Here’s the Shocking Reason Duke Reversed its “Muslim Call to Prayer” Decision

/36 Comments/in , /by

[Editor’s note: Everyone thought initially that it was public outrage that motivated Duke in its cancellation of the Muslim prayers. Instead, the article below suggests that Duke cancelled the prayers over the university’s concern about protecting Muslims. Yes, you read that right. And who did Duke think the Muslims needed protection from? From those who were “vitriolic” in their opposition to the call to prayer. The article follows.]

In the face of mounting controversy, Duke University reversed itself Thursday afternoon and announced it will not allow a Muslim call to prayer from its iconic chapel Friday . . .

“What began as something that was meant to be unifying was turning into something that was the opposite,” said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations. “It was clear we needed to reconsider.”

A Duke administrator had earlier touted the move as a way to promote religious inclusiveness at the school. But the university received hundreds of calls and emails, “many of which were quite vitriolic,” Schoenfeld said. “The level of vitriol in the responses was unlike any other controversy we have seen here in quite some time.”

There also were security concerns, Schoenfeld added.

Muslim community members will instead gather on the quadrangle outside the chapel and do the call to prayer, called the “adhan,” before moving to their regular location in the chapel basement for prayers. They have met there for the past several years. (Read more about the shocking reason Duke University reversed their decision HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Woman Can’t Forget the Cries of Baby During Live-Birth Abortion

/12 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Life News Members of Congress next week have an opportunity to right a travesty of injustice. Every day in the United States, babies are silently screaming in late-term abortions that deprive them of their right to life.

As Congressman Trent Franks told LifeNews.com recently, “More than 18,000 ‘very late term’ abortions are performed every year on perfectly healthy unborn babies in America. These are innocent and defenseless children who can not only feel pain, but who can survive outside of the womb in most cases, and who are torturously killed without even basic anesthesia.”

“Many of them cry and scream as they die, but because it is amniotic fluid going over their vocal cords instead of air, we don’t hear them,” he said.

A former employee at the abortion clinic Kermit Gosnell ran in Philadelphia described how she heard a baby scream during a live-birth abortion. Abortion clinic employee Sherry West described an incident which “really freaked (her) out” and related to the jury how she heard a child scream who was born alive following an abortion. (Read more about her experience during the live-birth abortion HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Feds Spend Hundreds of Thousands to Teach Doctors How to Talk to ‘Fat Kids’

/3 Comments/in , /by

A new project from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is using computer simulated training sessions to teach doctors in Minnesota how to talk to fat kids.

The nearly $500,000 study using “virtual role play” to coach doctors is the latest attempt by the federal government to combat obesity.

“Obesity in the United States is at historically high levels and is an important health problem,” the grant for the project states. “Interventions targeting children are a high priority because children bear the greatest lifetime health risk from overweight and obesity.”

“Health professionals in primary care settings are influential in the lives of families,” it continued. “Even brief advice delivered well can have a meaningful impact, and yet, health care providers indicate that lack of efficacy and skill, impact, patient motivation, and educational materials keep them from routinely addressing obesity prevention and treatment in their practices.”

The grant was awarded to SiMmersion, LLC, a communications training company that simulates conversations with virtual actors. In one example video a law enforcement officer interviews a neighbor of a man who “may be dealing drugs out of his house.” “On-screen assistants,” smaller computer animated people, give two thumbs up when the conversation is going well. (Read more on what the feds spend their money on HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Obamacare Exchanges Have Decreased Competition Among Insurers

/3 Comments/in , /by

By Alyene Senger. Unsurprisingly, Obamacare has made yet another problem worse—creating a government exchange that is less competitive than the prior individual market.

In 2009, when President Obama was trying to sell his health care reform ideas to Congress, he promised a competitive marketplace, where costs would decrease and quality would increase. He said:

We’ll…[create] a new insurance exchange — a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage.

