In a bizarre twist to a violent kidnapping, a Renton [Iowa] couple was stunned to learn the child they were babysitting had been abducted.
“It’s probably the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” said John Truong moments after police took custody of the 2-year-old boy. “It’s like something out of a movie.”
Authorities issued an Amber Alert Tuesday night after learning the toddler and his mother had been kidnapped from their home in Des Moines. Tuong and his wife didn’t know about the alert until early the next morning.
“I’m eating my breakfast, I’m checking my Facebook, all of a sudden I see this Amber Alert for this child,” recounted Tuong. “And it looks like this child in my bed, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God! What’s going on?’ ”
He called police, who arrived to find the boy safe and sound. Tuong then explained to detectives how the boy he had never seen before ended up at his house. (Read more from “Couple Shocked to Learn They Were Babysitting a Kidnapped Child” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-18 03:27:522015-04-18 03:27:52Couple Shocked to Learn They Were Babysitting a Kidnapped Child
A Seattle airport baggage handler who fell asleep in the cargo hold of an Alaska Airlines plane Monday has been banned from working on any of the carrier’s flights.
Alaska Airlines said in a statement late Thursday that the unidentified worker “has been permanently banned from ever working on any Alaska Airlines flights.”
The employee of Menzies Aviation, which contracts with airlines to handle baggage, told first responders he had taken a nap in the front cargo hold of the Los Angeles-bound flight. The plane was forced to return to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport 14 minutes into the flight after the pilot and passengers heard banging sounds coming from the front cargo hold.
Menzies officials said he had worked for the company for 18 months and was fortunate he was trapped in a part of the plane that was pressurized and temperature-controlled. The front cargo hold is often used to carry passengers’ pets. The company added that its policies were knowingly violated by the employee.
Also Thursday, 911 calls made by the worker in the early part of the flight were released, revealing his increasing desperation to get out of the hold. (Read more from “Alaska Airlines Bans Trapped Worker From Handling Its Flights as 911 Call Released [+video]” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-18 03:27:262015-04-18 03:27:26Alaska Airlines Bans Trapped Worker From Handling Its Flights as 911 Call Released [+video]
Principal Steve Madson of Hampton-Dumont High School has received a demand letter from Students for Life of America’s law firm, the Thomas More Society, on behalf of student Isabell Akers and Students for Life of America. The letter charges that Principal Madson has unconstitutionally discriminated against Isabell by denying her the right to form a Students for Life club at Hampton-Dumont High School.
“The pro-life students are simply asking for equal treatment,” said Jocelyn Floyd, Associate Counsel of Thomas More Society. “Here the school is trying to claim that its lesser treatment is justified because Isabell’s club doesn’t tie in with the school’s curriculum—but neither do most of the school’s other clubs, such as the book club, mock trial, or SADD (Students Against Drunk Driving). By law, Hampton-Dumont High School administrators must give their pro-life students the same opportunities as they give all these other school clubs.”
Isabell Akers, a senior at Hampton-Dumont High School, attempted to start a Students for Life club when she was a sophomore, but she met resistance from school administrators. After a series of delays and denials, the school eventually allowed Isabell’s club to meet periodically in the spring and fall of 2014, but not to advertise or host events. As Isabell will soon graduate, she tried once again in February to acquire school club status for her Students for Life club, to leave an established club in place for future high school leaders. However, the principal once again denied Isabell’s application, claiming that the Students for Life club is too “controversial.” (Read more from “Iowa High School Principal Prohibits Students From Creating a Pro-Life Club” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-18 03:27:092015-04-18 03:27:09Iowa High School Principal Prohibits Students From Creating a Pro-Life Club
Wal-Mart suddenly closed five stores in four states on Monday for alleged plumbing problems.
The closures could last up to six months and affect roughly 2,200 workers in Texas, California, Oklahoma, and Florida, CNN Money reports.
Wal-Mart employees say they were completely blindsided by the news, having been notified only a couple hours before the stores closed at 7 p.m. Monday.
“Everybody just panicked and started crying,” Venanzi Luna, a manager at a store in Pico Rivera, California, told CNN Money.
All workers will receive paid leave for two months. After that, full-time workers could become eligible for severance, according to CNN Money. But part-time workers will be on their own. (Read more from “Wal-Mart Suddenly Closed 5 Stores and Laid off Thousands of Workers and No One Knows Why” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-18 03:26:462015-04-18 03:26:46Wal-Mart Suddenly Closed 5 Stores and Laid off Thousands of Workers and No One Knows Why
Near California’s Success Lake, more than 1,000 water wells have failed. Farmers are spending $750,000 to drill 1,800 feet down to keep fields from going fallow. Makeshift showers have sprouted near the church parking lot.
“The conditions are like a third-world country,” said Andrew Lockman, a manager at the Office of Emergency Services in Tulare County, in the heart of the state’s agricultural Central Valley about 175 miles (282 kilometers) north of Los Angeles.
