Activists: Syrian Forces Launch New Aleppo Strikes

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Photo Credit: YahooSyrian military helicopters dropped barrels packed with explosives in the government’s latest air raids on rebel-held areas of the northern city of Aleppo on Saturday, killing at least 23 people including a family trapped in a burning car, activists said.

In neighboring Lebanon, a car bomb blew up near a gas station in a Shiite town, killing at least three people, in the latest attack linked to the war in neighboring Syria.

Footage on al-Manar television, associated with the Shiite group Hezbollah, showed a bright orange blaze as black silhouettes of people ran by the gas station in the northeastern town of Hermel that lies near the Syrian border. Blasts could be heard in the background. The Lebanese Red Cross said another 18 people were wounded. The organization initially reported that four people were killed, but later revised the number downwards.

The large blast occurred near a school for impoverished and orphaned children. None were injured, officials said.

It was the latest in a series of attacks targeting Lebanon’s Shiite community, as Syria’s violence causes neighboring Lebanon’s sectarian tensions to escalate into outright violence.

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Dylan Farrow: Woody Allen Sexually Assaulted Me

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Photo Credit: APDylan Farrow renewed molestation allegations against Woody Allen, claiming the movie director sexually assaulted her when she was 7 after he and actress Mia Farrow adopted her.

In an open-letter to The New York Times posted online Saturday, Dylan Farrow made her first public comments about the 1992 incident. In a letter to op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof, she said she was moved to speak out because of Hollywood’s continued embrace of Allen.

“That he got away with what he did to me haunted me as I grew up,” wrote Farrow. “I was stricken with guilt that I had allowed him to be near other little girls.”

The New York Times reported that Allen declined comment. Also, representatives for Allen and for former partner Mia Farrow also did not immediately return requests for comment Saturday from The Associated Press. Allen has long maintained his innocence.

In the letter, Dylan Farrow claims that in 1992 at the family’s Connecticut home, Allen led her to a “dim, closet-like attic” and “then he sexually assaulted me.” Farrow didn’t specify Allen’s actions, but described other abusive behavior.

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Report: Man Sues IRS For Tripping On Phone Wire In Their Office And Is Awarded $862,000

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Photo Credit: Opposing News A 66-year-old New York man was awarded a generous payout after suing the IRS for a fall at their Long Island office nearly six years ago.

According to William Berroyer, back in 2008, he went to an IRS office in Hauppauge for an audit and to figure out a plan to pay the $60,000 that he owed them. While at the office, Berroyer claims he tripped over a telephone wire and severely injured himself.

“I really can’t say whether I hit it with my shoulder, hand or elbow, but I broke my fall on the cabinet,” said Berroyer in his testimony.

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Bernanke Leaves Fed with Record Balance Sheet

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez MonsivaisRetiring Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who was replaced by Janet Yellen as of today, is leaving the Federal Reserve with an unprecedented $4,102,138,000,000 in total assets on its balance sheet, up 391 percent from the $834,663,000,000 in total assets the Fed showed on its balance sheet when Bernanke took over as chairman in February 2006.

Much of the increase in the Fed’s assets has come in the form of U.S. Treasury securities and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae mortgage-backed securities that the Fed purchased over the last five years in its attempts to stimulate the economy.

As of Feb. 1, 2006, when Bernanke took over as chairman, the Fed’s balance sheet indicated it owned $748,840,000,000 in U.S. Treasury securities. At that time, the balance sheet listed no mortgage-backed securities. As of Jan. 29, 2013, the balance sheet indicated the Fed owned $2,243,176,000,000 in U.S. Treasury securities and $1,532,224,000,000 in mortgage-backed securities.

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Krauthammer: How to Debunk the ‘War on Women’

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Photo Credit: Screenshot What is it about women that causes leading Republicans to grow clumsy, if not stupid? When even savvy, fluent, attractively populist Mike Huckabee stumbles, you know you’ve got trouble. Having already thrown away eminently winnable Senate seats in Missouri and Indiana because of moronic talk about rape, the GOP might have learned. You’d think.

Huckabee wasn’t quite as egregious, just puzzling and a bit weird. Trying to make a point about Obamacare mandating free contraceptives, he inexplicably began speculating that the reason behind the freebie was the Democrats’ belief that women need the federal government to protect them from their own libidos.

Bizarre. I can think of no Democrat who has ever said that, nor any liberal who even thinks that. Such a theory, when offered by a conservative, is quite unfortunately self-revealing.

In any case, why go wandering into the psychology of female sexuality in the first place? It’s ridiculous. This is politics. Stick to policy. And there’s a good policy question to be asked about the contraceptive mandate (even apart from its challenge to religious freedom). It’s about priorities. By what moral logic does the state provide one woman with co-pay-free contraceptives while denying the same subvention to another woman when she urgently needs antibiotics for her sick child?

The same principle of sticking to policy and forswearing amateur psychology should apply to every so-called women’s issue. Take abortion, which is the subtext of about 90 percent of the alleged “war on women,” the charge being that those terrible conservative men are denying women control of their reproductive health.

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Miller Says Shell Withdrawal Underscores Need for Change

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Photo Credit: NewscastUS Senate Candidate Joe Miller says yesterday’s announcement of Shell Oil’s intent to withdraw from Alaska due to the adverse ruling passed down from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week is further evidence of the failed Democrat agenda.

“This latest blow to Alaska’s economy is a testament to the fact that elections have consequences,” said Miller. “Returning Mark Begich to the US Senate will only ensure that we get more of the same: more moral support for Barack Obama; more power grabs by Harry Reid; more activists confirmed to the federal bench; and more anti-development appointees leading the federal bureaucracy. It’s time to make a change.”

