Measles Outbreak Spreads to Three More States; Should the Feds Force Childhood Vaccinations?

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Editor’s note: the measles outbreak is continuing to spread throughout the U.S. Many vaccination advocates are using this as an opportunity to attack parents who refuse vaccinations or decide to vaccinate on a different schedule than what some public health officials direct. On the left, activists are suggesting that vaccinations should be forcibly imposed on all children, notwithstanding any parental objections.

But some of these objections stem from legitimate religious objections. For example, Merck’s Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Chickenpox vaccine is produced from an aborted fetal cell line. The idea of injecting cells produced from murdered babies is deeply unsettling to some.

It is outrageous to suggest that parents should be forced to vaccinate their children using such products. But it is also outrageous that those advocating for mandated vaccination would ignore one of the major causes of the outbreaks of formerly-eradicated diseases in the United States: the third world, illegal alien.
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By Lenny Bernstein. The measles outbreak spread to three more states and Washington D.C. last week, affecting 19 additional people, according to an update posted Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The highly contagious disease is now in 18 jurisdictions, with 121 people affected. The vast majority of the cases are part of the large outbreak that began in Southern California Disney theme parks in late December, the health agency said . . .

Authorities have said the resurgence is mostly caused by the growing number of people who are declining to vaccinate their children for personal reasons, or delaying the vaccinations.

“This is a teachable moment for this country,” former U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman said at a conference Monday at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. “When we see a disease that was almost eliminated in the early 1980s now come back with a jolt all around this country, we have to ask ourselves what’s going on. (Read more about the measles outbreak HERE)

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Here’s How Obama is Defending His Choice to Not Meet With Netanyahu

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Photo Credit: The BlazeBy Fred Lucas. President Barack Obama said his refusal to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu two weeks before Israel’s elections isn’t personal — he wouldn’t meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel under the same circumstances, either.

“As much as I love Angela, if she was two weeks away from election, she probably would not have received an invitation to the White House, and I suspect she would not have asked for one,” Obama said at a joint news conference with the German leader Monday at the White House. “Some of this just has to do with how we do business. I think it is important for us to maintain these protocols because the U.S.-Israeli relationship is not about a particular party” . . .

“I don’t want to be coy. The prime minister and I have differences around Iran’s sanctions,” Obama said. “I have been very clear and Angela agrees with me and [British Prime Minister] David Cameron agrees with me and the others who are members of the negotiations agree that it does not make sense to sour the negotiations a month or two before they are about to be completed and we should play that out if we can get a deal, we should embrace it. If we cannot get a deal, we will have to make a set of decisions and, as I said to Congress, I will be the first one to work with them to apply even stronger measures against Iran.” (Read more about how Obama is defending his choice to not meet with Netanyahu HERE)

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Despite Recent Criticism, Netanyahu Still Determined to Address U.S. Congress on Iran’s Nuclear Program

By Barak Ravid. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he is determined to address the U.S. Congress on Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu rejected the criticism in the United States and Israel, saying that “while some are busy with protocol or politics, a bad deal with Iran is taking shape.”

Speaking at a Likud election event, Netanyahu added that, as prime minister, it is his duty to do everything in his power to prevent a dangerous deal with Iran. “From the day Israel was established to this day, there have been essential differences between Israel and the U.S., and relations remained sound – this will be the case this time as well,” he said.

“This is not a political issue or a party issue, neither here nor there. This is an existential issue, and I approach it with the fullest responsibility.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Boko Haram Attacks Again, Attacking Villages and Kidnapping 30

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By Associated Press. Residents say suspected Boko Haram fighters have kidnapped more than 30 people in northern Cameroon after attacking several towns.

Bouba Kaina, resident of where the first attacked took place, confirmed to The Associated Press on Monday that a bus was seized by the insurgents with 20 people aboard.

The bus was then driven toward the border with Nigeria, about 11 miles away . . .

Boko Haram fighters have escalated their attacks outside Nigeria, striking multiple times inside neighboring Cameroon and Niger in recent days. Neighboring countries are planning a military effort to subdue the group blamed for killing 10,000 people over the past year. (Read more about the Boko Haram attacks HERE)

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Nigeria Vows Not to Postpone Another Election, Despite Even More Boko Haram Threats

By Ola Awoniyi, with Aminu Abubakar in Kano. Nigeria insisted it will crush Boko Haram militants and avoid another election postponement, even as violence raged and the Islamists’ leader vowed to defeat a regional force hunting them.

National Security Advisor Sambo Dasuki’s comments came as Boko Haram launched another attack in neighbouring Niger and reports emerged of 20 people kidnapped in Cameroon, with 12 of them executed.

Niger’s parliament voted unanimously on Monday to send troops to join the regional fightback against the extremists, who have seized swathes of northern Nigeria in a conflict that has claimed more than 13,000 lives since 2009.

