“Everyone is Scared of Fox”: Reporter Quits Daily Caller After Column on Fox News’ Support for Amnesty was Yanked

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By Daniel Byers. The blogger Mickey Kaus has quit his job at The Daily Caller after the conservative site’s editor-in-chief, Tucker Carlson, pulled a critical column about Fox News from the site, Kaus told the On Media blog on Tuesday.

“It’s pretty simple,” Kaus said in an interview, “I wrote a piece attacking Fox for not being the opposition on immigration and amnesty — for filling up the airwaves with reports on ISIS and terrorism, and not fulfilling their responsibility of being the opposition on amnesty and immigration…. I posted it at 6:30 in the morning. When I got up, Tucker had taken it down. He said, ‘We can’t trash Fox on the site. I work there.'”

Carlson, who co-founded The Daily Caller in 2010, is a conservative contributor to Fox News and the host of its weekend edition of “Fox & Friends.”

Kaus says when he told Carlson he needed to be able to write about Fox, Carlson told him it was a hard-and-fast rule, and non-negotiable. (Read more from “Mickey Kaus Quits Daily Caller After Tucker Carlson Pulls Critical Fox News Column” HERE)


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“Everyone Is Scared of Fox”: Why Mickey Kaus Quit the Daily Caller


By Andrew Prokop. A well-known blogger has quit his job at the conservative website the Daily Caller — because his employer wouldn’t let him criticize Fox News . . .

Kaus argued that this was a symptom of a larger dynamic in the conservative movement, telling Byers, “Everybody is scared of Fox. … Fox is their route to a high-profile public image and in some cases stardom. Just to be on a Fox show is a big deal. And I think that’s a problem on the right, Fox’s monopoly on star-making power.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Laid-Off American Worker Makes Impassioned Case Against Low-Cost Foreign Workers [+video]

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By Alex Swoyer. An emotional Jay Palmer, a laid off technology worker, explained to the Senate Judiciary Committee the hardships of being replaced in the workforce by lower-cost foreign employees.

(Read more from “Laid-Off American Worker Makes Impassioned Case Against Low-Cost Foreign Workers [+video]” HERE)

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Rector Estimates Lifetime Retirement Costs of Illegals Granted Executive Amnesty at $1.3 Trillion

By Caroline May. The lifetime costs of Social Security and Medicare benefits of illegal immigrant beneficiaries of President Obama’s executive amnesty would be well over a trillion dollars, according to Heritage Foundation expert Robert Rector’s prepared testimony for a House panel obtained in advance by Breitbart News.


Rector, a senior research fellow at Heritage, is slated to speak on the costs of Obama’s executive amnesty Tuesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He will testify to the high entitlement costs of granting legal status to millions of illegal immigrants.

Based on Rector’s calculations, which assume that at least 3.97 illegal immigrants would apply for and receive legal status under Deferred Action for Parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents (DAPA), and that the average DAPA beneficiary would have a 10th grade education, the costs would be immense.

Specifically, in 2010 dollars, the lifetime costs of Social Security benefits to DAPA beneficiaries would be about $1.3 trillion. (Read more from this story HERE)

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EPA Wants to Monitor How Long Hotel Guests Spend in the Shower

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower.

The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to “modify their behavior.”

“Hotels consume a significant amount of water in the U.S. and around the world,” an EPA grant to the University of Tulsa reads. “Most hotels do not monitor individual guest water usage and as a result, millions of gallons of potable water are wasted every year by hotel guests.”

“The proposed work aims to develop a novel low cost wireless device for monitoring water use from hotel guest room showers,” it said. “This device will be designed to fit most new and existing hotel shower fixtures and will wirelessly transmit hotel guest water usage data to a central hotel accounting system.”

