread among several mass killings and homeland security incidents lately? Time and again, it's the control freaks in Washington who have fallen down on their jobs, allowing crazies, creeps and criminals to roam free and wreak havoc while ignoring rampant red flags. Let's review: Washington Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis: Despite gun-grabbing Democrats' best efforts to blame a nonexistent "AR-15" for this week's horrific Navy Yard massacre, the truth is seeping out about shooter Aaron Alexis. The 34-year-old Navy veteran had been treated since August by the Veterans Administration for a host of mental problems that plagued him for up to a decade.
COLORADO SPRINGS -- Quick, call the CDC. We've got a Rocky Mountain outbreak of Acute Sore Loser Fever. After failing to stave off two historic recall bids on Tuesday, two delusional state legislators and their national party bosses just can't help but double-down and trash voters as dumb, sick, criminal and profligate. The ululations of gun-grabbing Democrats here in my adopted home state are reverberating far and wide. Appearing on cable TV Thursday to answer the question "What happened?" Pueblo State Sen. Angela Giron sputtered that she lost her seat due to "voter suppression." Giron whined to CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin that voters "weren't able to get to the polls" and that there was "voter confusion."
Before we head to Syria to avenge the mass murder of their kids, how about we finish avenging *ours*? When I say "finish," of course I really mean "start." A dozen years after the 9/11 attacks, the trials against the jihadist plotters who incinerated pregnant women, firefighters, grandparents, newlyweds, toddlers and schoolkids on their first-ever plane rides have yet to begin. Justice not only has been delayed and denied. Justice has been demoted, disowned and deserted. Justice for the 9/11 victims and families isn't blindfolded. She's gagged and hogtied.
Next week, "never forget" will resound across America as citizens mark a dozen years since the 9/11 terrorist attack and one year since the bloody disaster in Benghazi. But who will remember the American heroes who came under siege at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan on 9/14/12? Two heroic U.S. Marines -- Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell -- perished in the monstrous battle last year, and nearly a dozen others were injured. What happened at Camp Bastion and whether the Obama administration has learned from the deadly incident are timely questions as Washington prepares for war again in a jihadi-infested region.
Out: The boy who cried wolf. In: The girl who cried birth control. Desperate Democrats are imposing false-alarm feminist politics on a high-stakes recall election in Colorado this month. It's a golden opportunity for independent-minded women to reject empty femme-a-goguery and tear up the Sandra Fluke card. On September 10, Colorado Springs and Pueblo will decide whether to boot two top state Democrats (state Senate Majority Leader John Morse and state Sen. Angela Giron) over their support for radical gun- and ammo-control measures spearheaded by outside special interests. Left-wing billionaires Michael Bloomberg of New York City and Eli Broad of Detroit have poured $700,000 between them into defending the endangered Colorado Democrats.
