Fifth-Grade Football Team Stands Up For Bullied Waterboy (+video)

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Photo Credit: danxoneilIt’s Band of Brothers meets the Rat Pack, and it’s the most inspiring story you’ll see this week. When members of the Bridgewater (CT) Badgers fifth-grade football team learned that their waterboy, kindergartner Danny Keefe, was being bullied, they did what you’d expect: dress up in suits, ties and fedoras and rally to his defense. Wait, what?

Boston News, Weather, Sports | FOX 25 | MyFoxBoston

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Netanyahu: Iranian Nuclear Accord a False Peace

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Photo Credit: Hayim Tzah/GPOBy Herb Keinon.

“What was agreed last night in Geneva is not a historic agreement, it is a historic mistake,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. “Today the world has become a much more dangerous place, because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world.”

For the first time, he said, the leading powers of the world agreed to uranium enrichment in Iran, while removing sanctions that it has taken years to build up in exchange for “cosmetic Iranian concessions that are possible to do away with in a matter of weeks.”

Netanyahu said the consequences of this deal threaten many countries including Israel. He reiterated what he has said in the past, that Israel is not obligated by the agreement.

“Iran is committed to Israel’s destruction, and Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself by itself against any threat,” he said.

“I want to make clear as the prime minister of Israel, Israel will not allow Iran to develop a military nuclear capability.”

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Israel vows ‘whatever is necessary’ to stop Iran

By WND.

Israel will do “whatever is necessary” to stop Iran from going nuclear, declared Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon in a radio interview Sunday.

Speaking on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio, Danon warned all options are on the table after Iran and six world powers reached what is being described as an historic deal.

“We were not part of the negotiations,” he said. “We have not signed this agreement. And we will do whatever is necessary to protect Israel.”

Danon said, “We cannot allow ourselves to make a mistake. If it is a bad agreement and Iran is playing with the world, maybe the Western superpowers can afford to make such a mistake. It is not the case for Israel.”

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‘Great Satan’ Meets ‘Axis of Evil’ and Strikes a Deal

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/CAROLYN KASTER/POOLBy LOUIS CHARBONNEAU, PARISA HAFEZI AND ARSHAD MOHAMMED.

Saturday night had turned into Sunday morning and four days of talks over Iran’s nuclear program had already gone so far over schedule that the Geneva Intercontinental Hotel had been given over to another event.

A black tie charity ball was finishing up and singers with an after party band at a bar above the lobby were crooning out the words to a Johnny Cash song – “I fell into a burning ring of fire” – while weary diplomats in nearby conference rooms were trying to polish off the last touches of an accord. Negotiators emerged complaining that the hotel lobby smelled like beer.

At around 2:00 a.m., U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and counterparts from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia were brought to a conference room to approve a final text of the agreement which would provide limited relief of sanctions on Iran in return for curbs to its nuclear programme.

At the last minute, with the ministers already gathered in the room, an Iranian official called seeking changes. Negotiators for the global powers refused. Finally the ministers were given the all clear. The deal, a decade in the making, would be done at last.

Now that the interim deal is signed, talks are far from over as the parties work towards a final accord that would lay to rest all doubts about Iran’s nuclear program.

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Obama: Deal Opens Path to ‘Peaceful’ Iranian Nuclear Program

By CNSNews.com Staff.

President Barack Obama announced at the White House late Saturday that the U.S. government, working with the British, French, Germans, Russians and Chinese, had gotten the government of Iran to agree to curtail parts of its nuclear program in exchange for easing some of the sanctions being imposed on it.

The endgame of the negotiations with Iran, Obama explained, was to allow Iran to have a “peaceful” nuclear program…

Here is the full text of Obama’s statement:

President Barack Obama: Good evening. Today, the United States — together with our close allies and partners — took an important first step toward a comprehensive solution that addresses our concerns with the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program.

Since I took office, I’ve made clear my determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. As I’ve said many times, my strong preference is to resolve this issue peacefully, and we’ve extended the hand of diplomacy. Yet for many years, Iran has been unwilling to meet its obligations to the international community. So my administration worked with Congress, the United Nations Security Council and countries around the world to impose unprecedented sanctions on the Iranian government.

