Poll: Overwhelming Majority Believe News Monitoring Not the Government’s Job

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Photo Credit: TownHallBy now you’ve heard about the FCC “study” that would have put government bureaucrats into newsrooms all over the country in order to monitor how news is gathered. Luckily, that study was killed thanks to the work of conservative media and FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who exposed and spoke out against it.

Now, a new Rasmussen Report shows an overwhelming majority of Americans do not believe it is the government’s job to monitor news content.

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Mark Levin to Receive Inaugural Citizens United ‘Andrew Breitbart’ Defender of the First Amendment Award’ at CPAC

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Photo Credit: Mark Taylor/flickrConservative talk radio host Mark Levin will be honored with the inaugural “Andrew Breitbart Defender of the First Amendment Award” at this year’s CPAC on Thursday, March 6.

Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow will introduce Citizens United President David Bossie, who will present the award to Levin along with Breitbart News President and CEO Larry Solov and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon.

“Mark Levin fearlessly and passionately stands up for conservatives and everyday Americans whose voices the mainstream press often tries to marginalize or silence,” Solov said. “And like Andrew Breitbart, Levin has a way of cutting through the mainstream press’s filter with his words and is never afraid to have arrows slung at him by the institutional left on the front lines of the fight.”

It will mark Levin’s only appearance at this year’s conference. The ceremony will take place in the CPAC Theater in the Chesapeake conference rooms that Citizens United will sponsor.

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ObamaCare Restaurant Menu Mandate Creating Headaches

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Photo Credit: Fox News Tucked deep in the Affordable Care Act is language requiring all restaurants with at least 20 locations to list nutritional information alongside each and every item on their menu.

That edict is now creating headaches for small business owners across the country, particularly pizza chains.

Take Domino’s. There are 34 million different pizza combinations available at the chain, when all crusts and cheeses and toppings are factored in.

Now imagine walking into a Domino’s and navigating a menu board with 34 million different options on it.

Executives say figuring out the small print will be a big burden.

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Poll: 66 Percent of Americans Want Continued Benghazi Investigation

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Photo Credit: Reuters Published in The Washington Times, the poll shows strong American support–across the political spectrum–for such an investigation.

The poll asked: “Should Congress continue to investigate the Obama administration’s handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the deaths of four Americans?”

Read more this story HERE.

Holder Promotes Lawlessness to State AG’s: You Don’t Have to Enforce Laws You Disagree With

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Photo Credit: TownHallAttorney General Eric Holder is taking the lawless attitude of the Obama administration and passing it down to state attorneys general. Yesterday during an interview with The New York Times, Holder said state attorneys general do not have to enforce laws they disagree with, specifically when it comes to the issue of gay marriage.

It is highly unusual for the United States attorney general to advise his state counterparts on how and when to refuse to defend state laws. But Mr. Holder said when laws touch on core constitutional issues like equal protection, an attorney general should apply the highest level of scrutiny before reaching a decision on whether to defend it. He said the decision should never be political or based on policy objections.

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As Obama’s Approval Rating Slips, Democrats are Avoiding Him

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Photo Credit: JACQUELYN MARTIN/AP
When President Obama goes abroad, world leaders come to meet him. When Obama travels at home these days, members of his own party often avoid him.

When Obama speaks Wednesday in St. Paul, Minn., on the economy, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) “hopes he can join the President,” a spokesman for the former funnyman said. “But it’s uncertain if his schedule will allow for travel since the Senate is in session.”

“Maybe out of an abundance of caution Franken is hesitating to be in the state,” said prominent political handicapper Stuart Rothenberg.

Minnesota is a liberal state by national standards. But a poll this month by the state’s Star Tribune newspaper found Obama’s approval rating there had for the first time turned negative. Half of Gopher State respondents disapproved of Obama’s performance while 43% approved, his worst marks since his election.

Nationally, Democrats hold 55 Senate seats to Republicans’ 45. But most contested Senate races feature Democratic incumbents running states Obama didn’t carry.

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California College Student Teaches School $50,000 Lesson on Constitution (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsA California college student who was blocked last year from handing out copies of the Constitution gave his school a lesson in civics and the law, winning a $50,000 settlement and an agreement to revise its speech codes.