But thus far, much like his other promises, this one falls flat on all fronts. (Read more on what the Obamacare exchanges have done HERE)

_______________________________________________

Top Obamacare Official Steps Down

By Sarah Ferris. Tavenner is leaving after five turbulent years overseeing the agency. Her tenure included the disastrous rollout of the government’s HealthCare.gov website as well as, most recently, an inflated tally of total ObamaCare enrollment.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee last month grilled Tavenner about the miscount, which had helped push the first-year enrollment total for ObamaCare past 7 million — a milestone that was celebrated by the administration at the time.

Tavenner said some figures were “inadvertently” double-counted, an explanation that was greeted with deep skepticism from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), whose staff identified the error.

“Tavenner had to go,” Issa wrote Friday in a statement provided first to The Hill.

“She presided over HHS as it deceptively padded the Obamacare enrollment numbers. It was a deplorable example of an agency trying to scam the American people. They weren’t successful this time because of Congressional oversight. We deserve better.” (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Republicans Must Continue to Break the Status Quo

/3 Comments/in , /by

If the past is prologue, the future of the new Republican majority may be short-lived. The GOP’s rapid return to minority status need not be, but it must learn the lessons of its past.

The numbers speak for themselves. Over the last century, the Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress 56 years to the Republicans 26. Overall, the Democrats have held at least one chamber of Congress for 74 of the past 100 years.

Looking back over the history of the Republican Party, the shining moments (and longest times in leadership) have come when it boldly took up the banner of reform rather than holding up the white flag of resignation to the status quo. During these times, the GOP faced and addressed the nation’s challenges so directly and correctly that the American people rewarded it with the opportunity to lead for years, and even decades, at a time.

Formed in 1850s, the Republican Party took on the issue of slavery, when the other two parties of the day—Democrats and Whigs—would not. The GOP succeeded not only in its initial goal of blocking the growth of slavery, but went on to preside over its ultimate demise within a little over a decade of the Party’s genesis. The majority of Americans responded to this leadership by granting Republicans control of Congress (and the Presidency with two exceptions) for the rest of the 1800s and into the early 1900s.

After losing its way briefly during the 1910s, the Republican Party grabbed on to the reform banner once again and regained control of Congress in 1919. The GOP proceeded to pass the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote, and implemented policies to get the post World War I recession bound economy moving again. They cut taxes to a top rate of 25 percent and slashed the war-fattened federal budget in half. The economy roared back creating one of the greatest periods of expansion in American history with unemployment dropping from nearly 12 percent to essentially full employment. The federal government ran surpluses throughout the 1920s, and the Republicans stayed at the helm of leadership for its longest run in the past 100 years.

By the end of the decade, poor lending policies and rampant over-speculation in the stock market precipitated the crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression. The GOP response, unlike a decade before, was to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans (from 25 to 63 percent) and grow the size of the federal budget by over 40 percent.

The Democrats retook control of Congress and the Presidency in the elections of 1931 and ’33. They can always do big government better: i.e. promise, tax and spend more. FDR and the new Congress launched the New Deal with predictable results. Over a six-year period, the National Debt doubled while unemployment remained at a stubborn 17 percent.

The Republicans offered very little by way of an alternative vision for nearly 50 years. Then came Ronald Reagan. With unemployment, inflation and interest rates all in double-digits and the economy stagnant in the early 80s, he turned the orthodoxy of decades on its head pronouncing, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem.” His prescription: 1) Cut taxes back to nearly 1920s levels, 2) Get rid of burdensome regulations, 3) Limit the growth of federal spending.

Reagan’s long coattails carried the GOP to control of the Senate for the first time since the 1950s and brought enough new members into the House that the Reagan Revolution could go forward. The economy soared to unprecedented heights growing an entire third larger, while creating 17 million new jobs, doubling tax revenue to the Treasury, and dropping the unemployment rate to five percent.

What the Reagan Revolution began in the 1980s, the Republican Revolution carried forward in the 90s. Keeping promises made in theContract with America, the GOP passed tax cuts for working families and those who invested in the economy, welfare reform (establishing a work requirement) and limited the growth of federal spending to its lowest levels since World War II. The economy soared to even greater heights, with unemployment dropping to under 4 percent, while the federal government ran consecutive surpluses for the first time since the 1950s. The American people rewarded the GOP with control of Congress from the latter half of 90s and into the early 2000’s.

