Mom’s Tribute to Stranger Who Entertained Daughter with Autism on Plane Goes Viral (+video)

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kate-600Eric Kunkel might not really be 3-year-old Kate’s real Daddy, but for 2½ glorious hours on an airplane he generously assumed the child’s name for him.

Her fellow passenger’s act of kindness greatly touched Shanell Mouland, Kate’s mom, who was dreading the Jan. 5 flight home to Canada (by way of Philadelphia) after a weeklong family trip to Orlando.

Kate, who has autism and trouble sitting for long periods, can protest loudly when feeling uncomfortable, yet it appears both Mouland and Kate hit the jackpot when Kunkel sat down next to the little girl.

For some reason, Kate felt an immediate connection to the New Jersey businessman, reaching out to him and calling him “Daddy.” Kunkel happily played along, putting aside his work and entertaining little Kate for the duration of the flight.

His gracious attention to Mouland’s younger daughter prompted a three-hanky tribute to him on her blog, Go Team Kate, that has since gone viral.

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Birmingham, Alabama Abortion-Free for Now as Planned Parenthood Closes

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

Birmingham, Alabama is abortion free for now, as the sole abortion clinic there, run by Planned Parenthood, has temporarily closed. If it stays closed this is the second closure of an abortion clinic in 2014.

Local pro-life activist Fr. Terry Gensemer of CEC For Life tells LifeNews that sidewalk counselors report that the facility does not appear to have performed abortions since before Christmas. One counselor confirms that she has only seen a handful of patients show up in the past four weeks, none of which stayed long enough to have an abortion.

“But that’s just the start. On December 30th, after the facility was closed for several days, pro-lifers on the sidewalk witnessed the facility’s director being escorted from the building, followed by a repairman changing all of the locks. Three days later, a sign from Planned Parenthood Southeast (PPS) appeared stating that the facility would be closed until January 6th, 2014. After the 6th, sidewalk counselors say the facility did reopen, but only briefly,” Gensemer explained.

As of Tuesday, PPS posted yet another sign, now reading: “We apologize for the inconvenience, but this facility is temporarily closed.” The PPS website also removed the facility’s hours of operation schedule, as well as adding a note that reads: “Services at our Birmingham health center are temporarily slowed.”Gensemer hopes the closure will be permanent.

He told LifeNews, “This Planned Parenthood should have been closed long before today. It already has a lawsuit pending from a woman left infertile after the abortionist ignored her ectopic pregnancy and performed an abortion on her empty womb. Before that, the facility was caught in a round of scandal for allegedly covering up cases of statutory rape. For the sake of everyone this facility continues to harm, we are praying it remains closed.”

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Obama Acting Like Weak Power in Iran Negotiations

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Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Here’s a thought: If we’re starting negotiations to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program cowering in fear that Iran will walk away from the table, we’re probably not negotiating from a position of strength.

America’s interim deal with Iran went into effect over the weekend, giving the U.S. and other so-called world powers six months to negotiate a deal to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program. There is good reason to be skeptical that Iran would ever negotiate away its nuclear weapons program — which it denies even having — but given the Obama administration’s claim that sanctions brought Iran to the table, wouldn’t the prospect of more sanctions if a deal does not materialize provide even greater incentive for Iran to capitulate?

You would think so, but President Barack Obama is adamantly opposed to a Senate bill co-sponsored by Republican Sen. Mark Kirk and Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez that would impose further sanctions on Iran if the Islamic Republic doesn’t come to an acceptable agreement with the U.S. on its nuclear program. The bill, so far backed by 59 Senate Republicans and Democrats, has sent the Obama administration into a tizzy. The president has pledged to veto it. Administration officials say those who support it are essentially warmongers — in contrast, of course, to the president, who says he only wants to “give peace a chance.”

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UConn Rebukes Coach, says Jesus Doesn’t Belong in Football

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Photo Credit: beisbolct

Photo Credit: beisbolct

The president of the University of Connecticut publicly rebuked an assistant football coach for telling The Hartford Courant that “Jesus Christ should be in the center of our huddle.”

