Boy Scouts Propose Admitting Homosexual Boys But Keeping Homosexual Adults Out

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Photo Credit: Reuters

The Boy Scouts of America on Friday proposed lifting a ban on gay scouts but maintaining a prohibition on gay adults from leading troops, a compromise that attempts to end a fight that has split the century-old American institution into bitter factions.

Reaction from scouting supporters ranged from outrage to limited approval. The biggest organization in scouts, the Mormon Church, said it was studying the proposal, leaving uncertain the outcome of a May vote by scout leaders that will set policy. Gay rights groups said continuing to bar gay adults was unacceptable, but they welcomed the change for youths.

“The general feeling is that this is a bad move,” which could precipitate a major crisis, A.J. Smith, president of the Association of Baptists for Scouting, wrote in a website post, attempting to summarize Baptists’ views. “This is about a concerted effort to bring down a cultural icon. We must brace ourselves for the long haul on this one.”

The scouts’ decision is a focal point of a heated gay rights debate in the United States, where polls show public opinion is fast moving toward greater acceptance and a core of social conservatives stridently oppose such change.

In the coming months, the Supreme Court will rule on whether to strike down parts of a federal law that defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. In 2011, the military repealed a ban on openly gay soldiers.

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Russia Promised to Assist US Even Before Discovering Bombings' Chechen Connection

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Photo Credit: Radio_TV_IBS_Liberty

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his country’s help with the investigation into Monday’s attack in Boston even before Friday’s revelation that the two suspects are Chechen.

News reports said the two suspects are brothers of Chechen origin, but have lived in the United States for several years after immigrating legally. The news comes at a time of high tensions between the United States and Russia, which is reeling from the Obama administration’s decision to publicly blacklist 18 Russian officials last week and continues to support President Bashar Assad in Syria.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in a firefight with police, is believed to have been born in Russia near Chechnya. His brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is still on the run and was born in Kyrgyzstan, much farther to the east near the border with China.

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Boston Bombing Marathon Suspect Dead, Another 'Armed and Dangerous,' both from Chechnya, Police Say (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

By ANTHONY CASTELLANO and LEE FERRAN. One suspect in this week’s deadly Boston Marathon bombing is dead while a second suspect is still at large and the subject of a massive overnight manhunt in Massachusetts, police said early this morning.

In a brief press conference, a local police official said the first suspect was killed after exchanging fire with police officers, during which multiple explosive devices were detonated. One officer was injured and is in critical condition. The man the FBI identified Thursday as Suspect 2 in photos released related to the Boston Marathon bombing investigation is on the loose and is armed and dangerous, police said. He is the target of an “active search by tactical teams.”

“We believe this is a terrorist, we believe this is a man that’s come here to kill people,” said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.

Police also released a new image of Suspect 2, which they said was taken from a local 7-11 in Cambridge, Mass., last night.

Watertown police have blocked off at least one town street and multiple police cars, ambulances and fire trucks are on the scene. Read more from this story HERE.

Boston Marathon bombing suspects are brothers of Chechen origin, say reports

The two suspects in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing have been identified as men from Chechnya.

Earlier today they killed a police officer at the MIT campus, injured a transit officer in a firefight and threw explosive devices at police during their getaway attempt in a long night of violence that left one of them dead and another still at large Friday, authorities said.

A law enforcement intelligence bulletin obtained by the AP identified the surviving bomb suspect as 19-year-old Dzhokhar A Tsarnaev of Cambridge, Massachussets.

Two law enforcement officials told AP that Tsarnaev and the other suspect, who was not immediately identified, had been living legally in the US for at least one year.

Authorities say the suspects threw explosives from the car as police followed it into Watertown. The suspects and police exchanged gunfire and one of the suspects was critically injured and later died. Read more from this story HERE.

Editor’s Note: Fox is reporting in its live broadcast this morning that both individuals are brothers from Russia near Chechnya, who have been living in the Boston area with their family of six for the past year. Fox also reports that the brothers are registered to vote and must “obviously” be citizens.

A Grim Day for a Small Town

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Photo Credit: Associated Press

By ANN ZIMMERMAN, SHELLY BANJO and NATHAN KOPPEL. This small town just off I-35, known in central Texas as a good place to pull off the highway for Czech pastries, spent Thursday coming to grips with a landscape of flattened homes and diminishing hopes that friends and neighbors will be found alive in the aftermath of a devastating explosion.