By the 2000s, the Republican Party had gone Washington. It is true the GOP enacted pro-growth tax cuts (and revenues rose to record levels), but it also increased spending more than any Congress since the 1970s. Only half of the nearly 100 percent increase in discretionary spending related to defense/security. Overall federal spending went from approximately $2 trillion in 2001 to $3 trillion per year by 2009.

Once again if the name of the game is big government, the Democrats can always do it better and took back control of Congress and the Presidency in the elections of ’06 and ’08 and gave us $1 trillion+ deficits and ObamaCare.

A majority of the American electorate have now rejected big government and given the GOP control of the Senate and the largest majority in the House since the 1920s. All eyes are now on the Republican Party. The challenges our nation faces require a bold, reform agenda: 1) Deficits still hover at a half a trillion dollars; 2) Federal entitlements in their current configuration will bankrupt the nation; 3) ObamaCare is causing inestimable harm to the nation’s healthcare system; 4) A complex tax regime pegs the United States at the highest corporate taxes in the world; and 5) Real unemployment is still in double-digits.

Will the Republican Party take up the banner of reformation and boldly face the issues of the day or wave the white flag of resignation to the status quo? The answer to this question offers the best glimpse into how long the American people will give it the privilege to lead.

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

American Morality Takes Another Hit: What Once was Called “Incest” is Now Termed “GSA”

/13 Comments/in , /by

Unbelievably, marriage equality advocates are once again attempting to change the language to make once-forbidden and immoral practices culturally accepted.

One such group is “Full Marriage Equality.” This organization is “Advocating for the right of consenting adults to share and enjoy love, sex, residence, and marriage without limits on the gender, number, or relation of participants. Full marriage equality is a basic human right.” It claims that

If you’ve met a genetic relative for the first time, or after being separated since at least one of you was a child, and you have experienced a strong attraction to that person that includes physical or sexual attraction or has resulted in sexual affection or arousal, you are likely experiencing Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA).

GSA is real and is a common, normal response to the circumstances involved. GSA is not an indication that anything is wrong with you or the other person. It is not wrong to have these feelings.

At the rate of our culture’s moral implosion, there’s little doubt that within the next few weeks we’ll be reading other columns attempting to normalize bestiality and pedophilia.

Oh, wait. That’s already happened.

_____________________________________________

[Editor’s note: The following excerpt from New York Mag is presented as an example of the efforts to normalize incestuous behavior.]

What It’s Like to Date Your Dad

By Alexa Tsoulis-Reay. In the late ’80s, the founder of a support group for adopted children who had recently reconnected with their biological relatives coined the term “Genetic Sexual Attraction” (GSA) to describe the intense romantic and sexual feelings that she observed occurring in many of these reunions. According to an article in The Guardian, experts estimate that these taboo feelings occur in about 50 percent of cases where estranged relatives are reunited as adults (GSA’s discoverer had herself become attracted to the son she’d adopted out when she met him 26 years later, but her feelings were not reciprocated).

Though the research is scarce, those who have studied GSA offer a range of possible explanations for it, including a primordial feeling of always having “belonged” to the estranged relative, a sense of wanting to experience the bonding missed out on during childhood, or simply an overwhelming closeness based on similarities: like meeting a mate who was designed for you in a science lab. Perhaps GSA accounts for Kevin Gates’s attraction to his first cousin.

Consensual incest between fathers and their daughters remains the least reported and perhaps the most taboo sort of GSA relationship. Keith Pullman, who runs a marriage equality blog, has personally talked to over 20 GSA couples and notes that he’s only had a few father-daughter couples speak out, speculating that many of them fear that others will assume the daughter must have been abused in childhood (it should be said that when these unions lead to children, those children can face potentially serious difficulties as a result of the genetic implications of incest, even if some online communities downplay these risks). (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

ISIS Executions Becoming Even More Brutal

/2 Comments/in , /by

By Tom Wyke. Two men were hurled from the top of a tower block, two more were crucified in front of a baying crowd and a woman was stoned to death in the latest series of horrific executions by ISIS.

