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News/Politics 3-19-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Sore losers.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “In a comment unprompted by any question from the media, White House press secretary lashed into some of the rhetoric Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu used in his reelection campaign. The White House even suggested it had hurt Israel’s democracy and America’s relationship with its greatest ally in the Middle East.

“There’s one other thing that I anticipated might come up that I just did want to mention as it relates to the Israeli elections.  Specifically, there has been a lot of coverage in the media about some of the rhetoric that emerged yesterday that was propagated by the Likud Party to encourage turnout of their supporters that sought to, frankly, marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens.  The United States and this administration is deeply concerned by divisive rhetoric that seeks to marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told the media aboard Air Force One today. 

“It undermines the values and democratic ideals that have been important to our democracy and an important part of what binds the United States and Israel together.  We’ve talked a lot about how our shared values are an important part of what binds our two countries together, and rhetoric that seeks to marginalize one segment of their population is deeply concerning and it is divisive.  And I can tell you that these are views that the administration intends to communicate directly to the Israelis.””

Awwww….. You mad bro? 😆

From HotAir  “David Axelrod- “Tightness of exits in Israel suggests Bibi’s shameful 11th hour demagoguery may have swayed enough votes to save him. But at what cost?”

First Twitter response: “You mad bro?” Yup. Keep in mind that this lamenter of demagoguery is the same guy who ran a campaign that accused Mitt Romney of giving a woman cancer, blessing scurrilous charges of tax evasion, and darkly warning Ohio voters that Obama’s opponent wasn’t “one of us.” You’d think he’d respect a ruthless, win-at-all-costs (successful) strategy. Instead, he’s moaning about tactics and civility. Heal thyself, Axe. As for Lefties’ rapidly-congealing narrative that Bibi’s upset victory was the product of last-minute ugliness, read Commentary’s Jon Tabin:

Within moments of the announcement of the exit polls, some of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s critics were claiming his likely win in today’s Knesset election was the result of a crude, racist appeal to voters. The justification for this charge was a speech made by Netanyahu and released only on social media because of restrictions on campaign appeals in the media, telling the country that left-wing groups funded by foreign money were busing Arab voters to the polls in order to elect a left-wing government led by his Zionist Union rival Isaac Herzog. Netanyahu’s opponents interpreted this as an appeal to racism. The statement was unfortunate because it made it seem as if the prime minister viewed Arab voters as somehow illegitimate. But the voters likely saw it in a different light. The prospect of a left-wing government that depended on the Joint Arab List was always unlikely. But a critical mass of voters viewed the prospect with alarm not because they’re racists but because a government that relied on the votes of anti-Zionists that favor Israel’s dissolution was something they considered a danger to the future of their country…Though Western journalists mocked Netanyahu’s comments about wanting to prevent a “Hamasistan” in the West Bank, the voters in Israel largely agreed. That doesn’t make them racist or extreme. It means they are, like most Americans, realists. They may not like Netanyahu but today’s results demonstrates that there is little support for a government that would make the sort of concessions to the Palestinians that President Obama would like. They rightly believe that even if Israel did make more concessions it would only lead to more violence, not peace. Israel’s foreign critics and friends need to understand that in the end, it was those convictions have, for all intents and purposes, re-elected Netanyahu.”

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2. Most transparent administration… Oh never mind.  🙄

From TheAP  “The Obama administration set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

The government took longer to turn over files when it provided any, said more regularly that it couldn’t find documents and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.

It also acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.

Its backlog of unanswered requests at year’s end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000. It also cut by 375, or about 9 percent, the number of full-time employees across government paid to look for records. That was the fewest number of employees working on the issue in five years.”

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3. Why was the CIA director forced to sign, but Hillary wasn’t?

From NationalReview  “In my column on the plea agreement the Obama Justice Department allowed David Petreaus to enter after it was discovered that he mishandled classified information, I noted that he had been required to sign a separation agreement when he left the CIA. It is called a “Security Exit Form” and is obviously the CIA version of the State Department departure form described in Jim’s post (and linked in Shannen’s column) that Secretary Clinton should have signed upon leaving government service.

The prosecutors’ outline of the evidence against Petraeus includes the following (at pages 11-12, paragraph 27):

[O]n or about November 26, 2012, defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS executed … a Security Exit Form. The Security Exit Form included seven provisions regarding his continuing duty to protect classified information from disclosure. Among other things, by signing the Security Exit Form, DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS adopted the following provision: “I give my assurance that there is no classified material in my possession, custody, or control at this time.”

Petraeus was also required to sign at least three other forms dealing with his obligations not to retain government records and to keep secret information secret.”

And here’s an article about the dire consequences for not signing the form. Well, if your name isn’t Clinton they’re the dire consequences.

From TheDaily Caller

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4. Glenn Beck is saying what a lot of people are thinking, myself included.

From TheHill/MSN  “Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck on Wednesday announced he is leaving the Republican Party.

“I’ve made my decision — I’m out,” Beck said Wednesday on “The Glenn Beck Program,” his broadcast on TheBlaze.com. “I’m out of the Republican Party. I am not a Republican. I will not give a dime to the Republican Party. I’m out.” The host said Republicans lost him with their inaction on both ObamaCare and illegal immigration.

“All this stuff that they said and they ran and they said they were doing all of these great things and they were going to stand against ObamaCare and illegal immigration — they set us up,” Beck added. “They set us up. Enough is enough. They’re torpedoing the Constitution and they’re doing it knowingly.”

The former Fox News pundit also took issue with the GOP’s treatment of Tea Party lawmakers. Beck said that establishment Republicans had disrespected Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a likely 2016 GOP presidential candidate.

“They’re taking on people like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and they’re torpedoing them,” Beck said. “And these guys are standing for the Constitution.””

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5. A new study says breastfeeding leads to higher IQ and earnings later.

From MSNHealth  “People breastfed as infants have higher intelligence scores in adulthood, and higher earnings, according to a study published Wednesday that tracked the development of 3,500 newborns over 30 years.

And, critically, the socioeconomic status of mothers appeared to have little impact on breastfeeding results, according to a paper published by The Lancet medical journal.

“The effect of breastfeeding on brain development and child intelligence is well established,” lead author Bernardo Lessa Horta of the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil said in a statement.

What has been less clear, is whether the effects persist into adulthood, and whether a mother’s socioeconomic status or education level played a bigger role in the outcome of previous studies than her choice to breastfeed or not.

