Facebook Drones to Offer Low-Cost Net Access

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Photo Credit: BBC

Photo Credit: BBC

Facebook has ambitious plans to connect the two-thirds of the world that has no net access, using drones, satellites and lasers.

The move was announced on the social media platform by founder Mark Zuckerberg.

It will put it in direct competition with Google, which is planning to deliver net access via balloons.

Both of the net giants want to extend their audiences, especially in the developing world.

Details about Facebook’s plan were scant but it will include a fleet of solar-powered drones as well as low-earth orbit and geosynchronous satellites. Invisible, infrared laser beams could also be used to boost the speed of the net connections.

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Krauthammer: Obama vs. Putin – The Mismatch

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U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin talk before the first session of the G20 Summit in Los Cabos<“The United States does not view Europe as a battleground between East and West, nor do we see the situation in Ukraine as a zero-sum game. That’s the kind of thinking that should have ended with the Cold War.” — Barack Obama, March 24

Should. Lovely sentiment. As lovely as what Obama said five years ago to the United Nations: “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation.”

That’s the kind of sentiment you expect from a Miss America contestant asked to name her fondest wish, not from the leader of the free world explaining his foreign policy.

The East Europeans know they inhabit the battleground between the West and a Russia that wants to return them to its sphere of influence. Ukrainians see tens of thousands of Russian troops across their border and know they are looking down the barrel of quite a zero-sum game.

Obama thinks otherwise. He says that Vladimir Putin’s kind of neo-imperialist thinking is a relic of the past — and advises Putin to transcend the Cold War.

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Condi Rice Campaigns for McConnell, Sullivan and Other GOP Establishment Candidates

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Weekly Standard

Weekly Standard

House majority whip Kevin McCarthy introduced [Former Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice [at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner Wednesday night in Washington, D.C.] and raised the prospect that she might become even more involved in politics in two years. After listing various prestigious positions she’s held, he noted, “There’s one thing that’s not on her resume and I want her to put her mind to it to resolve that in 2016.”

Rice has downplayed those suggestions and there’s little reason to believe she’s angling for a run. Still, she has been increasingly active on behalf of her fellow Republicans. Earlier this month, Rice spoke at a Kentucky fundraiser for Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and the spring convention for the California Republican party. Rice appeared in an ad touting Alaska Senate hopeful and Marine reservist Dan Sullivan, a spot paid for by Karl Rove’s super PAC, American Crossroads. In the coming months, she will make appearances for the National Republican Senatorial Committee….

Before turning to foreign policy, Rice urged the crowd, including many Republican House members, to keep America a “nation of immigrants” and strafed liberals who send their kids to private schools but write New York Times op-eds claiming that school choice will ruin public schools.

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Common Core Shows Fourth Graders Gory, Painful Ways to Kill Class Pets

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Common Core math has gotten a lot of negative attention.

However, the Common Core standards also mandate a nonfiction-heavy reading regime that devalues literature tremendously. Specifically, under the Common Core standards, “informational texts” must constitute a huge part of what students read.

So, what exactly is in these “informational texts”?

In the idyllic expanses of New York’s Lakeland Central School District, the “informational texts” for fourth graders are disturbing agitprop from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

As EAGnews.org reports, the entire text forced on the fourth-grade kids was taken word-for-word from the PETA website PETAkids.com—home of the “30-day vegan pledge,” militant screeds against KFC and statement such as: “Zoos collect animals and put them on display to make money.”

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Poll: Twice as Many Feel Safer with Gun in the House than Without

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

By a margin of slightly more than two-to-one, Americans overall would feel safer with a gun in their house than not, but less than a quarter of Democrats agree, according to a new survey.

Pollster YouGov found that 42 percent would feel safer with a gun in the home. Just 20 percent would feel “less safe.”

But the findings were divided politically. Most Republicans, 59 percent, would feel safer with a gun nearby, but only 24 percent of Democrats agree.

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Oversight Democrats Demand End to Benghazi Probe

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Photo Credit: Getty

Photo Credit: Getty

By John Bre Snahan.

All 17 Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are demanding that Chairman Darrell Issa end his year-and-a-half-long probe into the Benghazi attacks, which left four Americans dead and have become a catchphrase signifying conservative suspicion of the Obama administration.

Led by ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the move to end what Democrats dismiss as a “partisan investigation” is part of a broader effort by party leaders on Capitol Hill to finally move past the political furor surrounding the incident.

Democrats and Obama administration officials complain that the probe has cost millions of dollars while forcing the Pentagon and other federal agencies to respond to seemingly endless congressional demands for more information, all without yielding any coverup or conspiracy. They argue that the investigation has not produced any information related to allegations that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to “stand down” military units that could have been sent to Benghazi in a bid to save U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and the other besieged Americans.

Democrats privately believe that Issa is using Benghazi to try to hurt Clinton’s possible presidential ambitions in 2016. “This is all about putting up points against Hillary,” complained a Democrat close to the issue. “It’s clear what they’re trying to do.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Townhall

Photo Credit: Townhall

Remembering HillaryCare, Benghazi and “What Difference at This Point Does it Make?”

By Donald Lambro.

