Federal Judge: Mt. Soledad Cross Must Come Down, Unconstitutional

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Photo Credit: AP FILE

Photo Credit: AP FILE

A cross atop Mount Soledad in California is an unconstitutional religious display on government land and must come down, a federal judge in San Diego ruled late Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Larry Burns ordered the cross, which honors veterans, must be removed within 90 days — a decision that could result in the case being sent back to the U.S. Supreme Court. Burns immediately stayed his order pending an expected appeal.

The original lawsuit was filed in 2006 by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Jewish Veterans of the United States of American and several other Southern California residents.

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Michael Bargo Sentenced; Now Youngest Man on Florida Death Row (+video)

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Photo Credit: WFTV

Photo Credit: WFTV

An Ocala man is heading to death row for his part in the slaying of a 15-year-old boy.

During a 10-minute hearing on Friday, Circuit Judge David Eddy read 21-year-old Michael Bargo’s death sentence.

Bargo was the last of five defendants to be sentenced in the April 2011 murder of Seath Jackson in Summerfield, near Ocala.

“It is the judgment of the law and the sentence of the court for the premeditated murder of Seath Jackson, you Michael Shane Bargo are sentenced to death,” Eddy said.

Prosecutors said Jackson was lured to the home where he was beaten, shot and tortured before his body was burned in a backyard fire pit. The teen’s remains were then placed into three paint buckets and dumped into a limerock pit.

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True Unemployment Rate 11% or Higher in 49 of the Last 50 Months

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

The official unemployment rate has fallen to a five-year low of 7%. But put away the champagne.

That gradual decline reflects a historic drop in labor force participation. Without that drop, joblessness would be 11.3%, holding at 11% or higher in every month but one in the last 50 months.

To be considered unemployed, a person has to be out of work but actively looking. So when people give up the job hunt, they reduce unemployment — even if the number of people working hasn’t risen.

At the start of the recession in December 2007, the labor force participation rate was 66%. It fell sharply, tumbling to 62.8% in October, a 35-year low. It rose slightly to 63% last month.

The actual labor force has declined by 217,000 so far this year, even with nonfarm payrolls up by 2.1 million.

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North Carolina Democrat Warns Private School Vouchers Will Lead to Terrorist Kids

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

North Carolina’s superintendent of public instruction has warned that the state’s new voucher law could end up funding schools run by hardened terrorists who will churn out little terrorists hell-bent on the destruction of America.

June Atkinson made the comments while speaking at the state school board association’s public policy conference last week in Wilmington, reports local NBC affiliate WECT.

“With the voucher legislation that we have we could be in dangerous territory as far as taxpayers’ dollars going to private schools,” Atkinson told reporters.

The elected Democrat’s appears to be laboring under the belief that no state or federal laws prevent that sort of thing now. Only the limitation of not being flush with tax dollars precludes private schools from offering coursework in suicide bombing to North Carolina’s ready-to-be-radicalized grade schoolers.

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Eight Miles from Columbine, Gunman Opens Fire at Colorado High School Injuring Two Students Before Shooting Himself (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A shotgun-toting student who was targeting a teacher at a Colorado high school opened fire and injured two students this afternoon before shooting himself dead.

The gunman, who has not been identified by authorities, openly carried the firearm as he entered Arapahoe High School in Centennial just after 12.30pm on Friday and immediately demanded to know where the member of staff was, Sheriff Grayson Robinson said.

He opened fire and shot a female student in the area, the sheriff said. The girl, believed to be 15 or 16, was transported to Littleton Hospital where she is undergoing surgery.

As authorities swarmed the scene, about 20 minutes after the initial call, they found the gunman dead inside the school with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

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NYC Mayor de Blasio Walks Away From White House Meeting With Sweeping National Hopes for Progressivism

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Photo Credit: Politicker

Photo Credit: Politicker

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio went down to Washington, D.C. today to meet with President Barack Obama, emerging emboldened that a “progressive movement” was sweeping the nation.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, which included 15 other newly-elected mayors, Mr. de Blasio said it was clear to him that the fight against inequality–which formed the centerpiece of his campaign–was gaining steam far beyond the five boroughs.

“You can’t have a room full of mayors–literally every corner of the country–all spontaneously saying to the president of the United States the same exact things from their own experience: Something’s going on here … So what we have to do is organize it and amplify it,” he told Politicker.

“It was very interesting: a lot of them talked about pre-K, a lot of them talked about early childhood education as one of the breakthrough things we have to do to change the dynamics, a lot of them talked about their growing poverty levels and how it was undermining the future of their cities. So I think there was a really organic unity among all of us of the fact that this is the issue of our times. Fighting inequality is the mission of our times,” he said.

The meeting, organized by the White House, had been called “discuss the ways in which the Obama Administration can serve as an active partner on job creation and ensuring middle class families have a pathway to opportunity.” Speaking in the Roosevelt Room, Mr. Obama said he hoped to partner with the city leaders to help them achieve their goals.

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Last light: Incandescent Bulbs Become Illegal Jan. 1

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Photo Credit: AP PHOTO/ED ANDRIESKI

Photo Credit: AP PHOTO/ED ANDRIESKI

It’s lights out for the light bulb.

