Grenade Tossed in GOP Civil War

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Photo Credit: WND Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, has announced his office has taken the initial steps to call for a Senate Ethics Committee investigation of Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Cornyn is the Senate minority whip and second-most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill.

He is also facing a challenge from Stockman for his Senate seat in the Texas GOP primary on March 4.

A Stockman spokesman told WND a formal Request For Investigation was filed with the Senate Ethics Committee Monday. He said Cornyn could face as many as 24 counts of using his Senate office to promote his reelection campaign.

The congressman claims he has been targeted by establishment Republicans and broke the news to WND on Jan. 31 that he was suing Cornyn’s Super PAC for libel.

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House Benghazi Report Concludes Something New That Aide Admits ‘Some People Are Going to Be Upset About’

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Photo Credit: AP/Mohammad HannonA House committee formally concluded for the first time that there was no military “stand down” order given on the night of the deadly terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

It’s a finding that one committee aide acknowledged to TheBlaze, “some people are going to be upset about.” The allegation that the military was told to stand down on aiding the Americans in Benghazi has long been used to accuse the Obama administration of not doing enough to save the lives of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and others during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks.

The Republican-led House Armed Services Committee, however, concluded in its new report that no such order was given; rather, Army Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson, then-head of the site security team at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, was ordered by higher commanders to remain in Tripoli, lest another attack take place there as part of a larger coordinated assault.

“The term ‘stand down’ means different things to different people. To someone in uniform, it means you are to do nothing … that is not the direction that Lt. Col. Gibson was given,” the committee aide told TheBlaze.

The finding is part of the committee’s Benghazi report set to be released Tuesday. Stevens, information technology specialist Sean Smith, and CIA security contractors and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed.

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Obamacare Is Wayne’s World

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Photo Credit: YahooBy Lloyd Green.

Welcome to President Obama’s war on the work ethic. On Friday, the Department of Labor announced that workforce participation still hovered at a 35-year low, and that only 113,000 new jobs were added in January. Meanwhile, last Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that Obamacare would result in “a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024.” (PDF)

Significantly, the CBO did not point the finger at business for the anticipated drop. Instead, the CBO explained that the “estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply rather than from a net drop in businesses’ demand for labor.” Great, so Wayne and Garth—the basement dwelling metal-heads first made famous on Saturday Night Live in the 1980s, can keep on living with their parents for the rest of their lives.

Except, the White House and its friends don’t want you to think that it will be the young, fit, and fancy-free who will be the ones most likely to go on welfare—I mean Obamacare. No, instead they want you to believe that those who would work less are 55 year olds who would stay home to care for a sick parent, simultaneously embark on a second or third career, and become Pulitzer Prize-winning writers.

Just listen to White House Spokesman Jay Carney or to his de facto back-up Paul Krugman. According to Carney, “Because of this law, individuals will be empowered to make choices about their own lives and livelihoods, like retiring on time rather than working into their elderly years or choosing to spend more time with their families.” Earth to Jay, 28-year-olds without college degrees or technical training don’t have a whole lot of empowered choices to make.

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesHealthCare.gov to be out of service

By Jonathan Easley.

HealthCare.gov will be out of service for two and a half days beginning on Feb. 15 — the last day people can sign up to obtain coverage that begins on March 1.

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services announced in a blog post on Monday that the ObamaCare website would be lacking some enrollment functionalities so the Social Security Administration can conduct its annual systems maintenance activities.

The site will be out of order from 3 p.m. on Feb. 15 until 5 a.m. on Tuesday — a period that coincides with the long holiday weekend.

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Analysis – Alaska Crude Likely First to Flow Around U.S. Export Ban

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Photo Credit: APOil traders looking for cracks in a contentious decades-old U.S. ban on crude exports should be looking west, not east.

The first big cargoes to be shipped far overseas are likely to come from one of the country’s oldest oil patches, Alaska, rather than booming new shale fields like the Eagle Ford of Texas, or North Dakota’s Bakken.

Oil companies and analysts are already examining the widening arbitrage window for selling Alaska’s North Slope (ANS) crude to Asia, looking to resume shipments that halted a decade ago as rising domestic output of light, sweet crude threatens to crowd long-time baseload ANS out of West Coast refineries.