The funding is going toward creating a prototype and market analysis for the device. The goal of the project is to change the behavior of Americans when they stay at hotels. (Read more from “EPA Wants to Monitor How Long Hotel Guests Spend in the Shower” HERE)

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Democrats Block Human Trafficking Bill, Complaining about Abortion Language

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An anti-human trafficking bill that just two weeks ago had broad, bipartisan support was filibustered and stalled Tuesday by Senate Democrats upset over anti-abortion language they claim was subtly inserted into the measure.

The Justice for Victims in Trafficking Act fell five votes short of garnering the 60 needed to advance in the chamber. The legislation would create a federal fund for victims’ services and law enforcement tools financed by fines levied on convicted traffickers.

Democrats objected to a section of the bill that nodded to the Hyde Amendment – a nearly four-decade-old legislative provision that bans taxpayer-funded abortions. Language in the trafficking bill prohibited funds raised by the fines to be used for abortions.

“The partisan provision embedded in the Senate version of this bill is not something the survivors of human trafficking are asking for,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Tuesday.

[T]he bill’s author and the chamber’s majority whip, decried the Democrats’ opposition, saying Tuesday he feared the Senate was “losing its soul.” (Read more from “Democrats Block Human Trafficking Bill over Abortion Language” HERE)

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Air Force Veteran Charged with Attempting to Join ISIS [+video]

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A former avionics specialist with the U.S. Air Force is accused of attempting to join the Islamic State.

Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh, 47, was charged in federal court in Brooklyn on Monday.

Pugh, who worked for several companies as an airplane mechanic, had been living overseas for one year before he was arrested in January while in Asbury Park, New Jersey.

New York News

“Born and raised in the United States, Pugh allegedly turned his back on his country and attempted to travel to Syria in order to join a terrorist organization,” U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said in a statement. “We will continue to vigorously prosecute extremists, whether based here or abroad, to stop them before they are able to threaten the United States and its allies.”

On January 10, Pugh traveled from Egypt to Turkey in an effort to cross the border into Syria to join ISIL, according to the federal complaint. (Read more from “Air Force Veteran Charged with Attempting to Join ISIS” HERE)

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Watch: Ted Cruz Peppered with Delicate Political Questions in Late Night Interview

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By T. Becket Adams. Sen. Ted Cruz, during an appearance Monday evening on NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” addressed several politically charged topics as the show’s host used the occasion of their meeting to pepper the GOP lawmaker with questions ranging from global warming to same-sex marriage.

Meyers early on in the interview addressed Cruz saying in a speech this weekend in New Hampshire that the White House’s failed foreign policy has set the world “on fire.”

The Texas Republican’s weekend remarks prompted a three-year-old girl in the audience to ask her mother whether the world really was on fire, much to the amusement of Cruz’s audience.

“The world is on fire, yes,” Cruz said during his weekend speech, addressing the girl. “Your world is on fire. But you know what? Your mommy’s here and everyone’s here to make sure that the world you grow up in is even better.”

Meyers used Cruz’s weekend speech to question the Texas senator’s position on global warming. (Read more from “Watch: Ted Cruz Peppered with Delicate Political Questions in Late Night Interview” HERE)

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Mom: Ted Cruz Did Not Scare My 3-Year-Old Daughter

By Catalina Camia. A New Hampshire mom wants the world to know: GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz did not scare her 3-year-old daughter with his assertion that “the world is on fire.”


Michelle Trant is disputing the characterization by some news media that Cruz frightened her daughter, Julia, with his comments Sunday in Barrington, N.H. That assessment was all over Twitter on Monday morning.

“There were no tears, none at all” Trant told WRKO-AM, Boston’s talk radio station, during Jeff Kuhner’s call-in show Monday. “She was quite happy.”

Cruz, a Texas senator, was in the midst of criticizing President Obama on the economy, health care and foreign policy when he said “the world is on fire.” Julia, sitting on her mom’s lap in the front row, was described as being terrified by Cruz’s rhetoric or “listening in horror.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Watch: College Students Informed About Their Share of the National Debt, and Their Reactions Are Priceless

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Campus Reform is back with yet another video that is sure to stir up debate. Caleb Bonham informs college students about their share of the national debt – in an extraordinarily creative way.

