US Trained Alaskans as Secret 'Stay-Behind Agents'

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Fearing a Russian invasion and occupation of Alaska, the U.S. government in the early Cold War years recruited and trained fishermen, bush pilots, trappers and other private citizens across Alaska for a covert network to feed wartime intelligence to the military, newly declassified Air Force and FBI documents show.

Invasion of Alaska? Yes. It seemed like a real possibility in 1950.

“The military believes that it would be an airborne invasion involving bombing and the dropping of paratroopers,” one FBI memo said. The most likely targets were thought to be Nome, Fairbanks, Anchorage and Seward.

So FBI director J. Edgar Hoover teamed up on a highly classified project, code-named “Washtub,” with the newly created Air Force Office of Special Investigations, headed by Hoover protege and former FBI official Joseph F. Carroll.

The secret plan was to have citizen-agents in key locations in Alaska ready to hide from the invaders of what was then only a U.S. territory. The citizen-agents would find their way to survival caches of food, cold-weather gear, message-coding material and radios. In hiding they would transmit word of enemy movements.

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Canada's Lower Corporate Tax Rate Raises More Tax Revenue

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Photo Credit: Tax Foundation

Photo Credit: Tax Foundation

Canada is apparently becoming an attractive place to do business. This week Burger King announced plans to move its headquarters to Canada, via a merger with Tim Hortons. Other U.S. companies that have recently moved or announced plans to move to Canada include Bausch and Lomb, Allergan, and Auxilium. A Bloomberg analysis indicates Tim Hortons was once a U.S. company, until it inverted to Canada in 2009.

Part of the attraction is the substantial tax reforms that occurred over the last 15 years in Canada. First among these is the dramatic reduction in the corporate tax rate, from 43 percent in 2000 to 26 percent today. The U.S. currently has a corporate tax rate of 39 percent, but lawmakers are reluctant to do what Canada did, i.e. lower the tax rate, for fear of losing tax revenue.

The natural question is: How much tax revenue did Canada lose?

Answer: None.

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Activists Who Condemned Illegal Abortions Now Push Do-It-Yourself Abortions

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

So how are a boat anchored in international waters off Dublin, Ireland, border town flea markets in Texas, a businessman in India, and a storefront in rural Iowa all related?

According to an article written by Emily Bazelon appearing in last Thursday’s New York Times (8/28/14), they’re all key pieces of the abortion industry’s transition from relying almost exclusively on standard brick and mortar clinics that performed surgical abortions to a new model where chemical abortifacients can be ordered over the internet or purchased over the counter and performed at home by women on themselves—hence the acronym D-I-Y (Do-It-Yourself) abortions.

RebeccaGompertsBazelon’s article, “The Dawn of the Post-Clinic Abortion,” begins largely as a profile piece on Rebecca Gomperts (right). As we will explained later in this story, while Gomperts herself is not currently working in countries where abortion is legal, abortion activists in the United States are watching her “radical idea of providing abortions without direct contact with a doctor” with great interest. (NRL News Today last wrote about Gomperts, a Dutch general-practice physician, at “’Women on Waves’ bringing abortions performed off shore to Morocco.”)

Gomperts is the former Greenpeace activist who launched the “Abortion Ship” from the Netherlands in June of 2001, heading for the coast of Ireland on a ship stocked with abortion pills—mifepristone (RU-486) and the prostaglandin misoprostol. She called her effort “Women on Waves.”

The plan was to anchor just outside Ireland’s coastal boundary and have women ferried out to the ship to take the pills and start their abortions. However disputes over licensing and strategy kept the group from performing any abortions there.

Read more from this story HERE.

D'Souza Announces Tour to Bring "America" Documentary to College Campuses

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Moore of the right,” is launching a college tour this fall to introduce and discuss with students his new documentary, “America: Imagine a World Without Her.” The film challenges the notion that America is a “predatory colonial power” that relied on thievery and exploitation to earn its prominent place in the world.

The tour is being sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation. From the organization’s press release:

Following the release of his breakthrough documentary, America, which has surpassed Michael Moore’s “Capitalism” at the box office, Dinesh D’Souza will be taking the message of his film directly to college students. As showcased in the film, America’s greatness is under attack by those who argue that our country’s founding was based on the theft of America’s natural resources and the exploitation of Native Americans and others around the world. Many of these attacks originate on college campuses and Dinesh will bring the message of the film to young people who often only hear a one-sided view of our history.

Read more from this story HERE.

Our Freedoms Are Slowly Slipping Away

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

As Americans celebrated Labor Day and the freedom to provide for their families, let’s hope they didn’t spoil the holiday yesterday by pausing to consider whether government today is making their lives easier or more difficult.

To wit, the 2014 Index of Economic Freedom, published by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation, which ranks countries based on four main factors – rule of law, limited government, regulatory efficiency, open markets – has the US is headed in the wrong direction. “The U.S. is the only country,” the survey states, “to have recorded a loss of economic freedom each of the past seven years.”

As ordinary Americans toil to put food on the table and provide for their families, most “cling” to the idea that the highest aim of our leaders is to leave a legacy of greater freedom our children, not less. Americans don’t believe in a monarchy, and they actually believe everyone should live by the same set of rules, not one set of rules for them and another set for the political class when circumstances or political arguments fail.

Needless to say, many Americans are outraged to see laws being re-written midstream, whether in health care, taxes, immigration or in government grants to political cronies. They are discouraged to learn of the secret 2012 decision by the Treasury Department to confiscate the profits of the mortgage guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. With that decision, the federal government thumbed its nose at transparency, flaunted the basic rule of law and property rights, and put the government deeper into the mortgage market. It moves our country in the opposite direction of where it should be headed.

