Eighth-Grade Student Arrested for Setting Teacher’s Hijab on Fire

Photo Credit: Daily Caller An eighth-grade student at Westdale Middle School in Baton Rouge, La. has been expelled for allegedly setting a substitute teacher’s hijab on fire using a cigarette lighter.

The incident occurred on the morning of Oct. 4, reports New Orleans Fox affiliate WVUE.

The local school drug task force (apparently an arm of the sheriff’s office) was summoned to the Westdale at 9:50 a.m. to investigate, notes ABC affiliate WBRZ.

Parents say they were never informed about the incident. Many were unhappy about this lack of notification. Some have alleged a cover-up.

The reasons that the incident has only come to light some three weeks later remain unclear.

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Iraq Bombings Kill Dozens in Baghdad, Mosul and Tarmiya (+video)

Photo Credit: APA series of car bombings in Baghdad, an explosion at a market and a suicide attack in the northern city of Mosul killed at least 62 people on Sunday in the latest wave of attacks in Iraq.

The attacks made Sunday the deadliest day in the country since 5 October, when 75 people were killed. Iraq suffers a number of coordinated bombings each month, feeding a spike in bloodshed that has killed more than 5,000 people since April.

The local branch of al-Qaida often takes responsibility, but there was no immediate claim for Sunday’s attacks.

Police officers said that the bombs in Baghdad, placed in parked cars and detonated over a half-hour period, targeted commercial areas and car parks, killing 42 people.

The deadliest blasts were in the south-eastern Nahrwan district of the city, where two car bombs exploded simultaneously, killing seven people and wounding 15, authorities said. Two other explosions took place in the northern Shaab and southern Abu Dshir neighbourhoods, each killing six people, and other blasts hit the eastern neighbourhoods of Mashtal, Baladiyat and Ur, Bayaa in the south-west, and Sab al-Bor and Hurriya in the north.




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Mother, Four Children Killed with Meat Cleaver in New York

Photo Credit: rakkhi/flickrA New York woman and her four young children were hacked to death with a meat cleaver in their Brooklyn home, and the father’s cousin was charged with their murders on Sunday, the New York Police Department said.

Responding to an emergency call on Saturday night, police found two boys, two girls and their mother with multiple wounds at their home in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.

Ming Dong Chen, the 25-year-old cousin of the children’s father, was at the home and was taken into custody. He was charged with five counts of murder, criminal possession of a weapon and assaulting a police officer, a police spokesman said.

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Get Ready to Talk About your Meds, Guns and Lifestyle

Photo Credit: WND Americans are increasing their calls for lawmakers to fight Obamacare because of worries over an abundance of personal information that soon will be in the government’s hands.

The Healthcare.gov website calls for information such as name, address, Social Security number and income, while Obamacare will implement online medical records that include details about ailments, conditions, mental state, drug use, gun ownership and other personal details.

That has people worried that the sum total of information could be mishandled by the government, or worse yet, be let loose. There were more than 12.6 million victims of identity theft in the U.S. last year, and the federal government’s collection of Americans’ personal health and financial data offers a treasure trove of possibilities for criminals.

This week, the Los Angeles Times reported an Alahambra, Calif., medical clinic admitted that two laptops that contained more than 700,000 patient medical records were stolen during an office break-in.

The thieves have not been caught.

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Ted Cruz to Iowa Republicans: This Fight is ‘Path to Victory’

Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreRepublican Senator Ted Cruz, who incited a standoff over Obamacare culminating in a 16-day U.S. government shutdown, told party activists in Iowa that fighting the health law will pay dividends in the 2014 midterm elections.

The junior senator from Texas, just nine months in office, won a warm reception during a 45-minute speech last night in which he said that his attempt to defund President Barack Obama’s signature health-care program has made a difference, even if it has cost his party in the polls.

“Collectively, we accomplished a great deal,” Cruz told about 600 Republican activists at a downtown convention hall in Des Moines. “We elevated the national debate over what a disaster, what a train-wreck, how much Obamacare is hurting millions of Americans.”

He told the party faithful the prescription for unifying the GOP in the wake of the bitter congressional battle that triggered the shutdown was to ignore both the media and Washington strategists.

“This fight is worth it,” he said. “It is the path to victory.”

