86-Year-Old Woman With Dementia Warms up to Santa ─ and Makes Him Cry

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An 86-year-old woman deep in the throes of dementia came out to the surface briefly when she encountered her beloved Santa in a photo studio in a New Mexico mall.

“Every time Santa got close to her, she would nuzzle in and close her eyes as if there was no place she would rather be,” the studio wrote on its Facebook page.

“It was so sweet and emotional for Santa and our whole staff.”

The photography studio, Hartsocks’ Photography, said Santa cried when the woman left.

Karen Rangel was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2014 and was recently put on hospice care. (Read more from “86-Year-Old Woman With Dementia Warms up to Santa ─ and Makes Him Cry” HERE)

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California’s Wildfire Now Largest in State History

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The blaze known as the Thomas fire in Southern California is now the largest in the state’s recorded history, fire officials said Saturday evening.

The Thomas fire has scorched 273,400 acres, or about 427 square miles of coastal foothills and national forest.

That makes the Thomas fire 154 acres larger than the 2003 Cedar fire in San Diego that killed 15 people, officials said.

Thousands of firefighters and fleets of aircraft have been battling the Thomas blaze since Dec. 4. A firefighter and a woman fleeing the blaze died.

Days of unrelenting hot, gusty winds drive it through Ventura neighborhoods, incinerating entire blocks, and threatened the wealthy enclave of Montecito. (Read more from “California’s Wildfire Now Largest in State History” HERE)

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It’s Not Over Yet: Two More Accusers Come out Against Bill O’Reilly

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Two more former associates of Bill O’Reilly have joined a defamation lawsuit filed by a fellow O’Reilly accuser.

Andrea Mackris, Rebecca Gomez Diamond and Rachel Witlieb Bernstein have come together in a defamation suit after O’Reilly claimed that they were political operatives trying to take him down and liars with the goal of extortion, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.

Mackris is a former producer on O’Reilly’s show who claimed she had been sexually harassed by O’Reilly. According to her complaint, the Fox News host would call and engage in phone sex fantasies with her.

According to a New York Times article, the 2004 suit also said that O’Reilly had threatened her and told her that anyone who complained about his behavior would “pay so dearly that she’ll wish she’d never been born.”

The narrative was shaped to depict Mackris as promiscuous, but eventually O’Reilly payed $9 million to settle the suit, according to The Times.

Diamond is a former Fox Business Network host who asserted that O’Reilly had also sexually harassed her over the phone. She had recordings of the conversations and in 2011 when she was told her contract would not be renewed, her lawyers brought her complaints to the company.

According to The Times, she left Fox with a confidentiality agreement and the paid settlement.

Bernstein complained about O’Reilly’s harassment in 2002, though the alleged harassment was not sexual, the Daily Mail reported, and received a small payout.

In response to the defamation claims, O’Reilly’s lawyer Fredric S. Newman said that his client hadn’t named one of his accusers when he said that certain individuals were out to take him down.

“Bill O’Reilly has never mentioned the plaintiff’s name publicly in any context,” he said in a statement, according to the Daily Beast.

Nancy Erika Smith who represents Mackris, Diamond and Bernstein also represented Gretchen Carlson in her lawsuit against Fox News, who is also a defendant on this defamation suit.

“They are tired of being smeared with lies by a bully who thinks that his victims are afraid to answer to them,” she said about her clients. “They are standing up for the truth, joining the many voices of brave women who are no longer tolerating abuse or being silenced.”

After O’Reilly was fired from Fox, he told Matt Lauer on the Today Show, “If you look at the totality, this was a hit job — a political and financial hit job,” Deadline reported.

According to the Daily Mail, O’Reilly has paid over $45 million to six women over allegations of misconduct.

He has said in the past that he settled these cases so that they would not come out in public and put stress on his teenage son and daughter.

“There is ample evidence that Fox News, with the complicity of top executives, enabled the abuse of women for many years than silenced them with non-disclosure agreements and non-disparagement clauses,” Smith said in a media release.

Smith’s law partner Neil Mullin expanded, saying that Fox “should release all victims from their NDAs and let the truth out. It is cowardly to publicly attack these women knowing they have been subjected to contractual provisions requiring absolute silence.” (For more from the author of “It’s Not Over Yet: Two More Accusers Come out Against Bill O’Reilly” please click HERE)

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Fire Chief Was Wrongly Fired for Supporting Biblical Marriage

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This time last year A Charlie Brown Christmas was being censored in schools and former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran was still waiting for justice after being wrongly fired for expressing his religious beliefs about marriage.

But this year is looking up – both for the Christmas classic and for Chief Cochran.

Chief Cochran was fired by the city in 2015 in violation of his constitutional rights. He brought a federal civil rights suit against the city of Atlanta for his unjust termination.

I had the privilege of representing Chief Cochran before a federal district court last month, asking that it uphold his right to free speech. The government cannot force its employees to get permission before engaging in free speech. After all, free speech is not really free if you have to get City permission for it.

