The Ebola finger-pointing kicked into a higher gear Monday as politicians in Washington blamed each other for cutting research funding, even as the federal government’s top disease chief apologized for suggesting workers at a Dallas hospital failed to follow protocols, leading to this weekend’s first U.S.-contracted case of the deadly virus.

More than $1bn earmarked for the reconstruction of Iraq was stolen and spirited to a bunker in Lebanon as the American and Iraqi governments ignored appeals to recover the money, it has been claimed.

Stuart Bowen, a former special inspector general who investigated corruption and waste in Iraq, said the stash accounted for a significant chunk of the huge sums which vanished during the chaotic months following the 2003 US-led invasion.

Bowen’s team discovered that $1.2bn to $1.6bn was moved to a bunker in rural Lebanon for safe keeping – and then pleaded in vain for Baghdad and Washington to act, according to James Risen, a journalist who interviewed Bowen for a book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War, to be published this week.

Corrente readers could see this coming in May 2013: "California exchange spending and contractors exempted from open records law". I'm sure there are plenty of rationalizations for exemptions like that, but it's hard to think of any good reasons. And so we come to today's story from AP:

AP Exclusive: California gives no-bid health pacts

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- California's health insurance exchange has awarded $184 million in contracts without the competitive bidding and oversight that is standard practice across state government, including deals that sent millions of dollars to a firm whose employees have long-standing ties to the agency's executive director. ...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) believes President Barack Obama should appoint a "czar" to lead America's response to Ebola.

"From spending time here in Arizona, my constituents are not comforted. There has to be more reassurance given to them. I would say that we don't know exactly who's in charge. There has to be some kind of czar," McCain said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

Though the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) refuses to discuss the origin of the current outbreak of Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), the fact that emergency rooms across the country began seeing infected children around the same time as the nation's public schools were re-opening for the 2013-2014 school year, should serve as at least a clue as to how the virus made its way here.

Of course, the Obama administration has allowed tens of thousands of children to enter this country illegally over the past several months, and most of them have now been admitted to our public schools.

Three years ago, reporter and former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert took to the road and traveled across the United States to gather research for his new book, Losing Our Way. In it, Herbert tells the stories of the brave, hard-working men and women he met who have been battered by the economic downturn. He found an America in which jobs have disappeared, infrastructure is falling apart and the “virtuous cycle” of well-paid workers spending their wages to power the economy has been broken by greed and the gap between the very rich and everyone else.

Tens of thousands of people are flooding the streets of cities all over Europe on Saturday in mass rallies against a controversial trade agreement between the US and the EU.

Talks on the pact, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), started last February and, having been mostly held behind closed doors, have raised widespread concerns in the European Union and beyond.

Social networks have been mobilized for a mass campaign that has been calling on Europeans and Americans to take action against “the biggest corporate power grab in a decade.”

Republican Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said Friday that he thinks the IRS targeting scandal was driven by Valerie Jarrett’s office in the White House, according to information that he saw that Democrats tried to “whitewash.”

Roberts told talk radio host Hugh Hewitt that he participated in a Senate Finance Committee investigation into the IRS scandal but “the effort was made by the majority, by the Democrats in the Congress, to simply end that investigation,” which he called a “whitewash.”

“I’m convinced that even Valerie Jarrett was involved,” Roberts said.

The Roman Empire lasted 500 years but the American Empire may not surpass 300 years

Boris Johnson argues in his new book on Sir Winston Churchill that Adolf Hitler's speaking style was much-copied, by Tony Blair among others

HealthCare.gov, the online portal where millions of Americans must by health insurance, will not display premiums for 2015 until after the 2014 elections, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

The media may be reporting the quote verbatim, but Jeanne Shaheen's message to barack Obama as she's fighting to keep her Senate seat there couldn't be more clear. Stay out of New Hampshire, Barack!

A top Democratic pollster thinks Hispanic voters may sit out the 2014 midterm elections because President Barack Obama did not enact his executive amnesty by the end of the summer.

Pollster Celinda Lake told The Hill that Democrats face "a big uphill battle for the Latino turnout, and that's going to affect our candidates" in places like Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Georgia.

Fewer voters than ever think either major political party has a plan for the nation’s future, with most still convinced that neither represents the American people.

A prominent pro-life Republican in South Carolina has a plan to stop an Ebola outbreak in the United Nations.

