Aerosmith’s Joe Perry Tweets ‘Freedom of Speech’ Defense of Duck Dynasty

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Joe Perry, lead guitarist for the rock band Aerosmith, which is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and who with front-man Steven Tyler is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, tweeted a defense of the Duck Dynasty controversy concerning anti-gay behavior saying, “More crackin’ down on Freedom of Speech in the US or what?”

In a follow-up tweet, Perry said, “Seems to me people have a right to express their opinions & religious beliefs. But that doesn’t mean we have to agree.”

Duck Dynasty, with about 12 million viewers per episode, is a reality-TV show on the A&E cable channel about a Christian family in Louisiana who built a mega-successful business making duck-calls for hunters. The head of the family, self-described Bible-thumpin’ Phil Robertson, was suspended indefinitely from the program on Dec. 18 by A&E because of comments he made in the latest GQ magazine explaining why he thinks homosexual behavior is unnatural and sinful.

A&E’s actions and Robertson’s comments sparked nationwide news coverage and commentary, in part because Duck Dynasty is the highest-rated reality-TV show in cable history.

In a Dec. 22 tweet, Joe Perry sent a message to his 250,000-plus followers at 1:46 PM: “So what do you think about this Duck Dynasty hoopla? More crackin’ down on Freedom of Speech in the US or what?”

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Senator Urges UPS to Refund Customers Whose Christmas Packages Were Late

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A U.S. senator is calling on UPS to refund customers whose Christmas packages got caught up in widespread delays.

“In a very real sense, Christmas is on the line,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a written statement Thursday. “I call on UPS to do the right thing and provide refunds to people whose Christmases were a little less cheery as a result of their late deliveries.”

The senator said he recognizes the “tremendous work” that UPS, as well as the U.S. Postal Service and FedEx, put in this time of year. However, he said he was “disappointed” to learn so many people in his state and across the country were “left empty-handed” on Christmas.

Both UPS and FedEx were playing catch up Thursday after poor weather and overloaded systems delayed packages that were intended to be delivered in time for Christmas.

Neither company said how many packages were delayed but noted it was a small share of overall holiday shipments. But the problems appear to have affected many parts of the country.

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California Schools Prepare for Transgender Rights Law

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

With a law that spells out the rights of transgender students in grades K-12 set to take effect in California, school districts are reviewing locker room layouts, scheduling sensitivity training for coaches, assessing who will sleep where during overnight field trips and reconsidering senior portrait dress codes.

But administrators, counselors, teachers and school board members also are watching and waiting. The law, the nation’s first requiring public schools to let children use sex-segregated facilities and participate in the gender-specific activities of their choice, could end up suspended within days of its Jan. 1 launch if a referendum to repeal it qualifies for the November ballot.

To obtain a public vote on the law, passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, a coalition of conservative groups called Privacy for All Students has collected hundreds of thousands of signatures. Counties have until Jan. 8 to verify them through random spot-checking.

Depending on how many are found to be valid, the secretary of state will approve the referendum, determine that it failed or order a review of every signature.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen when kids come back from their holiday vacation,” said Republican state Sen. Steve Knight, who voted against the law. “Are there going to be 15-year-old girls talking in the bathroom and in walks a boy? What are they going to do? Scream? Run out?”

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Report: Islamists’ Slaughter of Syrian Christians Ignored by Obama, Major Media

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

The West has ignored the killing of Christians in Syria, a report said.

The Middle East Forum asserted that the United States and other NATO countries were overlooking reports of the killing of Christians by Islamist rebels. In a report, the forum cited the raid of Islamist units supported by the United States of the Christian town of Sadad in late October.

“One of the worst Christian massacres — complete with mass graves, tortured-to-death women and children, and destroyed churches — recently took place in Syria, at the hands of the U.S.-supported jihadi rebels; and

the U.S. government and its mainstream media mouthpiece are, as usual, silent — that is, when not actively trying to minimize matters,” the report said.

Author Raymond Ibrahim said the Islamist rebels held Sadad for more than a week and killed 45 Christians. The town’s 14 churches were said to have been destroyed in what could be seen in the videos released by the militias.

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Sharks Use Twitter to Warn Swimmers

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Sharks in Western Australia swimming close to popular beaches are using Twitter to send warning messages to surfers and swimmers.

The unique project means beach goers can make an informed decision about whether to go in the water knowing a shark is nearby.

Scientists have attached transmitters to more than 320 sharks, including great whites, which monitor their movements up and down the coast.

When a tagged shark swims within about a half mile of a beach, it triggers an alert which is picked up by computer. That computer then instantly turns the shark’s signal into a short message on Surf Life Saving Western Australia’s (SLSWA) Twitter feed.