“Our employees cannot appear to endorse or advocate for a particular religion or spiritual philosophy as part of their work at the university, or in their interactions with our students” President Susan Herbst wrote in a letter to the newspaper. “This applies to work-related activity anywhere on or off campus, including on the football field.”

Ernest Jones, the team’s new director of player engagement, set off the religious firestorm last weekend after he explained how the coaching staff would encourage players to embrace their spiritual faith.

Jones, along with new head coach Mike Diaco, had previously worked at the University of Notre.

“Just because you come to the University of Connecticut doesn’t mean you won’t have the opportunity to pursue your faith,” Jones told the newspaper. “No, you’re going to be able to come here and love the God that you love. So we provide opportunities for them to grown spiritually in our community.”

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Video: Rand Paul on Diplomacy

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Photo Credit: National Interest

Photo Credit: National Interest

When I was about ten years old, I used to play chess with an old Ukrainian named Pete Karpenko. Captain Pete, as we called him, told us stories of fighting the Bolsheviks when he was fourteen years old. He and his family were little more than peasants but they resisted the idea of collective farming. He fought with the White Army against the Bolsheviks, and fled when the communists won. Fifty-five years later, he was still afraid to return to the Soviet Union. So, it’s easy to understand that around my house, we had little use for communists or their sympathizers.

Like many conservative middle-class families, our inclination was to resist anything to do with Red China. In that black and white world, you were either for us or against us. Trade with China was thought to be trade with the enemy. A funny thing happened, though, along the way. Many conservatives came to understand a larger truth. As trade began to blossom with China, many conservatives, myself included, came to admit that trade improves our economic well-being AND makes us less likely to fight. The success of trade with China made many conservatives rethink their view of the world.

People sometimes ask me what my worldview is. My response is that even if you’ve crisscrossed the globe, I’m not sure that the world doesn’t change by the time you return to the same spot twice. I really am a believer that foreign policy must be viewed by events as they present themselves, not as we wish them to be.

A few years ago, I read a review of John Gaddis’ biography of George Kennan. I laughed when I read that Dr. Gaddis promised Kennan not to publish it until after his death. And that twenty years later Gaddis’ students were jokingly wondering who might die first. I loved the book. To me, containment is not a dead letter. I look at the worldwide menace of radical jihad and I think we need a long-term vigilance like containment.

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Shot Show: Police Officers Explain Why Millennials Make Terrible Cops

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Police departments across the country are struggling with staffing shortages as a result of a weak economy, hiring freezes, furloughs, layoffs, and cutbacks to salaries, benefits, and retirement incentives.

According to Police Chief Magazine, “Such difficulties spurred 7,272 applications to the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Hiring Program, requesting $8.3 billion to support more than 39,000 sworn-officer positions. Altogether, both the supply of and demand for qualified officers are changing in a time of increasing attrition, expanding law enforcement responsibilities, and decreasing resources.” The problem is not new, either. The Anniston Star reported in December 2013:

Since the late 1990s the nation has seen a decrease in the number of people interested in becoming police officers. A 2006 article on police officer recruitment published in Police Chief Magazine said an estimated 80 percent of the nation’s 17,000 law enforcement agencies had positions they could not fill. A separate report, Hiring and Keeping Police Officers, published in 2004 by the National Institute of Justice said 20 percent of agencies experienced officer weakness as a result of recruitment and fiscal problems.

One particular question being discussed by the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) at the annual National Shooting Sports Foundation’s SHOT Show in Las Vegas this year is how local law enforcement can recruit and retain quality individuals to their departments’ SWAT teams. An NTOA seminar on this question was well attended by SWAT team officers from all over the country, from cities including Chicago, Santa Barbara, Washington D.C., and Palm Beach.

As baby-boomers in departments look toward retirement, issues surrounding differences among officers who grew up as Generation X-ers or Millennials appear to be surfacing. Veteran SWAT officers within the group of attendees say that too many new recruits look at SWAT as a “stepping stone” or “résumé builder” to other areas of law enforcement, so finding new recruits who are willing to stay on SWAT teams for the long haul is becoming more difficult.