Kill anyone who gets it.

Todd Kincannon, the former executive director of the South Carolina GOP went on a Twitter tirade this weekend.

His first tweet read: “People with Ebola in the US need to be humanely put down immediately.”

Gov. Rick Perry is visiting Army troops before they deploy to West Africa to support U.S. efforts to contain and eradicate Ebola.

The Republican is coming to the sprawling Army installation at Fort Hood on Thursday to address the soldiers before they leave. He isn't seeking re-election in November but is seriously considering a second run for the White House in 2016.

The first federal prosecutor to probe the financial dealings of Bill and Hillary Clinton says he was poised to bring high-profile indictments against top Arkansas political and business figures — based in part on testimony from a chief witness against the then president — when he was abruptly replaced by a panel of federal judges, throwing his investigation into turmoil.

"I was angry, frustrated and above all disappointed that I was not going to be able to carry through and finish bringing the indictments," writes Robert Fiske, a former U.S. attorney who served as the original independent counsel in charge of the Whitewater investigation, in a forthcoming memoir, "Prosecutor Defender Counselor."

Fiske — ever the punctilious prosecutor — offers no judgments on the conduct of the Clintons, nor on that of the man who replaced him, Kenneth Starr.

Kellogg is a large contributor to a group against an initiative in Oregon to label genetically modified foods, according to the St. Louis Business Journal.

The publication reported Tuesday the Battle Creek-based company has contributed $250,000 to the "No on 92 Coalition." The organization includes business groups such as the Oregon Manufacturers Association but also has backing from Monsanto Co., which has spent $1.5 million to defeat Measure 92, according to the Oregon Secretary of State's Office.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has rejected a labor group’s effort to increase the state’s $7.25 an hour minimum wage.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that a coalition led by the group Wisconsin Jobs Now had seized on a provision in Wisconsin law which states that the minimum wage must be a “living wage” – defined as “reasonable comfort, reasonable physical well-being, decency and moral well-being.” However, the Journal-Sentinel noted, state law also allows governors to weigh such factors as the wage’s impact on the labor market. (Studies show that state increases in the minimum wage don’t harm job growth.)

Citing the living wage provision, the coalition last month urged the Walker administration’s labor department to raise the state’s minimum wage. In rebuffing the effort, the Walker administration isn’t just citing the other factors a governor is allowed to consider – it’s actually asserting that $7.25 an hour is a living wage.

On his blog on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), director Dr. Tom Frieden wrote that sealing borders, restricting travel to and from countries with widespread cases of Ebola, and otherwise isolating communities infected with the deadly disease “increases people’s distrust of government, making them less likely to co-operate to help stop the spread of Ebola.”

The World Health Organization has said repeatedly it does not recommend travel bans on the countries affected by the Ebola outbreakl because that would leave the countries cut off from the rest of the world, “resulting in detrimental economic consequences, and hinder relief and response efforts, risking further international spread.” http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2014/ebola-2nd-ihr-meet...

The key problem in travel bans, says the WHO and others, is that ending flights in and out of affected countries hinders these countries’ ability to receive the new supplies they so desperately need. As well, there are already not enough health workers on the ground in the affected countries. What foreign worker would willingly fly into the epidemic to offer assistance knowing they might not be allowed to fly back out?

“While fraud and corruption are revealed on almost a daily basis now in the vaccine industry, the U.S. mainstream media continues to largely ignore such stories. Outside the U.S., however, the vaccine empires are beginning to crumble, and English versions of the news in mainstream media outlets are available via the Internet.

One such country is India, where the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and their vaccine empire are under fire, including a pending lawsuit currently being investigated by the India Supreme Court.” [1]

The Health Impact News article centered largely on a four-page report that was recently published by Economic Times India.

An accountant who became an FBI whistleblower in a Medicare fraud investigation against a hospital chain spoke out on Monday, saying the company’s former chief executive, Florida Governor Rick Scott, must have known about hundreds of millions of dollars in theft.

“Fraud was brewing in the DNA of Rick Scott’s company from the very beginning, and he was the father of it,” John Schilling said at a news conference organized by the rival gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Charlie Crist.

Scott is facing off against Crist in a close election battle, an expensive and closely watched political race for the nation’s largest swing state.

Governor Sean Parnell has ordered the Alaska National Guard’s top commander to rehire two senior officers he fired last week as the trio were all competing for the same higher-ranking job, officials said on Monday.