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The Tyranny of Winter: The Left is At War with Economic Reality

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Photo Credit: National Review The Left is at war with economic reality. The intellectual poverty of the Left — which is also a moral poverty — is evident in the fact that its leaders are much more intensely interested in incomes at the top than those at the bottom. Examples are not difficult to come by: Senator Elizabeth Warren is visibly agitated by Jamie Dimon’s recent raise, the AFL-CIO maintains a website dedicated to executive compensation, Barack Obama avows that “at a certain point, you’ve made enough money,” et cetera ad nauseam. The entire rhetoric of inequality is simply an excuse to rage about incomes at the top, a generation’s worth of progressive shenanigans having failed to do much about those at the bottom.

It is the case that incomes at the top have gone up while those in the middle and at the bottom have stagnated or declined in real terms. It is not the case that incomes at the top have gone up because those in the middle and at the bottom have stagnated or declined, nor is it the case that incomes in the middle and at the bottom have stagnated or declined because incomes at the top have gone up. There is a relationship between the two phenomena, but it is not the relationship that progressives imagine it to be.

Neither the American tax code nor other features of our economic policy are notably generous to high-income and high-wealth people by the standards of the developed world. American businesses labor under the highest business income-tax rate in the world and one of the business tax codes most riddled with political favoritism. At 40 percent — compared with an OECD average of 25 percent — our business income-tax rate is nearly double that of Sweden, and more than twice that of Switzerland, which does not tax capital gains. Our top personal income-tax rate is higher than that of New Zealand, which manages to finance an effective national government out of the proceeds, and much higher than that of very competitive countries such as Singapore. Taken together, our tax and entitlement systems are about as redistributive as typical European welfare states. What is unusual about the United States is not that the rich are taxed so lightly but that the middle class is taxed so lightly, at least relative to European practice.

Which is to say, those who endorse policies such as higher taxes on the wealthy as an antidote to income inequality are missing the picture. The American rich are not getting richer because of the American tax code. Income inequality in the United States is increasing. It is also increasing in Sweden. And Norway. And Finland. And the Netherlands. And Canada. And Germany. Pick your European welfare state and throw in Japan, too, and you’ll find much the same story.

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Remembering Shirley: Iconic Child Star Dies at 85

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Photo Credit: Ladyfroufrou SparkleSparkle!/flickrShirley Temple Black, iconic child star, dies at 85

By Valerie J. Nelson.

Shirley Temple Black, who as the most popular child movie star of all time lifted a filmgoing nation’s spirits during the Depression and then grew up to be a diplomat, has died. She was 85.

Black died late Monday at her home in Woodside, Calif., according to publicist Cheryl J. Kagan. No cause was given.

From 1935 through 1938, the curly-haired moppet billed as Shirley Temple was the top box-office draw in the nation. She saved what became 20th Century Fox studios from bankruptcy and made more than 40 movies before she turned 12.

Hollywood recognized the enchanting, dimpled scene-stealer’s importance to the industry with a “special award” — a miniature Oscar — at the Academy Awards for 1934, the year she sang and danced her way into America’s collective heart.

After she sang “On the Good Ship Lollipop” in “Bright Eyes,” the song became a hit and the studio set up Shirley Temple Development, a department dedicated to churning out formulaic scripts that usually featured the cheerful, poised Shirley as the accidental Little Miss Fix-It who could charm any problem away.

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Photo Credit: YouTube The Meaning of Shirley Temple

By William Bigelow.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.” We don’t have her any more after her death Monday night, and the truth is we are not all right.

Shirley Temple and her iconic screen presence were a tribute to an America that believed in innocence, even during a dark era when millions of Americans were out of work and desperate to find a path back to normalcy. Temple’s screen presence, a cherubic, delightful, utterly charming persona, was a balm for those in the audience who needed a respite from the daily terrors of insolvency and loss of faith in their future.

Temple was innocent enough that when she danced with the legendary black dancer Bill Robinson in The Little Colonel, no one gave a hoot that the interracial teaming was a watershed moment.

More than anything, Temple represented the wide-eyed innocence that America once believed was the natural province of childhood.

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Ice Expert Predicts Three-Quadrillion-Gallon Lake Superior Will Completely Freeze Over This Winter

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Photo Credit: NOAABy Barbara Hollingsworth.

Superior hasn’t completely frozen over in two decades.

But an expert on Great Lakes ice says there’s a “very high likelihood” that the three-quadrillion-gallon lake will soon be totally covered with ice thanks to this winter’s record-breaking cold.

The ice cover on the largest freshwater lake in the world hit a 20-year record of 91 percent on Feb. 5, 1994.

Jay Austin, associate professor at the Large Lakes Observatory in Duluth, Minn., told CNSNews.com that he expects that record will be broken this winter when the most northern of the Great Lakes becomes totally shrouded in ice.

