EPA Set To Strike Key Blow Against Coal?

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsStymied by the GOP’s long resistance to cap and trade legislation, the EPA this week began public hearings — the next step toward a final rule — to cut carbon dioxide emissions from new coal plants.

The rule would limit emissions to 1100 pounds per Megawatt hour, a level the coal industry says is technologically unattainable.

Green energy proponents disagree.

“Opponents say this will prevent ever building another coal-fired plant in the United States today. They say that the technology is not commercially available. These claims are scare tactics,” Rep. HenryWaxman, D-Calif., said in a press conference Thursday outside EPA headquarters in advance of the hearing.

Some supporters of the proposed rule say fracking has unleashed a treasure trove of cleaner natural gas. Its new abundance and low price has put coal at a competitive disadvantage, a welcome development, they say, given the consequences of global warming.

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Jeh Johnson: DHS Already Preparing to Implement Immigration Reform

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Gary CameronThe Department of Homeland Securityis already preparing to implement immigration reform legislation, according to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.

“When reform legislation is enacted, DHS must be prepared to implement reform. So to prepare for this potential outcome, I have already directed the deputy director of homeland security to coordinate the process to ensure we are ready to implement the law,” Johnson said Friday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, during his first major policy address since becoming DHS’s fourth secretary.

He praised the House Republicans recent statement of principles on immigration, calling them a “serious step forward” that “contains a lot to work with.”

“With both parties’ recognition that our immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed, this should not be an issue used in one way or another for political advantage,” Johnson said. “Rather we must look to find commonsense solutions to a problem we all know we have.”

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House GOP Report: Hillary Was ‘Aware’ of Benghazi Security Lapses

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Photo Credit: APHouse Republicans Friday released a blistering new report saying former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “was certainly aware” of security problems in Libya before the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, blasting her and successor John Kerry for failing to hold anyone accountable.

The report written by staff members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s GOP majority cited problems with the State Department’s Accountability Review Board examination of the attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, The Washington Times reported.

And despite the Obama administration’s assertion that review board examination shows the blame for the attack lies with lower-level employees, the House report says Clinton should have been held accountable – and both she and Kerry failed to fire anyone for security breaches that led to the deaths of Stevens, State Department staffer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, the Times reported.

“Systemic failures at the State Department during Secretary Clinton’s tenure resulted in a grossly inadequate security posture in Benghazi,” the report states, according to the Times.

“These vulnerabilities contributed to the deaths of four Americans, including the first U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979.”

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Berkeley Prof Forces Students to Tweet Pro-Islam Views

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Photo Credit: Youtube screenshotStudents in Professor Hatem Bazian’s class at the University of California at Berkeley are required to publicly denounce Islamophobia on Twitter while designing strategies to help Islamic groups improve their outreach efforts.

Bazian is a founder of “Students for Justice in Palestine” at Berkeley, where he teaches in the Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies departments. One of his classes, “Asian American Studies 132AC: Islamophobia,” requires students to tweet about Islamophobia, according to Tarek Fatah, a columnist for the Toronto Sun.

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Manchin: ‘We Haven’t Been Successful’ in Changing Afghanistan: ‘Time to Leave’

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott ApplewhiteSen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) says it’s time to “rebuild America, not Afghanistan.” He and three other senators want Congress to debate a continued U.S. military presence in that country after 12-plus years of war:

“If military might or money would change that part of the world, we’d have changed it by now,” Manchin told a news conference on Thursday.

“We haven’t been successful nor do we believe we will be successful. That’s my deep-rooted commitment to getting out of this part (of the world) and basically protecting America, making sure that harm doesn’t come to any Americans, and we’ll do whatever it takes to protect them.

“But an occupation — that is not our goal. It’s not what we do well, and it’s not been proved successful at all. So again, I’d say if military might or money would have changed that part of the world after 12 years, we’d have changed it, and we haven’t. So it’s time to leave.”

Manchin on Thursday joined fellow Democrat Jeff Merkeley (Ore.) and Republicans Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.) in introducing a resolution that says Congress should vote on the Obama administration’s reported plan to keep 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan for another ten years.

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Great Lakes Ice Cover Spreading Rapidly; See Which Lake Set a New Record

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Photo Credit: NASAIce continued to build this past week on the Great Lakes due to the cold air and temperatures staying below freezing, and Lake Superior’s new record shows it.

The lake is 92 percent frozen, toppling a 20-year-old record of 91 percent set on Feb. 5, 1994. That statistic helped total Great Lakes ice cover soar, and we can expect to see more form in coming days.

The air temperatures this past week averaged around five degrees below normal for the Great Lakes area. This amount of deviation from normal means it was a fairly cold week.