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Biden’s ‘Crass Plea’: Don’t Let Women’s Rights, ‘Collective Agenda’ Fall to Tea Party

Photo Credit: Cliff OwenPleading for money to help his party win back the House, Vice President Joseph Biden on Friday night took direct aim at tea party conservatives, calling them the biggest impediment to progress in America.

“Everything you worked for and the progress we have made is literally in jeopardy if we lose seats in the Senate and if we don’t gain seats in the House,” Mr. Biden told the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum, according to a pool reporter traveling with the vice president. “Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t win the House back … That’s the single most important thing, in my view, we can do for our collective agenda, is win back the House.”

He added that his one “crass plea” to the group is to raise more money for the upcoming 2014 congressional elections.

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Michelle Obama’s Princeton Classmate is Executive at Company that Built Obamacare Website

Photo Credit: Daily Caller First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.

Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.

Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

Toni Townes ’85 is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. Her decision to return to work, as an African-American woman, after six years of raising kids was applauded by a Princeton alumni publication in 1998.

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Man Tries Checking Rifles, Handguns and Ammo at JFK Airport- Things Didn’t Go So Well for Him

Photo Credit: NBC New YorkPolice arrested 23-year-old Keenan Draughon at New York’s Kennedy International Airport Saturday morning after he tried to check two defaced rifles and two handguns.

Both rifles were missing their serial numbers and one had a round in the chamber. Police spokesman Joseph Pentangelo says the Tennessee man also tried to check two magazines capable of holding 15 rounds of 9-millimeter ammunition.

These magazines are illegal in New York.

Draughon was arrested trying to board a flight to Charlotte, N.C., after Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police found the weapons.

Police said the 23-year-old told a United Airlines attendant that he wanted to check two cases containing firearms for his flight to Charlotte, a spokesperson for the Queens County district attorney’s office said in a statement.

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Rubio Now Opposes Going to Conference with Senate Immigration Bill

Photo Credit: Reuters A spokesman for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), a member of the Senate’s “Gang of Eight,” told Breitbart News exclusively on Saturday that the House should not pass individual piecemeal immigration bills in a “ruse” to get to a conference committee that would result in a comprehensive immigration bill.

“At this point, the most realistic way to make progress on immigration would be through a series of individual bills,” Rubio spokesman Alex Conant said in an email. “Any effort to use a limited bill as a ruse to trigger a conference that would then produce a comprehensive bill would be counterproductive. Furthermore, any such effort would fail, because any single senator can and will block conference unless such conference is specifically instructed to limit the conference to only the issue dealt with in the underlying bill.”

In taking such a stance, Rubio has now publicly opposed the procedural mechanism through which House GOP leadership and Senate Democratic leadership had planned to try to slip a backdoor amnesty through Congress and save the Senate bill.

Technically speaking, the House could pass any bill or group of bills related to immigration to move to conference. Several immigration bills are ready to be taken up on the House floor, having already made it through their respective committees. If such an immigration bill, or group of bills, passes the House, the Republican leadership could take the bill or group of bills to the Senate and open a conference committee. A conference committee is a formal negotiating body where the House and the Senate will each send key negotiators, or conferees, to argue with each other about both the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill and whatever bill or bills the House brings to the table.

As Breitbart News first reported in July, conservatives have expressed worry about such a committee. Endorsing the House’s piecemeal approach is not enough to stop the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill as congressional leaders in both parties and both chambers of Congress could slip the comprehensive Senate bill past everyone through procedural trickery.

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John Kerry: Damage To U.S. Image Abroad Due To Shutdown; Fails To Mention NSA Spy Scandal (+video)

Photo Credit: AFPJohn Kerry told a liberal think tank Thursday that the recent government shutdown has hurt America’s image abroad. He failed to mention the NSA spy scandal, which at least 21 countries have condemned.

Ironically, as reported by cnsnews.com, Kerry’s appearance at a Center for American Progress conference came on the same day that German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle summoned the U.S. ambassador to warn friendship was at stake over the alleged bugging of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone.

Also on Thursday, European Union leaders meeting in Brussels discussed allegations of widespread NSA spying, and said afterwards that “a lack of trust [between the U.S. and E.U.] would prejudice the necessary cooperation in the field of intelligence gathering.”

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