Millennials Have ‘Historically Low’ Levels Of Trust In Government

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A new poll surveying young Americans’ political attitudes released by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics Tuesday found millennials have less trust in government than ever before.

Harvard’s poll showed millennials, which the pollsters defined as peopled aged 18 to 29, have lost trust in a variety of different major public institutions including the President, the military, Congress, the Supreme Court, and the federal government as a whole. Of all the institutions tracked by the poll, the President and the military lost the most trust among young Americans with a seven point drop. Overall, the pollsters said the level of trust millennials have in “most American institutions tested in our survey” had dropped below even “last year’s historically low numbers.”

This chart created by the pollsters shows the steep declines in their “composite trust index,” which is the level of trust on average in six different public institutions; the President, the U.S. Military, the Supreme Court, the federal government, and the United Nations. The drop is dramatic:

composite trust chart

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NBA Suspends Clippers’ Owner Donald Sterling For Life, Imposes $2.5 Million Fine (+video)

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Photo Credit: Rondo Estrello / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Rondo Estrello / Creative Commons

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced Tuesday Clippers owner Donald Sterling will be suspended for life and fined $2.5 million following racist remarks he made in a recorded audio clip.

Silver spoke to the press at an 11 a.m. news conference from New York, stating he will “do everything in my power” to force the sale of the Clippers.

“The hateful opinions voiced by that man are those of Mr. Sterling. The views expressed by Mr. Sterling are deeply offensive and harmful. That they came from an NBA owner only heightens the damage and my personal outrage,” Silver said. “I am banning Mr. Sterling for life from any association with the Clippers association or the NBA. Mr. Sterling may not attend any NBA games or practices, he may not be present at any Clippers facility, and he may not participate in any business or decisions involving the team.”

Silver said a forensic expert confirmed an audio recording taken by Sterling’s mistress, V. Stiviano, was not altered. In the clip, which was released by TMZ on Saturday, Sterling tells Stiviano, who is of African-American and Mexican descent, not to broadcast her association with “black people” at Clipper’s games. The audio clip was released shortly after she posted a picture of herself with Lakers Hall of Famer Magic Johnson on Instagram, which has since been removed.

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Conservative Lawmaker Predicts Boehner Won’t Run for Speaker Again

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A House Republican who supported Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in 2013 is predicting Boehner won’t run for the job again and says he would be surprised if he could win reelection by the House.

“I don’t think John Boehner will be Speaker this time next year,” Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said in an interview. “But I think it’s because, in my judgment, he’s not going to run for reelection as Speaker, but if he does, I’ll be mildly surprised if he can get the 218 votes that the Constitution requires.”

Brooks, a conservative serving his second term, voted for Boehner on the floor of the House in January 2013, but he would not say if he would do so again in 2015.

His prediction came hours after Boehner used a private GOP meeting to walk back comments he made in Ohio last week that were seen as mocking his fellow Republicans for a lack of courage to pursue immigration reform.

“You only tease the ones you love,” Boehner told reporters, repeating a phrase he used inside the meeting. He acknowledged, however, that “sometimes I can rib people just a little too much.”

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Pro-Life Professor Wins Discrimination Lawsuit Against University of North Carolina

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Photo Credit: William Yeung / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: William Yeung / Creative Commons

By Ashley Herzog.

More than seven years after filing a lawsuit against the University of North Carolina-Wilmington for religious and political discrimination, pro-life professor Mike Adams won his case in March. He is now using his case to make people more aware of this type of bias, which is rampant on college campuses.

Back in 2006, Adams, an associate professor, applied for promotion to full professor. He had published more peer-reviewed articles than most of his colleagues and had won three teaching awards, including Faculty Member of the Year. But Adams was nonetheless denied a promotion, and UNCW refused to provide a written explanation.

Why? Adams believed that it was because he is also an evangelical Christian and a popular conservative author at Townhall.com. After years of litigation, a jury in a U.S. District Court agreed.

“They concluded that the University of North Carolina Wilmington retaliated against Dr. Adams by denying him a promotion in 2006 and they retaliated against him because they did not like the views he expressed in his books and columns and speeches,” Adams’s lawyer, Travis Barham, told a local news station. “Basically, they didn’t like what he said in his own time.”