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Unbelievable Incompetence Led to No-Bid Contract for Healthcare.gov

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Photo Credit: American Thinker It appears that management of the rollout of healthcare.gov was delegated to the Keystone Kops, the famous symbols of comic incompetence created by Mack Sennett. A level of ineptitude that surely must be termed negligence has led to at least one no-bid contract as CMS leadership discovered at the last minute that they had forgotten one crucial piece of the project. Sharon Begley of Reuters reports:

Caught flat-footed by the challenges of building the financial-management and accounting parts of the U.S. government’s new online marketplace for health insurance, officials rushed to hire a familiar contractor without seeking competing bids, according to government procurement documents reviewed by Reuters.

The documents dated in August – less than two months before the opening of online marketplaces established by President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law – showed the agency in charge had only “recently learned” that building the financial management functions was “beyond (its) currently available resources.”

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) documents shed more light on the problems facing the agency as it worked on the marketplaces established by the law commonly called Obamacare and on its revelation this week that at least 30 percent of the marketplace is still being built.

Those problems and others have been revealed by congressional oversight investigators who released emails and outside reports that paint an administration scrambling to meet the technological challenges of the marketplace – and usually failing to do so.

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State Confirms Security Breach To Health Care Exchange Website

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Photo Credit: KAREN BLEIER/AFP/GettyOfficials overseeing the Vermont Health Connect website confirmed Friday there was a security breach on the system last month in which one user got improper access to another user’s Social Security number and other data.

A report from state to federal officials overseeing the health insurance exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act said a consumer reported the incident with the Vermont Health Connect website on Oct. 17.

The consumer, whom officials would not identify, reported that he received in the mail — from an unnamed sender — a copy of his own application for insurance under the state exchange.

“On the back of the envelope was hand-written ‘VERMONT HEALTH CONNECT IS NOT A SECURE WEBSITE!’ This was also (written) on the back of the last page of the printed out application,” said the incident report.

The report was prepared by Greg Needle, privacy administrator with Vermont Health Connect, and filed with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The Associated Press obtained it after a request under the state public records law to the Department of Vermont Health Access.

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An Appalling Betrayal of Imprisoned American Pastor Saeed Abedini

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Photo Credit: ACLJ.orgOn the night of November 23, 2013, the President of the United States left an American pastor, Saeed Abedini, behind.

The “deal” with Iran announced tonight by President Obama, which allegedly halts “part” of Iran’s nuclear program, allows Iran to enrich uranium and allows it to maintain a nuclear program in exchange for an easing of sanctions and humanitarian relief.

It is outrageous that the Obama Administration commenced these negotiations and concluded them without the release of Pastor Saeed – a U.S. citizen. In fact, the Administration has just confirmed that he was not even part of the negotiations, stating that “The P5+1 talks focused exclusively on nuclear issues.”

The Obama Administration did not volunteer this information; it was revealed only after a specific inquiry from Fox News.

For more than a year, Pastor Saeed has undergone torture at the hands of his Iranian captors, most recently being transferred to one of the most deadly prisons in the world. Yet instead of demanding the release of this innocent U.S. citizen as a precondition to any negotiations with Iran, the Obama Administration is relaxing sanctions and providing humanitarian relief, while getting nothing but more meaningless promises in return.

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When Abortion Hits Home

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Photo Credit: LifeNewsFeminist author and blogger Jessica Valenti, known for (among other things) advocating free abortions on demand and without apology, recently wrote an apology for her own abortion. Yet, she couldn’t even use the word. Instead, Valenti’s essay poignantly describes the dire medical circumstances surrounding her unplanned pregnancy, her adoring love for the toddler she already has, the loss of her hope to provide her daughter with a sister, and the traditions she has cultivated around the family table to pass on to her child, such as Sunday sauce.

So it is here, it seems—at the family table—that abortion has finally arrived in its collective meaning for all of us. The semiotics of abortion in American culture has evolved, and with it the images that give its meaning power: from the dark, dirty alley; to the clean, well-lighted clinic; and now, to the warm glow of the family dining room.

Nearly every table set for the family gathering at Thanksgiving this year will have a missing place, if not two or more, since one in three women in America now has an abortion by age 45; the majority of these self-identify as Christian. Even in the church, abortion is no longer something that affects “other” people; it affects us all. The volume of abortions has grown so astronomically high today that it’s virtually impossible not to be intimately acquainted with someone who has had one, explains Olivia Gans Turner, director of American Victims of Abortion. It’s statistically unlikely that our own families have been untouched by abortion. Abortion hits home for all of us.

