FINANCIAL FRAUD IN OBAMACARE CO-OP? New York insurance regulators speed up “winding down” of Health Republic, the largest of the Obamacare co-ops, after finding its financial condition “substantially worse” than previously reported. Ten of the 23 Obamacare co-ops established at a cost of $2.4 billion in 2011, have shut down in recent weeks. And more failures are coming even if the feds are being secretive about it.

A WARNING TO BIBLE BULLIES EVERYWHERE: Threatening seventh graders for expressing their faith in class is probably not a winning strategy. And aren’t Christians supposed to have “a ready defense” of their faith?

LYING POLITICIANS AND THE JOURNALISTS WHO ENABLE THEM: That which is A cannot be Non-A. But don’t tell that to the MSM.

YOU PROBABLY THINK HIPAA PROTECTS YOUR MEDICAL PRIVACY: Not if federal bureaucrats want your records. All they have to do is issue an administrative subpoena. The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Kathyrn Watson says forget the Fourth Amendment because Congress decided administrative subpoenas don’t need prior approval by a judge

DID AP RIP-OFF THE DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION? AP “exclusive” today reports that “in each year from 2011 to 2014, the State Department’s poor cybersecurity was identified by the inspector general as a ‘significant deficiency’ that put the department’s information at risk. ” Great story, except for the fact the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Richard Pollock reported it first, on Sept. 27: “Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official diplomatic business created many national security problems, but they may pale by comparison with the wreckage she left behind in her department’s main digital information security office.”

CO-OP FLOP: Here’s 12 things that help explain the biggest Obamacare disaster you’ve probably never heard about. So why can’t journalists at places like the New York Times and the Washington Post be as thorough and committed to getting the whole story as Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation?

ARE FEDERAL BUREAUCRATS REALLY WORTH 78 PERCENT MORE THAN JOE BLOW WORKERS? Latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis says total compensation of 2.1 million federal civil servants is $119K vs $67K for taxpayers employed by private companies. What’s wrong with this picture?

TRUMP CAN’T WIN? THINK AGAIN: HERE’S HOW TRUMP WINS THE GOP NOMINATION: Donald Devine was one of the political strategists who helped Ronald Reagan win in 1980, so he knows something about presidential politics. Love Trump or hate him, Devine’s analysis of the Trump surge is absolutely essential reading.

HILLARY’S IT FIRM WASN’T CLEARED BY DOD TO HANDLE CLASSIFIED MATERIALS. So why would the nation’s chief diplomat use an obscure firm in Denver that wasn’t certified by the Pentagon as being capable of protecting national security secrets? This story keeps getting more amazing by the minute. Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has the story.

MORE LIBERAL INTOLERANCE OR JUST PLAIN HYPOCRISY? Hans Wyss, the Swiss billionaire and funder of Clinton Foundation’s No Ceilings project to empower women,  doesn’t want one woman – Jackie Long – empowered. He’s asked a Pennsylvania court to put her in jail because she told the Daily Caller News Foundation about allegations of how he sexually abused her. And Wyss threatened the DCNF with litigation after it published those allegations.

IF YOU LOVE DATA AND WORDS, the following job description may be of interest and perhaps we should talk. Contact .

DATA EDITOR JOB DESCRIPTION:
Must be able to do both summary statistics and deep-dive analyses using Excel, Access or other software programs to analyze large official databases such as FEC contributions, FBI Uniform Crime Reports data and CMS Excluded Doctors in search of news at the Daily Caller News Foundation. Should also be able to scrape/clean/reformat documents and datasets, and be comfortable graphically communicating data-driven stories using D3 or Tableau. Knowledge of national politics and recent history required. BIG plus for candidates with web programming capabilities. Salary commensurate with experience.

SOME WISDOM OF THE CROWD NEEDED: Earlier this week, the Daily Caller published this story about a major liberal donor who contributed $5 million to the Clinton Foundation’s No Ceilings women’s empowerment program even as his lawyers were in federal court trying to suppress records related to his long history of sexually abusing women.

Similarly, last July, the Washington Examiner published this story about the same major liberal donor’s former medical devices company killing three people in illegal human testing (we subsequently learned five people died). The story also noted then-Obama senior aide John Podesta’s financial links to the major liberal donor.

Neither story got traction in the national media. Now, I’ve been a journalist a long time and I know these are not nothing-burgers. I’m also pretty sure the results would have been dramatically different had the subject’s last name been spelled K-O-C-H instead of W-Y-S-S. What am I missing here???

IT’S BEEN A GREAT WEEK, FRIENDS AND FELLOW INSTAPUNDIT ADDICTS, but, sadly, it must end. Keep an eye on the exploding scandal at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. It’s exploding largely because of the reporting of the Washington Examiner’s Mark Flatten. His dogged insistence on facts and verification marks him as a great journalist. Check out a selection of his fine VA reporting here, here, here, here and here. And he’s got a huge VA story coming tomorrow or Tuesday.

