Cold War Echoes: Sochi Not Thawing US-Russian Relations

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Photo Credit: APThe Olympic Games, created to bring countries together around sports, appear to be having the opposite effect on U.S.-Russia relations.

Rising animosity between the former Cold War powers was on full display Friday when Russia chose a former figure skater who tweeted out a racially charged picture of President Obama for the symbolic lighting of the Olympic cauldron…

To be sure, there are hard feelings in Russia toward the U.S. and the Obama administration, too.

Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped hosting the first Games since the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which the U.S. boycotted, would showcase a “new Russia” emerging from the ashes of the Soviet Union as he enters his 15th year in power.

Instead the U.S. and its western allies have consistently painted the picture of a corrupt autocracy.

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Zogby Report Card: Only 29% Say Obama Has Nation Headed in Right Direction

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner Pollster John Zogby reports in our weekly White House report card that President Obama’s numbers are mixed, both in approval rating and right-direction, wrong-direction.

“I am a numbers guy and the numbers are mixed. Troubling for Obama is that so few Americans feel the U.S. is headed in the right direction (29 percent average) and that the stock market is falling. This could be the inevitable correction and the obvious impact of the Fed’s tapering.

“He is also still upside down in public opinion toward Obamacare, though the gap between supporters and opponents is not really widening.

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Video: Second Amendment Advocate Ted Nugent Talks Hunting, Tofu, Drugs and Rap

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Rocker and rabid-pro Second Amendment advocate Ted Nugent talks to Bill O’Reilly about celebrities’ attacks on his hunting lifestyle, rails against drug use, and questions why anyone would listen to rap. Listen to it here.

Alaska Sends Dozens to Evangelize Sochi Winter Olympics

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SOAR International Ministries, an Alaska-based organization dedicated to missions and outreach in Russia, has partnered with local Russian churches during the Sochi Winter Olympic Games to spread the Gospel to tourists and communities converging on the event.

The ministry sent 40 volunteers to Russia to establish a number of “fun zone” hospitality centers in local church buildings. They will also go out into parks and other public venues to invite others to partake in their activities.

“The team will assist the local church in introducing the community to Christ and who they are in Him,” said Greg Mangione of SOAR, according to Mission News Network. “They’ll do that through Gospel magic shows, somebody making balloon animals and face paintings, and just a variety of activities and entertainment. The primary goal is to reach out to the people. We pray it’ll be a beginning of a long-term relationship with the local churches.”

During the two weeks of the Games volunteers will divide their time between the coastal and mountain cluster areas of Sochi while each hospitality center will have the Olympic events projected on big screens along with evangelistic videos.

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Disabled US Veteran Denied Entry to Starbucks Over Service Dog

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Photo Credit: Fox News A disabled U.S. Army veteran says he was told he could not enter a Texas Starbucks because of his service dog.

Yancy Baer traveled to Houston from San Antonio on behalf of the national organization Canine Companions for Independence, which helped pair Baer with service dog Verbena after Baer’s left leg was amputated from the knee down due to bone cancer, KHOU reported.

The cancer was discovered after a non-combat injury Baer suffered while serving in Iraq in 2009.

Baer got Verbena about 14 weeks ago, and traveled to San Antonio to share his story on behalf of the nonprofit Canine Companions.

He tried to go into a Starbucks on Memorial Drive when he was stopped by a store employee.

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Michelle Malkin Girds for 2014 GOP Civil War

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Photo Credit: APMichelle Malkin doesn’t run away from fights, she runs toward them. And she’s running faster than ever headlong into the 2014 Republican primary battles on behalf of upstart conservative candidates who are mounting insurgent challenges to the GOP old guard.

Twitter is Malkin’s weapon of choice. Battles with her almost always devolve into wars, and those who follow the conservative social media scene know she has a proven formula online: Taunting quips from foes bring out the full force of her Twitter arsenal, with snappy replies, catchy hashtags and the mobilization of a legion of energized followers.

Malkin, 43, says she’s using her influence — and her confrontational approach — on behalf of candidates she deems worthy of it in this year’s midterm.

“I see the practically unlimited power that social media has to help push the issues and causes and people I care about,” Malkin told POLITICO in a recent interview. “I know what I’m good at.”

She’s focusing on backing politicians challenging establishment Republicans — for instance, she’s thrown her support behind Katrina Pierson, who is campaigning to unseat longtime incumbent Rep. Pete Sessions in Texas.

