24-Injured In Stabbing At High School

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Photo Credit: Bill Rehkop f /NewsRadio

Photo Credit: Bill Rehkop f /NewsRadio

At least 24-people have been injured in a stabbing at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville.

The attack occurred in crowded hallways just minutes before the start of school.

Westmoreland County updated the victim count late Wednesday evening, saying 24-people had been injured. (21-students stabbed, 1-security guard stabbed, and 2-others injured)

At least five students were critically wounded, including a boy who was on a ventilator after a knife pierced his liver, missing his heart and aorta by only millimeters, doctors said. An injured school officer was discharged.

A school security guard called in the stabbing at 7:13 a.m.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Employees Accused of Donning Pro-Obama Gear, Urging Callers to Vote for Him

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Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

IRS workers in several offices have been openly supporting President Obama, including by donning pro-Obama paraphernalia and urging callers to reelect the president in 2012, according to allegations contained in a new government watchdog report.

A report by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, released Wednesday, cited accusations that workers at a Dallas IRS office may have violated federal law by wearing pro-Obama items like shirts, stickers and buttons. The Hatch Act forbids Executive Branch workers from engaging in partisan political activity.

The report comes as two House committees move to take action against former IRS official Lois Lerner regarding the agency’s targeting of conservative groups.

The report, further fueling allegations of bias at the agency, claimed that several accusations were made against the Dallas office claiming pro-Obama gear was “commonplace” there. Employees allegedly wore Obama shirts, buttons and stickers to work and had Obama screensavers on their IRS computers.

The report said it was unclear whether this activity happened before or after the 2012 election, but an advisory was issued to Dallas employees that such activity was prohibited.

Read more from this story HERE.

Opinion: What Republicans Stand For

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Photo Credit: Red State

Photo Credit: Red State

This morning a group that I am a member of was asked an interesting question. What do we as Republicans/Libertarians/Conservatives believe in and actually stand FOR? Now, I obviously don’t speak for the entire right of center coalition that exists today. I am more socially conservative than some of my libertarian friends, I am more libertarian than some of my socially conservative friends, and I am more fiscally conservative than nearly all of our elected representatives.

Despite these divisions and nuanced differences on certain policy aspects, I still believe that the center right coalition stands for a few simple things that don’t just bind us together as Republicans, but also have made up the basis for our civil society since our founding.

So what is it that Republicans stand for?

We stand for many things, to list them all out would be quite the task. But it all springs forth from our founding. We stand for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We stand for life, in that we stand for the dignity of the individual. We stand for life by acknowledging the uniqueness of each individual, embracing them for who they are, rather than what purpose they might suit for the collective. We stand for life in the defense of our nation through the sacrifice of a volunteer military.

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Veteran Tells Congress He Was Handed a ‘Death Sentence’ by VA Hospital

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Photo Credit: AP Photo / David Goldman

Photo Credit: AP Photo / David Goldman

Barry Coates knows he will die soon and thus become another preventable patient death resulting from botched care at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.

In November 2010, Coates sought treatment for severe abdominal pain and rectal bleeding at a VA hospital in Hartsville, S.C.

The doctor recommended a colonoscopy to determine if his suffering resulted from early stages of colorectal cancer.

For more than a year, Coates faced delay after delay, churning through one doctor after another until finally the routine medical test was performed in December 2011.

It showed he had advanced colorectal cancer, which could have been treated more effectively if had been detected that first day.

Read more from this story HERE.

NYT: Russia Withheld Information on Boston Bomber

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Photo Credit: Ninian Reid

Photo Credit: Ninian Reid

Russia withheld critical information from the FBI on one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects’ ties to radical Islam two years before the attacks that killed three Americans and injured more than 260 others — and those disclosures most likely would have triggered more investigation by authorities, The New York Times reports.

Russian officials told the FBI in 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a shootout with police after the attacks, “was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer,” the Times says, citing a new report on how U.S. agencies could have stopped the bombings.

Moscow also told the agency that Tsarnaev “had changed drastically” as he met up with “unspecified underground groups,” during travels to the Dagestan region of Russia, according to the report.

But Moscow refused to provide any further information to the FBI despite the agency making “several” requests for more data, the Times reports.

“They found that the Russians did not provide all the information that they had on him back then, and based on everything that was available, the FBI did all that it could,” a top U.S. official briefed on the report told the Times.

Read more from this story HERE.

Miami Police Officer Charged with Helping Caribbean Drug Ring

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Photo Credit: Andy Rain / EPA

Photo Credit: Andy Rain / EPA

A high-ranking police officer was due to appear in a federal court in Miami on Wednesday to face allegations that he led a double life as a fixer for a violent Caribbean drugs gang.

Ralph Mata, a lieutenant in the internal affairs division of the Miami-Dade police department, smoothed the passage for large quantities of cocaine to be smuggled into the US from the Dominican Republic in pallets of bananas, according to the indictment against him.

Mata, nicknamed the Milk Man by FBI investigators, provided weapons and sensitive law enforcement information to his paymasters, the complaint alleges, and received a $10,000 Rolex watch and many thousands more dollars in cash for regularly transporting drugs proceeds to and from the Caribbean.