“Our study provides the first evidence that prolonged breastfeeding not only increases intelligence until at least the age of 30 years but also has an impact both at an individual and societal level by improving educational attainment and earning ability,” said Horta.”

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by

News/Politics 3-18-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Race baiting and Ferguson.

From TheHooverInstitution  “Let’s start with the DOJ report that exonerated Wilson. The federal prosecutors ran an exhaustive review of all the physical, forensic, and testimonial evidence in the case. It is necessary to state its final conclusion in full: “Darren Wilson’s actions do not constitute prosecutable violations under the applicable federal criminal civil rights statute, 18 U.S.C. § 242, which prohibits uses of deadly force that are ‘objectively unreasonable,’ as defined by the United States Supreme Court. The evidence, when viewed as a whole, does not support the conclusion that Wilson’s uses of deadly force were “objectively unreasonable” under the Supreme Court’s definition. Accordingly, under the governing federal law and relevant standards set forth in the USAM [United States Attorneys’ Manual], it is not appropriate to present this matter to a federal grand jury for indictment, and it should therefore be closed without prosecution.”

The legal conclusion is surely correct, but the tone of the report’s findings are slanted against Wilson. It is not just the case that there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution. It is that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the evidence supports that Wilson’s conduct was fully justified. During the initial encounter, Brown had tried to wrest Wilson’s gun from him by reaching into Wilson’s Chevy Tahoe SUV. Wilson’s story was corroborated, to quote the report, “by bruising on Wilson’s jaw and scratches on his neck, the presence of Brown’s DNA on Wilson’s collar, shirt, and pants, and Wilson’s DNA on Brown’s palm.” Later on, the evidence also showed that Brown was running toward Wilson at the time Wilson fired the fatal shots, not knowing whether Brown was armed or not. The incident was far clearer than the oft-ticklish situations in which the courts have to decide whether a police officer used excessive force against a person who was resisting arrest, as with the controversial grand jury decision not to indict any police officer for the killing of Eric Garner.”

“The situation is made worse with the publication of the second DOJ report which offers a top-to-bottom condemnation of Ferguson’s criminal justice system. This report was clearly prompted by the belief that Wilson’s killing of Michael Brown was the result of structural problems in Ferguson. But why pick on Ferguson after Wilson was exonerated? It would be one thing to argue that the illegal killing of Michael Brown stemmed from a corrupt and racist culture inside that department. But once it is established that Wilson was fully justified in acting as he did, it is impossible to explain how the culture and norms of the police could have contributed to any illegal act. Indeed, the only plausible inference cuts the opposite way. The ability of Wilson to handle himself well under extreme pressure reflects approvingly on his conduct and on the ethos of the Ferguson Police Department.

In this case, however, the DOJ was determined to make a big deal out of the various misdeeds of the Department. In so doing, it set back race relations in the United States by sending out the unmistakable message that while the DOJ could not get Wilson, it could surely get the city for which he had worked. The Ferguson report gets off on the wrong foot by leading with the claim that “Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the City’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs.” That basic orientation, the report continues, leads the police to concentrate on collecting revenue from traffic offenses in order to fill any hole in the Ferguson budget left by a shortfall in sales tax collection. It then further chides the city for sending out arrest warrants for individual ticket holders to meet court dates and to pay for their offenses.”

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2. House Democrats are hitting Obama for his secretive trade talks.

From TheHill  “House Democrats are criticizing President Obama’s administration for holding a classified briefing on trade with top administration officials, saying it’s an attempt to push a trade program in secret.

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman will meet with House Democrats on Wednesday in a classified briefing to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Members will be allowed to attend the briefing on the proposed trade pact with 12 Latin American and Asian countries with one staff member who possesses an “active Secret-level or high clearance” compliant with House security rules. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) told The Hill that the administration is being “needlessly secretive.”

“Even now, when they are finally beginning to share details of the proposed deal with members of Congress, they are denying us the ability to consult with our staff or discuss details of the agreement with experts,” DeLauro told The Hill.”

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3. MB supporter Obama and his side-kick Valerie Jarrett are not gonna like this.

From TheTelegraph/UK  “An Egyptian court on Monday condemned to death Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie and 13 other senior members of the banned movement.

The 14 members of the Brotherhood, which was declared a “terrorist organisation” in 2013, were found guilty of “plotting attacks aimed at sowing chaos” across the country, state news agency MENA reported.

The court found Badie and his co-defendants, who include the Brotherhood’s former spokesman Mahmud Ghazlan, had set up an “operations room” to prepare attacks against the state in the weeks after the army ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July 2013.

But lawyer Ahmad Helmi branded the verdicts as “farcical”, in a telephone interview with AFP.

A total of 51 suspects, including the 14 sentenced to death on Monday, are being tried in the case, 31 of whom are behind bars.”

So basically everyone in the world except Obama and his advisers recognize them for what they are. A terrorist group.

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4. Would you like cream, sugar, or a lecture on race with your coffee? Me neither. 🙂

Things got so bad on Twitter that the liberal CEO who thought up this idea had to suspend his account yesterday because he couldn’t take the comments. Imagine how the poor employees will feel.

From HotAir  “We now live in an era in which corporate executives have grown convinced that their customers don’t merely want a product or a service, but spiritual and intellectual enlightenment. And they’re relying on their entry-level employees to provide it.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has decided that his 4,700-store enterprise is no longer just going to be offering customers coffee, frothy drinks, and overpriced pastries. His baristas will soon serve up a venti-size helping of social justice.

“Starbucks published a full page ad in the New York Times on Sunday — a stark, black, page with a tiny caption ‘Shall We Overcome?’ in the middle, and the words ‘Race Together’ with the company logo, on the bottom right,” read a Fortune Magazine report previewing a forthcoming Starbucks campaign in which the coffee chain’s baristas will be encouraged to talk about race relations with their customers.

Beginning on Monday, Starbucks baristas will have the option as they serve customers to hand cups on which they’ve handwritten the words “Race Together” and start a discussion about race. This Friday, each copy of USA Today— which has a daily print circulation of almost 2 million and is a partner of Starbucks in this initiative — will have the first of a series of insert with information about race relations, including a variety of perspectives on race. Starbucks coffee shops will also stock the insert.”

