Free Speech Dying in the Western World

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Free speech is dying in the Western world. While most people still enjoy considerable freedom of expression, this right, once a near-absolute, has become less defined and less dependable for those espousing controversial social, political or religious views. The decline of free speech has come not from any single blow but rather from thousands of paper cuts of well-intentioned exceptions designed to maintain social harmony.

In the face of the violence that frequently results from anti-religious expression, some world leaders seem to be losing their patience with free speech. After a video called “Innocence of Muslims” appeared on YouTube and sparked violent protests in several Muslim nations last month, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that “when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others’ values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.”

It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance. As Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard put it in her recent speech before the United Nations, “Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.”

A willingness to confine free speech in the name of social pluralism can be seen at various levels of authority and government. In February, for instance, Pennsylvania Judge Mark Martin heard a case in which a Muslim man was charged with attacking an atheist marching in a Halloween parade as a “zombie Muhammed.” Martin castigated not the defendant but the victim, Ernie Perce, lecturing him that “our forefathers intended to use the First Amendment so we can speak with our mind, not to piss off other people and cultures — which is what you did.”

Of course, free speech is often precisely about pissing off other people — challenging social taboos or political values.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cash-Strapped Farmers Feeding Candy to Cows

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Cattle farmers struggling with record corn prices are feeding their cows candy instead.

That’s right, candy. Cows are being fed chocolate bars, gummy worms, ice cream sprinkles, marshmallows, bits of hard candy and even powdered hot chocolate mix, according to cattle farmers, bovine nutritionists and commodities dealers.

“It has been a practice going on for decades and is a very good way to for producers to reduce feed cost, and to provide less expensive food for consumers,” said Ki Fanning, a livestock nutritionist with Great Plains Livestock Consulting, Inc. in Eagle, Neb.

Feeding candy to cows has become a more popular practice in tandem with the rising price of corn, which has doubled since 2009, fueled by government-subsidized demand for ethanol and this year’s drought. Thrifty and resourceful farmers are tapping into the obscure market for cast-off food ingredients. Cut-rate byproducts of dubious value for human consumption seem to make fine fodder for cows. While corn goes for about $315 a ton, ice-cream sprinkles can be had for as little as $160 a ton.

“As the price of corn has climbed, farmers either sold off their pigs and cattle, or they found alternative feeds,” said Mike Yoder, a dairy farmer in Middlebury, Ind. He feeds his 400 cows bits of candy, hot chocolate mix, crumbled cookies, breakfast cereal, trail mix, dried cranberries, orange peelings and ice cream sprinkles, which are blended into more traditional forms of feed, like hay.

Read more from the story HERE.

United Nations’ Effort to Tax, Regulate Internet Gaining Steam

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U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer warned on Friday that a proposal to give a United Nations agency more control over the Internet is gaining momentum in other countries.

Proposals to expand the U.N.’s International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) authority over the Internet could come up at a treaty conference in Dubai in December. European telecommunications companies are pushing a plan that would create new rules that would allow them to charge more to carry international traffic.

The proposal by the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association could force websites like Google, Facebook and Netflix to pay fees to network operators around the world.

Kramer said the idea of an international Internet fee is “gaining more interest in the African states and also in the Arab states.”

He said the United States delegation to the conference will have to redouble its efforts to convince other countries that the proposal would only stifle innovation and economic growth.

Read more from this story HERE.

Why is the American Automobile Association, With Over 50 Million Members, Doing Nothing About High Gas Prices?

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By My Auto Club. The American Automobile Association (AAA) has for years failed to fight high gas prices to benefit its motorist members. The AAA with 50+ million members is the largest nonreligious member organization in the country.

The AAA gas price surveys always have included the oil cartel’s excuses and red herring arguments for their skyrocketed prices.

The AAA is tasked to lobby in support of motorists. But it has not yet done any lobbying to any state or the Federal government to:

1. investigate the domestic oil cartel for collusion and antitrust violations.

2. investigate the worldwide oil cartel including OPEC and its allies.

