US Gov’t Takes Bank Of America To Court And Wins, Jury Finds Countrywide Liable For Fraud

Photo Credit: Forbes Thought those mortgage lawsuits against banks were winding down? Think again.

Today a jury found Bank of America liable for defrauding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when its Countrywide unit sold it bad mortgages.

The jury also found former Countrywide executive, Rebecca Mairone, liable on the one fraud charge facing her, Reuters reports.

The verdict is a win for the US government as this is one of the few cases stemming from the financial crisis that it’s taken to trial.

“In a rush to feed at the trough of easy mortgage money on the eve of the financial crisis, Bank of America purchased Countrywide, thinking it had gobbled up a cash cow. That profit, however, was built on fraud, as the jury unanimously found,” US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

Read more from this story HERE.

Police Officer Who Pepper-Sprayed UC Davis Protesters Awarded $38,000 Settlement (+video)

Photo Credit: Wayne Tilcock, The Davis EnterpriseA former University of California-Davis police officer made famous after being filmed pepper-spraying seated activists during a Nov. 2011 protest has been awarded a $38,059 workers’ compensation settlement, The Guardian reports.

John Pike, a 40-year-old former lieutenant on the university police force, claimed he suffered from depression and anxiety after receiving death threats following the incident.

A judge approved the settlement between Pike and the university on Oct. 16, according to KCRA.

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White House Now Denying Top Democrat’s Claim About ‘I Cannot Even Stand to Look at You’ Obama Moment

Photo Credit: Getty ImagesBy Fred Lucas.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the charge from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that an unidentified Republican House leader told President Barack Obama, “I cannot even stand to look at you” during government shutdown negotiations is not accurate — but Durbin is standing by his story.

A reporter Wednesday referred to Durbin’s claim on Facebook that a member of Congress told the president to his face that he couldn’t stand to look at him.

Carney, clearly prepared for the question, gave a direct answer.

“I looked into this and spoke with someone who was in that meeting and it did not happen,” Carney said.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Durbin: House leader told Obama ‘I cannot even stand to look at you’

By Justin Sink.

A top Senate Democrat said that a leading House Republican told President Obama that they could not ‘even stand to look at you’ during negotiations over the government shutdown.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a Facebook post that the alleged confrontation happened during a meeting between Republicans and the president.

“Many Republicans searching for something to say in defense of the disastrous shutdown strategy will say President Obama just doesn’t try hard enough to communicate with Republicans,” Durbin said. “But in a ‘negotiation’ meeting with the president, one GOP House Leader told the president: ‘I cannot even stand to look at you.'”

“What are the chances of an honest conversation with someone who has just said something so disrespectful?” the Illinois Democrat added.

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Nine Generals Fired, Two Military Leaders Suspended

Photo Credit: Ben Swann Nine commanding Generals have been fired, and two other leaders are on suspension, in a historic military shake up…

“I think they’re using the opportunity of the shrinkage of the military to get rid of people that don’t agree with them or not tow the party line. Remember, as (former White House chief of staff) Rahm Emanuel said, never waste a crisis,” a senior retired general told TheBlaze on the condition of anonymity because he still provide services to the government and fears possible retribution…

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, an outspoken critic of the Obama administration, said the White House fails to take action or investigate its own, but finds it easy to fire military commanders “who have given their lives for their country.”

“Obama will not purge a civilian or political appointee because they have bought into Obama’s ideology,” Vallely said. “The White House protects their own. That’s why they stalled on the investigation into fast and furious, Benghazi and Obamacare. He’s intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.”

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What Happens to Unborn Babies After Abortion? Pathologists Share the Horrors

Photo Credit: LifeNews One of the most convenient things about abortion is that it takes care of the perceived “problem” in a permanent way—people walk into the abortion clinic with a child growing inside them, and leave after the child’s forcible eviction. The pro-life movement tries to prevent people from entering the abortion clinic in the first place, and urges people to seek healing if they decide to go through with the abortion after all. So what happens to the babies after they are killed?

Some, we know, are cremated. Others are tossed in the trash, and discovered by pro-lifers like Dr. Monica Miller, who dutifully record their fate and give them the funeral and respect their humanity demands. But what about the other babies—the ones shipped off in containers and sealed buckets to pathology labs? When searching for the answer to that question, I found a series of horrifying testimonies on a Student Doctor Network Forum hosted by St. George’s University. On the discussion board, those who worked with the bodies of aborted babies shared their horror at what they saw.

“Anyone get tripped on these?” one wrote (spelling and grammar errors his), “I’m talking especially the big ones, where you can actually make out facial expressions like they knew they were being hacked the hell up (im serious). I almost went bonkers once over one, that is some scary crap. Am I the only pathologist who freaks when a 0.5 cm eye ball comes rolling out of bag and stares right at you…I know we are thinking this, just no one in pathology is talking about it.”

Another pathologist, identifying himself as “Andy Milonakis,” responded by saying, “Totally trippy man. We get a fair number of fragmented fetuses from abortion procedures and they come in a container with formalin. The fact that they’re all hacked up is disturbing to begin with. Of course, there is the whole eyeball issue which freaks me out as well. Echoing in my mind is the sound effects from the movie Psycho…Reee Reee Reee Reee Reee Reee Reee!”