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Google Announces Contact Lens Glucose Monitor

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Google has announced that it is testing a prototype for a contact lens that would help people with diabetes manage their disease.

In a press release distributed Thursday, the company said that the lens it is designing would measure glucose in tears continuously using a wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor. Google says that using the lenses would be a less invasive method of measuring glucose levels than finger-pricking.

It also claims that the more frequent testing would consequently reduce the risks associated with infrequent glucose testing such as kidney failure and blindness.

The contact lenses were developed during the past 18 months in the clandestine Google X lab that also came up with a driverless car, Google’s Web-surfing eyeglasses and Project Loon, a network of large balloons designed to beam the Internet to unwired places.

“We wondered if miniaturized electronics — think chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair — might be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater accuracy,” Google said in its press release.

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Tom Coburn to Step Down at End of 113th Congress

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Photo Credit: Medill DC

Photo Credit: Medill DC

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., plans to give up his Senate seat at the end of this Congress, he said in a statement Thursday night.

“Serving as Oklahoma’s senator has been, and continues to be, one of the great privileges and blessings of my life,” said Coburn, 65. “But after much prayer and consideration, I have decided that I will leave my Senate seat at the end of this Congress.”

Coburn, a licensed physician who formerly specialized in family medicine, obstetrics and allergy treatment, has been battling prostate cancer, and has previously suffered from colon cancer and melanoma. But he said he was stepping down to honor his pledge to serve no more than two terms in the Senate, though he will be stepping down two years before his term expires.

He was first elected to the House in 1994, where he served three terms, and later was elected to the Senate in 2004.

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The Church of Global Warming Hearts Communism

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Photo Credit: UK Guardian

Photo Credit: UK Guardian

Quick show of hands: who’s surprised to learn the global warming fanatics think communism is super-awesome?

Oh, I know what you’re thinking, People Who Have Your Hands Down. You’ve seen what communist countries look like. They’re absolute environmental disasters, horrifying wastelands of garbage and toxic pollution. You’re wondering how anyone could possibly review the history of communism and come to the conclusion that it’s a political philosophy that leads to wise stewardship of the planet.

You need to switch off your critical thinking skills, People Who Have Your Hands Down, and master the crucial global warming skill of ignoring evidence that contradicts your ideology. That’s what this scam has been all about since the beginning. Ignore 70 percent of the data, declare what remains “science,” and treat anyone who disagrees as the moral equivalent of a Holocaust denier. If you don’t actually look at communist China, whose capital is currently enveloped in a choking cloud of pollution that’s literally driving people off the streets, you can come to the ideologically motivated conclusion that they’re the best little global warming fighters on the whole planet.

That’s what the United Nations’ climate poobah just did, as related by Bloomberg News:

China, the top emitter of greenhouse gases, is also the country that’s “doing it right” when it comes to addressing global warming, the United Nations’ chief climate official said.

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Conservative Insurgents Strike Blow Against GOP Establishment

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Cold cash, together with control of institutions, is what makes the Establishment the Establishment. But in the current Republican civil war, the insurgents have secured their own money pipelines, and they control their own institutions – which means the GOP leadership and its allies in the business lobby have a hard fight in front of them.

The firing and hiring of conservative staffer Paul Teller makes it clear that the anti-establishment has built its own establishment.

Teller was a House staffer for more than a decade, and was longtime executive director of the conservative Republican Study Committee. The RSC always exerted a rightward pull on party leadership, but it is nonetheless a subsidiary of the party.

After the 2012 election, the Republican Establishment captured the RSC, in effect, by getting Congressman Steve Scalise elected chairman. Scalise is a conservative, but he is also a close ally of the party leadership – much more so than his predecessors Jim Jordan and Tom Price. Scalise immediately swept out most of the RSC staff.

Last month, Teller was accused of working with outside groups such as Heritage Action to whip RSC members – and Scalise showed Teller the door.

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