3. urge President Obama to stop all help the US occupation authorities are giving to Iraq and its OPEC allies (could be done with a stroke of President Obama’s pen); and investigate the possible support the US occupying forces continue to give to Iraq and its OPEC allies, including enforcing worldwide oil production quotas. Iraq has kept its oil production down at the Saddam Hussein level of March 2003 when the occupation started. The price of gas was $1/gallon in March 2003 and is now $4/gallon.

4. stop tax increases on gasoline and diesel.

The two largest AAA clubs are the Automobile Club of Southern California (with about 7 million members), which owns the AAA clubs in Texas, New Mexico, and Hawaii, and parts of Northern New England (Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire), Missouri, and Alabama; and the Automobile Club of Northern California, which owns the AAA clubs in Utah and Nevada. Both have totally failed to lobby. No bills have been sponsored, no ballot measures been initiated.

Time for the AAA to rise up for its member-owners. The multi-billion dollar rip-offs must stop.

NY Times: Voter Registration Databases Can Easily Be Hacked

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Computer security experts have identified vulnerabilities in the voter registration databases in two states, raising concerns about the ability of hackers and others to disenfranchise voters.

In the last five years, Maryland and Washington State have set up voter registration systems that make it easy for people to register to vote and update their address information online. The problem is that in both states, all the information required from voters to log in to the system is publicly available.

It took The New York Times less than three minutes to track down the information online needed to update the registrations of several prominent executives in Washington State. Complete voter lists, which include a name, birth date, addresses and party affiliation, can be easily bought — and are, right now, in the hands of thousands of campaign volunteers.

Computer security experts and voting rights activists argue that a hacker could use that information to, say, change a person’s address online to ensure that the voter never receives a ballot in Washington, where voting is now done entirely by mail. In Maryland, hackers could ensure that a voter is not listed on the precinct register at a designated polling station. In that case, the voter would be redirected to another precinct, or asked to fill out a provisional ballot. In both cases, the person would not be able to vote in local, or possibly, Congressional races.

But the real concern, critics say, is that large numbers of voters from one political party, or demographic, could have their information changed by automated computer programs. A program that could change tens of thousands of voter records at once, they say, would require only a dozen lines of code.

Read more from this article HERE.

Video: Parents of Fallen SEAL Say Obama Put Target on Son’s Back, Call Rules of Engagement “Criminal”

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A new ad by Veterans for a Strong America hammers the Obama Administration. The ad features two parents who blame Obama for “putting a target” on their son’s back. The SEAL team member was killed when their helicopter was shot down over the Wardak Province in Afghanistan.

After showing the ad, Hannity then interviews the parents of the fallen SEAL. The father explains that Obama has virtually neutered our warriors’ ability to wage war in Afghanistan.

He goes on to detail how his son was killed, stating that, despite the presence of two Apache AH64 helicopters and a massive AC130 gunship, the SEALs were not permitted to prep the landing site prior to landing. This was despite an ongoing firefight on the ground. The father says that the landing was handled like a “landing at Walmart.”

Saying that the “President is directly responsible for the rules of engagement,” he calls them “criminal for our warriors.”

A Critical Interior Senate Race: Coghill vs. Thomas

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One of the most critical races in the state of Alaska is in Senate Seat A between incumbent Republican John Coghill, leader of the Senate Minority and incumbent Democrat Joe Thomas. What hangs in the balance is control of the state senate. Coghill has been an effective advocate for conservative social issues such as liberty, life, limited government, and school choice. In contrast, Joe Thomas has been an advocate of larger government (he voted for the creation of Senate Standing Committees last session), supported SB9 on compulsory public school attendance, has expressed his belief in government control from the cradle, and has consistently voted in a way that is adverse to virtually every issue important to real Alaskan conservatives.

This race is so important to the Bipartisan Working Group and the Democratic Party that Coghill is being outspent by negative ads. According to these, Joe Thomas claims to be the only “man with a plan.” The ads claim the bipartisan group is working and that we should stand up for these senators.

Curiously, Joe Thomas and the Bipartisan Working Group voted against the Amendment 1 sponsored by John Coghill. When the state senate finance committee cut funding for natural gas in the Interior from the state budget, Coghill came back with an additional amendment. Who fought the amendment for the Bipartisan Working Group? Sen. Joe Thomas led the fight, claiming that the Interior did not need the money. In the face of that, Sen. John Coghill pled for relief for the Interior. Nevertheless, Sen. Joe Thomas, Sen. Joe Paskvan, and the Bipartisan Working Group voted against the amendment.