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5. Sure, it’s all fun and games, until it breaks free and terrorizes the city. 🙂

From NBCNews  “A group of Russian and South Korean researchers has begun their attempt to clone a woolly mammoth, starting by extracting DNA from a spectacularly well-preserved specimen discovered in the Siberian permafrot in 2013. The project is led by Hwang Woo-Suk, a Korean cloning scientist who was the focus of a scandal in 2006 involving fraudulent research on human stem cells. Hwang has had success with animals, however, reportedly creating the world’s first cloned dog and several cloned coyotes.

The research team, from the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation and Russia’s North-Eastern Federal University, began this week to extract DNA from the leg of the long-frozen animal. The news was reported by the university and the Siberian Times.”

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by

News/Politics 3-17-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Sounds fishy.

From USAToday  “The White House is removing a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, making official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject requests for records to that office.

The White House said the cleanup of FOIA regulations is consistent with court rulings that hold that the office is not subject to the transparency law. The office handles, among other things, White House record-keeping duties like the archiving of e-mails.

But the timing of the move raised eyebrows among transparency advocates, coming on National Freedom of Information Day and during a national debate over the preservation of Obama administration records. It’s also Sunshine Week, an effort by news organizations and watchdog groups to highlight issues of government transparency.”

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2. The legal case against Obama’s internet plan.

From TheHill  “As legal challenges loom for new net neutrality regulations, GOP members of the Federal Communications Commission are offering some of the first lines of attack.
 
The dissenting opinions of the two Republicans ran 80 pages, and they telegraph some of the arguments on which critics could rely as they prepare legal filings to scrap the new rules.
 
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has repeatedly said the commission wrote the rules to withstand challenges from the “big dogs.” And while it is still unclear which organization or company will lead the charge, there is little doubt that a legal battle is brewing.
 
On Thursday, the public got its first look at the actual text of the net neutrality order, two weeks after it was approved. The rules would reclassify broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communication Act. The new designation will give the commission increased authority to enforce rules barring Internet service providers like Verizon or Comcast from prioritizing any piece of Internet traffic above another.
 
Here are four legal arguments already being lobbed against the new rules. “

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3. The Senate is probing Obama’s anti-Bibi campaign activities.

From FoxNews  “A powerful U.S. Senate investigatory committee has launched a bipartisan probe into an American nonprofit’s funding of efforts to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Obama administration’s State Department gave the nonprofit taxpayer-funded grants, a source with knowledge of the panel’s activities told FoxNews.com.

The fact that both Democratic and Republican sides of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations have signed off on the probe could be seen as a rebuke to President Obama, who has had a well-documented adversarial relationship with the Israeli leader. 

The development comes as Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel Two television station this week that there were “governments” that wanted to help with the “Just Not Bibi” campaigning — Bibi being the Israeli leader’s nickname.

It also follows a FoxNews.com report on claims the Obama administration has been meddling in the Israeli election on behalf of groups hostile to Netanyahu. A spokesperson for Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio Republican and chairman of the committee, declined comment, and aides to ranking Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, did not immediately return calls.”

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4. Outsourcing in America.

From TheHill  “You’ve spent twenty plus years loyally working in Information Technology (IT) for Southern California Edison, and eighteen months ago your boss tells you that they are going to study outsourcing but not to worry, “your position is safe.” On the one hand you are worried because you know many stories of American IT workers losing their jobs to outsourcing, but on the other you feel comforted that you’ve been loyal to SCE and provide a critical service. Then eight months ago they tell you that they are outsourcing most IT functions and that they want you, get this, to train your guestworker replacement. If you say no, SCE will terminate you with cause and you would lose not only a severance package but also eligibility for unemployment insurance. This is the common story I heard from many workers at SCE.

The work that the 400 SCE IT employees do isn’t disappearing, instead it and their jobs are being taken over by foreign guestworkers here on H-1B visas. Those guestworkers are employed by the two leading India-based outsourcing firms, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys.

The SCE workers are wondering: “Why should I lose my job when the work still needs to be done? Why is the government doing this to me and my family?”

Adding to the injustice of losing their jobs, the SCE workers are being forced to do something that is so common in the industry it is a term of art: “knowledge transfer,” an ugly euphemism that means being forced to train your own foreign replacement. The SCE workers are, “demoralized; in disbelief; beyond furious; down in the dumps; feeling anguish; depressed; feeling dehumanized; feeling humiliated; worrying about the future; worrying about paying the bills.”

The SCE workers rightly place the culpability squarely on SCE executives, the president, and Congress. One worker simply said, “Shame on Edison for doing this and shame on our politicians for enabling it.””

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5. Sure, they can track every fish that comes to the US, but not illegal immigrants.

From TheWapo/MSN  “It’s exactly what the Obama administration is hoping to crack down on when it rolls out a new plan Sunday to stop seafood crime with an ambitious system that attempts to track every fish and crustacean shipped to U.S. ports.

Before any seafood enters the U.S. market, officials said, it must have information about its origin, who caught it, when and with what. That data can be taken by any federal, state and local authority at a port and submitted to a central database for tracking.

Traceability from harvest to ports is “new and that is the story,” said Russell Smith, deputy assistant secretary for international fisheries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Currently port officials are not required to collect that much information and much of what they do is not automatically shared by federal, state and local governments.”

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6. Not good.

From HotAir  “This is not the first time that Islamic State fighters have been accused of using the region’s loose chemical weapons on pro-Western forces, but this might be the most disturbing reported use of chemical agents by ISIS. The allegation that ISIS militants used chlorine gas on Kurdish soldiers in Iraq likely represents the ultimate failure of the Obama administration’s policy toward to the Syrian civil war.

According to reports, Kurdish authorities have provided evidence to international investigators that indicates ISIS used low-grade chemical weapons, likely chlorine gas canisters, against Peshmerga fighters in an attack near the Syrian border in Iraq.

The allegation by the Kurdistan Region Security Council, stemming from a Jan. 23 suicide truck bomb attack in northern Iraq, did not immediately draw a reaction from the ISIS, which holds a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in its self-declared caliphate. However, Iraqi officials and Kurds fighting in Syria have made similar allegations about the militants using the low-grade chemical weapons against them.

In a statement, the council said the alleged chemical attack took place on a road between Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, and the Syrian border, as peshmerga forces fought to seize a vital supply line used by the Sunni militants. It said its fighters later found “around 20 gas canisters” that had been loaded onto the truck involved in the attack.”

