Mosab Yousef, the son of a Hamas founder, argues that Islam is a religion of war and that following Muhammad inevitably leads to extremism and terror.
Photo credit: kitty23
President Barack Obama expanded his lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney to 6 percentage points in the White House race this month as voters became slightly more optimistic about the economy, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Tuesday.
Four months before the November 6 election, Obama leads Romney among registered voters 49 percent to 43 percent. In June, Obama held a slim 1-point lead over the former Massachusetts governor.
Obama’s improved standing was fueled in part by a slight rise in optimism about the future, with the number of Americans who think the country is on the wrong track dropping 5 percentage points to 58 percent.
Obama’s approval ratings ticked up 1 point to 48 percent and the number of Americans who disapprove of his job performance dropped 3 percentage points to 47 percent.
The shift follows a low point for Obama in June as economic worries deepened and Romney consolidated Republican support after clinching the party’s nomination to challenge him in November. Obama had led Romney by 7 points in May’s poll.
Read more from this story HERE.
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The Obama administration is moving to shut down nine Border Patrol stations across four states, triggering a backlash from local law enforcement, members of Congress and Border Patrol agents themselves.
Critics of the move warn the closures will undercut efforts to intercept drug and human traffickers in well-traveled corridors north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Though the affected stations are scattered throughout northern and central Texas, and three other states, the coverage areas still see plenty of illegal immigrant activity — one soon-to-be-shuttered station in Amarillo, Texas, is right in the middle of the I-40 corridor; another in Riverside, Calif., is outside Los Angeles.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it’s closing the stations in order to reassign agents to high-priority areas closer to the border.
“These deactivations are consistent with the strategic goal of securing America’s borders, and our objective of increasing and sustaining the certainty of arrest of those trying to enter our country illegally,” CBP spokesman Bill Brooks said in a statement. “By redeploying and reallocating resources at or near the border, CBP will maximize the effectiveness of its enforcement mandate and align our investments with our mission.”
But at least one Border Patrol supervisor in Texas has called on local officers to “voice your concerns” to elected officials, warning that the “deactivation” will remove agents from the Texas Panhandle, among other places. Several members of Congress have asked Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher to reconsider the plan. And local officials are getting worried about what will happen once the Border Patrol leaves town, since they rely on those federal officials to assist in making immigration arrests.
Read more from this story HERE.
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In a recent radio interview, New Black Panther Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz made remarks startling even for his radical group. He contended not only that Democrats are using black people “like whores and prostitutes” but that the United States is a “modern Babylon and a modern Rome” in serious decline. He continued:
“Can the Democratic Party really save us, locally and nationally, or are we just holding on because we ain’t got nothing better? Are we just being fired up for this election, to go out here and give some votes, and all of the core concerns of the black community will be thrown to the side when November gets passed. We don’t want to be used like whores and prostitutes, we have to pay attention – we have to take charge of our post, accept our own and be ourselves, and stop jiving in bullsh*t.”
Here’s more from the Blaze:
The chairman then began to list a series of grievances with democrats, citing the rights of ex-felons and gentrification, whites moving into black neighborhoods, as letdown issues. Shabazz returned to the point by asking:
“Is the Democratic Party going to help with that? Is that even on their agenda, on their radar? Are your concerns being addressed, or are you being used like a whore? That’s the main point here.”
Shabazz reiterated his point by telling his listeners once again:
“We don’t want to be used like whores and prostitutes, we have to pay attention — we have to take charge of our post, accept our own and be ourselves, and stop jiving in bullsh*t.”
Photo credit: Bob Jagendorf
Iran has expanded its terror network and now has tens of thousands of agents in Latin America, according to a former Iranian official who has witnessed the regime’s crimes against humanity inside Iran and has knowledge of its terror network targeting the West.
In interviews with the opposition outside Iran, the official revealed that more than 40,000 of the regime’s security, intelligence and propaganda forces successfully have been placed over time in Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Venezuela.
These forces consist mostly of former interrogators, torturers and security forces along with the members of the Quds Forces.
Many of them, according to the source, are other nationalities, such as Afghans, Lebanese, Iraqis and Somalis.
Hassan Rahim Pour Azghodi, a member of The Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution in Iran and a noted ideologist and theorist of the Islamic regime who visited Ecuador, Venezuela and several other Latin American countries last year, is a former interrogator and a torturer who is now a close adviser of Ghassem Soliemani, the chief commander of the Quds Forces, the source said.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Last week, Brad Pitt’s mother Jane Pitt hit headlines after penning a response letter-to-the-editor of her local newspaper, Missouri’s Springfield News Leader, in which she advocated support for Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, referring to him as a “a family man with high morals, business experience, who is against abortion, and shares Christian conviction concerning homosexuality.”
“Any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for Romney’s opponent, Barack Hussein Obama – a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage,” she continued. “I hope all Christians give their vote prayerful consideration because voting is a sacred privilege and a serious responsibility.”
However, it seems the backlash surrounding Jane’s opinion has become so vehement that she has reportedly been “scared into silence.”
According to WND, Mrs. Pitt has not only been the victim of vulgar and hate-filled attacks, but she has also received death threats which have left her very frightened.