The blast Wednesday night at a fertilizer plant here has left more than a dozen dead, and 150 injured. It destroyed a school and 75 or so homes—damaging a sizable portion of a tightknit town of 2,800 with a Czech heritage that stretches back generations.

The majority of the dead are believed to be first responders, who had raced to the scene to try to tame a fire at the plant, not knowing the mammoth blast was coming. The explosion had the force of a 2.1 magnitude earthquake, seismologists said.

Law-enforcement officials are still sifting through the rubble in search of survivors, but none are expected, said Tommy Muska, the town’s mayor. Mr. Muska, who lost his own home on Wednesday, is a volunteer firefighter himself—as well as an insurance agent in town.

“Our town is definitely hurting,” he said. His office was flooded with insurance claims. Read more from this story HERE.

Crews seek survivors, bodies after Texas blast

By NOMAAN MERCHANT and JOHN L. MONE. Rescuers searched the smoking remnants of a Texas farm town Thursday for survivors of a thunderous fertilizer plant explosion, gingerly checking smashed houses and apartments for anyone still trapped in debris while the community awaited word on the number of dead.

Initial reports put the fatalities as high as 15, but later in the day, authorities backed away from any estimate and refused to elaborate. More than 160 people were hurt.

A breathtaking band of destruction extended for blocks around the West Fertilizer Co. in the small community of West. The blast shook the ground with the strength of a small earthquake and crumpled dozens of homes, an apartment complex, a school and a nursing home. Its dull boom could be heard dozens of miles away from the town about 20 miles north of Waco.

Waco police Sgt. William Patrick Swanton described ongoing search-and-rescue efforts as “tedious and time-consuming,” noting that crews had to shore up much of the wreckage before going in.

There was no indication the blast, which sent up a mushroom-shaped plume of smoke and left behind a crater, was anything other than an industrial accident, he said. Read more from this story HERE.

Gang of 8 Immigration Bill Would Provide $3k Incentive to Hire Immigrants Over Citizens

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Passage of the new bipartisan immigration reform bill could mean a $3,000 per year incentive for employers who choose a newly legal immigrant over a U.S. citizen.

The bill unveiled Wednesday says people who are granted provisional legal status will be treated the same as people “not lawfully present” under Obamacare guidelines, Investor’s Business Daily reports.

This means that provisionally legal immigrants will not be eligible for Obamacare tax credits or required to pay a tax penalty for failing to get health insurance – and employers won’t be fined for not providing them with affordable health coverage.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senator Cruz on Obama's Real 'Gun Control' Record

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

From yesterday’s Rush Limbaugh Show:

CRUZ: In 2010, roughly 48,000 felons and fugitives attempted to illegally purchase firearms. Out of those 48,000, the Obama Justice Department prosecuted only 44.

RUSH: Right.

CRUZ: Let me repeat those numbers because those numbers, in my opinion, are quite staggering. Out of 48,000 felons and fugitives who in a single year tried to illegally purchase firearms, the Justice Department prosecuted just 44 of them. In our judgment, that’s unacceptable.

RUSH: What Cruz is doing here is called push-back. He’s a freshman, won election. He’s Tea Party. He’s got a great future. People very much appreciate what Cruz is willing to stand up and say. But did you know the specifics here, the nut of what he said here? It proves the point. Forty-four prosecutions out of 48,000 felons and fugitives who tried to illegally purchase firearms. We’ve already got plenty of law. We only prosecuted 44 of ’em in 2010. Why? Because we don’t want to create the impression we have enough gun laws. In fact, let’s turn it around 180 degrees. The Democrats want the impression created we don’t have enough law.

So you have all of these fugitives, all of these felons committing these horrendous crimes, and we’re not pursuing and we’re not prosecuting ’em, and the reason, “We need more law, Mr. Limbaugh. We don’t have enough law to go after these people. The gun control laws are woefully inept, we need more.” That’s what they want everybody to conclude. Just like we don’t have the laws necessary to deal with immigration. Yes, we do. All we would have to do is enforce current law, and we could reform the immigration problem without anything new.

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Scam: Gang of Eight's Immigration Bill

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Photo Credit: Politico

[T]he part of the [Gang of Eight Immigration Bill] that dictates who owes taxes and how much they will have to pay raises several questions, the answers to which could mean millions of dollars in tax revenue and whether the government has a realistic shot at collecting taxes owed by undocumented workers.