More here, from FoxNews

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by

News/Politics 3-16-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Today we’re gonna take Michelle’s advice. There’s bad news everywhere, but today we’ll just concentrate on some good news for a change. I’ll start off with a few, and you can share any you may have come across.

We’ll get back to the bad news tomorrow. 🙂

1. We’ll start off with some good kids in the news.

From FoxNews  “A group of middle school basketball players walked off the court in the middle of a game when they heard bullying coming from the stands directed at cheerleader, Desiree Andrews, who has Down syndrome.

“We walked off the court and went to the bullies and told them to stop because that’s not right to be mean to another person,” said Miles Rodriguez, one of the players, told Fox & Friends Friday.

The athletic director at Lincoln Middle School in Wisconsin told the show he was proud of the boys for what they did, as well as Desiree and the other cheerleaders.”

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2. Here’s another.

From NBCNews  “A 9-year-old girl who sprung into action when her mom had a seizure behind the wheel was hailed as a hero this week.

Michigan state police awarded Jacey Jones with a Distinguished Citizens Award on Thursday for her quick thinking back in September, when her mother, Samantha Jones, started seizing while driving Jacey and her sister to school in their hometown of Bay City.

“I was just driving her to school like any other day and I woke up a few hours later in the hospital,” Samantha told NBC 25 in Michigan. “I had a seizure while driving.”

Jacey, who was in the back seat with her sister, climbed to the front of the car. Clutching the steering wheel on the family’s Hyundai, Jacey managed to steer the car away from the curvy road they were on and into the school’s parking lot. She then drove in circles, attracting the attention of another parent.

“A parent had jumped in and put the car in park … and took the kids out,” Samantha said. “I didn’t really believe it.””

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3. Here’s a fun one. Where does some of our favorite junk food come from?

From TheDailyMeal/MSN  “”Junk food” is a term we use to describe snack foods that and full of calories and sugar and/or fat but has little to no nutritional value (yes, we are talking about that bag of chips you probably have open on your desk right now) — baked goods, candy bars, and other salty snacks.

Today, junk food is popular the world over, from Israel ‘s Cheetos-like Bamba to Peru’s Doña Pepe, a chocolate cookie doused in sprinkles. We recently published an article callked This is What Junk Food Looks Like Around the World, and our research got us thinking: Exactly where did junk food come from in the first place? 

Unsurprisingly, its origins trace themselves back to our own country, where two brothers selling a delicious concoction of popcorn, peanuts, and molasses at the Chicago World Fair might well have invented the genre.

Since then, the junk food wheel of creation has continued to spin, churning out everything from chocolate bars and corn chips to today’s creations of cake pops or yogurt-covered pretzels (and no, just because they are covered in yogurt does not mean they are healthy).”

Now you’ll know who to thank. Or blame, if you’re like me and Oreo’s are a favorite. 😉

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4. And it’s mid-March already, so it’s tournament time! If you’re in need of a bracket, here ya’ go…

2015 NCAA Tournament

I’m picking Duke. Shocking right? 🙂

I won’t be picking them in my bracket because that’s a good way to kill it, but on the first full night my heart says Go Lafayette!

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by

News/Politics 3-13-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Here’s the 400 pages of new internet regulations.

From TheWashingtonPost  “The Federal Communications Commission has finally published its full net neutrality rules on its Web site. And they’re not for the faint of heart. Together with the dissents from the agency’s Republican commissioners, the document adds up to 400 pages.

The release of the rules comes two weeks after the FCC voted to approve them in a historic, polarized vote at the commission. Now begins the next chapter in the story. Expect Internet providers to comb through the publication, probing the rules for legal weaknesses they can take to court.”

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Oddly enough, the document cites a group funded by George Soros and one of his neo-Marxist friends a total of 46 times as “experts” pushing the matter. That’s probably why Obama needed it passed before we could read it.

More on that here, from TheDailyCaller

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2. The State Dept. won’t say whether Hillary signed crucial record forms, or whether she committed a felony. So I’m guessing it’s probably yes.

From NationalReview  “State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki couldn’t tell reporters on Thursday if Hillary Clinton signed an official records form presented to all employees as they leave the department — a crucial question in determining whether the former Secretary of State committed a felony by failing to turn over government e-mail records.

Former Department of Justice lawyer and National Review contributing editor Shannen Coffin noted this week that Clinton should have signed form OF-109 as part of her standard exit from the department. That form declares that she turned over all relevant records at the time of her departure — and stipulates that any failure to do so could result in felony fines and jail times.

Clinton did not turn over her government communications to the State Department until asked for them late last year. “

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3. Do you think they would have sat on this if she were a Republican? Me neither.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Politico scored a journalistic coup with its exclusive 2014 profile on Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the agency’s targeting of conservative groups.

But a former Illinois lawmaker who said Politico contacted him repeatedly that year with questions regarding claims he was targeted by Lerner in the mid-1990s has been left wondering why the news group chose to ignore his documented dealings with the former federal official.

“I was shocked,” Al Salvi told the Washington Examiner’s media desk, describing what he characterizes as several “lengthy” interviews with Politico reporter Rachael Bade.

Lerner went after his 1996 Senate campaign with a lawsuit totaling $1.1 million — an enforcement action that was eventually thrown out of court — when she was working at the Federal Election Commission, according to Salvi.

“I spent something like an hour and a half talking to Politico about this,” said Salvi, whose dealings with the FEC are well documented by the federal agency. “And I’m nowhere in the story. They had no intention of using anything I said.””

Click the link and read it. The IRS scandal wasn’t Lerner’s first time targeting political enemies.

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4. Huh. We’ve been assured for years that there was no slippery slope, and that approving gay marriage would not lead to other attempts to alter the institution. Guess that was a lie.

From SFGate  “An Oakland family has found what they think is the key to a happy household: three parents.

Two women named Melinda and Dani Phoenix and the man they both consider their husband, Jonathan Stein, are in a polyamorous relationship and parenting two babies together under the same roof.

Melinda and Dani began their relationship as a lesbian couple and became domestic partners in 2010. A year later, Jonathan joined them as the third partner and the three married last summer in a ceremony that is not legally recognized.

Now they’re sharing their story to raise awareness about polyamorous families and hope that some day these arrangements can be widely accepted and legally recognized. With children entering their picture, they feel gaining support from the community is more important than ever.”

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by

News/Politics 3-12-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

UPDATED

More trouble in Ferguson overnight.

