Kremlin Party Youth Protest Disallowed Goal in US-Russia Match

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsAfter a heated U.S.-Russia hockey match at the Sochi Olympics on Saturday, many Russian spectators have decided the cold war is back — and not just on the ice.

Demonstrators gathered in Moscow on Monday to protest a referee’s call disallowing a Russian goal in the match that Russia ultimately lost in a penalty shootout.

The protesters, organized by the Kremlin party’s youth group, donned Russian hockey jerseys and shouted, “Make soap out of the ref!” — a common expression among Russian soccer fans.

Wielding a banner with a photograph of the American referee, Brad Meier, the protesters used a cheese grater to grate soap into buckets.

The goal, which would have given Russia to a 3-2 lead with less than five minutes on the clock, was disallowed after officials ruled that the net had come loose from the ice before the goal was scored. Russian fans, who had leapt to their feet in celebration, howled with rage as the call was announced.

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After Calling for Shared Sacrifice During CA Trip to Survey Drought, Obama Plays Water-Guzzling Desert Golf Courses

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Photo Credit: Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty ImagesPresident Barack Obama traveled to California on Friday to highlight the state’s drought emergency at two events near Fresno, calling for shared sacrifice to help manage the state’s worst water shortage in decades. He then spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the hospitality of some of the state’s top water hogs: desert golf courses.

Vacationing with DVDs of his favorite television shows and multiple golf outings with his buddies, the duffer in chief played at two of the most exclusive courses in the Palm Springs area. On Saturday, Obama played at the Sunnylands estate, built by the late billionaire Walter Annenberg, which features a nine-hole course that is played like 18 holes. The following day he golfed at billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s 19-hole Porcupine Creek. On Presidents’ Day, Obama hit the links at Sunnylands once again.

The 124 golf courses in the Coachella Valley consume roughly 17% of all water there, and one-quarter of the water pumped out of the region’s at-risk groundwater aquifer, according to the Coachella Valley Water District. Statewide, roughly 1% of water goes to keep golf courses green. Each of the 124 Coachella Valley courses, on average, uses nearly 1 million gallons (3.8 million L) a day because of the hot and dry climate, three to four times more water per day than the average American golf course.

Of course, golf is a vital industry to the tourist paradise with streets named for Presidents and Hollywood stars, but the two courses Obama selected are among the most exclusive, seeing far fewer rounds per year than nearby courses. Sunnylands, owned by a trust, is not open to the public. Ellison’s course hosts charity events, but is also closed to the general public. Ellison himself has said he doesn’t golf.

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Survey: Faith-Driven Consumers Dissatisfied with ‘Noah,’ Hollywood Religious Pics

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Photo Credit: Variety The religious organization found in a survey that 98% of its supporters were not “satisfied” with Hollywood’s take on religious stories such as “Noah,” which focuses on Biblical figure Noah. Faith Driven Consumers has been tracking the viability of major Hollywood films courting faith-based audiences this year.

“As a Faith Driven Consumer, are you satisfied with a Biblically themed movie – designed to appeal to you – which replaces the Bible’s core message with one created by Hollywood?” asked the survey.

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UAW May Challenge Volkswagen Vote Results

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Photo Credit: Detroit Free PressUAW leaders on Friday said they will review all of their legal options and consider challenging the results of a devastating defeat in an election for union representation at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Workers at the German automakers plant voted against the UAW in a three-day election that ended Friday in a margin of 712-626.

UAW President Bob King sharply criticized Tennessee politicians who he said scared workers away from voting in favor of union representation. Going into the election, the UAW thought it had support from a majority of the more than 1,500 workers who had an opportunity to vote.

That support began to decline in recent days, mostly because of news conferences held by the state’s political leaders who warned that a vote in favor of the UAW would make the state less attractive to other manufacturers and could jeopardize Volkswagen’s plans to expand its factory there.

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Girl Scouts USA Threatens LifeNews After Reporting Its Link to Planned Parenthood

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Photo Credit: LifeNewsDuring the last two weeks, LifeNews has brought international attention to the link between the Girl Scouts and the Planned Parenthood abortion business and the national boycott of Girl Scouts cookies sponsored by pro-life groups.

The pro-life movement has been concerned for a number of years about the ties between the Girl Scouts and the Planned Parenthood abortion business. Although the Girl Scout organization maintains that it takes “no position” on the issue of abortion, parents, churches, and pro-life activists have long complained of the pro-abortion slant of the Girl Scouts’ resources, role models, and affiliations.

After a series of articles on the boycott and the Girl Scouts-Planned Parenthood link, that featured the Girl Scouts logo to identify the organization, Brian Crawford, an executive with Girl Scouts USA, wrote LifeNews a scathing letter attempting to intimidate us into stopping our reporting on their link and to no longer use their logo or image to identify them as we bring attention to their support for the nation’s biggest abortion business.

In his letter Crawford again denied any connection to Planned Parenthood and he complained about LifeNews.com “articles that outline alleged ties to Planned Parenthood,” saying “GSUSA has an obligation to protect the Girl Scout name.”

“Girl Scouts of the USA does not have a partnership or any relationship with Planned Parenthood and does not plan to initiate one,” he claimed.

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Explosive Device Found at Anchorage Airport Said to be for Avalanches

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Photo Credit: Wonderlane/flickrThe employer of a man whose carry-on bag was found to contain a small explosive device at the Anchorage airport said Monday he was carrying avalanche-control equipment.