Still, it too often goes unacknowledged, even unknown, in our own families. “We’re not going to discuss it over pumpkin pie,” she said. Yet trusted loved ones should be those most welcoming to women (and men) needing to share an abortion experience. Turner founded her outreach after going through acute distress following her own abortion as a college student. My friend Debbie, who had an abortion at 22 when she was homeless, jobless, and penniless, says her healing didn’t begin until she was able to “surrender the secret in a safe place.”

In a recent New York Magazine article, “My Abortion,” 26 women surrendered to millions of readers the moving stories of their abortions. Abortion, according to the introduction to their stories, “is something we tend to be more comfortable discussing as an abstraction; the feelings it provokes are too complicated to face in all their particularities.” It’s an issue yet to be resolved “in our consciences.”

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Severe Winter Weather Slams Much of U.S.: “This is Not Texas Weather…It’s Alaska, or Idaho”

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The wicked wintry weather that pummeled the West Coast is now barreling across the country, threatening to ruin millions of holiday travel plans just before Thanksgiving.

More than 300 flights have already been canceled in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — not exactly a bastion for snow storms. Sleet and freezing rain will keep blanketing parts of the Southern Plains and Southern Rockies on Monday.

“It’s going to be so close to freezing, that’s when we’re anticipating it to be bad,” Sgt. Lonny Haschel of the Texas Department of Public Safety said.

And after the storm deluges parts of the South with rain Monday evening, it’ll start zeroing in on the Northeast, the National Weather Service said. And that could spell more travel nightmares.

It’s not just the bad timing that has travelers riled up. In many of the places, this kind of weather isn’t supposed to happen.”This is not Texas weather, man,” driver Ron Taylor told CNN affiliate KTVT. “This is Alaska, or Idaho.”

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Charlie Rangel Attacks Tea Party, says Obama Should Rule Like Dictator

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Photo Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty ImageAccording to Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., Tea Party Republicans want to destroy people in their districts, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did a good thing when he violated Senate rules to invoke the nuclear option, and Barack Obama should simply rule by decree, issuing executive orders for “everything,” Politicker reported Saturday.

“You know, the DREAM Act for the kids that came over here and didn’t know their home town, the president did that by executive order. What I did is I’ve taken out the language that he used and I’m gonna see why we can’t use executive orders for everything,” Rangel told NY1. “What’s he gonna do? Make the Republicans angry? They’re gonna get annoyed? They’re not gonna cooperate?”

Rangel — who once served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney under Robert F. Kennedy — also praised Harry Reid for violating Senate rules to invoke the nuclear option on filibusters against judicial nominees and wished he could do the same for legislation in the House.

He then slammed Tea Party Republicans for refusing to cooperate with Obama, and compared them to criminals.

“A police officer once told me when I was a kid that the worst criminal to deal with is one that doesn’t mind dying,” he said. “And if you take a look at what these Tea Party people have done–recognizing that there’s more sick and poor white folks then there is–but they still are resisting everything that the president wants to do so they can destroy the people in their district in terms of education and jobs, the Congress, the Republican name. And when we had the debt ceiling crisis, they were really prepared to let the United States of America fiscal policy to go in the tubes. How can you talk with people like this?”

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U.S. Supported Jihadi Rebels Inflict Biggest Massacre of Syrian Christians So Far

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Photo Credit: thecommentator.comThe worst massacre of Christians in Syria so far — complete with mass graves, tortured-to-death women and children, and destroyed churches — recently took place at the hands of the U.S.-supported jihadi “rebels”; and the U.S. government and its “mainstream media” mouthpieces are, as usual, silent (that is, when not actively trying to minimize matters).

The massacre took place in Sadad, an ancient Syriac Orthodox Christian habitation, so old as to be mentioned in the Old Testament.

Most of the region’s inhabitants are poor, as Sadad is situated in the remote desert between Homs and Damascus (desert regions, till now, apparently the only places Syria’s Christians could feel secure; 600 Christian families had earlier fled there for sanctuary from the jihad, only to be followed by it).

In late October, the U.S-supported “opposition” invaded and occupied Sadad for over a week, until ousted by the nation’s military. Among other atrocities, 45 Christians — including women and children — were killed, several tortured to death; Sadat’s 14 churches, some ancient, were ransacked and destroyed; the bodies of six people from one family, ranging from ages 16 to 90, were found at the bottom of a well (an increasingly common fate for “subhuman” Christians).

The jihadis even made a graphic video (with English subtitles) of those whom they massacred, while shouting Islam’s victory-cry, “Allahu Akbar” (which John McCain equates to a Christian saying “thank God”). Another video, made after Sadad was liberated, shows more graphic atrocities.

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