What’s interesting in the news today?
1. First up, a good story.
From FoxSports “Three years ago, U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Liam Dwyer lost his left leg while on duty in Afghanistan.
On Saturday, he was standing in victory lane with co-driver Tom Long after winning the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge race at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut.”
“Dwyer, who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was severely injured on May 22, 2011 when he stepped on an Improvised Explosive Device (I.E.D) while clearing a compound in Sangin Province. The blast sheared off his left leg above the knee and caused damage to his right leg and right arm. Four other Marines were also injured in the explosion.
The 32-year-old returned home where he underwent intense physical therapy after being fitted for a prosthesis on his left leg.”
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2. Just a reminder of where some of the blame for the VA scandal should fall.
From BizPacReview “Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., sits on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee in the House and she told [Larry O’Connor] Wednesday on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., that the House has passed a dozen bills for reform of the VA and they are collecting dust on [Sen.] Harry Reid’s desk:
O’CONNOR: Are your colleagues in the House doing something about this decades-old problem so we can get something done for the vets?
REP WALORSKI: In the past 18 months, since I’ve been a member of Congress, we’ve passed, on the House floor, at least 12 reform VA bills. Mandating the VA to fix different things, mandating the VA to report different things, mandating them to fix their website, bipartisan bills that went to the Senate, and they are DOA on the Senate side
The Indiana freshman went on to say, “We can pass bills all day long here on the House side, but if the Senate doesn’t get in gear and be held responsible and be held accountable for these veterans, it’s not going to work. … These things have been dead on arrival. Harry Reid has not moved one of these bills.”
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5. Your thoughts?
From CNSNews “Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said “Christians are under attack by Islam” and that “radical” Islam has nothing to do with it because “it’s just what it is.”
Speaking at the Watchmen on the Wall National Pastor’s Briefing in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Rev. Graham said, “The church around the world is under attack. Christians are under attack by Islam. They keep using this word ‘radical.’ It’s not radical, it’s just what it is.”
“Let’s stand up for our brothers and sisters in faith around the world who are being persecuted for their faith,” he said. “Because if we don’t stand up for them, there’s no other voice for them. There’s no other voice.”
“Rev. Graham’s remarks were part of his address “Standing Strong on the Controversial Issues,” in which he stressed the importance of pastors speaking out on controversial issues such as abortion and same-sex “marriage.”
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6. Just a reminder, as always, vote fraud is a myth.
From NewsDay “Evelyn E. Burwell’s family was surprised to learn she voted in the 2012 general and primary elections. They knew she was an avid voter, but she’s been dead since 1997.
Burwell is one of about 6,100 deceased people still registered to vote in Nassau County, a Newsday computer analysis shows. The former Wantagh resident, who died at age 74, is also among roughly 270 people that records show voted in Nassau County after dying, a group that includes a man who voted 14 times since his death.
Newsday’s analysis of voter registration and U.S. Social Security Administration death records found more deceased registered voters in Nassau County than any other New York county, accounting for nearly a quarter of the 26,500 on the rolls statewide. Suffolk County has about 2,490 deceased people registered to vote, with roughly 50 listed as voting after their death.”
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7. The IRS has issued a ruling barring employers from dumping employees into the ObamaCare exchanges as a cost saving measure.
From TheNYTimes ” 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.
Under a central provision of the health care law, larger employers are required to offer health coverage to full-time workers, or else the employers may be subject to penalties.
Many employers — some that now offer coverage and some that do not — had concluded that it would be cheaper to provide each employee with a lump sum of money to buy insurance on an exchange, instead of providing coverage directly.“
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Wandering Views 
I am interested in the answer to this question:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/05/was_elliot_rodger_on_antidepressants.html
I am curious whether America’s addiction to legal mind-altering drugs is a cause or a symptom of other problems. As a consumer, I would like to choose a plan with no “mental health” coverage or funding for mind-altering drugs. Perhaps, when China becomes Germany to America’s Greece, it will ween us off these poisons.
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#4. Some people are going to have to answer to God for giving a religious approval for abortion. Abortion was not a consideration in those days.
1. Each instance of childbirth in scripture has to do with a woman who wasn’t able to bear children. No example where a child wasn’t wanted. Even David wanted the child Bathsheba was carrying.
2. The Hebrew word for a young woman was “virgin”. The woman was expected to be pure until she married. There were prostitutes in those days, but it is not likely that they had abortions.
In a SS discussion of the depravity we are experiencing today, the Overton Window, and where we are headed, I said, “There is no bottom, there is no end of it.” But I was wrong. The depth of depravity was when the pagans, and later Hebrews in some cases, sacrificed their children to a pagan god. That is the bottom. The analogy to current practice doesn’t quite fit.
Yet.
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Ricky, I don’t have an answer for you, but you may be interested in reading a book I had checked out of the library a few months ago, entitled Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, by Robert Whitaker. I didn’t have as much time to read it as I thought I would, so I didn’t get very far into it before I had to return it to the library. I do know, though, that it’s not a “nobody should use psychiatric drugs”, as the author acknowledges that, for some people, they are truly needful.
He also does not condemn the short-term use of these types of drugs, as far as I can tell from the small amount of reading I did in the book. It is the effect of long-term usage in large numbers of people these days that he takes a hard look at.
If you have time to read the book, I imagine you may find answers to the questions you raised.
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Thanks, 6arrows. That sounds like a good book.
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