As of February 5, 2014, the entire Great Lakes system is now reportedly covered 77 percent with ice, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. Last week at this time the ice cover was 66 percent. The 77 percent ice cover now still lags behind 1994, when the entire Great Lakes system had an average ice cover of 84 percent on February 5. This data is according to Jia Wang, physical oceanographer at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Center in Ann Arbor, MI.

Let’s look at each individual lake…

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Most Of North Texas City Without Gas Service Or Heat (+video)

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Photo Credit: euthman/flickrTexas Gas Service (TGS) was forced to shut down the gas supply to the entire city of Jacksboro Thursday. Most businesses and residents had no heat, on a day when temperatures struggled to get out of the teens.

The lack of services affected adults and children. The Jacksboro Independent School District even sent students home early and businesses closed all over town.

“I felt the cold breeze right in my face,” recalled Jacksboro resident Ana Karen. “There’s nothing to do [now] but, somehow keep warm.”

Trucks were bringing in compressed natural gas (CNG) to supply the small city hospital, senior living center, warming shelter and emergency operations center.

City manager Mike Smith said gas service started repeatedly turning off and on early Thursday morning. With pilot lights going out, there was a risk for gas buildup inside of structures. TGS notified the city it would have to shut off service completely.

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Another Jobs Report Disappoints: 113,000 New Jobs, Unemployment Rate to 6.6 Percent

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner The Labor Department’s jobs report disappointed for a second consecutive month Friday, bringing the news that the U.S. created just 113,000 jobs in January, as the unemployment rate fell to 6.6 percent.

December’s even weaker job report was little revised, from 74,000 to 75,000.

Friday’s jobs number fell short of expectations, which were for 180,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate to hold steady at 6.7 percent

The report contained few indications, however, that the drop in the unemployment rate in January was due to out-of-work Americans continuing to quit the job hunt and leave the ranks of those counted as unemployed in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey. The labor force participation rate ticked up from a multi-decade low of 62.8 percent to 63 percent. A broader rate of unemployment, which reflects those forced into part-time work or only marginally attached to the labor force, fell from 13.1 to 12.8 percent.

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Planned Parenthood Must Pay $2 Million Settlement After Killing Woman in Abortion

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Photo Credit: LifeNewsThe Planned Parenthood abortion business has been forced to pay a $2 million settlement to the family of a black teenager it killed in a botched legal abortion in 2012.

Walter Hoye, a black pro-life leader who has closely followed the case, obtained a copy of the court order awarding the settlement. The settlement document indicates Planned Parenthood of Illinois, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation must pay her son Alvin Jones III, who was one at the time of Reaves’ death from the botched legal abortion.

He told LifeNews today that the settlement is an acknowledgement on Planned Parenthood’s part that it took Reaves’ life, but he said he’s disappointed the abortion giant won’t be held accountable further.

“In my opinion, Planned Parenthood is guilty of criminal negligence, depraved indifference, and gross medical incompetence,” Hoye said. “Now that the case is settled, we will never know how a jury would have reacted.”

“Finally, what happens to Planned Parenthood’s late term abortionist Mandy Gittler and their professionally trained staff operating out of their modern downtown Chicago facilities?” Hoye asked.The payouts of the settlement do not begin until Tonya’s son turns eighteen (18) in 2029.

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At Pakistan’s ‘Taliban U,’ Jihadists Major in Anti-Americanism

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Photo Credit: Fox News A 90-minute drive northwest of Islamabad is an Islamic seminary that is considered the ivory tower of terrorism, a jihadist factory that has produced prominent Taliban fighters and its leadership for decades.

Unofficially dubbed “University of Jihad,” Dar ul Uloom Haqqania [House of Knowledge and Truthfulness] counts Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of the dreaded Haqqani Network, among its alumni. Names of most of more than 8,000 former students who have passed through the seminary are encased in glass-covered wooden frames that hang on the walls inside the main building.

“The Haqqanis got their surname from Haqqania, this madrassa” “Ammanullah,” a proud member of the Class of 2007, told FoxNews.com during a recent tour, a rare look inside the seminary along the Grand Trunk Road in Akora Khattak.

The campus is the size of four football fields, encompassing several buildings guarded by one police gunman. About 3,500 students currently live and study at the compound, which has churned out generations of freedom fighters stretching back to the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Closely aligned with the Taliban of Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is at violent odds with the current governments of both nations.

Founded by Maulana Abdul Haq just after Pakistan gained independence in 1947, the seminary propagates Deobandi, a revivalist and anti-imperialist movement of Sunni Islam formed in reaction to the Britain’s colonization of India.

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