The original poster continued, describing an absolutely nightmarish scene:

“One incident really freaked me, it was a boy fetus, at least 3+ pounds, around 24+ weeks. It sat decomposing because the rest of the staff was AFRAID of it, Im not joking. Then the chief of staff told me to deal with it because I was the FNG (f-kcin new guy) so I went to work. Pulled out 2 well formed arms and then the torso, headless. The head was at the bottom of the container, when I pulled it, he had this expression of such utter horror it flipped me wayyyy out, my PA saw it and ran, literally left work and went on disability (Im serious here). It was like a headless screaming baby, like it had been born at least for a split second to realize it was screwed and let out one agonal yelp. The story of this reverberated around the department, someone actually accused me of doing what should have been a ME case and threatened to call the medical board! Im not joking, I woke up once shortly after that in a cold sweat with piss running down my leg….not pretty.”

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States Get Sued for Enforcing ‘Gay Rights’

Photo Credit: WNDLawsuits against Christians – sometimes even churches – have become common when they refuse to support non-Christian events, such as same-sex weddings. But now those defendants have started to fight back, filing lawsuits against state officials who are trying to coerce them to violate their faith.

WND reported in May when a Washington state florist sued Attorney General Bob Ferguson for allegedly trying to violate the state and federal constitutions’ religious freedom provisions.

And this week the Christian Institute in the United Kingdom profiled an Iowa couple suing their state’s Civil Rights Commission for the same reason.

“They have filed their own complaint saying that if the commission forces them to go against their beliefs and host gay weddings this would be a violation of the Iowa Civil Rights Act,” the Institute reports.

At issue is a claim against the Mennonite couple, Dick and Betty Odgaard, who own and operate the Gortz Haus Gallery, an old church building that is used for a variety of private events.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Ex-Bodyguard Losing Health Coverage

Photo Credit: WNDPresident Obama repeatedly has promised that no one will lose his health insurance because of Obamacare, declaring, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

Media fact checkers were doubtful, and all the way back in 2009 PolitiFact gave it a “half true” rating. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, it could be time now to change that to “pants on fire” or even a retroactive “lie of the year.”

Among those with evidence Obama wasn’t telling the truth is Dan Bongino, a former member of the Secret Service’s elite Presidential Protective Division.

That’s because he is losing his coverage due to Obamacare.

“My plan was canceled, simple as that,” he told WND.

Read more from this story HERE.

Nancy Pelosi: ‘I’m Here On a Mission’

Photo Credit: ReutersNancy Pelosi isn’t going anywhere.

While many thought the California Democrat would step down as House minority leader after this Congress, Pelosi confidants now believe she will remain atop House leadership through 2016 and maybe even longer.

Pelosi herself won’t tip her hand about her plans. But she doesn’t appear to be contemplating retirement.

“I’m not here on a shift. I’m here on a mission — and when my work is done, that’s when I will leave,” Pelosi said in a recent interview with POLITICO.

Pelosi declared the main reason she chose to stay put the past two years is to see Obamacare, which she had a strong hand in crafting and pushing through Congress, implemented successfully. Pelosi, like other Democrats, has publicly complained about the disastrous online rollout of the program, but she remains convinced it will turn out well in the long run.

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Pope Expels German ‘Luxury Bishop’ from Diocese (+video)

Photo Credit: Breitbart Pope Francis expelled a German bishop from his diocese on Wednesday pending the outcome of a church inquiry into his 31 million-euro ($43-million) new residence complex.

The Vatican didn’t say how long Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, 53, would spend away from the diocese of Limburg but it refused calls to remove him permanently. It gave no information on where he would go or what he would do.

The Vatican said the bishop was leaving pending the outcome of a German church investigation into the expenditures and his role in the affair. Fellow bishops and lay Catholics in the diocese, however, expressed doubt that he would ever be able to return.

“This is a crisis of confidence that will be hard to overcome,” said the dean of the cathedral chapter, Guenther Geis.

Limburg’s vicar general, the Rev. Wolfgang Roesch, who had been due to start Jan. 1, will instead begin work immediately and will run the diocese during Tebartz-van Elst’s absence, the Vatican said.

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Merkel’s Call to Obama: Are You Bugging my Phone?

Photo Credit: Yves Herman/ReutersThe furor over the scale of American mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden shifted to an incendiary new level on Wednesday evening when Angela Merkel of Germany called Barack Obama to demand explanations over reports that the US National Security Agency was monitoring her mobile phone.

Merkel was said by informed sources in Germany to be “livid” over the reports and convinced, on the basis of a German intelligence investigation, that the reports were utterly substantiated.

The German news weekly, Der Spiegel, reported an investigation by German intelligence, prompted by research from the magazine, that produced plausible information that Merkel’s mobile was targeted by the US eavesdropping agency. The German chancellor found the evidence substantial enough to call the White House and demand clarification.

The outrage in Berlin came days after President François Hollande of France also called the White House to confront Obama with reports that the NSA was targeting the private phone calls and text messages of millions of French people.

While European leaders have generally been keen to play down the impact of the whistleblowing disclosures in recent months, events in the EU’s two biggest countries this week threatened an upward spiral of lack of trust in transatlantic relations.

Read more from this story HERE.