Brigadier General Mike Bridges, the guard’s top acting official in Alaska, fired Brigadier General Catherine Jorgensen and Colonel Edie Grunwald on Thursday, Parnell’s spokeswoman said in a statement.

Parnell spokeswoman Sharon Leighow declined to provide the original reason for the firings. But she said Parnell had not been consulted on the move and ordered the pair rehired after he learned of the dismissals.

We try to stay positive here at Cracked, but we're starting to suspect that the American political system is fucked. We know it sounds crazy, but hear us out -- Congress' approval is at an all-time low, and a record number of Americans now believe that government corruption is widespread. So how the hell did things get this bad?

We wanted to find out, so we sat down with three people who could shine some light on this mystery: the former aid to a high-level career politician, a member of the Electoral College, and the infamous former lobbyist Jack Abramoff (no, really). Here's what we learned:

As reported by Al Jazeera, Hillary Clinton now publicly acknowledges her globally isolated role in aiding a terrorist organization in the overthrow of Honduras’s democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, in 2009.

Demonstrating her unwavering commitment to democracy and respect for the Honduran people, Clinton says she cemented the terrorist takeover by blocking Zelaya’s attempts to return to his elected post.

Hobby Lobby Fights against Providing Birth Control for Its Employees, Invests in Companies That Manufacture Birth Control

The NOSB is supposed to be comprised of individuals representing farmers, environmentalists, public interest advocates, handlers, retailers, scientists and a USDA certifying agent, as reported by Natural News. However, one of the nation's leading organic industry watchdog groups has persistently criticized the selection of four NOSB board appointees and the secrecy surrounding their nominations.

"The selection process was conducted in secrecy despite requests to cast sunlight on the decision making and solicit input from a very engaged community of organic farmers, businesses, and consumers," said Will Fantle, the co-director for The Cornucopia Institute.

"We think a more transparent process would ensure the selection of the best and brightest for the various vacancies on the board -- instead of, once again, appeasing the organic corporate lobby."

It seems that, perhaps, Israel’s latest slaughter of defenseless Palestinians may have been a bit too much even for the United States to condone. In what may be the U.S.’s harshest, although still quite mild, criticism of its puppet master, President Barack Obama said that the plan to increase illegal settlement building could alienate Israel from ‘even its closest allies’.

There is, of course, no closer ally of Israel than the United States. Israel is able to disdain international law, violate the most basic human rights of Palestinians, slaughter men, women and children, bomb United Nations refugee centers, kill journalists and commit genocide only because of U.S. funding and use of its veto power in the U.N.

But the U.S., this time, went even further in its criticism. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the newly-approved construction would cause the global community to ‘question Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement’ with Palestinians.

The insistent evangelical voice will ring out soon, and very close to the U.S. Capitol building. Scheduled for Sunday afternoon in Upper Senate Park, it’s the Rally for Israel, organized primarily by potential White House hopeful Mike Huckabee and Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America.

“It’s time for the United States to join together in prayer and support for Israel. I have been to Israel nearly 30 times over the past 41 years and have never seen the nation under such threat,” Mr. Huckabee observes.

The Center for Disease control is a rogue institution engaged in the destruction of the health of the American population . . .

CDC is a for-profit corporation listed on Dun and Bradstreet
CDC partners with big pharma
CDC deceives health practitioners as well as the public
CDC orchestrates propaganda campaigns
CDC wastes millions of dollars
CDC hires researchers to create bogus studies
CDC does not answer to the people, but promotes whatever agenda those who control the White House (the internationl banksters) wish advanced
CDC directs the public health institutions and even has employees stationed in their state offices
CDC ignores congressional reports and/or hearings
CDC actively discredits/destroys reputable researchers
CDC bilks insurance companys out of billions of dollars by knowingly creating disease through their massive vaccination programs

Obama’s administration sinks in the quicksand of its liberal ambitions –few of its liberal foreign policy objectives have been met; not the closing down of Guantanamo’s prison, nor the tethering of an out-of-control surveillance apparatus, nor even the War on Terror in general. In fact, Obama has intensified the drone warfare in Yemen and Pakistan, and tethered itself to a resurgent Saudi Arabia on the back of Qatari withdrawal. To polish its carapace, the Obama administration has become a latter-day believer in gay rights on the world stage. Power went on Jay Leno’s program to talk about global LGBT rights and held a Google hangout with human rights activists where the issue of LGBT rights was center-stage (later, on twitter, Power mourned the loss of “Eric Ohena Lembembe, a courageous Cameroonian activist tortured to death last month”). But, to stay on the Uganda story, Power did not raise the issue of LGBT rights and Uganda.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who sits on the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, took aim at President Barack Obama’s criticism of Israel’s plans to add more housing around Jerusalem.

After Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met at the White House on Wednesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama questioned the plan to add 2,500 homes, insisting it would undermine the peace process with the Palestinians.

“This development will only draw condemnation from the international community,” Earnest said. “It also would call into question Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.”

To begin, consider that people like Dr. Sanjay Gupta keep saying that the Dallas Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan had “told the nurse” who attended to him upon his first arrival at the Texas Presbyterian Hospital Emergency Room that he had “traveled “to” Africa.”

That’s certainly a very odd thing for a Liberian national, having just arrived from Monrovia, Liberia to the United States for the very first time in his life, to have supposedly said, is it not? Of course, it fits the CDC Checklist used prior to, and including, Duncan’s case, so that must have been exactly what Duncan said, right Sanjay?

It took only one wrong vote to teach a freshman Democrat from Texas how sensitive, and even wrathful, the Jewish community can be when it comes to Israel.

But the real story of what happened to Rep. Beto O’Rourke did not stop with the angry reaction he got when he cast one of only eight votes in Congress against special funding for Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defense system during the recent Gaza war.

What is notable is how quickly the carrot followed the stick.

It was almost a textbook case of how the establishment pro-Israel lobby works its magic — and a story not yet completed in early September, when The New Yorker magazine took note of what had happened to O’Rourke.

y forcing Americans to buy their products, President Obama's signature Affordable Care Act is widely seen as a winning proposition for health insurance companies. Conscripted customers! What more could a well-connected business want? But the law's complex rules require insurers to cover the costs imposed by older and ailing customers with the payments from young and healthy customers. Potentially, a company could end up with a disproportionate ratio of sick customers drawn by the promise of subsidized coverage—drowning the seemingly winning proposition in red ink. If that happens, says the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the administration can't bail out insurers without permission from Congress.

A new poll finds that three-fifths of likely voters support the repeal of Obamacare. A large plurality — 44 percent — wants to see Obamacare repealed and replaced with a conservative alternative. A much smaller group —16 percent — wants to see it repealed but not replaced. Less than one in three respondents — 32 percent — would like to keep Obamacare, whether in its current form or in amended form. So, with a conservative alternative in play, 60 percent of Americans support repeal, while only 32 percent oppose it.

I have received many emails regarding the various articles I have written about the problems with the current economic system of being forced to borrow all currency at interest from a privately-owned central bank. This is, of course, the very system of banking the United States fought a revolution to be free of, only to be sold back into said banker slavery not just once, but three times by corrupted congresses and corrupted presidents.

I have been asked to collect all those articles into a single page to make it easier for people to send to their friends, and this collection is the result.

Napoleon once famously remarked that “in politics, stupidity is not a handicap.” In few cases does this seem more apt than in that of Vice-President Joe Biden, perennial lapdog to the ADL’s Abraham Foxman. Biden has recently added to last year’s faux pas by recently committing the egregious sin of using the word “Shylocks” to describe mortgage lenders. The slip came in a speech to the Legal Services Corporation, which provides lawyers to Americans who could not afford them otherwise. In his remarks, the Vice-President described the experience of his son, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who was deployed for one year in Iraq:

People would come to him and talk about what was happening to them at home in terms of foreclosures, in terms of bad loans that were being — I mean, these Shylocks who took advantage of these women and men while overseas.

Just days after suggesting lawmakers might not debate U.S. military involvement in Syria until next year, House Speaker John Boehner said he'd agree to call Congress back into session to vote if President Barack Obama sends up a resolution asking for the authority.

Boehner told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that if the President wanted a vote, "I'd bring the Congress back" -- never mind that the U.S. has already begun airstrikes inside Syria as part of a coalition.

Boehner hopes the President requests and sends up an authorization for use of military force as soon as possible," his spokesman, Michael Steel, told CNN Monday.

Boehner left a much different impression in an interview published Thursday in The New York Times.

