Oklahoma officials U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, U.S. Rep. James Lankford and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt responded today to the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to uphold the challenge in Halbig v. Burwell. The court ruled that government subsidies given to 4.7 million people by the Obama Administration to purchase insurance on the federally-run Healthcare.gov were not legal under the Affordable Care Act.

The decision, if upheld, strikes down an IRS policy change that allowed Obamacare health insurance subsidies in states with state-run exchanges, despite the Affordable Care Act only allowing federal subsidies through state-run exchanges, not in the 36 states that chose partial participation in the marketplace or none at all.

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Israel accepts an Egyptian-proposed Gaza cease-fire; Hamas keeps firing. Hamas deliberately aims rockets at civilians; Israel painstakingly tries to avoid them, actually telephoning civilians in the area and dropping warning charges, so-called roof knocking.

“Here’s the difference between us,” explains the Israeli prime minister. “We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles,” Charles Krauthammer writes in a recent weekly political column for the Washington Post.
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A Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur fell from the sky7 in Ukraine approximately 20 miles from the Russian border after reportedly being hit by a ground-to-air missile.

The passenger plane was hit over eastern Ukraine with 295 people on board traveling at an altitude of 33,000 feet. Some reports suggesting that as many as 23 Americans were on board.
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Smoke from rockets fired from Gaza City launched toward Israel, July 15, 2014 ( photo: AFP/ Thomas Coex/)

Some 20 rockets were found Wednesday in a school in Gaza operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the organization confirmed Thursday.

The weapons were found in “the course of the regular inspection of its premises,” UNRWA said in a statement, adding that the school was vacant.
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Mr. McDonald,

Congratulations on your nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. As a good citizen you have agreed to take on one of the most demanding and important jobs in Washington.

As a veteran yourself you can appreciate how shaken veterans and their families are by the scandals and corruption that has been exposed throughout the Veterans Administration. I know you will agree that we owe our veterans the best care and we have failed to deliver.

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