What’s interesting in the news today?

1. First up, stop digging.

From TheChicagoTribune  “On some level, then, the president plainly agrees with critics of Obamacare, this page included, that the law needs to be rewritten: He and his administration keep rewriting its major components — remember the mandate that sizable employers offer coverage in 2014? — as practicalities and politics demand.

But in this country we don’t change bad laws by presidential fiat. We change them by having Congress rewrite them or by starting from scratch. Obama doesn’t want to reopen this law for fear that Republicans and some Democrats will substantially rewrite it. But that’s what has to happen.

We understand why the president and leaders of his party want to rescue whatever they can of Obamacare. On their watch, official Washington has blown the launch of a new entitlement program … under the schedule they alone set in early 2010.

What we don’t understand is their reluctance to give that failure more than lip service. Many of the Americans who heard their president say Thursday that “we fumbled the rollout of this health care law” would have been pleased to hear him add: So we’re admitting it. This law is a bust. We’re starting over.“

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2. Rand Paul is reminding folks who is responsible for folks getting cancellations. And no, it’s not those evil insurance companies. There’s also a 30 minute video of the whole conversation with Paul at the link.

From WeaselZippers  “RAND PAUL: I’m still learning about it. It’s 20,000 pages of regulations. The Bill was 2,000 pages and I didn’t realize this until this week, the whole idea of you losing or getting your insurance cancelled wasn’t in the original Obamacare. It was a regulation written by President Obama, three months later.

So we had a vote, this is before I got up there. The Republicans had a vote to try to cancel that regulation so you couldn’t be cancelled, to grandfather everybody in. You know what the vote was? Straight party line. Every Democrat voted to keep the rule that cancels your insurance.“

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3. Info that should have raised red flags, but didn’t. Cronyism and no-bid contracts got in the way of common sense.

From TheWaPo  “The lead contractor on the dysfunctional Web site for the Affordable Care Act is filled with executives from a company that mishandled at least 20 other government IT projects, including a flawed effort to automate retirement benefits for millions of federal workers, documents and interviews show.

CGI Federal, the main Web site developer, entered the U.S. government market a decade ago when its parent company purchased American Management Systems, a Fairfax County contractor that was coming off a series of troubled projects. CGI moved into AMS’s custom-made building off Interstate 66, changed the sign outside and kept the core of employees, who now populate the upper ranks of CGI Federal.

They include CGI Federal’s current and past presidents, the company’s chief technology officer, its vice president for federal health care and its health IT leader, according to company and other records. More than 100 former AMS employees are now senior executives or consultants working for CGI in the Washington area.”

Among that list are Obama donors and the first lady’s college friend.

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4. If you can’t pay for your new insurance plan, do you really even have one? Of course not.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “An editorial in last week’s USA Today repeats the common belief about the deadline: “The deadline for signing up for insurance that begins Jan. 1 is Dec. 15.”  However, “signing up” for insurance is not enough.  As the Healthcare.gov website states [emphasis added]:

If you enroll in a private health insurance plan any time between October 1, 2013 and December 15, 2013 and make your first premium payment, your new health coverage starts January 1, 2014.”

“However, paying the premium is not necessarily a simple matter.  An online chat with a Healthcare.gov representative revealed that the site is not recommending using the exchange to make the initial premium payment. The representative was not even completely sure the option was being offered.”

“The federal government-run exchange is not the only one to experience problems with premium payments.  The Maryland Health Connection, that state’s version of the Obamacare exchange, announced a week ago Friday that it was suspending the bill-pay feature indefinitely:”

Really need that face-palm smiley.

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5. Looks like some liberals are taking the IRS method of dealing with conservatives to heart. Nothing like govt funded intimidation of your political enemies huh?

From TheCapitolCityProject  “In Wisconsin, dozens of conservative groups and allies of Gov. Scott Walker are undergoing political intimidation from the left at the hands of a special prosecutor.

Subpoenas have been issued demanding correspondence and donor information of right-leaning organizations and individuals and raids have been conducted resulting in law enforcement officers taking computers and files in a secret investigation, according to reports.”

“It continues, “Copies of two subpoenas we’ve seen demand ‘all memoranda, email . . . correspondence, and communications’ both internally and between the subpoena target and some 29 conservative groups, including Wisconsin and national nonprofits, political vendors and party committees. The groups include the League of American Voters, Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Americans for Prosperity—Wisconsin, American Crossroads, the Republican Governors Association, Friends of Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.”

The WSJ says the latest actions are taking place under Wisconsin’s John Doe law, which makes it difficult for the groups involved to defend themselves publicly. The law, “Bars a subpoena’s targets from disclosing its contents to anyone but his attorneys. John Doe probes work much like a grand jury, allowing prosecutors to issue subpoenas and conduct searches, while the gag orders leave the targets facing the resources of the state with no way to publicly defend themselves.”

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6. The saga continues. What a mess.

From NBCNews  “George Zimmerman was arrested and charged  with threatening his girlfriend with a gun Monday after Florida authorities responded to a disturbance call at the woman’s home.

Zimmerman has been charged with felony aggravated assault, misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor criminal mischief, Seminole County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Dennis Lemma said during a press conference Monday in Sanford, Fla., hours after Zimmerman was arrested in nearby Apopka, roughly 15 miles northwest of Orlando.

Zimmerman’s girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, told deputies that she and Zimmerman were having a “verbal dispute,” and she alleged that he broke a table and pointed a long-barreled shotgun at her, Lemma said.”

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7. Why does this not surprise me?

From TheLATimes  “College students who cheated on a simple task were more likely to want government jobs, researchers from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania found in a study of hundreds of students in Bangalore, India.