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Attorney Slams Begich Campaign For Refusing To Take Down ‘Offensive’ Ad

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

An attorney for the family of an Alaska couple murdered last year sent a scathing letter to U.S. Sen. Mark Begich claiming that his political ad using the couple’s case to attack Republican challenger Dan Sullivan is “inciting” the family and “tearing [it] apart.”

Bryon Collins, the family attorney, sent the letter, titled “Second Demand To Take Down All Case References And Ads,” to Begich on Monday.

“The family directly and without question has told your campaign they want no part of this,” Collins writes in the letter, obtained by The Daily Caller.

Collins was referring to an ad first aired by Begich’s campaign on Friday.

It refers to the case of Jerry Active, now 25, who allegedly murdered Touch Chea and Sorn Sreap, two elderly Cambodian-Americans, in Anchorage on May 25, 2013. Active is also accused of sexually assaulting their 2-year-old granddaughter.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Larry Downing

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Larry Downing

Alaska Senate Challenger Dan Sullivan Accuses Mark Begich Of Lying In Ad

Republican Alaska U.S. senate challenger Dan Sullivan is accusing Democratic incumbent Mark Begich of lying in a television ad blaming Sullivan for the early prison release of a man accused of murdering two elderly people and sexually assaulting their young granddaughter.

The case involves Jerry Active, 25, who was arrested for the May 25, 2013 murder of a couple in Anchorage and of sexually assaulting their 2-year-old granddaughter.

The Begich campaign is using Active’s heinous act to attack Sullivan for being soft on crime, though Sullivan completely disputes the claim and says that Begich is exploiting the case for political gain.

“I don’t know how long Dan Sullivan lived in Alaska, but I know what he did as attorney general,” said retired Anchorage police officer Bob Glen in the ad, approved by Begich and released ahead of Labor Day weekend.

“He let a lot of sex offenders get off with light sentences. One of them got out of prison and is now charged with breaking into that apartment building, murdering a senior couple and sexually assaulting their two year old granddaughter.”

Read more from this story HERE.

West Point Report Describes Islamic State Threat as Crisis 4 Years in the Making

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

A new report from the West Point counterterrorism center challenges the notion that the Islamic State only recently became a major terror threat, describing the network’s gains in Iraq as a crisis four years in the making.

Meanwhile, Fox News has learned that top aides to President Obama expect the threat from the organization, also known as ISIS or ISIL, to outlast Obama’s time in office.

The details underscore the challenge facing the U.S. government and its allies as the president and military advisers weigh how — and where — to confront the Islamist militant forces.

“ISIL did not suddenly become effective in early June 2014: it had been steadily strengthening and actively shaping the future operating environment for four years,” the report from the West Point center said.

The report said that the “shattering” of Iraq’s security forces in June is a “case-in-point, the result of years of patient preparatory operations.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Feds Encouraging Deported Illegal Aliens to Come Back to US

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is expected to allow thousands of illegal immigrant deportees to return to the U.S., so long as they have ties to Southern California. Taxpayers will additionally fund a media campaign in Mexico, alerting deportees that they may be eligible to come back to the United States.

An agreement outlining the new settlement was announced in late August, according to the Los Angeles Times. The plan, which only applies to Southern California, was reportedly drawn up in response to a lawsuit that was filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) relating to the rights of illegal immigrants.

The Times reported that an unknown fraction of the some 250,000 previously-deported illegal immigrants will be allowed to come back to the country under the new plan.

Under the settlement, Border Patrol agents will be required to inform illegal immigrants of their right to fight deportation in the U.S. court system. Agents also must “provide them access to an informational hot line and a list of free legal service providers,” the Times reported.

A taxpayer-funded “outreach effort” will also be launched through Mexican media outlets. The ad campaigns will inform deportees that they might be eligible to come back to the United States.

Read more from this story HERE.

"Emergency Regulations": NY's Latest Attempt to Suppress Free Speech

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Remember when President Obama touted the Affordable Care Act by claiming if you “liked your plan you could keep it”? He earned Politifact’s 2013 “Lie of the Year” for that whopper. Amazingly, several other Democrats made the same false promise. Knowing what we know now, wouldn’t you want to expose any politician who stood behind that misleading statement? Well, if someone uttered those words in the state of New York, you may now be forced to let it slide. A new law in the Empire State, which some are calling the ‘shut up rule,’ could allow such lofty claims to go unchallenged.

The New York Board of Elections, in an attempt to regulate political spending by special interest groups during campaigns, has enacted “emergency regulations” that would make it much more difficult to challenge political speech:

The new regulations require individuals and groups spending on races — independently of candidates and political parties — to register with the state as a political committee and file financial reports that list so-called “independent expenditures.”

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WATCH: Biden Uses "Take Back America" – A Phrase Holder Calls 'Racist'

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Photo Credit: My Fox

Photo Credit: My Fox

Several hundred people, mostly union workers, crowded the site of the old Tiger Stadium to hear vice president Joe Biden speak Monday morning ahead of the organized labor’s annual parade.

The vice president’s speech helped kick off the start of the Detroit Labor Day parade. This is the second time Biden has been in Detroit on Labor Day in the past three years.

Biden spoke about the power of the union and how the union really is the reason why many of us have rights. He also stressed the importance of all Americans sticking together and, if we do that, how we will succeed. He believes if the middle class does well, so will everyone else.

“The American people have not stopped dreaming. The American people have not walked away from what they believe they are entitled to. Just give them a chance! No hand out – just give them a chance!” Biden said.

Read more from this story HERE.