In 1878, the Rothschilds were back in business with the US government (after having been chased out of DC by Andrew Jackson in the 1830’s), as detailed by this cable discussing the Rothschild refinancing of American debt:

Messrs. Rothschild & Sons to Mr. Sherman.
[Cable message.]

April 12,1878.
Hon. John Sherman,
Secretary of the Treasury, Washington D. C.:

Very pleased we have entered into relations again with American Government. Shall do our best to make the business successful.

ROTHSCHILDS.

We’ve now established that the Rothschilds “entered into relations” with the US government in 1878.

Coming off of her stirring dissent in the Hobby Lobby case, 21-year veteran Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has never been a more important voice for American women. In a rare interview—featured exclusively in the October issue of ELLE—she speaks frankly with Jessica Weisberg about everything from riding an elephant with Antonin Scalia to why people who want her to resign so President Obama can appoint another progressive justice are nuts.

Rhodes dismissed a lawsuit filed by victims of the water shutoffs, which argued that the city’s policy was doing irreparable harm to residents and threatened to create a public health disaster. The residents argued that the city’s policy violated the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against a state “depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” and the principle of “equal protection” under the law, since service to major corporations, which failed to pay, had not been discontinued.

Bank CEOs are the New Drug Lords. Here is a list of some of the banks managed by Bank CEOs, aka the new Drug Lords, that were fined billions of dollars for fixing LIBOR rates and stealing money from clients: Lloyds Bank, RP Martin, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Société Générale, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Barclays, United Bank of Switzerland and Rabobank. Here is a list of some of the banks in which the Bank Lords fixed FX rates and are currently negotiating fine amounts with the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA): Citigroup, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, JP Morgan and United Bank of Switzerland. HSBC had to pay nearly $2B in fines after its Bank CEO was allegedly caught overseeing the laundering of $7B in drug money for the notoriously violent and ruthless Sinaloa drug cartel and committing a wide array of other crimes like laundering $290MM from Russian mobsters that told HSBC bankers that their vast profits came from a “used car business”.

It is, let’s say, exceedingly peculiar to begin with that a government – in this case the American one, but that’s just one example -, in name of its people tasks a private institution with regulating not just any sector of its economy, but the richest and most politically powerful sector in the nation. Which also happens to be at least one of the major forces behind its latest, and ongoing, economical crisis.

That there is a very transparent, plain for everyone to see, over-sized revolving door between the regulator and the corporations in the sector only makes the government’s choice for the Fed as regulator even more peculiar. Or, as it turns out, more logical. But it is still preposterous: regulating the financial sector is a mere illusion kept alive through lip service. Put differently: the American government doesn’t regulate the banks. They effectively regulate themselves. Which inevitably means there is no regulation.

If you're opting out of the health-care coverage required by the Affordable Care Act, make sure you understand how much you'll owe Uncle Sam as a result.

For a family of five, the penalty could be as high as $12,240 for the 2014 tax year, experts say. And for many people, the penalty will rise sharply in 2015 and 2016.

It is easy to find the courage necessary to support a moral position if that position benefits oneself. True moral courage, however, is proven when one chooses to support that which is morally and ethically right even when such a position is to one's one detriment.

The people of the United States find themselves in such a position right now, forced to choose between a moral and ethical position that carries with it the potential for "inconvenience", or supporting the status quo and having to admit to themselves that they are not the champions of justice they imagine themselves to be. By the end of this article, you will know for yourself which one you are.

Most folks have heard that Hawaii is a state, one of the United States of America. Most people, including those who live in Hawaii, accept that statement as a fact.

Attorney General Eric Holder says he will resign as soon as his successor is confirmed, but U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, argues Holder needed to go a long time ago for politicizing every issue from Fast and Furious to the fight against radical Islam and even failing to prevent the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured 264 others.

For decades, top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (PEA) were aware that a compound approved for agricultural use in the United States was wiping out the honeybee population, but they chose to ignore the compound's effects in deference to pressure from agri-giant corporations.

Worse, the agency reacted harshly to anyone within the EPA who attempted to bring the issue to light, including through firings, forced reassignments and other actions.

According to a scholarly 2014 study [PDF] compiled by researcher Rosemary Mason, "on behalf of a global network of independent scientists, beekeepers and environmentalists," and published on the website of MIT, "We have found historical and chronological evidence to show that the herbicide glyphosate (or other herbicides that are used as alternatives) is responsible for the transformation of garden escapes into super-weeds (in the UK these are termed 'invasive species')."