The thickness of the ice on Lake Superior “varies tremendously,” from a very thin sheet in some areas near the coast to several feet thick in other spots, Austin says. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that the mean thickness of the lake ice is 26 cm, or a little over 10 inches.

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Photo Credit: AccuWeather Historic Ice Storm Unfolds in South; Lengthy Power Outages Possible

By Brian Lada.

With a major winter storm unfolding over the South, snow and ice will severely impact travelers and residents from Texas to the Carolinas through midweek.

The event could be the worst ice storm for parts of the South in more than 10 years.

One batch of snow, sleet, rain and freezing rain affected the South Monday into Tuesday.

Nearly 650 flights have been canceled at Atlanta International Airport alone as of Tuesday afternoon.

Another batch of snow and ice will hit many of the same areas spanning Tuesday night into Wednesday night, including parts of Texas, Arkansas, northern Louisiana and central and northern Mississippi.

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Sinking Feeling: Iranian Navy Sends Message with US-Bound ‘Rust Buckets’

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Photo Credit: FARS News AgencyThe two Iranian warships headed toward U.S. waters — one of which barely survived a 1988 run-in with an American fighter jet — are a pair of “rust buckets” Tehran is using to prove to its people it can project power around the globe, naval experts said.

The commander of Iran’s Northern Navy Fleet said the ships — the frigate Sabalan and Kharg, a supply ship capable of carrying helicopters — began their trip last month from the southern port city Bandar Abbas. Adm. Afshin Rezayee Haddad said the vessels had already entered the Atlantic Ocean near South Africa en route to U.S. maritime borders as part of a three-month mission. Haddad characterized the move as a response to the ongoing presence of the U.S. Navy’s 5th fleet, which is based in Bahrain, across the Persian Gulf.

But the British-built ships, which are reportedly carrying roughly 30 Iranian Navy academy cadets, are not militarily imposing, according to defense experts reached by FoxNews.com.

“From a tactical perspective, neither one of these ships are any good; they are an afterthought to the U.S. Navy from a warfare perspective,” said Christopher Harmer, senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. “From a strategic standpoint, they are very important.”

In 1988, the 310-foot Sabalan was attacked by American forces after it fired upon an A-6 Intruder aboard the USS Enterprise following tensions in the Persian Gulf. The Iranian ship was completely decimated but did not sink, ultimately being restored and improved — something not lost on the Iranian powers, Harmer said.

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A ‘Tsunami’ of Store Closings Expected to Hit Retail (+video)

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesGet ready for the next era in retail—one that will be characterized by far fewer shops and smaller stores.

On Tuesday, Sears said that it will shutter its flagship store in downtown Chicago in April. It’s the latest of about 300 store closures in the U.S. that Sears has made since 2010. The news follows announcements earlier this month of multiple store closings from major department stores J.C. Penney and Macy’s.

Further signs of cuts in the industry came Wednesday, when Target said that it will eliminate 475 jobs worldwide, including some at its Minnesota headquarters, and not fill 700 empty positions.

Experts said these headlines are only the tip of the iceberg for the industry, which is set to undergo a multiyear period of shuttering stores and trimming square footage.

Shoppers will likely see an average decrease in overall retail square footage of between one-third and one-half within the next five to 10 years, as a shift to e-commerce brings with it fewer mall visits and a lesser need to keep inventory stocked in-store, said Michael Burden, a principal with Excess Space Retail Services.

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Obama Admin Pressed for Lifting Sanctions on Iranian Broadcaster Involved in Human Rights Abuses

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Photo Credit: AlgemeinerWatchdog group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) on Tuesday called on the Obama Administration to reconsider its decision to lift sanctions on Iran’s state broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), which had been punished for its involvement in the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses. Among other offenses IRIB has jammed foreign broadcasts, televised forced confessions and broadcast show trials of political prisoners.

UANI said that while the U.S. and world powers agreed in November to lift sanctions tied to Iran’s economy in exchange for the regime allowing increased access to its nuclear facilities, they also agreed to maintain sanctions on areas tied to human rights abuses, and should stay that course.

“We urge the Obama administration to reconsider its decision to waive sanctions on IRIB,” said Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, UANI’s CEO. “The administration repeatedly pledged that the sanctions relief it granted Iran would not include those sanctions related to human rights. It must now uphold those promises, and maintain sanctions on IRIB given IRIB’s continued role in facilitating human rights abuses in Iran.”

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