Needless to say, Adams’s colleagues really didn’t like what he had to say about abortion. He’s well-known for attacking abortion in a mocking, satirical fashion – one that drives humorless leftists nuts.

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

Judge Sides With NAACP’s Attempt to Silence Black Pro-Lifer

By Steven Ertelt.

A judge has issued a ruling in the NAACP lawsuit against a black pro-life leader who exposed its pro-abortion views in an article appearing at LifeNews.com.

In February, the NAACP threatened to sue LifeNews.com and Ryan Bomberger, a LifeNews blogger , for a column that took the civil rights organization to task over its abortion position. The NAACP is upset about a column Bomberger wrote at LifeNews titled, “NAACP: National Association for the Abortion of Colored People,” which notes the organization’s 44th Annual Image Awards.

Following the piece, the NAACP sent Bomberger, the director of the Radiance Foundation, and LifeNews a threatening letter claiming infringement on its name and logo for including it in the opinion column. The letter accuses Bomberger (left) and his group, the Radiance Foundation, of “trademark infringement” over an ad campaign that exposes the NAACP’s pro-abortion position.

Stating that while “you are certainly entitled to express your viewpoint, you cannot do so in connection with a name that infringes on the NAACP’s rights,” the letter demands a response within a self-imposed time period.

In response to the letter, Bomberger asked a federal court to declare that the First Amendment protects his and the Radiance Foundation’s exercise of free speech and that his speech does not infringe on any of the NAACP’s trademarks or other rights. The lawsuit does not seek any damages.

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Rhetoric vs. Reality on Obamacare

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Photo Credit: AFP / Nicholas KAMM

Photo Credit: AFP / Nicholas KAMM

President Barack Obama once again came out swinging in defense of his signature healthcare law.

Countless times since the rollout, and again last week, he proclaimed that Obamacare is working, called on Democrats to defend it, and chastised conservatives for their opposition that he believes is entirely political. But people should look beyond Obama’s rhetoric and consider reality – Obamacare is bad medicine for America.

The president’s definition of success is a curious one. More than six million cancelled plans, lost doctors, and higher costs aside, Obama is in essence celebrating the expansion of the welfare state. In order to get more people insured, it was not necessary to raise taxes, restrict choice, drive the debt up to $27 trillion, and make millions more people dependent on the government.

But that is precisely what Obamacare is doing. And President Obama insists that it is working as he intended.

But even beyond the negative consequences on the nation’s well-being, claiming victory from a practical sense is a stretch, to say the least. Obama “spiked the football” as he touted seven million enrollees, but there is still no clear estimate of how many of those seven million were previously uninsured and have actually paid a premium signifying they are covered. The president’s vague claim that “a sizeable part of the U.S. population” is enjoying health insurance for the first time remains completely unquantifiable.

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WATCH: Cruz Calls on Kerry to Resign After ‘Apartheid’ Remark

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) demanded on the Senate floor Monday that Secretary of State John Kerry resign from his post following highly controversial remarks about the state of Israel.

Kerry came under fire from lawmakers and a variety of pro-Israel organizations after he told world leaders in a closed door meeting that Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state” if it fails to reach peace with the Palestinians.

Israel cut off peace talks late last week after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas formed a unity government with the terror group Hamas, which announced that it would not renounce violence or recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Cruz said in a speech on the Senate floor that Kerry should immediately offer his resignation to President Barack Obama.

“John Kerry should offer President Obama his resignation and the president should accept it,” Cruz said.

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Photo Credit: Brendan Smialowski / Reuters

Photo Credit: Brendan Smialowski / Reuters

Kerry Warns Israel Could Become ‘An Apartheid State’

By Josh Rogin.

If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,” Secretary of State John Kerry told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday.

Senior American officials have rarely, if ever, used the term “apartheid” in reference to Israel, and President Obama has previously rejected the idea that the word should apply to the Jewish state. Kerry’s use of the loaded term is already rankling Jewish leaders in America—and it could attract unwanted attention in Israel, as well.

It wasn’t the only controversial comment on the Middle East that Kerry made during his remarks to the Trilateral Commission, a recording of which was obtained by The Daily Beast. Kerry also repeated his warning that a failure of Middle East peace talks could lead to a resumption of Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens. He suggested that a change in either the Israeli or Palestinian leadership could make achieving a peace deal more feasible. He lashed out against Israeli settlement-building. And Kerry said that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders share the blame for the current impasse in the talks.