The men were thrown from the roof down to the crowd below in the brutal punishment for being gay.

Charges found against the accused were announced by a masked Islamic State fighter, using a small handheld radio. Reading from a list, he declares the men are guilty of engaging in homosexual activities and should be punished by death, in accordance with Islamic State’s radical interpretation of Sharia law.

They had been tied up and transported in the back of a white pickup truck to the public execution sight in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

Both prisoners are shown wearing casual clothing rather than the standard orange jumpsuit, commonly worn by many Islamic State prisoners in recent many high profile execution videos. (Read more about the ISIS executions HERE)

______________________________________________

Fight the Terrorists Before They Reach the West

By Matthew Continetti. Argue about the limits of free speech, the definition of “true” Islam, whether terrorists are lunatics or rational, or the social and political repercussions of terrorism as much as you’d like. The truth is that such debates are irrelevant to the core security problem: There is a growing and energetic movement of radical Muslims dedicated to killing as many people as they can and imposing their will on the rest.

And there is really only one way America can respond to this challenge. We need to kill them first. We need to kill them on a field of battle whose contours are determined not by the terrorists but by us. We need to kill them over there—in the Middle East—before they reach the West.

I realize that for at least the next two years what I propose is wishful thinking. American policy has reverted to a defensive condition in which Islamic terrorists set the terms of conflict. We have been here before. Until 2001, the United States treated Islamic terrorism as a matter of law enforcement. When our embassies were raided or bombed, when our barracks were destroyed, when our soldiers and sailors were murdered, when our World Trade Center was attacked, when our destroyer was damaged, we treated the assailants as members of an Arabic-speaking mafia, as criminals to be apprehended, tried, and punished.

Didn’t work. The jihad grew. It even found a base in Afghanistan, where it could equip and train and plot. In 2001, in a single fall morning, the World Trade Center was destroyed, the Pentagon bludgeoned, and more than 3,000 innocent people were killed.

America rethought its approach to terrorism. No longer were the terrorists considered felons. They were now unlawful combatants. Surveillance, interrogation, and detention policies became more aggressive. We invaded Afghanistan, we toppled the Taliban, and we sent al Qaeda leadership into hiding. (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

First the IRS, Now the EPA Accused of Destroying Agency Communications

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Fox News By Judson Berger. The Environmental Protection Agency, on the heels of the controversy at the IRS over missing emails, is facing a probe of its own over whether it improperly scrubbed text messages.

The EPA inspector general’s office announced this week it is launching an audit into the agency’s policies for keeping text messages. The audit was prompted by a complaint from Republicans on the House science committee, worried the EPA may have “deleted thousands of text messages” that should have been preserved.

Jennifer Kaplan, spokeswoman for the EPA inspector general’s office, confirmed the complaint prompted the audit.

“Our auditors were persuaded that this is something that they needed to look into,” she told FoxNews.com.

The official IG notice said they would examine whether the EPA followed policies on preserving text messages, or whether they deleted or destroyed messages that should have been saved — and if so, whether anyone was disciplined.(Read more about “EPA Accused of Destroying Texts” HERE)

___________________________________________________

Louisiana Residents Fear EPA’S Plan to Burn Explosives Near Their Land

By Chris Butler. The Environmental Protection Agency has a plan in rural Webster Parish to burn 15 million pounds of propellant explosives, originally designed for military use, into the northern Louisiana atmosphere.

People exposed to it might develop cancer or blood pressure problems or even pass on birth defects to their children, experts warn.

Parish residents fear these toxins, which could rise two miles into the atmosphere depending on weather conditions, might eventually cover their entire corner of the state or spread into Texas or Arkansas.

Puzzlingly enough, officials with the Environmental Protection Agency, who otherwise won’t hesitate to force landowners to go through long, costly environmental impact statements, aren’t doing the same here.

Maybe it’s because this is one of the EPA’s own special projects. (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Mitt Romney: Still Wrong on Russia

/1 Comment/in , /by

In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney possessed no real foreign-policy experience. But that didn’t stop him from attacking President Barack Obama as weak on national security. With Osama bin Laden dead and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan poised to wind down, Romney looked elsewhere for a place where Obama was failing: Russia.

