Starnes: You Can’t Celebrate America, School Says

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Photo Credit: WND Students and parents at a Colorado high school are outraged after administrators turned down their request for a spirit week day honoring America because it might offend non-Americans.

“They said they didn’t want to offend anyone from other countries or immigrants,” a 16-year-old member of the student council told me. “They just really did not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.”

The student council at Fort Collins High School had proposed having a day to celebrate the United States during next week’s Winter Spirit Week. The young people pitched “’Merica Monday” – and invited their classmates to dress in patriotic colors. Their proposal was promptly shot down by administrators.

“They said they didn’t want to be exclusive to any other country,” a 17-year-old member of the student council told me.

The students and parents who talked to me about this incident have asked to remain anonymous. The parents feared their children might face reprisals from liberal educators.

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NC High School Football Coach Ordered To Cease Baptisms, Leading Prayers

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Photo Credit: SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty ImagesHead football coach of Mooresville High School, Hal Capps, has been ordered to stop baptizing players and leading them in prayer following criticism from a national organization promoting constitutional separation of church and state.

The Wisconsin-based nonprofit Freedom from Religion Foundation wrote a request last fall that coach Capps cease leading prayers and joining baptisms for his players as a base rule of separating public school activities and religious ceremonies. School Superintendent Mark Edwards met with Capps, who said, “he understood” the violation and would no longer participate in such religious observances, the Charlotte Observer reports.

“It is a violation of the Constitution for the Mooresville High School football coach to organize, lead, or participate in prayers or other religious proselytizing before, during, or after games and practices,” Patrick Elliott, attorney for Freedom from Religion Foundation, wrote to the school’s district attorney last fall.

“It is well settled that public schools, and by extension public school officials, may not advance or promote religion.”

Elliott emailed the Observer a picture from the Blue Devils’ team Twitter, reportedly showing Capps at a team baptism. But Superintendent Edwards said the photo is from a baptism performed at the Charles Mack Citizen Center, a church that many team members attend and Capps was simply invited to attend.

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Number of Christians Killed Through Persecution Increased by 75 Percent in 2013

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Photo Credit: APPersecution of Christians continues to worsen, fueled in part by the “Arab Spring,” which not only unleashed a wave of Islamist radicalism across the Arab world but also left Christians holding the blame for many of the uprisings that removed Arab leaders from power.

In 2013, 2,123 Christians were killed in persecution around the world, up from 1,201 in 2012.

In countries across the Middle East, North Africa and south Asia, Christians are murdered or imprisoned, their homes and businesses destroyed and their rights removed. This area represents just four percent of the world’s 2.2 billion Christians, but the treatment they receive is nothing short of horrific.

“It is not an accident, the persecution and mass murder of Christians by Muslims,” said Lee Habeeb, a Lebanese Christian and vice president of content at Salem Radio Network. “It is not episodic. It is by design. It is part of a plan to destroy any competing narrative about God. To bully, threaten, and intimidate Christians into submission, or mass evacuation.”

Earlier this month, Open Doors, an organization dedicated to strengthening Christianity throughout the world, especially in oppressed nations, released its 2014 “World Watch List,” designed to highlight the countries where Christians are most oppressed. Countries in the Middle East, northern Africa and south Asia dominate the list. Here are some of the worst offenders…

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Chuck Grassley Demands Legal Arguments Behind Obama’s ‘Pen and Phone’ Strategy

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Photo Credit: APA top Senate Republican wants access to the legal opinions that justify President Obama’s plans to step up his use of executive orders.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter Monday to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, asking for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to disclose to the public its opinions and analyses of the president’s executive orders.

Grassley’s request comes a week after Obama promised “a year of action,” which he would undertake even if Congress does not vote in favor of his proposals.

“In his State of the Union address earlier this week, the President made plain his intention to implement his agenda through aggressive use of these orders, whether or not the Congress and the American people agree,” Grassley wrote to Holder. “I am gravely concerned that the system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution is threatened by the President’s determination to take unilateral action if he cannot persuade Congress and the American people of the merits of his ideas.”

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Conservative Legal Activist, Who Succeeded at Trial Court, Asks Supreme Court to Hear NSA Case

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Photo Credit: APThe conservative legal activist who won the first court ruling questioning the legality of the National Security Agency’s massive phone-call tracking database is asking the Supreme Court to short circuit the normal appeals process and take up the case directly.

Attorney Larry Klayman said he sent the unusual petition to the high court on Monday.

“We went to the Supreme Court because, unlike the government, we’re not dragging our feet. We want a quick decision here,” Klayman said in a brief phone interview Monday afternoon.

A Justice Department spokesman had no immediate comment on the submission

The filing, known as a petition for writ of certiorari before judgment, is granted exceesingly rarely by the court. Usually, the justices prefer for cases to have full appellate review and in many cases review by appeals courts from more than one circuit.

