School Employee on Snack Rules: ‘You Cannot Buy a Tic Tac in a Nebraska School, I Checked’

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Photo Credit: EAG NewsSchool nutrition experts in Nebraska are struggling to comply with new federal snack regulations championed by First Lady Michelle Obama.

“I think we’ve gone too far, too fast,” Diane Zipay, director of nutritional services for the Westside School District told KIETV.com. “And I don’t think it’s a real-world environment. We might have changed the school but we haven’t changed the child or our world.”

The federal snack rules take effect this year for school districts across the country that participate in the federal free and reduced lunch program. They restrict snack foods sold at schools to those with at least 50 percent whole grain, with low sugar, fat and sodium content. Each snack must also come in under 200 calories, according to the news site.

That means a lot of popular snacks are now off the table, including donuts, brownies, potato chips, full flavor pop, candy bars, and most other foods teenagers prefer. Even salt shakers and packets are now illegal.

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Obama: Illegal Immigrants Should Not Have to 'Look Over Their Shoulder'

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Photo Credit: APBy Tony Lee.

Perhaps signaling that he will soon enact executive actions to ease even more deportations, President Barack Obama said on Friday that illegal immigrants should not have to “look over their shoulder” while in the country illegally.

At a press conference at the NATO Summit in Wales, Obama said he would act “fairly soon” on executive amnesty after going over proposals and recommendations that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder have provided him.

Obama said that in the “absence of congressional action,” he intends to “take action” to increase resources on the border, upgrade “how we process these cases and that we find a way to encourage legal immigration and give people some path so they can start paying taxes, pay a fine, and learn English.” He asserted that it is important that they not have to “look over their shoulder but be legal since they’ve been living here for quite some time.”

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Photo Credit: TownHallIllegal Immigrants’ Length of Stay in U.S. Nearly Doubles Since Last Decade

By Sarah Jean Seman.

The length of time that illegal immigrants stay in the Untied States has spiked drastically over the last decade, according to a recent Pew Research Center study [emphasis added]:

Among the nation’s 10.4 million unauthorized adults, a shrinking share have been in the country for less than five years—15% in 2012, compared with 38% in 2000. A rising share have lived in the U.S. for a decade or more—62% in 2012, compared with 35% in 2000. About a fifth (21%) had been in the U.S. for two decades or more as of 2012.

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White House Reportedly Planning Years-Long Campaign to Destroy ISIS

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe Obama administration is reportedly preparing a campaign to destroy the Islamic State militant group that could outlast the president’s remaining time in office, according to a published report.

The New York Times, citing U.S. officials, reported late Sunday that the White House plan involves three phases that some Pentagon officials believe will require at least three years of sustained effort.

The first phase, airstrikes against Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is already underway in Iraq, where U.S. aircraft have launched 143 attacks since August 8. The second phase involves an intensified effort to train, advise, and equip the Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and any Sunni tribesmen willing to fight their ISIS co-religionists. The Times reports that this second phase will begin sometime after Iraq forms a new government, which could happen sometime this week.

The third, and most politically fraught phase of the campaign, according to The Times, would require airstrikes against ISIS inside Syria. Last month, the government of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus warned the Obama administration not to launch airstrikes against ISIS in Syria without its permission.

Obama was scheduled to outline his plan in a meeting Tuesday with House and Senate leaders before addressing the nation in a speech Wednesday, the eve of the 13th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. A senior Obama administration official told Fox News imminent, new military action in either Iraq or Syria was not expected to be announced in Wednesday’s speech. A senior White House official told Fox News that Obama’s primary aim will be to update the American public on what the strategy is to deal with the militant group, saying the administration wants “people to understand how he’s approaching this.”

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The American Delusion: Distracted, Diverted, And Insulated From The Grim Reality Of The Police State

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Photo Credit: Shutterstock“In the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility.” — Author Neil Postman

Caught up in the uproar over this year’s latest hullabaloo—militarized police in Ferguson, tanks on Main Street, and ISIS—Americans have not only largely forgotten last year’s hullabaloo over the NSA and government surveillance–but are generally foggy about everything that has happened in between.

Then again, so much has happened in the year since Edward Snowden first appeared on the national scene that it’s understandable if the average American has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, that occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the reality of the American police state.

This is not to say that many of these events are not critical or important. However, when we’re being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this.

In fact, Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of overwhelming news, short memories, and the use of propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,” wrote Ellul.

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Doc on Doing Late-Term Abortions: “Sensations of Dismemberment Flow Through Forceps Like an Electric Current”

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Photo Credit: LifeNewsOver the objections of plenty of taxpayers, PBS – a publicly funded channel – aired “After Tiller” on Labor Day. “After Tiller” is a documentary glorifying the work of four late-term abortionists in the U.S.

Day after day, these abortionists willingly take the lives of viable babies, some of them nearly full-term. And often, despite what “After Tiller” shows, the only reason for the murder of these innocents is their inconvenience.

People who’ve seen “After Tiller” need to know another side to the story of late term abortion. Here, for starters, are five things you need to know:

1) Carhart’s Meat in Slow Cookers

One of the film’s featured abortionists, Leroy Carhart, has been caught on tape by Live Action describing late-term babies as “meat in a Crock-pot.”

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Seven Months Later, Orange County Concealed Carry Permits Have Doubled

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Photo Credit: TownHall Last February, the Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over most of the Western United States, ruled that California’s concealed carry law was unconstitutional. The provision in the law stating that one must give “good cause” for a concealed carry permit was deemed too burdensome–and they’re right!