Wall Street is about to be rocked by secretly recorded audio tapes that purport to show a too-cozy relationship between the New York Federal Reserve Bank and the financial institutions it is supposed to regulate.

The 45 hours of tapes, made by Carmen Segarra, a former NY Fed worker, capture former co-workers, whose job was to keep banks like Goldman Sachs in line, instead deferring to the banks, being unwilling to take action and being extremely passive, according to NPR’s “This American Life,” which obtained the tapes and is scheduled to air a program about the matter Friday night.

The rumor
Mill in Washington is that Obama wants a Supreme Court Judge to
Retire quickly (I.e., Ginsberg) so he can nominate his pick while
Harry Reed and the Dem’s still control the US Senate. Remember, this
Is a LIFE TIME appointment. Who is his rumored pick? Are you ready
For this? “ERIC HOLDER!!!”

Two days before Attorney General Eric Holder announced his resignation, a federal court ordered the Justice Department to produce, by October 22, a detailed list of Fast and Furious documents sought by a conservative watchdog group.

Conservative talker Rush Limbaugh said he “can see” Attorney General Eric Holder, who recently announced his resignation from the Department of Justice, being nominated to the Supreme Court on Thursday.

We can only imagine what scandal is brewing behind the scenes. For someone this high-up the Obama food chain to jump ship before the mid-term elections, it means something very damaging for the White House may be coming down the pipeline…

Judicial Watch announced today that on September 23, 2014, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that by October 22, the Department of Justice (DOJ) must submit a “Vaughn index” listing Fast and Furious materials Judicial Watch sought in its June 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and subsequent September 2012 FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)). A Vaughn index must: (1) identify each document withheld; (2) state the statutory exemption claimed; and (3) explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption.

A massive construction project to house the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) headquarters in Washington is running over $1.5 billion over budget and 11 years behind schedule, all because of faulty government cost estimate practices.

What's the opposite of government efficiency? In a double-take-instigating headline, the federal government’s Obamacare enrollment system has cost about $2.1 billion so far, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis of contracts related to the project. BGOV’s analysis shows that costs for both healthcare.gov and the broader reform effort are far greater than anything publicly discussed. However, that pales into insignificance when considering health reform has cost American taxpayers $73 billion in the last four years... and counting.

In theory, when the U.S. deploys forces in military conflicts abroad, Congress is expected to debate and subsequently vote on the matter. Not so with the Obama administration's escalated military campaign against the Islamic State.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in an interview published Thursday that while Congress should eventually weigh in, it would be inappropriate to do so during the lame-duck session that will follow the November elections.

The United States has begun a bombing campaign in Syria, but don’t bet on Congress returning to Washington to vote on a new war authorization anytime soon.

Shortly after airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria started, some lawmakers started pushing again for an authorization vote. But so far, leaders aren’t gearing up to bring their members back to town.

Eric Holder Jr., the nation's first black U.S. attorney general, is preparing to announce his resignation Thursday after a tumultuous tenure marked by civil rights advances, national security threats, reforms to the criminal justice system and five and a half years of fights with Republicans in Congress.

“We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops,” Barry said in remarks on Tuesday night first reported by WRC-TV. “They ought to go. I’m going to say that right now. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.”

The health care think tank created by Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is going out of business.

I was fresh from the massive anti-war marches in New York and questioned the truth of any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, although President Bush and Vice President Cheney had drawn the association with regularity. My seatmate's whole body leaned over to the right -- literally. "I feel so sorry for you," he said. "How cynical you must be to think that the president would lie."

Now, nine years later, I feel sorry for all of us. If only, like the Beatles' Revolution 9, played backwards by disc jockeys of the day, we could rewind this tune.

In what appears to be surprising news for some, Reuters has an article titled "Americans brace for next foreclosure wave" whose key premise is that "a painful part two of the [housing] slump looks set to unfold: Many more U.S. homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes this year as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures."

Best-selling author Barry James Dyke, author of The Pirates of Manhattan and recently released sequel, The Pirates of Manhattan II: Highway to Serfdom maintains Ron Paul is the only candidate consistently telling Americans the truth about its finances and the role that the Federal Reserve has in America’s decline.