Dasuki, who at the weekend secured a six-week delay to Nigeria’s presidential elections, vowed that “all known Boko Haram camps will be taken out” by the time of the rescheduled vote. (Read more from this story HERE)

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HSBC Admits it Helped Wealthy Costumers Dodge Taxes

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Photo Credit: The Fiscal Times By Steve Slater and Joshua Franklin. British bank HSBC Holdings Plc admitted failings by its Swiss subsidiary in response to media reports it helped wealthy customers dodge taxes and conceal millions of dollars of assets.

“We acknowledge and are accountable for past compliance and control failures,” HSBC said late on Sunday after news outlets including French newspaper Le Monde and Britain’s The Guardian published allegations about its Swiss private bank.

The Guardian, along with other news outlets, cited documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) via Le Monde. HSBC said that its Swiss arm had not been fully integrated into HSBC after its purchase in 1999, allowing “significantly lower” standards of compliance and due diligence to persist.

The Guardian alleged in its report that the files showed HSBC’s Swiss bank routinely allowed clients to withdraw “bricks” of cash, often in foreign currencies which were of little use in Switzerland. HSBC also marketed schemes which were likely to enable wealthy clients to avoid European taxes and colluded with some to conceal undeclared accounts from domestic tax authorities, the Guardian added. (Read more about how HSBC admits it helped wealthy costumers dodge taxes HERE)

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Claims That HSBC Aided Tax Evaders

By Chad Bray. HSBC found itself under fire again on Monday after news reports over the weekend provided more details about long-running accusations that its Swiss private banking arm helped clients hide billions of dollars in assets from international tax authorities before 2007.

In a report released on Sunday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, an organization based in Washington, said that secret documents revealed that bank employees had reassured clients that HSBC would not disclose details of their accounts to tax authorities in their home countries and discussed options to avoid paying taxes on those assets. Also contributing to the report were the newspaper Le Monde in France, The Guardian in Britain, the BBC program “Panorama” and CBS News’s “60 Minutes.”

The documents were stolen from HSBC by a former employee in Switzerland in 2007 and were given to the French authorities, who in 2010 shared them with officials in Britain, Spain and the United States, among other nations. Some of those jurisdictions have used the information to seek back taxes and penalties from individuals, and the British bank has paid fines to the United States related to those disclosures. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Reports of Massive Explosion in Ukraine, Likely not Tactical Nuke, but Obama Shaken [+videos]

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Ukraine: Artillery Fire, Not ‘Tactical Nuke’ Attack, Sets Off Large Donetsk Explosion

[Editor’s note: A number of sites, such as Alex Jones’ Info Wars, suggested that the explosion was nuclear, but that seems to be a stretch. Nuclear detonations create significant EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) that would almost certainly have destroyed the electronic cameras recording the events.]

On Sunday night, a series of YouTube videos appear to show a large explosion in Donetsk, Ukraine (several can be watched here). However, it wasn’t a “tactical nuclear weapon,” as some social media users claimed, but just a big blast–reportedly Ukrainian army artillery fire hitting an ammunition depot held by the rebel Donetsk People’s Republic.

Videos that were uploaded Feb. 8 show a massive explosion going off in the distance, with an orange-red fireball lighting up the night sky.

While many details remain unclear, preliminary reports say it was a an artillery attack on a weapons depot owned by the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic. According to Ukrainian news site TSN.ua, right-wing politician Dmitry Yarosh said the blast killed about “200 terrorists,” destroyed 20 Grad rockets, and trucks filled with ammunition. (Read more from about the reports of a tactical nuke in Ukraine HERE)

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New York Times Warn About Russia “Nuclear Saber Rattling” in Ukraine

By JOHN J. MEARSHEIMERFEB. The possibility that Mr. Putin might end up making nuclear threats may seem remote, but if the goal of arming Ukraine is to drive up the costs of Russian interference and eventually put Moscow in an acute situation, it cannot be ruled out. If Western pressure succeeded and Mr. Putin felt desperate, he would have a powerful incentive to try to rescue the situation by rattling the nuclear saber.

Our understanding of the mechanisms of escalation in crises and war is limited at best, although we know the risks are considerable. Pushing a nuclear-armed Russia into a corner would be playing with fire.

Advocates of arming Ukraine recognize the escalation problem, which is why they stress giving Kiev “defensive,” not “offensive,” weapons. Unfortunately, there is no useful distinction between these categories: All weapons can be used for attacking and defending. The West can be sure, though, that Moscow will not see those American weapons as “defensive,” given that Washington is determined to reverse the status quo in eastern Ukraine.