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IRS Proposing New Regulations That Would Silence Obama’s Critics

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service was caught this year targeting conservative groups with harassment that included invasive probes into the content of prayers and unwarranted delays.

That issue is being worked out in court. But the IRS, nevertheless, remains on the attack, proposing new regulations that would silence the president’s critics.

Mathew Staver, founder and chief counsel of Liberty Counsel, said that after “being caught intentionally targeting conservative groups in the prior two elections, now the president wants his IRS to totally silence the voices of his political adversaries.”

New rules proposed in the Federal Register, Staver said, are “designed to silence and greatly restrict the activities of Liberty Counsel Action and other 501 (c) 4 nonprofit organizations during the upcoming election year.”

The rules were announced quietly in late November. They haven’t received much attention, Staver said, yet because the news cycle has been occupied by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to change Senate rules to let Democrats approve radical judicial and administrative appointments and the reaction to “Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson’s comments about homosexuality.

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Patchwork of ObamaCare Insurance Deadlines Adds to Confusion

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

So you’ve signed up for health care on the ObamaCare exchanges. Think you’re covered? Not quite.

As with any insurance plan, new enrollees still have to pay their first month’s premium to lock in coverage. But the deadlines for that task are different all over the country, adding to the confusion over an already-perplexing sign-up process.

“It makes an already kind of chaotic situation even more chaotic,” Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers said.

The deadlines in the ObamaCare enrollment process have been a moving target. For those seeking coverage for the start of the new year, the deadline to sign up was originally Dec. 15. Then it was moved to Dec. 23, and then again to Dec. 24. Even after that deadline passed Tuesday night, the administration announced that those who ran into technical problems on HealthCare.gov could still seek an exemption and get covered by Jan. 1.

Then comes the next set of deadlines. After appeals from the Obama administration, major health insurers announced earlier this month that they would give people until Jan. 10 — as opposed to Dec. 31 — to pay their first month’s premium and have coverage effective Jan. 1.

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Comparison with Orwell’s ‘1984’: Edward Snowden’s Christmas Message (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

What do Pope Francis, German President Joachim Gauck and the American “whistleblower” Edward Snowden have in common? This year all three of them have broadcast a Christmas message in which they reflect on their own actions and those of their fellow human beings. Pope Francis did so in the Christmas Eve Mass in the Vatican, Joachim Gauck on German television, and Snowden’s forum is the British television broadcaster Channel 4.

For the past 20 years, Channel 4 has broadcast an “alternative” Christmas message as part of its program. It’s always an unusual speech by people from whom one would not necessarily expect a Christmas message, such as the then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2008.

Comparison with Orwell’s ‘1984’

Snowden’s television address was his first appearance in several months. The pre-recorded video was broadcast on Wednesday (25.12.2013) at 5.15 p.m. UK time. In it, Snowden warned viewers about the risks inherent in the way we use modern technology.

“A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all,” he said. “They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem, because privacy matters.” He reminded us that, this year, we learned that governments had introduced a system of mass surveillance that watches everything we do.

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New Study: Health Insurance Shoppers are Terrible at Choosing Cost-Effective Plans

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Health insurance shoppers do a terrible job of picking the plan that will serve them best, according to a new study.

The study presented subjects with health insurance websites that mirror the exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act and asked them to pick a plan. The results were not pretty: Left to their own devices, consumers who selected their own plans ended up only slightly better off than they would have had their plans been assigned randomly.

When given four options, the consumers chose the most cost-effective plan only 42 percent of the time. When given eight options, the success rate plummeted to 21 percent—a rate indistinguishable from random assignments.

The researchers then repeated the study, but this time with added “cost calculators” on the mock website aimed at helping consumers. Even then, shoppers picked the most cost-effective option only 47 percent of the time, typically choosing plans that would cost them an extra $364.

In a final iteration, researchers offered the shopping choices to M.B.A. students enrolled in a consumer finance class. In this pool—where more than half of the subjects came from consulting or financial-services related fields—consumers made the most cost-effective choice 73 percent of the time, and the average mistake dropped to $126.

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Even Mother Jones Blasts Obama Economy

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

That the U.S. is going through the worst economic downturn and longest unemployment crisis in generations is news to almost no one.

That a left-leaning longtime advocate for Barack Obama’s socialist policies would admit it is.

The blast at the Obama economy came this week from the far left Mother Jones, which said, “Not since the Great Depression has the United States experienced such massive and persistent long-term unemployment.”

The article, under a trio of bylines including Dave Gilson, Tasneem Raja and AJ Vicens, noted that while the Great Recession of 2007 “ended in Jun 2009,” the economy remains full of holes.

“In less than a week, emergency federal unemployment benefits for 1.3 million of these jobless Americans are set to run out. Proponents of ending the benefits argue that the economy is expanding and that the benefits prevent people from finding work,” the report explains.

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