Inauguration Day: Obama Vows Aggressive Second-Term Agenda

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WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama began his second term Monday by setting an agenda for the next four years built on bedrock Democratic social policies, in a provocative speech coming at a time of deep partisanship in the capital and lingering economic uncertainty across the country.

With specifics not usually offered in inaugural addresses, Mr. Obama promised to preserve government health-care programs, expand rights for women and gay couples, and press for gun controls, overhauls of the tax code and immigration laws, as well as climate-change measures.

His priorities sent a message to Washington’s leaders that he is looking beyond the fiscal battles set to dominate the coming weeks, while signaling to the nation that he sees a large part of his legacy to be advocacy for underprivileged Americans.

“For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it,” Mr. Obama said in a 15-minute speech that drew repeatedly on the opening phrase of the Constitution.

Mr. Obama laid out a governing agenda rooted in Democratic policy goals and equal rights, citing Seneca Falls, N.Y., Selma, Ala., and New York City’s Stonewall Inn, birthplaces of the movements for women’s equality, civil rights and gay liberation, respectively. “That is our generation’s task—to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American,” the president said.

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Russia Moves to Enact Anti-Gay Law Nationwide

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MOSCOW (AP) – Kissing his boyfriend during a protest in front of Russia’s parliament earned Pavel Samburov 30 hours of detention and the equivalent of a $16 fine on a charge of “hooliganism.” But if a bill that comes up for a first vote later this month becomes law, such a public kiss could be defined as illegal “homosexual propaganda” and bring a fine of up to $16,000.

The legislation being pushed by the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church would make it illegal nationwide to provide minors with information that is defined as “propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism.” It includes a ban on holding public events that promote gay rights. St. Petersburg and a number of other Russian cities already have similar laws on their books.

The bill is part of an effort to promote traditional Russian values as opposed to Western liberalism, which the Kremlin and church see as corrupting Russian youth and by extension contributing to a wave of protest against President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

Samburov describes the anti-gay bill as part of a Kremlin crackdown on minorities of any kind – political and religious as well as sexual – designed to divert public attention from growing discontent with Putin’s rule.

The lanky and longhaired Samburov is the founder of the Rainbow Association, which unites gay activists throughout Russia. The gay rights group has joined anti-Putin marches in Moscow over the past year, its rainbow flag waving along with those of other opposition groups.

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Wife of Christian Held in Iran Waits as Trial, Possible Death Sentence Looms

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As her husband’s trial and possible death sentence looms, the wife of an American Christian pastor imprisoned in Iran for evangelizing clings to hope and prays for a miracle.

Naghmeh Abedini has been told by attorneys for her husband, Saeed, to expect the worst at Monday’s trial, where the 32-year-old husband and father faces the capital charge of compromising national security. Supporters believe the charges are directly related to Abedini’s work nearly a decade ago starting a house church movement in Iran, and the judge he’ll face, Abbas Pir-Abassi, is infamous for sending defendants to the gallows.

“There is a lot going through my mind. I can never clear my head. I only sleep two hours a night,” Naghmeh Abedini told Foxnews.com by phone from her family’s home near Boise. “Unfortunately, he has been set up for failure and a harsh sentence because of his beliefs. His attorney says that the court has gathered a large amount of evidence against him.”

As the trial approaches, Nagmeh and her husband’s supporters are hoping international pressure will be felt inside the Iranian regime. Although the U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Iran, on Friday, a spokesman for the Obama administration called on Iran to free Abedini.

“We remain troubled by the case of U.S. citizen Saeed Abedini, who was arrested by Iranian officials more than three months ago on charges relating to his religious beliefs. We call upon Iranian authorities to release him immediately,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

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Michigan Teen Helps Save Women From Rapist

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SHEPHERD, MI — The kids were home alone. Their dad had stepped out and would be back shortly. But in the few minutes before he returned, their quiet world was upended by a terrifying visit.

It was just before 10 p.m. Wednesday. Acelin Persyn was sitting in the living room inside her family’s small house in Shepherd, a tiny, mid-Michigan town where most people know most everyone else and few lock their doors when they leave. The Persyns’ house sits on South Mission Road, a narrow strip of dirt that runs between miles of frozen fields, farmhouses and winter-idled tractors.

Acelin, a round-faced 11-year-old, was playing with 2-year-old brother Angus Persyn. James Persyn III, a shy 14-year-old with shaggy hair, was in his bedroom with the TV cranked loud to drown out the noise of his younger siblings in the other room.

Their father, James Persyn Jr., 36, had left to pick up his fiancée, Tiffany Ramon, 28. Her shift had just ended at her family’s business, J & M Produce and Nursery, only a few miles away.

Suddenly, the children heard frantic banging on their front door and a woman’s panicked screams.

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The Collectivist Mind Game: Demonizing the Non-Compliant (Part 1)

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In the libertarian sci-fi classic, “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,” Robert A. Heinlein describes a successful revolution of the individualistic, free-market-oriented residents of the Moon against the Earth’s tyrannical big government. The ins and outs of agitating and organizing the masses to fight the oppressive Authority feel just as realistic as the finer points of everyday life in the underground Lunar cities of the future.