From MSN/TheGuardian  “Two police officers have been shot in Ferguson, Missouri, as a small demonstration wound down in the city gripped by unrest since the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old last year.

One officer from St Louis County and another from Webster Groves were struck soon after midnight on Wednesday as they stood outside the Ferguson police headquarters, St Louis County police chief Jon Belmar said at a press conference early on Thursday morning.

“These police officers were standing there and they were shot, just because they were police officers,” said Belmar, who added that the officers sustained serious gunshot wounds.

The Webster Groves officer, a 32-year-old who has worked in the department for five years, was shot in the face, according to Belmar. The St Louis County officer, who is 41 and a 17-year law-enforcement veteran, was shot in the shoulder, he said.

Sergeant Brian Schellman, a spokesman for St Louis County police, told the Guardian that both officers were being treated in hospital. “No update yet on condition,” said Schellman. The St Louis Post-Dispatch reported police sources saying both were expected to survive.

Belmar said the shots appeared to have been aimed at the police as they were fired “parallel with the ground” and did not appear to have ricocheted. “I would have to make an assumption that these shots were directed exactly at my police officers,” he said.”

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1. The State Dept. has been the target of the “worst ever” cyber attack. But don’t worry, I’m sure Hillary’s private email server is totally secure. 🙄

From HotAir  “At one point in Hillary Clinton’s slightly less than marathon press conference on Tuesday, the former secretary of state insisted that there were no security breaches of her personal “homebrew” email server. How could she possibly know this? The secretary of state’s emails represent a high-value target for cyber hackers operating out of foreign intelligence agencies, and a breach is unlikely to leave a trace of any activity that the layman or even a cyber-intelligence professional would notice. Just ask the State Department.

“Overlooked in the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, is the fact that suspected Russian hackers have bedeviled State Department’s email system for much of the past year and continue to pose problems for technicians trying to eradicate the intrusion,” CNN reported on Tuesday.

As a matter of fact, the State Department is currently investigating what federal law enforcing officials are characterizing as the “worst ever” cyber-attack on America’s diplomatic establishment. “The attackers who breached State are also believed to be behind hacks on the White House’s email system, and against several other federal agencies, the officials say,” the CNN report continued.”

“This report noted that even the State Department’s .gov addresses are not entirely secure, and that attacks on unclassified email systems can expose sensitive information to foreign intelligence services. Capture enough sensitive information, and a competent espionage service can piece together classified material. This is not an inconsequential matter.

We know as a result of the infamous Romanian hacker “Guccifer” that Clinton received messages from her longtime private advisor Sydney Blumenthal via email. How do we know? Blumenthal’s emails were compromised, and that hack revealed that he had shared a variety of private intelligence assessments as well as personal communications with Clinton while she served as the nation’s chief diplomat. It’s possible that none of the emails Clinton provided to the State Department included her correspondence with Blumenthal, according to a FOIA request from Gawker.

“The Clinton camp’s claims about the email account being above-board is also contradicted by the State Department’s response to Gawker’s inquires two years ago,” Gawker’s J.K. Trotter observed. “[T]he State Department replied to our request by saying that, after an extensive search, it could find no records responsive to our request.””

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2. Maybe McConnell isn’t as clueless as he acts.

From NationalJournal  “After weeks of Democrats questioning his unwillingness to schedule the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be attorney general, the Senate majority leader announced at a press conference Tuesday that the Senate will vote to confirm her next week. There’s just one catch: Members will have to get past legislation that includes a controversial abortion rider first. “This is bad,” Jessica Brady, a spokeswoman for Judiciary Committee Democrats, said Tuesday.”

“To get their vote on Lynch, Democrats will have to get off of the trafficking bill. And, so far, Republicans aren’t showing any willingness to remove the controversial abortion language.

Democrats are furious that McConnell’s top deputy, Republican Whip John Cornyn, snuck—in their telling—a provision into a bipartisan human-trafficking bill that would prevent any of the funds reserved for trafficking victims from being used on abortions or Plan B contracepton (known as the morning-after pill).

Cornyn argued Tuesday that the legislation including the abortion language was posted publicly on Jan. 13. It earned a dozen Democratic cosponsors and passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously without a single Democratic member or aide flagging the abortion language. It was on page four.

 Democrats discovered the problem Monday night, sending staffers and members into a frenzy. The abortion language was not included in a list of changes made to last year’s trafficking bill sent to Democrats by Republican staffers, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin said Tuesday. As a result, the language went unnoticed.”

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3. The Obama admin has some ‘splainin’ to do.

From Breitbart  “The judge who blocked President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration has ordered the Justice Department to answer allegations the government misled him about part of the plan.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen has ordered federal government lawyers to appear in his court March 19 in Brownsville. The hearing is in response to a filing last week in which the government acknowledged some deportation reprieves were granted before Hanen’s Feb. 16 injunction.”

——————————

More here, from MSN/Reuters  “On Monday, Hanen said in a one-page order that the court will not rule on any pending motions at least until a court hearing set for March 19, where government attorneys will have to explain a filing that said some 100,000 people had been given three-year periods of deferred action prior to the judge’s injunction.

Hanen, who has previously criticized U.S. immigration enforcement as too lax, based his Feb. 17 ruling on an administrative law question, faulting Obama’s administration for not giving public notice of his plans. He also cited ways that Texas would be harmed by the action but used no other states as examples.

The decision was an initial victory for 26 states that brought the case alleging Obama had exceeded his powers with executive orders that would let up to 4.7 million illegal immigrants stay without threat of deportation. Obama’s orders bypassed Congress, which has not been able to agree on immigration reform.”

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4. They’ve learned nothing.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Nearly seven years after it was bailed out from the housing market crash, mortgage giant.

Fannie Mae is still engaging in behavior that could precipitate future financial crises and taxpayer losses, a government watchdog warns in a report to be released Wednesday.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency inspector general said its latest concerns involve Fannie Mae’s “haphazard” decision to fill a critical auditor position with an employee who lacked proper qualifications and suffered from a conflict of interest.

Unless Fannie Mae’s leaders and the audit committee that allowed the hiring do their jobs better, there is a “substantial risk” the mortgage company “will operate in an unsafe and unsound manner, suffer losses and expose U.S. taxpayers to further financial risks,” the inspector general said.

The watchdog also had harsh words for the FHFA, the federal agency that oversees Fannie Mae, saying its own leadership failed to act on concerns about the hiring of the auditor position, choosing instead to stay silent.”