He also came up with a plot to murder a rival gang’s leaders using hired assassins dressed in police uniforms, it is claimed, although the plan was never carried out.

Mata was due to appear before federal magistrate judge Alicia Otazo-Reyes on Wednesday afternoon to hear felony charges of aiding and abetting a conspiracy to distribute cocaine, conspiring to distribute cocaine and engaging in transactions derived from specified unlawful activity.

Read more from this story HERE.

“I Wouldn’t Be Here if Not for Him” Woman Says Unborn Baby Saved Her From Cancer

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

We’ve reported these kinds of stories before at LifeNews. A woman becomes pregnant and, because of pregnancy, she discovered cancer or some other medical condition that may very well have gone untreated and potentially claimed her life.

Although doctors sometimes suggest an abortion when a woman battling cancer is pregnant, in the case of Amy Hansen of Fort Collins, Colorado, she firmly believes she owes her life today to her unborn child.

Collins was diagnosed with ovarian cancer just weeks after learning she was pregnant with her first son. The 29-year-old tells the local newspaper she firmly believes her pregnancy and her son saved her life and now she wants others to know they can deal with cancer and carry a baby to term at the same time.

Studies show women don’t need to have an abortion and can safely seek chemo treatment during pregnancy.

Read her story HERE.

Heartbleed: Hundreds of Thousands of Servers at Risk from Catastrophic Bug

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Photo Credit: Codenomicon

Photo Credit: Codenomicon

Hundreds of thousands of web and email servers worldwide have a software flaw that lets attackers steal the cryptographic keys used to secure online commerce and web connections, experts say.

They could also leak personal information to hackers when people carry out searches or log into email.

The bug, called “Heartbleed”, affects web servers running a package called OpenSSL.

Among the systems confirmed to be affected are Imgur, OKCupid, Eventbrite, and the FBI’s website, all of which run affected versions of OpenSSL. Attacks using the vulnerability are already in the wild: one lets a hacker look at the cookies of the last person to visit an affected server, revealing personal information. Connections to Google are not vulnerable, researchers say.

SSL is the most common technology used to secure websites. Web servers that use it securely send an encryption key to the visitor; that is then used to protect all other information coming to and from the server.

Read more from this story HERE.

The War for the GOP

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

By WND.

It’s a crazy situation: Conservative-minded Americans – people who a generation ago were part of the “Reagan Revolution,” and today might identify with the “tea party” – are caught up in not just one, but two civil wars.

The first conflict everyone knows about: America is more polarized today than at any time in the last century.

Arrayed on one side are the forces for limited government, free-market capitalism and traditional morality, people who believe less government means more freedom, and that the “American Dream” depends primarily on self-governing, moral and religious people. Members of this side self-identify predominantly as Republicans.

On the other side are those who consider the first group to be unfair, unjust, unfeeling, selfish, intolerant, racist and predatory – and maybe evil. It is this side, which looks to government to solve virtually all problems, that currently dominates American government, media, education and culture. Members of this side self-identify overwhelmingly as Democrats.

That’s War No. 1.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Famous Republicans targeted for dumpster

By WND.

A conservative giant in Washington, D.C., has written a brand-new book that certainly won’t increase his chances of getting invited to cocktail parties inside the Beltway.

Known as the “funding father of conservatism,” Richard Viguerie’s “Takeover: The 100-Year War for the Soul of the GOP and How Conservatives Can Finally Win It” takes sides in what he describes as a century-old war for the soul of the Republican Party.

Released nationwide today, it offers a blueprint for how liberty-loving, small government conservatives can win the battle against big-government Republicans…

Target No. 1 is Karl Rove

Viguerie writes that Karl Rove “has grown wealthy by promoting the idea that content-free campaigns, rather than conservative principles, are the path to victory for the Republican Party.”

“His record of 22 losses to 9 wins in 2012 shows the folly of the Republican establishment in following Rove’s advice.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Pelosi: We’re Keeping the Employer Mandate No Matter What Gibbs’ Clients Want (+video)

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey / Creative Commons

Last week, former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs suggested that the employer mandate in ObamaCare would not survive, and he certainly has reason to think so. The White House keeps unilaterally changing the enforcement date and the parameters of the mandate, clearly hoping to escape political accountability for it when it finally takes effect. Yesterday, Candy Crowley asked Nancy Pelosi if Gibbs was right, but the House Minority Leader dismissed Gibbs’ prediction as just Gibbs speaking on behalf of his corporate clients:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested Sunday that former top Obama aide Robert Gibbs’s comment that the employer mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act won’t survive might be related to Gibbs’s business interests.

“I don’t know who his clients are or what his perspective is,” Pelosi told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But we are celebrating the fact that we have over seven million who have signed up.” …

Asked again about Gibbs on Sunday, Pelosi expressed exasperation that his comments would be given such prominence. “I don’t know why we’re focusing on that,” she told CNN. “One person says one thing. Seven million people signed up.”

Read more from this story HERE.