Thankfully, the court ruled December 20 that the City of Atlanta’s actions were unconstitutional. (Read more from “Fire Chief Was Wrongly Fired for Supporting Biblical Marriage” HERE)

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List: These 32 Senators Voted to Shut Down the Government Before Christmas

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The Senate approved a short-term spending plan to keep the government open Thursday but not without nearly a third of the chamber dissenting for various reasons.

The funding bill, called a continuing resolution, keeps the government open through mid-January.

The legislation needed at least 60 votes and passed by 66 votes, with 32 nays and two senators not voting. That’s double the 14 Democrats who dissented against the temporary spending bill two weeks ago.

Most of the nay votes were from Democrats who are desperate to deal with immigration issues.

During a caucus meeting Thursday, Democratic Rep. Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois criticized Schumer for not caring about the future of Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals, and for “throwing them under the bus,” The Washington Post reports.

Schumer, who voted no on the spending bill, issued an ultimatum to the GOP that his party would not vote for anything more than a short term bill until Congress addresses immigration and wider domestic spending issues.

He also mentioned that the $81 billion emergency spending bill the House passed Thursday would not go forward until the Senate addressed other issues.

“We’re not going to allow things like disaster relief to go forward without discussing some of these other issues we care about,” Schumer said. “We have to solve these issues together.”

Two Republican senators — Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky — joined the dissenting votes for the spending bill.

The spending bill again waived rules that would have mandated steep cuts to Medicare and other entitlement programs, which Paul didn’t want to see happen.

“Do federal deficits matter?” Paul asked.

Here are all the “nay” votes:

Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Nay

Michael Bennet (D-CO), Nay

Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Nay

Cory Booker (D-NJ), Nay

Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Nay

Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Nay

Ben Cardin (D-MD), Nay

Bob Casey (D-PA), Nay

Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Nay

Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Nay

Dick Durbin (D-IL), Nay

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Nay

Al Franken (D-MN), Nay

Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY), Nay

Kamala Harris (D-CA), Nay

Maise Hirono (D-HI), Nay

Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Nay

Mike Lee (R-UT), Nay

Ed Markey (D-MA), Nay

Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Nay

Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Nay

Chris Murphy (D-CT), Nay

Patty Murray (D-WA), Nay

Rand Paul (R-KY), Nay

Jack Reed (D-RI), Nay

Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Nay

Brian Schatz (D-HI), Nay

Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Nay

Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Nay

Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Nay

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Nay

Ron Wyden (D-OR), Nay

(For more from the author of “List: These 32 Senators Voted to Shut Down the Government Before Christmas” please click HERE)

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Top Marine General Announces Prediction to Troops: ‘There’s a War Coming’

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Concerns about rising global tensions were not eased when recent remarks by the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps became public this week.

As The Hill reported, Gen. Robert Neller was in Norway addressing Marines stationed there when he delivered a grim forecast of the international climate.

“I hope I’m wrong, but there’s a war coming,” he said.

Neller was stressing the geopolitical importance of a presence in Norway during his visit, according to Military.com.

He indirectly pointed to Russia, among other global actors, as possible threats in the near future. That would possibly put any battalion stationed in Norway, a recently introduced rotation for the Marines, in position to respond to the “big-a– fight” Neller believes is coming.

While he also mentioned the Pacific theater as a likely global hot spot, much of his rhetoric seemed to reference Russia.

That narrative was continued by Marine Corps Sergeant Major Ronald Green, who said the situation on the ground for those stationed in Norway could change without notice.

“Just remember why you’re here,” he said. “They’re watching. Just like you watch them, they watch you.”

The small Marine footprint in the nation could easily increase should circumstances warrant it, Green said.

“We could go from 300 to 3,000 overnight,” he said. “We could raise the bar.”

Video footage shows the training exercises Marines in the battalion are using to remain ready.

The notable avoidance of directly referencing Russia continues a trend Military.com first identified in previous conversations with the Marines in the Norway rotation. They reported being instructed not to mention Russia by name in any public statements.

In addition to permitting the Marine Corps unit to be stationed in the country, the Norwegian government also has deep economic ties to neighboring Russia. Some officials in Norway have expressed concern about the scope of the American mission in their country, though the arrangement has generally been met with approval.

As for Russian officials, there has been overwhelming rejection of U.S. presence on the Norwegian side of the border.

“They don’t like the fact that we oppose them, and we like the fact that they don’t like the fact that we oppose them,” Green said, again avoiding use of the word “Russia.”

He went on to say that, despite the size of the force on the ground in Norway, he likes their odds.

“Three hundred of us, surrounded by them, we’ve got them right where we wanted, right?” he said. “We’ve done this before.” (For more from the author of “Top Marine General Announces Prediction to Troops: ‘There’s a War Coming'” please click HERE)

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Senate Admits to Paying $1.5 Million for Harassment

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The Senate quietly released a bare-bones report late Thursday on what a statement called “harassment settlement” data, showing that nearly $1.5 million in taxpayers’ money has been spent over the past two decades to cover claims against lawmakers and other Senate offices.