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5. A brief modern history of Congressional “treason.”

From HotAir  “Over the last couple of days, media outlets and some Democrats have lost their minds over the letter signed by 47 Republican Senators, sent to Iran to warn them that President Obama does not have the authority to create a lasting agreement without the participation of Congress. The New York Daily News ran a headline calling them “traitors,” a charge that has been bandied about on social media without any sense of either its legal sense or the history of Congressional influence on foreign policy. A petition on the White House website to arrest the 47 Senators has gathered over 136,000 signatures, in an apparent attempt of the ignorant to publicly self-identify.

Obviously, this situation requires a little history and perspective, as well as a civics lesson on the nature of co-equal branches of government, and on how this latest “treason” stacks up. The US and the Soviet Union conducted a 44-year “cold war” that often turned hot in places like Korea and Vietnam, and yet as Noah pointed out yesterday, Senator Ted Kennedy encouraged the Soviets to interfere in the 1984 election. Noah also mentions Nancy Pelosi’s trip to visit Bashar Assad in 2007 against the Bush administration’s express desires. But there are even more instances that speak more directly to Congressional interference with executive branch efforts on foreign policy.

Joe Scarborough pointed out one example this morning on Twitter from the Reagan era. The Reagan administration wanted to block Soviet influence in the Western hemisphere by backing rebellions against Communist dictators, especially in Nicaragua. Reagan supported the contras against Daniel Ortega, a policy which Democrats opposed and for which they later passed the controversial Boland Amendment in an attempt to restrict Reagan’s options in foreign policy (and which led to the Iran-Contra scandal.) Before Boland, though, 10 Democrats in the House — including Edward Boland (D-MA) — wrote a letter to Ortega called the “Dear Commandante” letter pledging their support to his government. See if this sounds familiar:

The 10 authors include Jim Wright of Texas, the majority leader; Edward P. Boland of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and other senior Democrats in the foreign policy field. The letter tells Mr. Ortega that it was written ”in a spirit of hopefulness and goodwill” and voices regret that relations between Nicaragua and Washington are not better.

The writers stress that they all oppose further money for rebel campaigns against the Sandinista Government. In a veiled reference to the Reagan Administration, the letter says that if the Sandinistas do hold genuine elections, those who are ”supporting violence” against the Nicaraguan leaders would have ”far greater difficulty winning support for their policies than they do today.””

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by

News/Politics 3-11-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Traitors? Oh please….. 🙄

From HotAir  “Traitors! Wreckers! Saboteurs! The Senate Republicans, consumed as they are with a personal and irrational hatred for the president, have elected to thwart the administration’s glorious efforts to secure a nuclear deal with Iran and safeguard your family’s interests. The Republicans have put your children’s lives at risk with their reckless vandalism in an unprecedented betrayal of both king and country. And so on.

These and other hyperbolic and overwrought pronouncements from the left followed the decision by 47 Republicans in the upper chamber of Congress to remind those negotiating a nuclear deal that their consent to any agreement is ultimately necessary if it is to survive beyond January 20, 2017.”

“There are some, however, who contend that this level of defiance to a sitting president is unprecedented, but it is not. There are others who insist that decorum alone demands that the opposition party in full control of the co-equal legislative chamber should defer to the White House in negotiations with Iran, but they shouldn’t. Finally, there are others who would honestly contend that this display of frustration on the part of Senate Republicans was entirely unprovoked. They are wrong.

In 2007, many on the right were consumed by the same passionate fury with which Democrats presently contend. Then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) traveled to Syria in a display of dissent against the Bush administration’s approach to foreign affairs. In Damascus, Pelosi represented the American political opposition when she sat down with the murderous thug Bashar al-Assad, a Ba’athist dictator who would begin deploying chemical weapons against his country’s civilian population just five years later.”

“In 1991, it was revealed that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) proposed quite a coup that might have dangerously undermined American foreign policy in the process. In 1983, then KGB Chairman Viktor Chebrikov composed a memorandum to General Secretary Yuri Andropov, himself a former KGB chief who brutally crushed the anti-Soviet rebellions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1956 and 1968 respectively. The memo revealed that Kennedy had approached the Soviet spy service with an offer. “Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan,” Peter Robinson, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, wrote in 2009. “In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election.””

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2. Anybody shocked? And like Hillary, he insists it’s no problem.

From Mediaite  “Secret emails aren’t just a thing that Hillary Clinton uses: Attorney General Eric Holder has a few too, but according to the DOJ, they’re mostly for filtering out spam.

The Huffington Post reports that Holder has gone through three email accounts during his tenure as Attorney General, often using aliases that do not sound anything like “Eric Holder.” According to the Post, his discarded spam email addresses are Henry Yearwood (his mother’s maiden name and a friend’s name) and David Kendricks (a tribute to the Temptations that a spokesman called “soulful”).

It’s all good, though! A DOJ spokesman said that all the email addresses are known to people conducting congressional inquiries and officials handling FOIA requests. But thanks to a few unredacted emails, Holder’s had to change his address to protect from spam, hackers, and spam hackers:”

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3. Some black leaders are upset that Obama used the Selma March anniversary to champion “gay rights.”

From CNSNews  “Conservative black leaders are calling President Barack Obama’s likening of homosexual activism to the 1965 Selma to Montgomery civil rights march “ridiculous” and “an insult.”

“We’re the gay Americans whose blood ran in the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge,” President Obama said in a speech delivered Saturday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.”

““To me, it is an insult and every black person ought to be insulted by it,” Bishop Jackson said of Obama’s comparison of homosexual activism to Selma. “Instead of applauding that, we ought to be booing lines like that because it denigrates the tremendous price our ancestors paid to experience the full rights of citizenship in this country.”

“I think it’s a problem not only for the president but for a lot of people, who are deeply misguided, to compare people who are protesting to have their behavior, their sexual behavior, recognized as some kind of civil right or for that matter civil virtue and compare that to people who are trying to vote, trying to go into a restaurant and get a sandwich, are trying to stay in a hotel overnight while they are on the road, trying to sit wherever they want to sit on public accommodation and transportation,” Jackson said.

“To compare those two, to me, it is highly intellectually dishonest or just outright stupid,” said Jackson. “You can’t possibly believe that in your heart of hearts if you’re a thinking person.” “He said our highest ideals, but he’s talking about his own ideals,” said Jackson. “So his definition of what makes our country great is very, very different from mine.””