Robert Van Tuinen, 26, settled with Modesto Junior College just five months after his run-in with school officials on Sept. 17 – National Constitution Day. Van Tuinen said he’s more excited about getting the school to revise its speech codes, which previously confined the First Amendment to a small area students had to sign up to use.

“They were maintaining an unconstitutional speech code, and now any of my fellow students can go out and exercise their right to free speech,” Van Tuinen, an Army veteran who grew up in Modesto and now studies photography, told FoxNews.com.

Back in September, FoxNews.com aired the video Van Tuinen took of his confrontation with school officials.

In the video, Van Tuinen is confronted by an unidentified campus police officer within minutes of passing out the pamphlets. When he protests, he is told “there are rules.”

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Solid Majority of Americans Say UN Doing a Poor Job

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More Americans believe the U.N. is doing a poor rather than good job in trying to solve the problems it has had to face, by 57% to 35%. This rating is slightly worse than a year ago, when 50% said the U.N. was doing a poor job, and thus continues a decade-long trend of low public confidence in the U.N.

These results come from the Feb. 6-9 Gallup World Affairs Poll. The U.N. has been struggling to help bring the bloody, three-year Syrian civil war to a close, with the most recent U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Geneva widely seen as a failure, to the point that the U.N. envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, publicly apologized to the Syrian people that the peace conference did not yield any progress.

With such intractable conflicts as Syria dogging the U.N., it may not be surprising that many Americans would consider the international body — originally proposed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and established with strong U.S. support — ineffective. However, Americans’ negative evaluation of the U.N.’s functioning is nothing new. After the U.S. failed to win U.N. support for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the percentage of Americans who said the U.N. was doing a good job fell 13 points to 37%, and hit a nadir of 26% in 2009. It has failed to climb above 40% since then.

Prior to the Iraq war, Americans’ reviews of the international body waxed and waned. Opinions were generally positive in the 1950s and 1960s — not long after the institution was created — before falling off in the 1970s, a decade marked by continued war in Vietnam, a war between Israel and several Arab nations, and OPEC’s oil embargo of the U.S. American attitudes became more positive in the early 1990s, when the U.N. Security Council maintained a unified front against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

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Biden: I Would Run Against Hillary (+video)

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Photo Credit: Chip SomodevillaVice President Biden made it clear Tuesday he’s open to running against Hillary Clinton in a 2016 Democratic presidential primary.

Speaking on ABC’s “The View,” Biden pushed back when co-host Barbara Walters claimed he had said he would not enter the next race for the White House if the former secretary of State did.

“No, I haven’t” said that, Biden told Walters. He added later that “whether [Clinton] runs or not will not affect my decision.”

The 2016 questions came as Biden sought to promote ObamaCare’s marketplaces with the show’s heavily female audience.

The White House is urging mothers to tell their kids to sign up for health plans before March 31, when open enrollment ends for 2014.

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Drought Leaves California Farmers Choosing Which Crops Get Water and Which Wither

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Photo Credit: GETTY IMAGESA federal agency’s recent announcement that the California’s Central Valley will get zero percent water allocation this year was devastating for farmers already dealing with the worst drought seen in decades.

One of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, the enormous valley is reeling after the driest year in more than a century. But last week, the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, which supplies water to a third of the irrigated farmland in California through a 500-mile network of canals and tunnel, said it won’t be able to deliver any of the water sought by farmers.

“It goes beyond devastation, you’re going to see farms that have been in business 30 and 40 years, they do not have any water, they are out of business,” said Dennis Falaschi, general manager of the Panoche Water District.

The drought, combined with continued protections for endangered species, has forced farmers to find alternatives. Most farmers have already switched to drip irrigation, which is much more efficient than the flood irrigation technique used when water was plentiful. But it still may not be enough, as farmers are now choosing which crops to water – and which to let wither.

“This farm’s been here for over 90 years and we recognize that Mother Nature throws a drought occasionally and so we made the decision not to plant more than a third of this farm,” says Mike Stearns, a Central Valley Farmer.

Read more this story HERE.