The two-page release contained no names of senators or victims. It said $599,000 was for 13 settlements involving “member-led” Senate offices, while the remaining $853,000 was for 10 settlements involving “other” Senate offices.

The Senate’s Rules and Appropriations committees released the information on the evening of Congress’ final work day this year. It came during a period that has seen several lawmakers resign or announce their retirements following sexual harassment accusations, and growing condemnation for the secrecy with which Congress has guarded information about such cases.

While the release called the information “harassment settlement data,” none of the terse descriptions of each case used those words. Four of the cases involved sex discrimination, including two that also involved “reprisal,” while most of the rest were for race, age or disability discrimination. (Read more from “Senate Admits to Paying $1.5 Million for Harassment” HERE)

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Another State Bans Abortions on Down Syndrome Babies

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An Ohio bill to protect unborn babies with Down syndrome from abortion became law today as Gov. John Kasich signed the legislation. The measure bans abortions on babies with Down syndrome and it follows bans in North Dakota and Indiana.

The Down Syndrome Non-Discrimination Act (Senate Bill 164) would help prevent discrimination by prohibiting abortions on unborn babies who have or may have Down syndrome. Abortionists who violate the measure could be charged with a fourth-degree felony or lose their medical license. The legislation was sponsored by Reps. Sarah LaTourette and Derek Merrin and Sen. Frank LaRose.

“Now that the Down Syndrome Non-Discrimination Act is law, unborn babies prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome are given a shot at life” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life. “Ohio is and will continue to be a state that sees the lives of people with Down syndrome as lives worth living, thanks to this legislation.”

In an August report, CBS News had a segment about Down syndrome in Iceland, claiming the country had “eradicated Down syndrome.” The report stated that nearly 100% of mothers who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome for their pregnancy abort their child.

“Ohio Right to Life is immensely grateful to pro-life Governor John Kasich and his administration for how they have protected the unborn,” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life. “Gov. Kasich has signed 20 pro-life initiatives into law in the last six years. He is a pro-life champion, and we are thankful for how he has made it clear that we will not permit this kind of discrimination against people with Down syndrome.” (Read more from “Another State Bans Abortions on Down Syndrome Babies” HERE)

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Women Completes College Finals in Labor

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A college student in Kansas City was determined to finish her college finals on time, even if that meant going through labor when the exam was due.

Nayzia Thomas, a sophomore at Johnson County Community College, continued her studies of psychology for 39 weeks until her baby son ultimately gave her what she could no longer avoid: the completion of childbirth.

Yahoo! Lifestyle reported that, instead of putting off her final psych exam, Thomas decided to complete her assignment on time. So, she did just that. (Read more from “Women Completes College Finals in Labor” HERE)

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Dinosaur-Like Creature With Flesh on Bones Found in India

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By Michael Havis. Scientists have been left mystified after the body of a creature resembling a dinosaur was discovered with flesh still on its bones.

The partially-preserved corpse was discovered by an electrician cleaning out a sub-station that had been left untouched for 35 years in Jaspur, a small city in Uttarakhand, India.

It resembles a small dinosaur, but since flightless dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years, scientists have struggled to identify it.

The creature has now been sent for analysis, including carbon dating, which will reveal its age.

Dr Parag Madhukar Dhakate, a Conservator with the Indian Forest Service, said that the creature would remain an enigma until scientific analysis had been completed. (Read more from “Dinosaur-Like Creature With Flesh on Bones Found in India” HERE)

(Editor’s note: Our guess is “fake.” And not because we don’t believe that dinosaurs could currently exist, because they do. For example, the komodo dragon, crocodile, alligator, rhinoceros, elephant, etc., are alive and well and are definitely dinosaurian. Moreover, there are many other animals that evolutionists have said should have been dead millions of years ago, like the coelacanth fish, that are still being observed today. No, we think “fake” because of (1) its appearance (looks like a decayed rat with a bend in its back, something you’d expect to find in an abandoned electrical substation in India); and (2) where it was found and the third-world hucksters pushing the story on gullible westerners who click on their video. Perhaps we’ll be proven wrong in the next few weeks, but this looks like scam-city to us.)
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Scientists Baffled Over Half-Preserved Dinosaur-Like Corpse Found in India

By Outer Places. An interesting discovery has been made in an abandoned subway station in Uttarakhand, India, which may well change what we know about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.

According to reports, an electrician was cleaning the station, which had remained empty for over thirty years, when he came across a partially preserved skeleton which strongly resembles a raptor-like dinosaur. While the creature’s passing clearly wasn’t recent, its corpse still held some flesh, which by all rights should be impossible considering the length of time since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The corpse has now been sent for testing and carbon dating, although it’s already very clear that this creature couldn’t possibly actually date back to the Late Cretaceous period during which raptors existed and thrived . . .

There are a few possible reasons for the creature’s uncanny dinosaur appearance. The easiest answer to reach for is that this is a fake, planted by some enterprising prankster in the hopes of garnering some attention from the scientific community. (Read more from “Scientists Baffled Over Half-Preserved Dinosaur-Like Corpse Found in India” HERE)

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