As California enters the fourth year of a record drought, its residents and $43 billion agriculture industry have drawn groundwater so low that it’s beyond the reach of existing wells. That’s left thousands with dry taps and pushed farmers to dig deeper as Governor Jerry Brown, a 77-year-old Democrat, orders the first mandatory water rationing in state history.
“The demand we’re placing on the aquifer and the deep bedrock drilling, which is going on at an alarmingly fast pace, is really scary,” said Tricia Blattler, executive director of the Tulare County Farm Bureau. “Folks are really concerned we’re not going to be able find water in the groundwater system much longer. We are tapping it way too quickly.”
Nowhere has lack of rain been felt more than in Tulare County, in a valley dotted with dairy farms and walnut orchards at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains. With 458,000 residents, it’s home to 1,013 dry wells, accounting for more than half of those that have failed in the state since January 2014. (Read more from “Dry Wells Plague California as Drought Has Water Tables Plunging” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-18 03:17:282015-04-18 03:17:28Dry Wells Plague California as Drought Has Water Tables Plunging
The nation’s poultry industry may have to live with a deadly bird flu strain for several years, which would be “devastating,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief veterinary officer said Thursday.
Dr. John Clifford also said that while new cases should drop to close to zero once the weather warms up and kills off the virus, there’s “very likely” to be a resurgence this fall when the wild waterfowl that are natural carriers of avian influenza fly south for the winter.
Clifford spoke on a visit to Minnesota, the state hit hardest by outbreaks that have led to the death of over 2.5 million turkeys and chickens in the Midwest since early March. He said the fact that the highly pathogenic H5N2 virus has already appeared as far east as southern Ontario means there’s an uncomfortable risk of it spreading to the East Coast where much of the U.S. broiler chicken industry is based.
“If it sticks around and continues it’s going to be very devastating to our poultry industry and our international markets, trade markets, as well as the loss domestically,” Clifford said in an interview with The Associated Press. “That’s why we have to really use this time appropriately to do all that we can to determine how best we can address and prevent introductions in the future.”
Authorities have confirmed H5N2 outbreaks at nearly 40 commercial poultry farms in the Midwest, including 26 in Minnesota. All were turkey operations except for one chicken farm in Wisconsin. On Thursday, officials said four more Minnesota farms and two more in Wisconsin had been struck. (Read more from “USDA Veterinarian: Bird Flu Outbreak Could Be ‘Devastating'” HERE)
That’s not really a fish filet with a whole wheat bun resting on top.
Photo Credit: EAG News
Nah, your eyes are playing tricks on you.
That’s what administrators at Virginia’s Portsmouth Public Schools want parents to believe after a mother took a photo of her child’s paltry school lunch and posted it on social media.
After the photo began circulating around the community, Food Service Coordinator Jim Gehlhoff admitted the lunch “concerns us,” but added that it might not actually be as bad as it looks . . .
“Poor lighting and food presentation make this lunch unappealing,” he said in a statement released to the media. (Read more from “PHOTO: School Blames ‘Poor Lighting’ for Disgusting Michelle O Lunch” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-18 03:16:562015-04-18 03:16:56PHOTO: School Blames ‘Poor Lighting’ for Disgusting Michelle O Lunch
Here is a story of a failed Republican opposition party laid bare before the American people.
In a letter from the Social Security Administration responding to inquiries posed by Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ben Sasse (R-NE), it was revealed that 541,000 Social Security cards have been illegally issued to Obama’s DACA amnesty recipients as of Sept. 30, 2014. That number has likely grown over the past six months. Unfortunately, GOP insouciance to the rule of law is just as much to blame as Obama and his partners in crime.
For those of us disappointed with the lackluster GOP reaction to Obama’s mass executive amnesty in November of last year, remember that Republicans did absolutely nothing in response to the 2012 DACA amnesty. Mitt Romney refused to make it an issue in the presidential campaign and most Republicans didn’t even put out a press release opposing it. That amnesty for younger illegal aliens was just as unlawful as the “DAPA” amnesty of 2014, but Obama was given free reign.
Republicans, at least on a party level, declined to even pursue legal recourse in the court system. Instead, Kris Kobach, the famed immigration enforcement attorney, took the initiative and sued the administration on behalf of 10 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
On April 4, 2013, Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that the Obama administration’s DACA program was a clear violation of Section 1225(b)(2)(A) of the INA, which requires ICE agents to place all illegal aliens into removal proceedings. However, he said that ICE agents lacked standing to sue the administration in Article III Courts and were directed to lodge their complaint to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), an administrative panel dedicated to mediating disputes between federal employees and the government.