The Bipartisan Working Group may be working for someone, but not the folks of House District 2. It is amazing that John Coghill, the state senator for North Pole and Valdez, appeals for residents in Fairbanks while the actual senators for Fairbanks oppose this legislation that would have led to accelerating the construction of a natural gas infrastructure and rate relief for Fairbanks residents.

Here are two videos that lay out stark differences between Coghill and Thomas, in their own words:

Opinion: Alaska Senate Coalition Responsible for Genocide

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Alaska’s lawmakers are getting ready to do it again. After every election, the House and Senate meet secretly behind closed doors and form an organization commonly referred to as the “Majority Coalition” or the “Bipartisan Working Group.” They meet privately despite the Open Meetings Act, a law written by these same legislators who apparently believe in following different rules while conveniently providing themselves an exemption to the law.

This coalition has power and influence over our legislature, an organization about which we should be deeply concerned. Once joining the group, our elected representatives no longer truly represents us. Instead, he or she is then subservient to the coalition, an unequal yoking contrary to biblical principles. They become compromised, which prevents them from following their convictions including being forced to support the state budget as a tool to fund abortion.

Legislators bound by the coalition are no longer free agents to end the atrocity of killing the unborn. And we as constituents are no longer represented by those we elect once they’ve become servants to their organization.

To those who claim they can resign the coalition anytime, I have two questions: First, why haven’t you? And second, if you truly are a free agent, what inspires you to vote for a budget that funds elective abortions, as ours has for the last decade, or that has been patently unsustainable for many years?

We need to hold those in office to task in adhering to the pro-life principles they campaign on. If we place power in the hands of our elected leaders who betray us by allowing innocent blood to be spilled through continued abortion funding, we’ve ignored God’s principles and we have blood on our hands. Ezekiel 23 discusses the sin of idolatry and how children were burned as sacrifices. I see no difference between children being sacrificed then and children dying today at the hands of abortionists.

If we as a people don’t stand up for unborn babies and demand that our legislators do the same, the abortion genocide will continue.

Student Wearing Romney T-Shirt Ridiculed for Wearing “KKK Garb” in a “Democratic School”

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Samantha Pawlucy, a 16-year-old student at Charles Carroll High School in Philadelphia, was ridiculed in front of her geometry class by teacher Lynette Gaymon for wearing a t-shirt expressing support for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Pawlucy told a radio station that Gaymon likened the shirt to KKK garb and insisted that “this is a Democratic school.” Due in part to widespread outrage from conservatives—including Romney, who called Pawlucy on Wednesday to thank her for courage—Gaymon was switched to a different class.

[School District Communications Chief Fernando] Gallard affirmed the student’s right to wear the shirt, and said the district was supporting her “absolutely, from day one.”

“We provided support, we told [the Pawlucy family] that we were going to investigate, we removed the teacher from the classroom where the student was attending, and we have been in constant contact to provide for [Pawlucy’s] support,” he said.

District Superintendent Dr. William Hite released a statement of support for both the student and the teacher.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Secret Service Agent Arrested, in Drunken Stupor on Miami Sidewalk (+video)

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U.S. Secret Service agent Aaron Francis Engler was found early Friday morning passed out on the sidewalk near the intersection of Brickell Avenue and 7th just hours after President Barack Obama had left South Florida.

According to the arrest report, Miami police officers were in the area around 7 a.m. on an unrelated call when they noticed Engler passed out. According to the arrest report, when the officers checked on the man, he had bloodshot eyes, slurred speech and a strong odor of alcohol. Police said Engler started throwing his arms around while he and started to fight with officers, the report said.

The officers then took Engler to the ground and handcuffed him. As an officer searched Engler’s pockets, he discovered Engler’s Secret Service identification.

The officer didn’t make the find without a fight. During the search, sources said Engler threw his arms around and hit the officer in the chin.

Law enforcement sources told CBS4 Engler told police he was an agent out of Washington and was part of the advance team for the president’s visit on Thursday.