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4. Obama’s purge of military leaders continues and he has now reached his PC fingers into the chaplain ranks.

From FoxNews  “A chaplain who once ministered to Navy SEALs could be thrown out of the military after he was accused of failing “to show tolerance and respect” in private counseling sessions in regards to issues pertaining to faith, marriage and sexuality, specifically homosexuality and pre-marital sex, according to documents obtained exclusively by Fox News.

Lt. Commander Wes Modder, who is endorsed by the Assemblies of God, has also been accused of being unable to “function in the diverse and pluralistic environment” of the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command in Goose Creek, S.C.

“On multiple occasions he discriminated against students who were of different faiths and backgrounds,” the Chaplain’s commanding Officer Capt. Jon R. Fahs wrote in a memorandum obtained by Fox News.”

“Modder is a highly decorated, 19-year veteran of the military. Prior to becoming a Navy chaplain, he served in the Marine Corps.  His assignments included tours with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Naval Special Warfare Command – where he served as the Force Chaplain of the Navy SEALs. His record is brimming with accolades and endorsements – including from Capt. Fahs.

In Modder’s most recent review, Fahs declared that the chaplain was “the best of the best,” and a “consummate professional leader” worthy of an early promotion.

So how did Chaplain Modder go from being the “best of the best” to being unfit for service in the U.S. military in a span of five months?”

Good question.

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5. It’s good to be the king. And remember folks, this is just the airfare. The 5 star accommodations, the gourmet meals, security, and everything else is all extra.

It’s disgusting, and an abuse of taxpayers.

From JudicialWatch  “Martha’s Vineyard August, 2014 Vacation Cost $400,666.30 in Transportation 

$2,425,085.50 were Spent in Transportation Expenses for Obama’s July, 2014 West Coast Fundraising Trip

Obama Hawaii Christmas vacations over the past three years have cost taxpayers $15,540,515.10 in travel expenses alone;

“Judicial Watch announced today it obtained records from the U.S. Department of the Air Force revealing that the Obama family’s 2014 Christmas vacation to Honolulu, Hawaii, cost taxpayers $3,672,798 in flight expenses alone. Christmas in Hawaii is an annual tradition for the family and their most recent visit, from December 19, 2014, to January 4, 2015, marked their seventh Hawaiianvacation. The documents came from the Department of the Air Force in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on January 5, 2015.  Costs for the trip to Hawaii, to the West Coast, and to Martha’s Vineyard last year, cost nearly $3 million alone in transportation.

According to the documents, the Obama’s spent 17.8 hours in the air round-trip at $206,337.00 per hour, bringing the total cost to taxpayers to $3,672,798.60.

According to other figures obtained by Judicial Watch over the past three years, Obama Hawaii Christmas vacations have cost taxpayers $15,540,515.10 in transportation expenses alone. This includes outbound and return flight expenses in 2012 totaling $4,086,355.20. (The Secret Service provided documents for Obama’s Christmas 2012 trip to Honolulu. The grand total is $654,599.40 including $409,225.78 in hotels.)  Flight expenses for the Obamas’ Christmas vacations to Hawaii cost taxpayers $7,781,361.30. And the Christmas 2014 flight expense of $3,672,798.60. The average American family spent $4,580 on Christmas in 2014.”

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by

News/Politics 3-10-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. It’s time to drag her in and get some answers.

From FoxNews  “In the depths of the hacker and IT-blogger community, a skirmish has broken out over the nature of Hillary Clinton’s email server — a debate that could have profound implications for national security during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, and for investigators hoping to mine her emails for evidentiary purposes.

The questions center on where, exactly, Hillary Clinton’s email server is, or was, physically located; which private-sector firms may have been hosting it; and how secure Clinton’s emails were at any given point. 

Why does the physical location matter? Because if the server was not in Clinton’s home, and was maintained at some other site, then the secretary of state and the Diplomatic Security corps that guarded her were not in physical control of her server. This would have raised the possibility for compromise of Clinton’s account, either from an inside job, carried out by the very firm retained to host the server, or from external actors that could range from the Kremlin to China to independent hackers.”

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2. The dispute intensifies…

From MSN/WaPo  “An already heated battle between the White House and Republicans over negotiations to curtail Iran’s nuclear program grew more tense Monday when 47 Republican senators sent a letter to Iran designed to kill any potential deal.

The White House responded by accusing the Republicans of conspiring with Iranian hardliners, who oppose the delicate negotiations, and suggested that their goal was to push the U.S. into a military conflict.

“It’s surprising to me that there are some Republican senators who are seeking to establish a back channel with the hard-liners in Iran to undermine an agreement between Iran and the broader international community,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday.

He characterized the Republican effort as a “rush to war or at least a rush to the military option that …is not at all in the best interest of the United States.”

The letter’s main author Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) described the one-page letter as a remedial civics lesson to help Iran’s mullahs better understand the limits of presidential power.”

Says the guy who wants to give those same hardliners a nuclear weapon…

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3. Jihad, American style.

From TheTelegraph  “Egyptis facing a new campaign of violence, this time a series of attacks targeting western companies like KFC and Vodafone.

A series of bombings has killed at least three people and injured scores more in Cairo and Alexandria in recent weeks, separate from the intense jihadist violence being inflicted by Isil-backed terrorists against the police and military.

It seems in part inspired by an American Muslim convert with an anti-capitalist agenda, who posts texts online urging Egyptians to throw off a “neo-liberal” order in favour of Islam.

Shahid King Bolsen – born Shannon Morris – served time in Dubai for killing a German businessman, and hiding his body in a suit-case. Now he inspires young radicalised Egyptians with online calls for action – though he told The Telegraph he does not approve of violence.”

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4. Hold his feet to the fire.

From WND  “Pro-life activist Jill Stanek is joining with the Christian Defense Coalition later this month to stage a sit-in on Capitol Hill over lack of action on a late-term abortion ban that was supposed to be passed in January.

The sit-in is scheduled for 11.a.m. EST on March 25 outside the office of House Speaker John Boehner.

At issue is the GOP leadership’s handling of the “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” which bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy but includes exceptions for victims of rape and incest.”

“The bill was supposed to be voted on Jan. 22 in conjunction with the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion and while Washington was filled with pro-life activists for the annual March for Life. Stanek said the concept is very simple.