After two years of being led down the garden path, they finally got a hearing before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Recently, the 5th Circuit tossed out the lawsuit, amazingly, noting that ICE agents lack standing to sue, even though they are being forced to execute actions antithetical to their job description and the statutes of the United States Congress. Obama has even threatened agents who fail to implement his unconstitutional policies.
Accordingly, we are now stuck with a program that is clearly unconstitutional, but we lack the ability to stop it.
What are the consequences?
With Obama approving DACA applications at over a 90% rate, almost no criminal elements are being weeded out. Indeed many DACA recipients have already been arrested for criminal activity. They all have Social Security cards. And remember, even if conservatives can put an end to DACA and terminate the work permits, the Social Security numbers are there to stay.
In addition, the fiscal cost of this Social Security charade is enormous. An illegal immigrant who receives a Social Security number will be entitled to refundable tax credits, Social Security retirement benefits, and Social Security disability benefits. An individual low-income illegal immigrant – who would have no net tax liability – could be eligible to receive up to $3 in Social Security benefits for every $1 contributed through payroll taxes, and could even get up to $35,000 in tax credits for their household in a single year. Remember, that most of these young illegal immigrants are predominantly low-income earners.
This is fundamentally unfair.
The GOP establishment has run away from this issue because of the oleaginous arguments put forth by the left about sympathy for those who came here “of no fault of their own.” But they also came here of no fault of our basic laws of sovereignty and no fault of the American taxpayer. Their predicament is not the fault of our laws; it’s the fault of their parents and countries of origin that have violated our sovereignty.
Even one who believes in granting them amnesty at some point has no justification in supporting federal benefits for a new population at a time when we can’t afford the welfare state for native Americans and legal immigrants. Moreover, it is fundamentally unfair to legal immigrants who are not eligible for federal assistance for at least five years after receiving a green card.
If Congress truly cared about fairness and the rule of law, they would pass Rep. Randy Weber’s (R-TX) bill, H.R. 1332, which would block both the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and child tax credit for DACA and DAPA applicants.
If Republican presidential candidates really cared about this issue, they would embrace fairness in Social Security and tax credits as a campaign issue, instead of just touting a talking point about “securing the border” when finally forced to discuss immigration. (See “541,000 Illegally Issued Social Security Cards? GOP Yawns” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-17 02:08:272015-04-17 02:08:27GOP Doesn’t Care that 541,000 Illegals Were Just Issued Social Security Cards [+videos]
Another day, another town. Ryan T. Anderson, the conservative movement’s fresh-faced, millennial, Ivy League-educated spokesman against same-sex marriage, has another busy schedule.
There is an interview with conservative talk radio, a debate with a liberal professor at the University of Colorado’s law school and, after that, a lecture to Catholic students eager to hear Anderson’s view that the Constitution does not require that marriage be “redefined” to include same-sex couples.
The Supreme Court will soon be deciding just that question. And Anderson, a 33-year-old scholar at the Heritage Foundation, has emerged as a leading voice for those who resent being labeled hopelessly old-fashioned — or, worse, bigoted — for believing that marriage should be only between a man and a woman. . .
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. cited his work twice in his dissent from the court’s opinion in United States v. Windsor, which struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Anderson is becoming a prominent face of the opposition in news media appearances. . .
Anderson contends that he does not need to prove that his view of marriage is the correct one, only that the Constitution permits states to endorse it. “We’re having a national conversation about this, and that shouldn’t be short-circuited by the Supreme Court,” he says. . . (Read more from “The Right Finds a Fresh Voice on Same-Sex Marriage” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-17 02:06:022015-04-17 02:06:02The Right Finds a Fresh Voice on Same-Sex Marriage [+video]
Italy has become a destination of choice for many in Northern Africa, especially from Libya, fleeing violence. Italy is close, only a short boat ride across the usually calm Mediterranean Sea, and, as part of the European Union, is an access point to refugee status in any number of countries. So many illegals are crossing over that some have labeled it a crisis.
Sad to say, Italy’s migration crisis took a deadly turn as police in Sicily reported Muslim migrants threw 12 Christians overboard during a recent crossing from Libya, and an aid group said another 41 were feared drowned in a separate incident.
Palermo police said they had detained 15 people suspected in the high seas assault, which they learned of while interviewing tearful survivors from Nigeria and Ghana who had arrived only after being rescued at sea. The 15 were accused of multiple homicide aggravated by religious hatred, police said in a statement.
The survivors said they had boarded a rubber boat on the Libyan coast with 105 passengers aboard, part of the wave of migrants taking advantage of calm seas and warm weather to make the risky crossing from Libya, where most smuggling operations originate. During the crossing, the Christian migrants from Nigeria and Ghana were threatened with being abandoned at sea by other passengers from the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali and Guinea Bissau. The police statement said the motive was that the victims “professed the Christian faith while the aggressors were Muslim.” (Read more from “Muslims Threw Christians Overboard During Med Voyage” HERE)