“So apparently Brad Pitt’s mom is a c***,” tweeted one, while another wrote that “Brad Pitt’s genetics have been brought into question.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: Loren Javier
Huge glaciers in the area between Pakistan and China are puzzling scientists – and disproving the doom-laden predictions of some climate experts.
The glaciers in the Karakoram Range between northern Pakistan and western China have actually grown, rather than shrinking.
Unlike most mountain glaciers, the Karakoram glaciers, which account for 3 percent of the total ice-covered area in the world, excluding Greenland and Antarctica, are not shrinking.
A team of French glaciologists has recently confirmed that these glaciers on average have remained stable or may have even grown slightly in recent years.
The new study used data from satellites to study the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan and western China.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Two months after Vladimir Putin once again assumed the post of Russian president, the long-feared crackdown on his critics appears to have begun. The internet bill due to be considered by parliament on Wednesday is, say activists, the latest sign of growing repression of civil freedom in Russia.
The bill calls for the creation of a federal website “nolist”. Internet providers and site owners would be forced to shut down any websites on this list. According to Wikipedia authors on Tuesday, the bill will “lead to the creation of a Russian analogue to China’s great firewall”.
The bill’s backers in Putin’s United Russia party argue that the amendments to the country’s information legislation are aimed at child pornography and sites that promote drug use and teen suicide.
But critics, including the Russian-language Wikipedia, say the legislation could be used to boost government censorship over the internet.
In protest, the Russian-language Wikipedia site shut down for 24 hours on Tuesday. The Wikipedia logo was crossed out with a black rectangle, and the words “imagine a world without free knowledge” appeared underneath.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Holloman Air Force Base, at the eastern edge of New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, 200 miles south of Albuquerque, was once famous for the daredevil maneuvers of those who trained there. In 1954, Col. John Paul Stapp rode a rocket-propelled sled across the desert, reaching 632 miles per hour, in an attempt to figure out the maximum speed at which jet pilots could safely eject. He slammed on the brakes and was thrust forward with such force that he had to be hauled away on a stretcher, his eyes bleeding from burst capillaries. Six years later, Capt. Joseph Kittinger Jr., testing the height at which pilots could safely bail out, rode a helium-powered balloon up to 102,800 feet. He muttered, “Lord, take care of me now,” dropped for 13 minutes 45 seconds and broke the record for the highest parachute jump.
Today many of the pilots at Holloman never get off the ground. The base has been converted into the U.S. Air Force’s primary training center for drone operators, where pilots spend their days in sand-colored trailers near a runway from which their planes take off without them. Inside each trailer, a pilot flies his plane from a padded chair, using a joystick and throttle, as his partner, the “sensor operator,” focuses on the grainy images moving across a video screen, directing missiles to their targets with a laser.
Holloman sits on almost 60,000 acres of desert badlands, near jagged hills that are frosted with snow for several months of the year — a perfect training ground for pilots who will fly Predators and Reapers over the similarly hostile terrain of Afghanistan. When I visited the base earlier this year with a small group of reporters, we were taken into a command post where a large flat-screen television was broadcasting a video feed from a drone flying overhead. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly what we were looking at. A white S.U.V. traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs in the center of the screen and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road. When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.
“Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?” a reporter asked. One Air Force officer responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room.
Though the Pentagon is increasing its fleet of drones by 30 percent and military leaders estimate that, within a year or so, the number of Air Force pilots flying unmanned planes could be higher than the number who actually leave the ground, much about how and where the U.S. government operates drones remains a secret. Even the pilots we interviewed wore black tape over their nametags. The Air Force, citing concerns for the pilots’ safety, forbids them to reveal their last names.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: AN HONORABLE GERMAN
A former Planned Parenthood abortion clinic manager has filed a lawsuit against the nation’s biggest abortion business accusing it of engaging in massive fraudulent activities. The lawsuit follows a new investigation of Planned Parenthood in Illinois and Planned Parenthood abortion companies in other states having been found to have engaged in overbilling and Medicaid fraud.
Planned Parenthood clinic director Sue Thayer filed the lawsuit against the abortion giant’s Iowa affiliate accusing it of submitting “repeated false, fraudulent, and/or ineligible claims for reimbursements” to Medicaid and failing to meet acceptable standards of medical practice. Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) filed the suit for Thayer in March 2011, but it only became public yesterday.
“Americans deserve to know if their hard-earned tax money is being funneled to groups that are misusing it,” said Senior Counsel Michael Norton, a former United States Attorney who is handling the lawsuit for ADF. “People may hold different views about abortion, but everyone can agree that Planned Parenthood should play by the same rules as everyone else. It certainly isn’t entitled to any public funds, especially if it is defrauding Medicaid and the American taxpayer.”
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed the suit under a federal law that allows “whistleblowers” with inside information to expose fraudulent billing by government contractors. By law, such cases may not be made public until a court unseals them. In March, a federal court unsealed a similar Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuit against a Texas Planned Parenthood affiliate.
“During my last years working at Planned Parenthood, it became increasingly clear to me that not all of their policies and protocols were completely legal and ethical. After much thought, I contacted the Alliance Defending Freedom,” Thayer said about the lawsuit. “I believe that it is an important piece in the nationwide effort to shed light on the darkness and deception surrounding America’s largest abortion provider – Planned Parenthood.”
Read more from this story HERE.
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