Kerry also said that at some point, he might unveil his own peace deal and tell both sides to “take it or leave it.”

“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens—or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” Kerry told the group of senior officials and experts from the U.S., Western Europe, Russia, and Japan. “Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two-state solution, which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to.”

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Doctor’s Declaration of Independence: Time to Defy Healthcare Mandates Issued by Bureaucrats…

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Photo Credit: Corbis

Photo Credit: Corbis

In my 23 years as a practicing physician, I’ve learned that the only thing that matters is the doctor-patient relationship. How we interact and treat our patients is the practice of medicine. I acknowledge that there is a problem with the rising cost of health care, but there is also a problem when the individual physician in the trenches does not have a voice in the debate and is being told what to do and how to do it.

As a group, the nearly 880,000 licensed physicians in the U.S. are, for the most part, well-intentioned. We strive to do our best even while we sometimes contend with unrealistic expectations. The demands are great, and many of our families pay a huge price for our not being around. We do the things we do because it is right and our patients expect us to.

So when do we say damn the mandates and requirements from bureaucrats who are not in the healing profession? When do we stand up and say we are not going to take it any more?

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services dictates that we must use an electronic health record (EHR) or be penalized with lower reimbursements in the future. There are “meaningful use” criteria whereby the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tells us as physicians what we need to include in the electronic health record or we will not be subsidized the cost of converting to the electronic system and we will be penalized by lower reimbursements. Across the country, doctors waste precious time filling in unnecessary electronic-record fields just to satisfy a regulatory measure. I personally spend two hours a day dictating and documenting electronic health records just so I can be paid and not face a government audit. Is that the best use of time for a highly trained surgical specialist?

This is not a unique complaint. A study commissioned by the American Medical Association last year and conducted by the RAND Corp. found that “Poor EHR usability, time-consuming data entry, interference with face-to-face patient care, inefficient and less fulfilling work content, inability to exchange health information between EHR products, and degradation of clinical documentation were prominent sources of professional dissatisfaction.”

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Judge OKs Decision to Sell Widow’s Home Over $6.30 Debt

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Photo Credit: Eric Allix Rogers

Photo Credit: Eric Allix Rogers

A widow was given ample notice before her $280,000 house was sold at a tax auction three years ago over $6.30 in unpaid interest, a Pennsylvania judge has ruled.

The decision last week turned down Eileen Battisti’s request to reverse the September 2011 sale of her home outside Aliquippa in western Pennsylvania.

“I paid everything, and didn’t know about the $6.30,” Battisti said. “For the house to be sold just because of $6.30 is crazy.”

Battisti, who still lives in the house, said Monday that she plans to appeal to Commonwealth Court. That court earlier ordered an evidentiary hearing, which led to last week’s ruling.

Beaver County Common Pleas Judge Gus Kwidis wrote that the county tax claim bureau complied with notification requirements in state law before the auction. She had previously owed other taxes, but at the time of the sale she owed just $235, including other interest and fees.

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BLS: In 20% of American Families, No One Works

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Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons photo

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons photo

In 20 percent of American families in 2013, according to new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), not one member of the family worked.

A family, as defined by the BLS, is a group of two or more people who live together and who are related by birth, adoption or marriage. In 2013, there were 80,445,000 families in the United States and in 16,127,000—or 20 percent–no one had a job.

The BLS designates a person as “employed” if “during the survey reference week” they “(a) did any work at all as paid employees; (b) worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm; (c) or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family.”

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Big Chill: Feds Want to Scour Net, Media for ‘Hate Speech’

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

If two Democratic lawmakers have their way, Barack Obama’s Justice Department will submit a report for action against any Internet sites, broadcast, cable television or radio shows determined to be advocating or encouraging “violent acts.”

This according to the text of a new bill from Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014 “would create an updated comprehensive report examining the role of the Internet and other telecommunications in encouraging hate crimes based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation and create recommendations to address such crimes,” stated a news release from Markey’s office.

The one-page bill, reviewed by WND, calls for the Justice Department and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to “analyze information on the use of telecommunications, including the Internet, broadcast television and radio, cable television, public access television, commercial mobile services, and other electronic media, to advocate and encourage violent acts and the commission of crimes of hate.”

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