Just yesterday, it was revealed that Mark Begich has collected nearly $20,000 in campaign cash over the last two cycles from board members, executives, and associates of the plaintiffs who sued to stop drilling in the Arctic Ocean. These plaintiffs included the Alaska Wilderness League, Pacific Environment, Defenders of Wildlife, the Village of Point Hope, Oceana, and EarthJustice.

And that doesn’t include other affiliated groups and non-profits who account for thousands more. And who knows what their donors are doing?

It’s time to send a senator to Washington that folks can trust to put principle over party. Alaskans deserve a leader that they know won’t be cheating on them with Barack Obama and Harry Reid’s environmentalist friends.

Keystone XL Won’t Worsen Climate, State Dept. Study Finds

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Photo Credit: shannonpatrick17The proposed Keystone XL pipeline cleared a key hurdle today with a government study that found its impact on the climate would be minimal, which supporters said meets President Barack Obama’s test for allowing the project to be built.

In its final environmental review, the U.S. State Department found the Canada-U.S. oil pipeline would not greatly increase carbon emissions because the oil sands in Alberta will be developed anyway.

The study, while not the final word, is important because Obama has said he wouldn’t approve Keystone if it would exacerbate carbon pollution. Now the pipeline’s fate comes down to broader questions about whether the project is in the U.S. national interest, weighing matters such as energy needs and diplomatic relations.

“We are one step closer toward approval of the Keystone XL pipeline,” Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat and pipeline supporter, said in a statement. “Not only is it unacceptable, but it’s embarrassing that we cannot approve a pipeline application in the time it took us to fight World War II.”

TransCanada Corp. (TRP) applied more than five years ago for a permit to build the pipeline through the U.S. heartland, connecting the oil sands with refineries along the coast of Texas and Louisiana. It’s planned 830,000-barrel-a-day capacity would represent a fraction of U.S. oil imports, though the $5.4 billion project has spawned a multimillion-dollar lobbying fight and is forcing Obama to choose between angering an ally in Canada or his supporters in the environmental movement.

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Alaska Paratrooper Collapses, Dies after Jump

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Photo Credit: DVIDSHUBAn Alaska-based paratrooper has died after collapsing following a jump.

U.S. Army Alaska officials say in a release that the soldier died Thursday night at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage.

The statement says there’s no indication the soldier had a hard landing or that there was equipment failure during the parachute jump he completed prior to collapsing.

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Barack Obama: Patron Saint of the Press

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Photo Credit: APDuring this week’s State of the Union address, the President of the United States concluded his remarks telling the story of Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg. Sgt. Remsburg, on his 10th tour in Afghanistan, nearly lost his life when a roadside bomb exploded.

Sgt. Remsburg suffered brain damage and paralysis on his left side, is now partially blind and has difficulty speaking. It was a touching ending to an otherwise shabby speech. More striking than President Obama’s tribute was the press corps’ reaction. NBC News Senior Political Editor Mark Murray declared on twitter that, “Obama’s ending on Remsburg wasn’t just a story about America — it also was a story about Obama. Nothing has ever come easy.”

Former White House speechwriter Jon Favreau chimed in and agreed. Certainly Barack Obama is incapable of saluting others without making it about himself. After Nelson Mandela died, President Obama saluted him by sending out a picture of the President in Mandela’s jail cell. Honoring the men who died at Pearl Harbor, the president sent out a picture of himself at the USS Arizona. It was then natural to conclude that a narcissist like that would intend to make Cory Remsburg’s story about himself.

Had Mark Murray meant that, it would have been all well and good. But that is not what Murray meant. Writing at NBC News, Murray expanded his tweet, writing, “That story could also apply to Obama himself: Nothing in his seven years on the national political stage … has come easy. … And now the president’s current situation in which he finds himself bloodied and bruised after the botched health-care rollout.”

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Robert Redford Lays Into Republicans on CNN: They Want to Destroy Motives of President (+video)

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Photo Credit: NewsbustersLeftist actor-director Robert Redford laid into Republicans in a Sunday interview on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” Try not to notice this journalism show began with a Justin Bieber segment and included a Redford interview. Host Brian Stelter first asked how Redford felt about Obama. “I think he’s a good human being. That’s, I think, clear,” Redford replied. “He’s a humanitarian at heart, and that’s good. He’s trying to manage an extremely difficult situation. I mean, it’s — it’s almost too much for one person.”

He wouldn’t say the same for the GOP: “When you have one half whose only motive is to destroy the motives of the president of the United States, then you have a diseased system. And I don’t think that’s his fault. I think it just makes his job tougher.” Redford lamely claimed there was bipartisanship in getting to “truth” in Watergate: [See video after jump.]

REDFORD: We spoke a while back on “All the President’s Men Revisited.” There’s a moment in that film I’d like to point out that illustrates my point, which is remember the hearings, the Watergate hearings? And we have some archival footage in there where you had the panel, Sam Ervin, Sam Dash — you had all these guys, and you have the senator from Tennessee [Howard Baker], and he was conservative. He was a Republican.

You had Republicans and Democrats on this panel. And what you got out of it was how hard all of them were working together to get to the truth of something. And I thought, I’m seeing something we don’t see today, bipartisanship, working together to get to the truth for the public good.

Earth to Redford: In Watergate, can’t it look quite obviously like the Democrats and their media collaborators had the motive to “destroy the motives of the President of the United States”? The Republicans were cooperative in exposing what happened then. Do the Democrats look cooperative today on Obama scandals like the Benghazi fiasco or Fast & Furious? Are they interested in the “truth” when the Attorney General lies before Congress about his knowledge of Fast & Furious?

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