On Jan. 1 it will become illegal to manufacture or import traditional 60-watt and 40-watt incandescent bulbs, thanks to a 2007 bill that set strict minimum efficiency standards – and effectively outlawed the ordinary bulb.

And like a politician on Election Day, Home Depot is urging consumers to buy early and often.

“Get them while you still can,” the nation’s largest bulb retailer urges on its website. “Stock up on incandescent light bulbs before they are completely discontinued.”

That’s not quite correct. The 2007 law doesn’t mandate that manufacturers discontinue their bulbs, just that they improve them: 40W bulbs must draw just 10.5W, and 60W bulbs 11W. But the result is the same: Incandescents simply can’t keep up with those twisty compact fluorescent (CFL) and newer LED bulbs, and even retailers are buying in bulk as the calendar winds down.

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Breaking News: Man Arrested for Planned Suicide Bombing at Kansas Airport (UPDATED)

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Photo Credit: lumachrome

Photo Credit: lumachrome

By Tim Potter.

Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams says a 1 p.m. news conference Friday will address “a major situation for our city that was averted” through a collaborative investigation.

NBC News reported that federal officials arrested a man who planned to detonate a suicide bomb at Wichita’s Mid-Continent airport.

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Photo Credit: FBI

Photo Credit: FBI

‘Brother Bin Laden is a great inspiration to me’: Authorities thwart suicide bombing ‘by Islamic extremist flight technician who plotted to blow up Kansas airport’

By Louise Boyle and Associated Press.

An aviation technician with extremist Islamic views was charged on Friday after he planned to detonate a car bomb at a Kansas airport.

Terry Lee Loewen, 58, was arrested on Friday morning at Mid-Continent regional airport in Wichita, according to U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom, after being thwarted by an undercover FBI investigation.

Grissom said Loewen planned to drive a car that he believed was full of explosives into a terminal at the airport and trigger the device in a suicide mission.

Investigators say Loewen is an avionics technician who lives in Wichita and works at the airport.

Grissom said the 58-year-old spent months developing his plan of driving a car filled with explosives into the airport, triggering the bomb and killing himself.

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A Splash Or A Wave? A First Look At The 2014 U.S. Senate Races

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Photo Credit: The Federalist

Photo Credit: The Federalist

The GOP has been struggling to recapture the Senate majority for nearly a decade. Now, the sixth year itch, a plethora of vulnerable red-state Democrats, and Obamacare’s unpopularity appear to be forming a perfect storm – if the Republicans want it.

Six years ago, the Democrats were riding high: after winning the Senate back two years prior amidst scandals and the Iraq War, they improved their gains greatly, coming within a seat of a supermajority (which then-Republican Senator Arlen Specter happily granted just a few months later). This was accomplished with a mix of reasonably close overthrows of sitting Republicans (Sununu, Stevens, Coleman, and Smith), a wider rebuke of another (Dole), and picking up three seats vacated by retiring GOPers (Warner, Domenici, and Allard). Despite holding several seats in Republican territory, the popularity of incumbents Pryor, Landrieu, Baucus, Johnson and Rockefeller assured the Democrats that the Great Blue Wave would see no consolation prizes for the Republicans.

My, how things have changed.

Red State Democrats: an endangered species?

When the GOP flubbed the 2012 races in North Dakota, Missouri, Montana and Indiana, it seemed as if strong Democratic personalities still had a shot despite the growing unpopularity of the President in the red states. So long as the GOP picked either delusional or lackluster candidates, being a Democrat in a state that would break hard for Romney wasn’t necessarily a death sentence. One could hope for an Akin to rant about magical uteri, or a Berg to win their party’s nomination and, well, apparently forget to campaign.

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Thanks to Nuclear Option, Begich and Rest Of Senate Dems Confirm Radical Judge

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RTRN4F91-e1386873210394She’s the kind of nominee the Democrats went nuclear for. Cornelia “Nina” Pillard was confirmed by a 51-44 vote in the U.S. Senate in the middle of the night last night, as a judge on the powerful D.C. Circuit court. Prior to the nuclear option, she would have been (justifiably) filibustered and blocked.

Her views on a myriad of subjects are clearly outside the mainstream. Consider, for example, Pillard’s thoughts on abortion. This is from 2007: ”Casting reproductive rights in terms of equality holds promise to recenter the debate…away from the deceptive images of fetus-as-autonomous-being that the anti-choice movement has popularized…” (Bold mine.) (page 990)

This suggests a sort of anti-science view that is especially worrisome when found in someone who is supposed to put facts (and the law) ahead of political ideology. It’s a position that’s meant to serve her political theory, but flies in the face of science. Sonograms, of course, have changed the game. People put these pictures on their Facebook wall precisely because it’s very obviously their child. Nothing else quite captures her doctrinaire rigidity better than this statement.)

She went on to argue that limiting abortion “reinforces broader patterns of discrimination against women as a class of presumptive breeders…” (p.975) and that abortion rights “play a central role in freeing women from historically routine conscription into maternity.”…

The only good news for conservative? Vulnerable Democratic Senators like Mark Begich and Mary Landrieu are now on the record as supporting Pillard’s radical agenda. (And I guess the question over whether Bob Casey, Jr. was ever really pro-Life has been settled.)

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