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70 Million Americans Taking Mind-Altering Drugs

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Photo Credit: WNDThe heroin-overdose death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has caused the media to focus, however fleetingly, on America’s drug problem.

News accounts of the Oscar-winner’s tragic demise typically reference the startling increase in heroin-related deaths in the last four to five years. The problem, reporters explain, is the vast number of Americans addicted to prescription pain meds like OxyContin, many of whom discover heroin to be both cheaper and easier to obtain than the prescription opioid drugs to which they initially became addicted.

That’s accurate as far as it goes. But by following the trail further, we arrive at a place far more shocking and consequential. We discover that not only has the traditional distinction between illegal “street drugs” and legal “therapeutic prescription drugs” become so blurred as to be almost nonexistent, but between America’s twin drug epidemics – one illegal, the other legal – well over 70 million Americans are using mind-altering drugs. And that number doesn’t include abusers of alcohol, which adds an additional 60 million Americans. So we’re really talking about 130 million strung-out Americans. How is this possible?

Of course, most of the drug news we’ve heard lately has been about pot. It started with medical marijuana, with state after state successfully defying the federal ban. Then on Jan. 1, flat-out legalization took center stage, when Colorado and Washington opened their doors to exhilarated pot-smokers, while numerous other states – from Alaska, Oregon and California in the west to Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., in the east – announced plans to push for legalization in the coming months.

As a result, stock prices for cannabis companies soared (“The demand for marijuana is insatiable,” says one entrepreneur, “you have a feeding frenzy for the birth of a new industry”), the New York City-based publication “High Times” announced a new private-equity fund to “raise $100 million over the next two years to invest in cannabis-related businesses,” and ad agencies geared up to support “an industry estimated to already be generating revenues in the billions of dollars.”

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Parallels to ObamaCare Site Woes Seen as Vets Try to Get Benefits Online

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Photo Credit: REUTERSThe glitches and other problems with the ObamaCare website that sparked a national firestorm are similar to those military veterans using the federal government’s online benefits system have routinely faced for about the past 18 months.

Eric Jenkins, a veteran and American Federation of Government Employees representative, recently told Congress that during January the Veterans Benefits Management System crashed about once a week with downtimes ranging from one hour to multiple days.

“The constant … technical issues and frequent shutdowns make it difficult for me and others to serve veterans,” Jenkins told a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee.

The $537 million system went online in fall 2012 at a Department of Veterans Affairs office in New England and is now in all 56 regional offices.

The change to a paperless system was a major part of the Veterans Affairs’ goal of eliminating a massive backlog of compensation claims by 2015, with 98 percent accuracy.

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Pew Study: Christians Are The World’s Most Oppressed Religious Group

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Photo Credit: CNSRestrictions, harassment, and intimidation towards people who practice their religion increased in every major region of the world in 2012 except the Americas, with Christians the major target, says a new report by the Pew Research Center.

“Muslims and Jews experienced six-year highs in the number of countries in which they were harassed by national, provincial or local governments,” the study found, but Christians continue to be the world’s most oppressed religious group, with persecution against them reported in 110 countries.

A recent report by the Christian group Open Doors noted that “North Korea remains the world’s most restrictive nation in which to practice Christianity,” followed by Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Maldives, Pakistan, Iran and Yemen.

More than “5.3 billion people (76% of the world’s population) live in countries with a high or very high level of restrictions on religion,” Pew noted, “up from 74% in 2011 and 68% as of mid-2007.”

A fifth of the world’s nations (20%) also experienced religious terrorism or sectarian violence in 2012, Pew researchers found, which was “up markedly from 2007 (9%).”

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Obama Split 500,000 American Families to Legalize Illegals Before 2012 Election

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesPresident Barack Obama’s 2012 unilateral legalization of 500,000 young illegal immigrants helped him win the 2012 election — at the cost of splitting 500,000 innocent, law-abiding American families for months on end, according to a New York Times article.

The ruthless political calculation was buried deep in the low-key article, which was published on page 20 of the local “New York edition” of the national newspaper.

Obama directed officials to award work-permits to the illegal immigrants, preventing them from preparing green cards for Americans’ foreign-born spouses and children.

One American, Jessica Veltstra, applied last March to bring over her Dutch husband. “But he is still in the Netherlands, and she is rooming with relatives in New Jersey, unable to make plans,” the New York Times reported.

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