The device triggered an hour-long shutdown of security screening at the airport Sunday afternoon.

A statement issued Monday by ConocoPhillips Alaska said the device was for avalanche control and there was no ill will intended.

Conoco spokeswoman Amy Burnett told The Anchorage Daily News (https://bit.ly/1eJKOuv ) she could not release any personal information about the passenger or say if he faces any criminal charges.

Shared Services, a co-venture between Conoco and BP, transports more than 20,000 employees and contract workers between Anchorage, Fairbanks and the North Slope every month, Burnett said.

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House Dems Plan To Use Rare Tactic to Try to Force Vote on Immigration, Minimum Wage

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House Democrats are vowing to try a rarely used tactic to force votes in the GOP-led chamber on the minimum wage and immigration reform, a strategy that will likely fail but might hurt Republicans with voters in this year’s elections.

The tactic is known as a “discharge petition.” It would require the minority party, in this case Democrats, to persuade roughly two dozen Republicans to defy their leadership and join Democrats in forcing a vote on setting the federal minimum wage at $10.10 an hour.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said fellow chamber Democrats will push the issue when Congress returns from its break Feb. 24.

The attempt to force a vote on a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws could occur in a few months.

Democrats think that a majority of Americans support both issues and that attempting to use the discharge petition will at least portray House Republicans as the obstacle to their success.

WSJ: What Would Lincoln Do?

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Photo Credit: Richard Strauss/SmithsonianAbraham Lincoln, whose birthday we mark this holiday weekend, had less leadership experience than almost any earlier president. George Washington and Andrew Jackson had been generals, several other presidents had been governors, and all the Southerners had owned plantations. They had run organizations and managed men. President Lincoln, by contrast, was a former state legislator, a one-term congressman and the senior partner of a two-man law firm; he kept his most important papers filed away in his hat.

And yet Lincoln filled the office of president so effectively that he regularly tops historians’ rankings of great presidents.

It helped, of course, that he was one of the greatest writers in the American canon—certainly the greatest ever to reach the White House (Jefferson at his best could be equally good, but his range was narrower). Leaving aside such extraordinary talents, which of Lincoln’s principles of action can guide his successors?

Cite precedent. Lincoln the lawyer was ever mindful of precedents, while Lincoln the unhappy son who never bonded with his hard-driving, un-bookish father was always looking for paternal surrogates. He found both precedents and men he could look up to in America’s founding fathers.

Lincoln’s mature career—from the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854 until his death in 1865—was, among other things, a long effort to show that his positions on the issue of slavery were those of the founders. (Lincoln wanted slavery contained and ultimately extinguished; so, he said, did they.) He hammered away at this theme in his Peoria speech in 1854, the three-hour-long oration that first laid out his ideas; he returned to it repeatedly in his 1858 debates with the Illinois Democrat Stephen Douglas ; and he spent half the Cooper Union Address, his New York City command performance in 1860, showing that “our fathers, who framed the government under which we live,” agreed with him. “As those fathers marked [slavery], let it be again marked,” he said, “as an evil not to be extended.”

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Freedom of the Press? FCC Plan to Place ‘Researchers’ in Newsrooms

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Photo Credit: victoriapeckhamFirst Amendment: The FCC has cooked up a plan to place “researchers” in U.S. newsrooms, supposedly to learn all about how editorial decisions are made. Any questions as to why the U.S. is falling in the free press rankings?

As if illegal seizures of Associated Press phone records and the shadowy tailing of the mother of a Fox News reporter weren’t menacing enough, the Obama administration is going out of its way to institute a new intrusive surveillance of the press, as if the press wasn’t supine enough.

Ajit Pai, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission, warned this week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that a plan to dispatch researchers into radio, television and even newspaper newsrooms called the “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs” is still going forward, despite the grave danger it presented to the First Amendment.

Pai warned that under the rationale of increasing minority representation in newsrooms, the FCC, which has the power to issue or not issue broadcasting licenses, would dispatch its “researchers” to newsrooms across America to seek their “voluntary” compliance about how news stories are decided, as well as “wade into office politics” looking for angry reporters whose story ideas were rejected as evidence of a shutout of minority views.

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Are Laws Made to Be Broken?

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Photo Credit: WNDNothing better depicted Obama’s illegal tampering with the clear words of ObamaCare — his announcement this week that he was delaying the employer mandate for medium-sized companies — than Michael Ramirez’ brilliant cartoon showing the law as a blank page in which Obama had continually changed its words and meaning.

Along similar lines, Charles Krauthammer observes:

But generally speaking you get past the next election by changing your policies, by announcing new initiatives, but not by wantonly changing the law lawlessly. This is stuff you do in a banana republic. It’s as if the law is simply a blackboard on which Obama writes any number he wants, any delay he wants, and any provision.

[snip]

Where in the Constitution is the president allowed to alter the law 27 times after it has been passed?”

[snip]

The win-at-all-cost mentality helped create a culture in which a partisan-line vote was deemed sufficient for passing transcendent legislation. It spurred advisers to develop a dishonest talking point — “If you like your health plan, you’ll be able to keep your health plan.” And political expediency led Obama to repeat the line, over and over and over again, when he knew, or should have known, it was false.

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