The end of Barack Obama’s presidency effectively began after the 2010 congressional elections when Republicans took control of the House.

Obama and the Democrats have been tumbling into a political abyss ever since, hurtling toward major Senate losses this fall, if not a decisive Republican takeover of the Democratic-run chamber.

He has been robotically going through the motions of being the president, but he no longer steers the nation’s agenda or is seen as a catalyst for change or as a leader who gets things done — as his job approval polls sink into the low 40s and the lethargic U.S. economy shows no sign of serious improvement.

His grand plan to further push our country in a sharply leftward direction has turned into a disaster for his party. Democrats have been thrown on the defensive as a result of his unpopular healthcare law that is coming apart at the seams, driving up medical insurance costs, and most likely facing some dismantlement in the courts.

Vulnerable, frightened Democrats running for re-election talk now of “fixing” Obamacare rather than preserving it as it is presently shaped — while Obama orders one year long delay after another in its full implementation in the face of devastating losses in November.

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Not Just Britain! Babies Burned In U.S. Too (+audio)

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

(Warning: This news report contains descriptions of abortionists’ disposal of aborted babies and may disturb some readers.)

Pro-life activists are horrified by reports of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies being burned to provide green energy in Great Britain, but they point out that lax standards in the United States don’t stop the same thing from happening here.

Reports out of Britain went viral this week, following the revelation that more than 15,000 aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated by some 27 different National Health Service trusts. Some facilities burned them as rubbish and others did so as part of a “waste-to-energy” program that generates power for heat.

Americans United for Life attorney Jeanneane Maxon said the discoveries are revolting and reveal some disturbing facts about our culture.

“It is just appalling to see where society has come to that we have disregarded human life, so that even after children are born and you have the bodies of these dead babies – which is tragic in and of [itself] – that they would be disposed of in such a callous manner. It really hearkens back to the images that you think of in the Nazi Holocaust,” Maxon said.

Maxon called the practice “barbaric” and said she’s surprised this happened in Great Britain, which has more restrictive laws on abortion than the U.S. In fact, Maxon said the United States is one of only four nations worldwide that allow abortion throughout a pregnancy. The others are Canada, China and North Korea.

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Untruthful and Untrustworthy Government

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

Transparency and truth are the fuels that run sophisticated civilizations. Without them, the state grinds to a halt. Lack of trust — not barbarians on the frontier, global warming or cooling, or even epidemics — doomed civilizations of the past, from imperial Rome to the former Soviet Union.

The United States can withstand the untruth of a particular presidential administration if the permanent government itself is honest. Dwight Eisenhower lied about the downed U-2 spy plane inside the Soviet Union. Almost nothing Richard Nixon said about Watergate was true. Intelligence reports of vast stockpiles of WMD in Iraq proved as accurate as Bill Clinton’s assertion that he never had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.

Presidents fib. The nation gets outraged. The independent media dig out the truth. And so the system of trust repairs itself.

What distinguishes democracies from tinhorn dictatorships and totalitarian monstrosities are our permanent meritocratic government bureaus that remain nonpartisan and honestly report the truth.

The Benghazi, Associated Press, and National Security Agency scandals are scary, but not as disturbing as growing doubts about the honesty of permanent government itself.

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Coming Soon: DMV Facility Solely for Illegal Immigrants

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Photo Credit: Tomas / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Tomas / Creative Commons

Lompoc is slated to house a DMV processing center for undocumented immigrant driving privilege applications later this year. The state will start issuing those cards in January 2015. A building on North H Street, which has been vacant for a very long time, will house the facility according to Mayor John Linn.

The DMV location will serve as a regional center, taking applications from a broad geographic area, including San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties.

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Rand Paul Builds 50-State Network, Courts Mainstream Support for Presidential Bid

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Photo Credit: Ben Margot/AP

Photo Credit: Ben Margot/AP

Sen. Rand Paul has become the first Republican to assemble a network in all 50 states as a precursor to a 2016 presidential run, the latest sign that he is looking to build a more mainstream coalition than the largely ad hoc one that backed his father’s unsuccessful campaigns.

Paul’s move, which comes nearly two years before the primaries, also signals an effort to win the confidence of skeptical members of the Republican establishment, many of whom doubt that his appeal will translate beyond the libertarian base that was attracted to Ron Paul, a former Texas congressman.

The younger Paul’s nationwide organization, which counts more than 200 people, includes new supporters who have previously funded more traditional Republicans, along with longtime libertarian activists. Paul, 51, of Kentucky, has been courting Wall Street titans and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who donated to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, attending elite conclaves in Utah and elsewhere along with other GOP hopefuls.

For the rest of this year, his national team’s chief duties will be to take the lead in their respective states in planning fundraisers and meet-ups and helping Paul’s Washington-based advisers get a sense of where support is solid and where it’s not. This is essential in key early primary battlegrounds, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, and in areas rich in GOP donors, such as Dallas and Chicago.

“A national leadership team is an important step, and it’s a critical one for the movement going forward,” said Fritz Wenzel, Paul’s pollster. “Rand has tremendous momentum, and the formation of this team will guide him as he gets closer to a decision and [will] serve as a foundation for a campaign.”

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