The only way to solve the Ukraine crisis is diplomatically, not militarily. Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, seems to recognize that fact, as she has said Germany will not ship arms to Kiev. Her problem, however, is that she does not know how to bring the crisis to an end. (Read more from this story HERE)

See also Putin Threatens to Use Nukes in Ukraine

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Matt Drudge Warns that “Obama Knows Something Terrible is Coming”

In a tweet yesterday, Matt Drudge said this about Obama’s Grammy appearance:

Arizona Sheriff Calls Out Obama, Insists Our Borders are Not “More Secure Than Ever”

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Photo Credit: Western Journalism By Heather Laskin. For all of President Obama’s talk of the border being safer than ever, Pinal County, Ariz., Sheriff Paul Babeu provided some evidence to the contrary when he spoke before the House Judiciary Committee on the issue of illegal immigration Tuesday.

Babeu, America’s 2011 “Sheriff of the Year” and an Iraq War veteran, testified before the committee that between 88,000 and 123,000 illegal aliens are apprehended at the Tucson Sector, one of nine border-patrol zones along the U.S.-Mexico border, each year. The Tucson Sector covers most of the state of Arizona from the New Mexico state line to the Yuma County line — a total of 262 border miles.

Between 17 and 30 percent of those apprehended have a criminal record in the U.S. “This clearly shows that the border is not more secure than ever,” Babeu said.

He also detailed how 30 to 50 illegal alien criminals are released into Pinal County every day. “These are the people that everybody, including the president, said are the bad actors,” he said. Many of those released have criminal records that include rape, manslaughter, child molestation, financial crimes, armed robbery, and assault against law enforcement.

Babeu said he has asked the federal government for more information regarding those individuals and their criminal histories, but the government refuses to give it to him. “I, as the sheriff, who swore an oath to protect the people of my county, should have a right to that information,” Babeu declared.

He stressed to committee members that the situation is so lawless in some areas of Pinal County — the number one pass through county in America for drug and human smuggling — that it often feels like a war-zone on American soil. (Read more about what Arizona sheriff said HERE)

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Two US Veterans Disappear in Mexico

By KRGV. The family of two missing veterans in Matamoros is desperate for any word of their safety.

Ernesto and Jesus Garcia were reported missing in Mexico after they did not return home on Monday. The brothers from Brownsville were visiting their grandmother.

Family said they were staying in the south-west side of the city, about 20 minutes south of Brownsville.

The family said this was a trip the brothers made often. Every few months, they would visit their family in Matamoros and check-in on their grandmother.

This trip was different because the two decided to drive home to the U.S. in the middle of the night. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Fox News Guest: Mandating Vaccines Could Lead to ‘Forced Abortions’ [+video]

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Photo Credit: Media IteBy Josh Feldman. Fox News guest Jonathan Hoenig said today he absolutely supports vaccinations, but thinks the idea of mandating vaccines is a slippery slope to the government forcing all sorts of medical procedures upon people.

Hoenig is not alone in his concern about mandating vaccines; Rand Paul said this week most vaccines should be voluntary and not government-mandated, while Chris Christie said parents should have “some measure of choice” when it comes to vaccinations.

Hoenig, however, took the argument one step further when he warned about what it could lead to.

(Read more about the supposed ‘slippery slope’ to forced abortions HERE)
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Debate Over Vaccinations Creating Alliance Between Liberal Parents and Conservative Republicans

By Nicholas Riccardi. The debate over whether parents should be required to get their children vaccinated against measles has created strange alliances, putting some liberal parents on the same side as Republican conservatives.

While the two parties are not cleanly divided on the issue — various individual Democrats and Republicans stand on either side — in the nation’s state legislatures, it is increasingly the GOP that resists efforts to stiffen requirements on vaccinating kids.

In Maine, Republicans are objecting to an effort to make it harder to avoid vaccinating children. Last year in Colorado, it was largely Republicans who squashed an effort to make it harder for mothers and fathers to choose not to inoculate their children.

“This boils down to, does the government force everyone to conform or do we empower everyone to make decisions on their own?” said Colorado state Sen. Kevin Lundberg, a Republican who did not fully vaccinate his children and led the fight against last year’s bill.

This year, Colorado Republicans introduced a bill stating that parents have the right to make all medical decisions for their children, legislation that was cheered by vaccination opponents Thursday at a hearing. (Read more from this story HERE)

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7 Week Old Baby Survives Abortion Pill After Mother ‘Reverses’ It

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Photo Credit: Live Action News By Nancy Flanders. Since 2012, 77 children have survived abortion attempts on their lives from RU-486 — also called “the abortion pill” — thanks to AbortionPillReversal.com and their network of 226 pro-life OBGYNs . . .

One such woman, “Jen,” visited Assure Pregnancy Center after Planned Parenthood gave her RU-486 and she took the first pill. It was Memorial Day weekend. The staff at the clinic was looking forward to the three-day weekend, but when Jen walked in, they quickly got to work to save a little life.

