Because I hear that comments aren’t working. We’ll be right back …. And we’re back.

This is what happens when the lights flicker around here.

[guest post by Dana]

Ezra Klein asks Nancy Pelosi what her position is on the “ongoing scandal” in the Veterans Health Administration.

Pelosi brazenly obfuscates and attempts to spin in a disgustingly shameful manner.

As a reminder,

At least 40 U.S. veterans have died waiting for medical appointments at Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system — including many placed on a secret waiting list.

The list was part of a complex cost-cutting scheme set up by Veterans Affairs managers in Phoenix aiming to hide the fact that between 1,400 and 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait up to 21 months to see a doctor.

Retiring Dr. Sam Foote, who spent 24 years with the VA system, told CNN that the Phoenix VA worked off two patient appointment lists.

The “official” list shows the VA was offering timely appointments within 14 to 30 days. Foote called this a “sham list” because there was another secret document where waits where much longer.

“The scheme was deliberately put in place to avoid the VA’s own internal rules. They developed the secret waiting list,” he said.

According to Foote, the elaborate plans involved shredding evidence to hide the long list, with VA officials instructing staff to not make veterans’ appointments in the computer system.

If this does not fit the very definition of scandal, what on earth does?

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Another new regulatory end-run around Congress?

President Barack Obama’s administration has quietly suggested it is willing to create a two-tier race-based legal system in Hawaii, where one set of taxes, spending and law enforcement will govern one race, and the second set of laws will govern every other race.

The diversity proposal is portrayed as an effort to create a separate in-state government for people who are “native Hawaiians.”

The presentation of this proposal is contained in a document referred to as the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.

“The Secretary of the Interior is considering whether to propose an administrative rule that would facilitate the reestablishment of a government-to-government relationship with the Native Hawaiian community,” said the document.

To what end?

“to more effectively implement the special political and trust relationship that Congress has established between that [Hawaiian] community and the United States.”

Gail Heriot, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is concerned about the balkanization of the state as a result,

If Obama succeeds, “what’s to prevent creating similar [self-governing racial] groups out of say, Cajuns, or Orthodox Jews or Amish?” “If you can do that with groups that are already part of the mainstream, you can balkanize the country,” said Heriot, who is a law professor at the University of San Diego.

But the proposed measure to increase legal diversity is illegal because the president doesn’t have the power to grant one group of Americans the status of a separate government, she said.

“There is no constitutional basis for conferring such status, and Congress has repeatedly refused to confer this status,” said Carissa Mulder, a spokeswoman for two members of the federal Commission on Civil Rights.

“This seems to be yet another case of the Obama administration ignoring the law to achieve its policy objectives,” she added

Who benefits and how?

The move is likely intended to protect lucrative financial set-asides for Americans who are also part of the Hawaiian racial group, said Heriot.

These set-aside, which include cheap loans, are being threatened by the Supreme Court’s move to curb racial divisions and imposed racial diversity. In 2000, for example, the court’s Rice vs. Cayetano decision allowed non-Hawaiians to participate in the election of trustees for the state’s wealthy Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

The office holds a large tract of land in Hawaii under a legal trust, which generates revenue that is distributed to racial Hawaiians.

–Dana

I am working on something I want to get done in the next hour. If I knew how to do it, it would be easy. It requires basic iMovie skills — how do you insert a blank page with titles in between video clips, etc. Does any longtime reader know how to do that, who could hop on chat with me or something?

It has to do with that post I did about the judicial candidate and her supporter who used a bogus copyright claim to remove the truth from YouTube. My tech guy is not responding to me and I am looking to put together a short movie to show what these Orwellian people are editing out of the public dialogue.

UPDATE: JWB is on the case and the tech guy is on it too. Things are looking up!

Whoever got the watch on Amazon — thanks for doing so though my Amazon portal!

Here’s the news they dumped on you this past holiday weekend while you were grilling and remembering:

Many employers had thought they could shift health costs to the government by sending their employees to a health insurance exchange with a tax-free contribution of cash to help pay premiums, but the Obama administration has squelched the idea in a new ruling. Such arrangements do not satisfy the health care law, the administration said, and employers may be subject to a tax penalty of $100 a day — or $36,500 a year — for each employee who goes into the individual marketplace.

The ruling this month, by the Internal Revenue Service, blocks any wholesale move by employers to dump employees into the exchanges.

Sounds good, right? If they like their doctor they can keep them! Not so much:

Andrew R. Biebl, a tax partner at CliftonLarsonAllen, a large accounting firm based in Minneapolis, said the ruling could disrupt arrangements used in many industries.

“For decades,” Mr. Biebl said, “employers have been assisting employees by reimbursing them for health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs. The new federal ruling eliminates many of those arrangements by imposing an unusually punitive penalty.”

Just another way ObamaCare “benefits” the public, by putting the giant and oppressive thumb of the federal government on private arrangements.

Come on, now. COME ON!

President Obama berated Real Clear Politics reporter Alexis Simendinger after she asked him about reports of the U.S. sending trainers to help the rebels in Syria.

Moments after the president finished speaking with individual students and taking pictures with the press at the White House’s science fair exhibit, Simendinger asked him a question regarding these reports.

“I’m sorry, we’re doing a science fair- c’mon, c’mon,” Obama responded before rushing out of the room and avoiding comment on the breaking news.

Video:

He just wants to eat his waffle. (By the way, that haughty response was also to a female reporter. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.)