Bonham asks college students – among a few others – when they were born. Then he queries what they would do with the hundreds of thousands of dollars they are due to pay the federal government.

Several of the respondents can’t curb their shock and surprise before going off on comments about what that means to them. (Read more from “Watch: College Students Informed About Their Share of the National Debt, and Their Reactions Are Priceless” HERE)

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U.S. Military Loses Contact with Predator Drone Flying over Syria

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A Pentagon official confirmed the U.S. military lost contact with an unarmed Predator drone Tuesday while it was flying above northwestern Syria, but could not corroborate reports that the aircraft was shot down by President Bashar Assad’s air defenses.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said that U.S. forces lost contact with the drone about 1:40 p.m. Eastern time and that the reason for its disappearance was being investigated.

The incident marks the first time a U.S. aircraft has gone down since President Obama authorized airstrikes against Islamic State militants in the summer. Since then, Predator drones have been flying daily missions above Iraq and Syria.

Predators are flown from bases across the globe, but the military official would not discuss where the U.S. aircraft was being controlled from or where it was based before they lost contact with it.

Earlier Tuesday, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said the country’s air defenses had brought down a U.S. surveillance plane in the coastal province of Latakia. (Read more from “U.S. Military Loses Contact with Predator Drone Flying over Syria” HERE)

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After 3 Decades, Largest Presbyterian Denomination Approves Homosexual Marriage

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After three decades of debate over its stance on homosexuality, members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted on Tuesday to change the definition of marriage in the church’s constitution to include same-sex marriage.

The final approval by a majority of the church’s 171 regional bodies, known as presbyteries, enshrines a change recommended last year by the church’s General Assembly. The vote amends the church’s constitution to broaden marriage from being between “a man and a woman” to “two people, traditionally a man and a woman.”

The Presbytery of the Palisades, meeting in Fair Lawn, N.J., put the ratification count over the top on Tuesday on a voice vote. With many presbyteries still left to vote, the tally late Tuesday stood at 87 presbyteries in favor, 41 against and one tied.

“Finally, the church in its constitutional documents fully recognizes that the love of gays and lesbian couples is worth celebrating in the faith community,” said the Rev. Brian D. Ellison, executive director of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, which advocates gay inclusion in the church. “There is still disagreement, and I don’t mean to minimize that, but I think we are learning that we can disagree and still be church together.”

The church, with about 1.8 million members, is the largest of the nation’s Presbyterian denominations, but it has been losing congregations and individual members as it has moved to the left theologically over the past several years. There was a wave of departures in and after 2011, when the presbyteries ratified a decision to ordain gays and lesbians as pastors, elders and deacons, and that may have cleared the way for Tuesday’s vote. (Read more from “Largest Presbyterian Denomination Gives Final Approval for Same-Sex Marriage” HERE)

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Thousands of Snow Geese Fall Dead from Sky in Idaho

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Avian cholera is suspected in the deaths of at least 2,000 snow geese that fell dead from the sky in Idaho while migrating to nesting grounds on the northern coast of Alaska, wildlife managers said Monday.

Dozens of Idaho Department of Fish and Game workers and volunteers at the weekend retrieved and incinerated carcasses of snow geese found near bodies of water and a wildlife management area in the eastern part of the state, said agency spokesman Gregg Losinski.

Avian cholera is believed to be the culprit in the deaths mostly because of the way the birds died, he said.

“Basically, they just fell out of the sky,” said Losinski.

He said biologists were awaiting results from a state wildlife lab to confirm the birds died of the highly contagious disease, which is caused by bacteria that can survive in soil and water for up to four months. (Read more from “Thousands of Snow Geese Fall Dead from Sky in Idaho” HERE)

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