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Child Soldier: Shocking Video Surfaces of Purported 4-Year-Old Jihadist in Syria

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Photo Credit: YouTubeAl Qaeda fighters in Syria may have sunk to a new low with a video that appears to show a four-year-old boy squeezing off rounds from an AK-47 as jihadists exhort him on with cries of “Alahu Akhbar.”

The little tyke, whose father stands proudly behind him, is dwarfed by the heavy automatic weapon, and props the barrel up on a street barricade in the stomach-turning clip. The gun’s recoil knocks him back, and his father helps him hold it, offering encouragement in Arabic. International experts say the use of child soldiers is a disturbing trend previously seen in the bloody Syrian civil war, but the use of such a young boy is a new depth.

“Syria is unique to any other conflict we’ve worked in over the last 20 years,” Kate Adams, policy and advocacy manager at London-based charity War Child told FoxNews.com. “Children do seem to have been targeted by both sides, more than we might necessarily see in other conflicts. Children are being used almost as pawns of the war and not just as collateral damage.”

The child, identified as “Muhammad,” wears a black mask as he fires the gun, then removes it to reveal the chubby cheeks of a boy who should be playing harmless games with friends. Local reports say he arrived in Syria with his father from either Uzbekistan or Albania, along with the thousands of foreign fighters who are now answering the call for Holy War in the key Middle East nation.

The original video of the boy carried the title, “A message from one of the cubs of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” an Al Qaeda-linked group bent on establishing a terrorist state spanning Iraq and Syria. The video was removed from YouTube, but copies of the brief 30-second clip had already been released onto the web.

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Eating Too Much Added Sugar May Be Killing You

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Photo Credit: Allison Joyce, Getty ImagesSugar not only makes you fat, it may be killing you.

Consuming too much added sugar — in regular soda, cakes, cookies and candy — increases your risk of death from heart disease, according to a new study, the largest of its type.

“The risk of cardiovascular disease death increases exponentially as you increase your consumption of added sugar,” says the study’s lead author, Quanhe Yang, a senior scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On average, adults in the USA in 2010 consumed about 15% of their daily calories — about 300 calories a day, based on a 2,000-calorie diet — from added sugars. That’s far more than the American Heart Association’s recommendation that women consume no more than 100 calories a day from added sugars, or about 6 teaspoons of sugar; and men consume no more than 150 calories a day, or about 9 teaspoons. The World Health Organization recommends consuming less than 10% of calories from added sugars.

One can of regular soda contains about 140 calories of added sugar. That’s about 7% of the daily calories of someone eating 2,000 calories a day, Yang says.

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Farm Bill Moves Forward in Senate with Final Passage Expected Tuesday

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Photo Credit: ThinkstockThe Senate moved forward Monday on long-awaited legislation to authorize farm spending, voting to end debate on the measure so that the chamber can vote on final passage Tuesday.

Two years in the making, the $1 trillion bill ends a decades-old policy of providing taxpayer subsidies directly to farmers.

The five-year plan cuts spending by $16.6 trillion over a decade, including an $800 million annual reduction to the food stamp program.

The vote was 72-22, and included opposition from Republicans who wanted deeper cuts and Democrats who opposed the food stamp reduction.

The House approved the measure last week by a bipartisan 251-166 vote.

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Forgetting Gun Was in Glove Box Could Land Veteran in Canadian Prison for 3 Years

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Photo Credit: Reuters Retired Army Sergeant Major Louis DiNatale was on his way to Vermont for vacation in his wife’s car when he took a wrong turn, ended up on a bridge to Canada, and was charged for possession of a firearm after Canadian customs agents found a small-caliber pistol in his wife’s console.

Although DiNatale made it clear he was on the bridge inadvertently and simply wanted to u-turn and return to the United States, he was handcuffed and could face three years in prison.

According to the LA Times, DiNatale had forgotten the gun was in his wife’s console shortly after putting it there so it wouldn’t be in his truck when he drove onto base at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. He put the pistol in his wife’s car for safe-keeping then forgot all about it.

When a Canadian custom agent asked DiNatale if he owned guns, the retired Sergeant Major said, “yes.”

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Farewell to Henry Waxman, Maker of Bad Laws

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott ApplewhiteAfter 40 years in Congress, California Democrat Henry Waxman is calling it quits. His legacy includes a toxic fuel additive (a boondoggle known as ethanol), a failed pork-fest of a climate bill and the devastation of small businesses — to name a few of his legislative accomplishments.

Washington Post correspondent Karen Tumulty praised Waxman, calling him “one of the last to whom the word ‘lawmaker’ still applied.”

But here’s the thing: If you spend four decades making laws, you’re going to make some bad laws. And Henry Waxman made a lot of bad laws.

Waxman deserves praise for many things. Together with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, Waxman passed a reform that improved the prescription drug patent system. He also passed a postal reform.

Waxman kept his hands impressively clean of K Street’s tainting influence. Despite being in Congress longer than “Wheel of Fortune” has been on the air, Waxman has only six former staffers in the “Revolving Door” database at the Center for Responsive Politics. Since 1989, Waxman averaged less than $30,000 from lobbyists per election – a modest sum for a committee chairman.

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