“I think no one can go back and guess or surmise how much the unpaid taxes would be for the entire group,” said David Marzahl, the president and CEO of the Center for Economic Progress, a group that works on tax issues with low-income and immigrant groups.

Negotiators had to choose between a hard-line approach favored by Republicans, like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), that would have required immigrants and employers to painstakingly piece together a tax history so the government could collect what is owed and a less burdensome option of focusing on people who already have a past-due bill with the Internal Revenue Service.

They chose the milder approach and punted the details to the Treasury Department and IRS to hash out down the road.

“Getting back taxes is incredibly difficult, particularly when someone has paid into a fraudulent Social Security number,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a member of the gang, told POLITICO. “You might have a case where the government owes more back than it gets in. So I don’t know. We’ll leave that up to the IRS to figure how we do it.”

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Drone Battles over America a Possibility in the Future, Sen. Dianne Feinstein Says

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Photo Credit: AP

As the global drone boom unfolds in the next few years, one key lawmaker warns we could eventually see science-fiction style warfare in American skies.

“I can envision drone fights in the air, drones cracking into each other,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, during a Senate subcommittee hearing on the Federal Aviation Administration’s fiscal 2014 budget.

Although Mrs. Feinstein isn’t the only one with such concerns, FAA officials have on several occasions reassured the public that it would be illegal to operate an armed drone in U.S. airspace. It is illegal for civilians to arm the helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft they own or operate, though every military in the world already does this.

But with technology racing ahead, Mrs. Feinstein fears drone pilots could disregard the law and use the crafts to deliver weapons — and that the federal government will be ill-equipped to stop them.

“It doesn’t take much to put munitions on [a drone], once you’ve got the know-how,” she said.

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Feminist Mom Aghast at the Treatment her son Gets at College (From the Feminists)

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I am a feminist. I have marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women’s rights. Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act.

But that was before my son, a senior at a small liberal-arts college in New England, was charged—by an ex-girlfriend—with alleged acts of “nonconsensual sex” that supposedly occurred during the course of their relationship a few years earlier.

What followed was a nightmare—a fall through Alice’s looking-glass into a world that I could not possibly have believed existed, least of all behind the ivy-covered walls thought to protect an ostensible dedication to enlightenment and intellectual betterment.

It began with a text of desperation. “CALL ME. URGENT. NOW.”

That was how my son informed me that not only had charges been brought against him but that he was ordered to appear to answer these allegations in a matter of days. There was no preliminary inquiry on the part of anyone at the school into these accusations about behavior alleged to have taken place a few years earlier, no consideration of the possibility that jealousy or revenge might be motivating a spurned young ex-lover to lash out. Worst of all, my son would not be afforded a presumption of innocence.

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Postmodern Prudes

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Photo Credit: National Review

More than 500 people were murdered in Chicago last year. Yet Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel still found time to berate the fast-food franchise Chick-fil-A for not sharing “Chicago values” — apparently, because its founder does not approve of gay marriage.

Two states have legalized marijuana, with more to come. Yet social taboos against tobacco smoking make it nearly impossible to light up a cigarette in public places. Marijuana, like alcohol, causes far greater short-term impairment than does nicotine. But legal cigarette smoking is now seen as a corporate-sponsored, uncool, and dirty habit that leads to long-term health costs for society at large — in a way homegrown, hip, and mostly illegal pot smoking apparently does not.

Graphic language, nudity, and sex are now commonplace in movies and on cable television. At the same time, there is now almost no tolerance for casual and slangy banter in the media or the workplace. A boss who calls an employee “honey” might face accusations of fostering a hostile work environment, yet a television producer whose program shows an 18-year-old having sex does not. Many colleges offer courses on lurid themes from masturbation to prostitution, even as campus sexual-harassment suits over hurtful language are at an all-time high.

A federal judge in New York recently ruled that the so-called morning-after birth-control pill must be made available to all “women” regardless of age or parental consent, and without a prescription. The judge determined that it was unfair for those under 16 to be denied access to such emergency contraceptives. But if vast numbers of girls younger than 16 need after-sex options to prevent unwanted pregnancies, why isn’t there a flood of statutory-rape charges being lodged against older teenagers for having consensual relations with younger girls?

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