The proposed revolutionary scenario could even serve as a workable model for similar real-life endeavors, if only the renowned futurist author hadn’t neglected to factor in the immanent function of any oppressive regime: systemic brainwashing of its subjects through the media, education, and entertainment channels.

If the tyrants on Earth were worth their salt, all the freedom-loving colonists would be subjected to an intense, manipulative indoctrination, which would shape their self-image as small and sinful “little guys” vis-à-vis the powerful, virtuous government that serves the powerless and protects them against all enemies, including themselves.

Thus, the government’s propagandistic narrative would establish the illusion of a society divided into three major classes: the ruling government class, endowed with benevolent powers to guide or punish; the majority class of hapless losers, whose survival depended on the government’s largesse and protection; and an unquantifiable class of demonized mysterious enemies of the government and, by extension, of the people, who would be the perceived culprits of all failures, hardships, and misery of the little guys’ everyday existence.

The majority class would itself be divided into an assortment of narrow-interest groups, held together only by the glue of government’s redistributive, pacifying and equalizing powers, as well as by their shared hostility towards the designated “enemies.”

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Flashback: Palin Predicts Obama Admin. Using Health Care to Curb Second Amendment Rights (+video)

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On August 1, 2009–just seven months into President Barack Obama’s first term–former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin predicted Obama would attempt to leverage health care to “take away” the Second Amendment rights of Americans.

In a speech to National Rifle Association members in Anchorage, Alaska, Palin said Americans should be “wary” of this “tie-in” because Obama would attempt to “take away our rights under the guise of some new health care plan”:

“And by the way, [with] health care being so big in D.C. right now, be wary when some kind of tie-in occurs. Because it will crop up: a tie-in with guns in an attempt to take away our rights under the guise of some new health care plan. You know that this is coming–that the two issues will somehow crop up and they’ll be tied together. So we have to be very wary of that.”

On Wednesday–more than three years after Palin’s warning–Obama did exactly what the former governor forecasted.

During a press conference wherein he issued 23 executive actions regarding guns and unveiled his gun control proposals, including a ban on so-called assault weapons, Obama said “doctors and other health care providers also need to be able to ask about firearms in their patients’ homes and safe storage of those firearms, especially if their patients show signs of certain mental illnesses or if they have a young child or mentally ill family member at home.”

See video below:

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Video: Islamists Protest French Military Intervention in Mali, Call for Shariah, Jihad in Europe and World

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The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) posted unbelievable video Sunday of Islamists rallying in England a little over one week ago to protest the French intervention in Mali.

The chants of the Islamists, though, appear to target the West in its entirety. Far from objecting to French foreign policy, the speakers repeatedly threaten that an Islamic caliphate will begin in Africa and the Middle East, but will eventually spread to “the whole world.”

“We will not stop as Muslims until the whole world is governed by Islam,” one man says evenly and calmly.

The video begins with a bearded individual leading chants, saying things like “Shariah for Mali! Jihad for Mali!” and “Allah Akbar!”

Watch shocking video:

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Obama’s ATF Nominee on DOJ’s ‘Fast and Furious’ Design Team

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As part of President Barack Obama’s 23-point gun control plan, he nominated Minnesota U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones–who currently doubles right now as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives–to be the ATF director.

Jones was personally a part of the high-ranking Department of Justice unit that first met on October 26, 2009, to create the new DOJ policy that was used to justify “gunwalking” in Operation Fast and Furious. In Fast and Furious, the ATF “walked” roughly 2,000 firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. That means through straw purchasers the agency allowed sales to happen and didn’t stop the guns from being trafficked, even though they had the legal authority to do so and were fully capable of doing so.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens–estimates put it around at least 300–were killed with these firearms.

Obama nominated Jones after he said in his gun control plan that the “ATF has not had a confirmed director for six years. There is no excuse for leaving the key agency enforcing gun laws in America without a leader. It is time for Congress to confirm an ATF director.”

According to a congressional report from House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley, Jones was one of several senior DOJ officials in the meeting. Before the meeting, then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden disseminated a strategy that became the new law enforcement platform on which gunwalking was based.

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Algeria Hostage Crisis Death Toll Hits 80, Could Rise Further

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Algerian troops found 25 bodies of hostages at a bomb-littered gas plant deep in the Sahara desert on Sunday, a day after ending a four-day siege, a security source said, raising the death toll of militants and their captives to at least 80.

Around 30 foreigners – including American, British, French, Japanese, Norwegian and Romanian citizens – are among those missing or confirmed dead after the siege, one of the worst international hostage crises in decades.

Algeria had given a preliminary death toll of 55 people killed – 23 hostages and 32 militants – on Saturday and said it would rise as more bodies were found.

The security source said that toll did not include the 25 bodies found on Sunday, which meant the total number of hostages killed – foreign and local – was at least 48. The search was not over, and more could yet be found, he said.

He also said six militants were captured alive, including two found hiding on Sunday. Troops were still searching for others. Earlier, the authorities had said all the fighters had been killed.

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