WHAT HAPPENED? We live in a fast-changing world, right. Still, how to account for this sequence of headlines in Politco Pro a friend on Capitol Hill pointed out this morning:

Headline from 11/27/13 edition of Politico Pro proclaims: State successes show health law can work.

Headline from 5/11/14 edition of Politico Pro notes: $474m for 4 failed Obamacare exchanges.

IF KEVIN DURANT’S MVP SPEECH MADE YOU CRY, then stop what you are doing and go to The Federalist to read Rachel Lu’s explication of why what he said is profoundly important to the Right. Trust me, this is one of the most important articles the Right media will publish in 2014.

BTW, if you haven’t bookmarked The Federalist, you should. Some great writing and thoughtful analysis there every day. Oh, and they also published something I wrote a few weeks ago: “Can the Right displace the established media? It already has.”

HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY TO SEE ERIC HOLDER SPROUT WINGS AND FLY? Getting President Obama’s Attorney General to do that is the compulsory predicate to jail time for Lois Lerner.

WHAT ELSE DO THE KOCH BROTHER CAUSE? ASHE SCHOW KNOWS! Here’s 10 dandy GIF-illustrated things you probably didn’t know are caused by the Koch Brothers. If you drive, you will especially appreciate #6. And don’t forget to add your two-cents worth on Twitter at #kochscausedit.

NOW HARRY REID CLAIMS THE KOCH BROTHERS ARE THE “MAIN CAUSE” OF CLIMATE CHANGE! So, I have set out on a digital journey to determine if there are any limits to what the Koch Brothers can do, at least in Reid’s world. Here’s what I’ve found so far: Bad Hair Days, Potholes and Your Cat’s Hairballs. Feel free to join me in this journey and share your discoveries on Twitter at #kochscausedit. Didn’t somebody once say you know you are finished in politics when they are laughing at you instead of with you?

Earlier this week, Washington Free Beacon’s Lachlan Markay busted the wall of secrecy surrounding the Democracy Alliance’s Chicago confab. Democracy Alliance is the high-dollar assembly of Democrat fatcats that provides a dark-money pass-through for liberal activist groups like Media Matters for America and the Center for American Progress.

Today, according to the Washington Examiner’s Sean Higgins, it turns out that two of Democracy Alliance’s members are leaders of a powerful union that represents thousands of newspaper reporters and other news industry workers at major media outlets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NBC and ABC. But that wouldn’t explain why Democracy Alliance almost never suffers negative coverage in the mainstream media. Would it?

DEMS’ BENGHAZI STRATEGY: DENY, DELAY, DISRUPT, DISCREDIT: With House Republicans convening a select committee to investigate the Benghazi scandal, Democrats can be expected to be totally cooperative, completely forthcoming and unusually public spirited … and we have this fabulous bridge in Brooklyn at special price just for you! Morning Examiner lays it out in detail. The mainstream media’s slashing  profiles of Rep. Trey Gowdy are likely being researched and written as this is posted.

WHERE DOES DEEPA KUMAR, THE RUTGERS PROFESSOR who led those First Amendment-crushing protests against Condoleeza Rice, go to celebrate her victory? Why, the Kremlin’s favorite TV outlet in the U.S., Russia Today, of course. Kumar teaches journalism and “media studies” (whatever that is) at Rutgers and is the author of “Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire.” Can you guess which country is the villain in Kumar’s rendering? That’s just one of the Kumar gems unearthed by my Washington Examiner colleague, Chuck Hoskinson, who humbly refers to himself as a “student of the Middle East.” Don’t believe him, he’s an expert.

EMAIL AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO? Now it’s John Holdren, Obama’s White House science adviser, who’s been found using a private email account to conduct official government business. Extra helping of irony here is that back in 2010 Holdren issued memo to White House Office of Science and Technology Policy employees warning them NOT to use private email accounts to do official government business. Competitive Enterprise Institute asks federal judge to order compliance.

YOU PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF SMITH ELECTRIC. But the U.S. spawn of a failed British operation got $32 million under President Obama’s green energy program to build 510 electric vehicles, including some electric truck prototypes for the Army. I’m betting you can guess what comes next in this story? It’s another Washington Examiner Watchdog exclusive. Speaking of which, have you bookmarked the Watchdogs? Nothing else like them in the Right mediasphere.

A timely reminder from The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol about how and why Ronald Reagan was one of America’s greatest presidents and the most successful conservative political figure of the 20th Century. Hint: It wasn’t because he told a good yarn and it wasn’t because he and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill got together at night and shared a few bipartisan laughs.