“It is a ban on abortion past 20 weeks,” she explained. “It is known that by 20 weeks, and probably before, children feel pain. When they are aborted at 20 weeks, they are literally drawn and quartered. They’re just ripped apart, limb by limb. So this ban would make it a federal offense [and] ban abortions past 20 weeks.” But the bill, which sailed through the House with a smaller Republican majority in the previous Congress, never received a vote.”

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5. Oh boy…. 🙄

From CNSNews  “Many people are living longer, but not to age 112 or beyond — except in the records of the Social Security Administration.

The SSA’s inspector general has identified 6.5 million number-holders age 112 — or older — for whom no death date has been entered in the main electronic file, called Numident.

The audit, dated March 4, 2015, concluded that SSA lacks the controls necessary to annote death information on the records of number-holders who exceed “maximum reasonable life expectancies.”

“We obtained Numident data that identified approximately 6.5 million numberholders born before June 16, 1901 who did not have a date of death on their record,” the report states.

Some of the numbers assigned to long-dead people were used fraudulently to open bank accounts. And thousands of those numbers apparently were used by illegal immigrants to apply for work:”

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by

News/Politics 3-9-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The White House is dragging out Obama’s favorite excuse.

Scandal? What scandal? Oh, you mean the one Obama read about in the news?

Yet another lie. They’ve known since August of last year at least.

From Politico  “The White House, State Department and Hillary Clinton’s personal office knew in August that House Republicans had received information showing that the former secretary of state conducted official government business through her private email account — and Clinton’s staff made the decision to keep quiet.”

____________

You mean these Clinton staffers?

From FoxNews  “Emails obtained through a federal lawsuit show that two top aides to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were running interference internally during the 2012 Benghazi terror attack.

The aides were Philippe Reines, widely described as Clinton’s principal gate-keeper, and Cheryl Mills, who has been at Clinton’s side for decades.

The emails show that while receiving updates about the assault as it happened, Mills told then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland to stop answering reporter questions about the status of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was missing and later found dead. 

Also littered throughout the State Department emails, obtained by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, are references to a so-called Benghazi Group. A diplomatic source told Fox News that was code inside the department for the so-called Cheryl Mills task force, whose job was damage control.”

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FOIA requests? Never heard of ’em….

From TheFreeBeacon  “The State Department may have ignored or rejected a request made in 2012 under the Freedom of Information Act by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) seeking Hillary Clinton’s email addresses, according to a Daily Caller report on Thursday.

The New York Times reported on Monday that Clinton exclusively used a private email account and server for her email during her four years as secretary of state, skirting federal records laws, as well as State Department and Obama administration transparency guidelines, and raising suspicions that numerous public records requests for her emails were improperly blocked.

Anne Weismann, CREW’s general counsel, submitted a FOIA request to the State Department on Dec. 6, 2012, seeking “records sufficient to show the number of email accounts of or associated with Secretary Hilary Rodham Clinton, and the extent to which those email accounts are identifiable as those of or associated with Secretary Clinton.”

CREW’s request came on the heels of news that former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson had used an alias email account to conduct government business, and the organization was seeking to see if other senior officials used similar pseudonymous email accounts.”

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2. And Clinton and Jackson aren’t the only ones….

From TheDailySignal  “IRS manager Lois Lerner allegedly used an msn.com email account labeled ‘Lois Home’ for government-related communications. Lerner was a key player in what the IG found was the tax agency’s unfair targeting of conservative groups.

Former Obama EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used private email accounts, as well as a secret EPA email address under the pseudonym “Richard Windsor,” to conduct official business. That included communicating with a climate lobbyist.”

“The EPA inspector general recently found the agency’s Chemical Safety Board Chairman Rafael Moure-Eraso and two top officials used personal email accounts to conduct official business. The IG said the officials did not preserve the emails, in violation of federal regulations.”

“Attorney General Eric Holder’s criminal division head, Lanny Breuer, was caught forwarding controversial Fast and Furious-related emails to his personal account.”

“Obama Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, Holder’s former assistant attorney general for civil rights, allegedly used his private email account to leak non-public information about official business.

As to whether Holder himself ever used personal email for government business, the Justice Department isn’t saying. A spokesman did not respond to requests for information about Holder’s email practices.”

This is common practice in the self-proclaimed “most transparent administration ever.”

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3. And since I brought up Holder….

From InvestorsBusinessDaily  “Unable to pin racism charges on Ferguson policeman Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder is using half-baked data to manufacture a case of racism against his entire police force.

Holder’s race-baiting civil rights crew combed through several years of Ferguson Police Department data on traffic stops, searches and arrests and “found a pattern of racial disparities in Ferguson’s police activities.”

“African Americans are overrepresented in FPD’s vehicular stops” and victims of “racial bias,” Holder concludes in his report.

He notes that blacks accounted for 85% of vehicle stops, “despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson’s population,” while whites made up 15% of stops, despite representing 29% of the population.

So there you have it, a slam-dunk case of racism, right? Hardly.

Outrageously, the nation’s top prosecutor failed to control for factors that explain the racial “disparity” in traffic stops, such as speeding, DUI, expired license plates, headlight, seat-belt and child-restraint violations and other reasons for being pulled over.

Holder’s own department statistics show that African Americans, on average, violate speeding and other traffic laws at much greater rates than whites.”

You mean Holder’s race-baiting dishonestly and fudging the numbers? Say it ain’t so….. 🙄

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4. This is just one more reason Boehner has to go. Like I said, he’s a Democrat’s best friend.

From TheHill  “A number of right-wing Republicans, long wary of Boehner’s commitment to GOP efforts attacking President Obama’s policy priorities, have openly considered a coup in an attempt to transfer the gavel into more conservative hands.

But Democrats from across an ideological spectrum say they’d rather see Boehner remain atop the House than replace him with a more conservative Speaker who would almost certainly be less willing to reach across the aisle in search of compromise. Replacing him with a Tea Party Speaker, they say, would only bring the legislative process — already limping along — to a screeching halt.”

““I’d probably vote for Boehner [because] who the @#$% is going to replace him? [Ted] Yoho?” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) said Wednesday, referencing the Florida Tea Party Republican who’s fought Boehner on a host of bipartisan compromise bills. 

“In terms of the institution, I would rather have John Boehner as the Speaker than some of these characters who came here thinking that they’re going to change the world,” Pascrell added.”

Yeah, nobody wants to change the world. Just the horribly broken and corrupt Washington DC.

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