After the ruling, Orange County saw a spike in concealed carry permits. It got to the point where the county had to spend an additional $1.6 million–and hire 14 part-time staffers–to process all the applications.

At the time, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens said she wasn’t going to add more scrutiny to the concealed carry permit process. If you’re a law-abiding citizen and apply, you’ll get your permit. She was quoted in the New York Times saying, “We’re not going to try to tell them there’s a low crime rate or it’s safe on the streets…if they feel that under the current guidelines that they need it for personal safety and they pass the background of moral character, then we are going to issue it to them.”

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Where Is The Nation Building At Home, Mr. Obama?

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Photo Credit: ShutterstockThe clearest expression of a foreign policy doctrine President Obama has articulated came in 2012, when he announced that the “tide of war in Afghanistan” had “turned,” and that this was lucky because it was “now time to focus on nation building here at home.” Al-Qaida, defined so narrowly as to exclude everyone save Osama bin Laden and his closest friends, was declared “defeated”; and a satisfied commander in chief confidently turned to domestic matters.

Obama’s assumption that a vigorous foreign policy and a successful domestic agenda are in conflict is wrong. The U.S. experienced high rates of economic growth and development (with occasional recessions) throughout the post-World War II period while also maintaining the world’s largest military. In the 19th century, Great Britain’s citizens enjoyed among the best living standards in the world, even as the nation maintained an empire and ensured freedom of navigation for all. Though many Americans now recoil from the role for themselves, the British served for most of the 19th century as the “world’s policeman.”

In his West Point speech, Obama mocked his predecessor for believing that “every problem” has a military solution. What he fails to see, even now, is that while there are risks in action, there are also risks in inaction. The choice to refrain from intervening in Syria was not safe or “smart.” It wasn’t like voting present in the Illinois senate. By declining to support the less radical factions opposing Bashar al-Assad, he permitted the most savage actors to dominate; and now they’ve spilled over Syria’s borders into Iraq and created a threat that even Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel says is “beyond anything we’ve ever seen.”

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Could the EPA Chief Really be ‘Worse than Lois Lerner’?

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Photo Credit: APA new court ruling may force more transparency out of the Environmental Protection Agency.

That’s the hope of Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He points out the EPA has been involved with false identification in e-mail accounts, conducted agency business on private e-mail accounts and is now being held accountable for destroying thousands of public records in the form of text messages.

Horner goes so far as to say EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is “worse than Lois Lerner,” the central figure in the Internal Revenue Service targeting scandal.

“I don’t think any agency can compare with this agency,” Horner told TheBlaze, regarding the EPA. “For once, the EPA has been told it cannot do whatever it wants to do under the law. That is news.”

Horner was referring to a federal judge’s ruling Thursday that called it “implausible” that EPA officials could be missing 5,000 text messages from government-issued mobile phones and not suspect the destruction of records. The decision allows a lawsuit to proceed seeking an injunction to prevent further document destruction by the agency.

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Internal Medicine Specialist: Ebola Cases Massively Under Reported, Virus Much More Contagious Than Public is Being Told

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Photo Credit: CELLOU BINANI / AFP / GettyDespite knowing that he had symptoms of the Ebola virus, a Nigerian diplomat boards a plane in Liberia and flies from that small country to his nation’s capital city of Lagos, a city with 21 million people. The man was fleeing a quarantine meant to contain the Ebola virus. Instead, his body — now a host for the disease — was transporting the highly contagious and deadly, single-strand virus to Nigeria’s largest city. . .

The Nigerian doctor who visited the diplomat in his hotel room and became infected with Ebola also saw hundreds of patients — operating on at least two of them before he ultimately passed away from the disease. . .

With the possibility of the Ebola outbreak widening in the region and eventually spanning the globe, this writer reached out to Board Certified Internal Medicine specialist Dr. Jorge Rodriguez for more information. . .

In the brief discussion about the mysterious disease, Rodriguez shared some startling information, including, ”This thing is a lot more contagious than we’re being given . . . or we’re being told about.”

“What scares me the most . . . doctors and nurses are the ones getting this, dying from it and transmitting it,” Rodriguez added. “So, I think there’s a lot more about Ebola and how it’s transmitted that we don’t know . . . The head of the CDC said, ‘It’s much worse than what’s being reported . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s double or triple what we’re told.”

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Can IRS Collect Obamacare Taxes When It Can’t Handle Tax Complaints?

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Photo Credit: APThe Internal Revenue Service is on the hot seat again as federal auditors blast the agency for not responding to taxpayer complaints in a timely manner.

The latest report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) reveals that between 2012 and 2013, the IRS failed to address at least 47 percent of complaints filed against tax preparers. The report also said that another 49 percent of the complaints sat unaddressed for at least two months.

This is significant auditors said because “the burden on taxpayers can include receiving an incorrect refund amount or even owing the IRS penalties and interest.”

There’s even more at stake than delays in handling complaints. This is the second scathing report in less than a month to question the agency’s productivity and work quality. In August, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said the IRS was struggling to collect a new tax that’s critical to financing the president’s health care law; auditors say the IRS’s flawed collecting process is allowing it to raise only three-quarters or so of the revenue that was originally expected.

The IRS had originally estimated that the tax would bring in about $1.2 billion in the second and third quarters of 2013 – but it’s only received $913.4 million.

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