It all started in March 2012, when a hot mic caught Obama telling then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more “space” to negotiate on missile defense after the November presidential election in the United States. After news broke of this hush-hush assurance, Romney pounced, branding Russia “without question our number one geopolitical foe” in an interview and accusing Moscow of “fight[ing] every cause for the world’s worst actors.” When pressed, he claimed that Russia posed a greater threat than Iran, China, or North Korea. In an essay published on Foreign Policy‘s website the next day, Romney went so far as to say the president was “ingratiat[ing] himself with the Kremlin.” Few in the national security community took his accusations seriously. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” Obama joked during a debate several months later.

As he gears up for yet another presidential run, it’s clear to Romney that his 2012 position has been vindicated. Last March, he authored an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he argued that Obama has been a “failure” on Russia. That has become a rallying cry echoed by top foreign-policy voices in the GOP, including Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Sen. John McCain. Romney now says that Obama demonstrated “naiveté with regards to Russia” and that the president’s “faulty judgment” contributed to President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to use military force in Crimea.

Romney, though, wasn’t right then, and he isn’t right now. The Crimea invasion, as Obama has said, was the act of a cowed “regional power” — and a declining one at that. The days when Moscow could challenge the United States on a global scale are long gone. Russia is boxed in by sanctions and wracked by a collapsing economy, thanks in part to plummeting oil prices. Romney’s attempt to claim victory on all things Russia is misplaced, and it will certainly undermine his foreign-policy credibility if he chooses to run once again. (Read more about Romney being wrong on Russia HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

‘American Sniper’ Review: Patriotic Masterpiece About War on Terror

/3 Comments/in , /by

By John Nolte. In director Clint Eastwood’s best films (“Gran Torino,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “Unforgiven,” “The Outlaw Josey Wales”), the multiple Oscar-winner is able to make us feel both the righteousness of justified violence and the heavy emotional price paid by those committing it. “American Sniper,” which is undoubtedly Eastwood’s best picture since “Million Dollar Baby” (2004), and might just be his best since “Unforgiven” (1992), faithfully constructs and respectfully deconstructs “The Legend”: Chris Kyle, the deadliest sniper in the history of the U.S. Military.

“American Sniper” opens during the worst days of Fallujah in Iraq. Kyle (Bradley Cooper) is the eye in the sky watching his fellow warriors through a sniper scope and protecting them when necessary with the kind of precision shooting that will quickly make him a legend (and target).

Through a door, an Iraqi woman emerges with a boy who can’t be older than 10. They walk towards a group of Marines. She hands the boy a large grenade. Kyle has been told by his superiors that what happens next is his call.

Before Kyle can make what seems like an impossible choice (“I’ve never seen such evil,” Kyle says later), Eastwood and his screenwriter Jason Hall take us back in time with one of the best flashback sequences you’ll ever see. The economy is brilliant, and in just a few minutes we see what made Chris Kyle Chris Kyle: His Christian father’s strict but loving moral code, his days as a rodeo rider, his romance with Taya (a terrific Sienna Miller) — the woman who will become his faithful wife, and why two pre-9/11 terrorist attacks on American embassies led Kyle to become a Navy SEAL at the ripe old age of 30.

The rest of the story, which is every bit as compelling (this might be the best-paced film Eastwood has ever made), centers on Kyle’s harrowing four tours of duty and his troubled home life. This is a man deeply in love with his country (“I’d die for this country. America is the greatest country in the world.”) and his young family. He can only be truly faithful to one. “God, country, family,” are the man’s priorities. (Read more about the American Sniper review HERE)

_________________________________________________

‘American Sniper’ Set to Shatter Box Office Records

By Twitchy Staff. From The Hollywood Reporter:

Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper is smashing records at the North American box office, where it is doing huge business Friday for a projected four-day debut in the $55 million-$60 million range over the long Martin Luther King weekend, if not higher.

Take note, Hollywood: Americans admire our heroes. (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.