Jen, as reported by Pregnancy Help News, was a married college student with a toddler. Despite the fact that her husband and family were excited about her pregnancy, Jen felt that she should abort in order to keep her college and career plans on track. She set up an appointment at Planned Parenthood (PP).

While at PP, Jen wasn’t allowed to hear the heartbeat of her baby, which was the one thing giving her doubts about aborting. After she took that first pill, all she could think about was the heartbeat that the pills would be ending. She realized she had made a mistake, and she headed to Assure. (Read more about the baby surviving the abortion pill HERE)

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New York Abortion Clinics Inspected Less Than Pizzerias

By Carl Campanile. Abortion clinics should be inspected at least as frequently as pizzerias, tanning salons and movie theaters, according to new radio ads decrying the sanitary conditions at some of New York’s facilities.

The 30-second and 60-second spots paid for by the pro-life Chiaroscuro Group quote what the organization claims are scathing reviews culled from social-media Web sites and penned by horrified patients who visited some of the clinics.

A sample of the reviews: “Avoid at all costs”; “The Waiting Room is dirty and smelled of dried urine”; “DO NOT EVER GO HERE”; “Filthy Medical Equipment looks like it’s from the 1970s”; and “She Balanced Her Tool Tray on a Garbage Can.”

The narrator says: “New York inspects everything: pizzerias, nail and tanning salons, movie theaters. But for more than a dozen years, it’s failed to inspect women’s clinics around the state.”

The Post reported last year that eight of New York’s 25 abortion clinics had not been inspected at all between 2000 and 2012, and five others were inspected only once in a dozen years. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Here are the Three Most Conservative States in the US

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By Frank Newport. Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana are the most right-leaning states in the union, with between 46% and 49% of residents in each identifying as politically conservative. Massachusetts, Vermont and Hawaii are the most left-leaning, with 30% of residents in each of those states identifying as liberal.

The top 10 most conservative states in 2014 are very similar to the top 10 in 2013, with the exception of Louisiana, which was not in the top 10 list in 2013, but replaced Wyoming in the top 10 this year.

The list of the top 10 most conservative states is also similar to what it was in 2008, the first year Gallup tracked ideology daily. Mississippi was the most conservative state in 2008 and remains the most conservative in 2014, with 49% of residents identifying as conservative in both years. Three states — Louisiana, Oklahoma and Montana — were not in the top 10 list in 2008 but are in 2014, while South Dakota, Wyoming and Texas dropped out of the top 10 list over the past seven years.

Eight of the top 10 most liberal states in 2014 were on the top 10 list 2013. The other two — Connecticut and Maryland — replaced Delaware and Maine, which appeared in the top 10 in 2013. The only two states in the top 10 most liberal list this year that were not in the top 10 in 2008 are Maryland and New Jersey, and in that year, they came in ranked just below the top 10.

These results are based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews throughout 2014 with 177,034 U.S. adults. Gallup asks Americans if they describe their political views as very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal or very liberal. The results shown combine the two conservative and the two liberal categories. (Read more about the conservative states in the US HERE)

[Editor’s note: According to Gallup’s poll, Alaska is 21 spots from the bottom, ranking behind states like Indiana, Iowa, Virginia, Kansas and two dozen other states.]

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Tyrannical Judicial Rule Continues: Alabama Set to Be 37th State to Allow Same-Sex Couples Can Legally Marry

By Associated Press. Alabama is set Monday to become the 37th state where gays can legally wed.

An order by a federal judge that overturned the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is to take effect Monday. The U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on Alabama’s request to stay the decision, hours before courthouses were to open. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Despite Refusing to Meet With Netanyahu, Biden and Kerry Had No Problem Meeting With This Left-Wing Israeli Politician

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US Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry both met informally with Zionist Camp co-leader Isaac Herzog — head of the Labor Party and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief rival in the Israeli elections — on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich, Germany on Saturday

Their discussions reportedly revolved around security matters and the Zionist Camp’s defense strategy.

The meetings were not formally scheduled, and no photographs were immediately issued.

Herzog also met with the EU’s Foreign Affairs Chief Federica Mogherini and German FM Frank-Walter Steinmeier on the sidelines of the conference.

The Biden-Kerry meetings with Herzog came a day after Biden’s office said the vice president would be abroad and would not attend a contentious speech on Iran Netanyahu is set to deliver to Congress on March 3. Netanyahu’s planned address has infuriated the Obama administration, which accused the Israeli leader of breaching protocol as the visit was not coordinated with the White House. Both Kerry and President Barack Obama said last month that they would not meet with Netanyahu during the visit, citing its proximity to the March 17 elections. (Read more about Joe Biden and John Kerry meeting with the Israeli politician HERE)

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