Lawmaker to Obama: ‘You’re Not a Dictator’ (+audio)

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Congressional Republicans should absolutely fight to defund Obamacare in a fight over funding the federal government and President Obama has no right to demand a debt ceiling extension without Republicans demanding spending restraint in return, according to Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C.

Current government funding expires at the end of September. The GOP is divided over whether to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government at current spending rates across the board or to fund everything at current rates while completely defunding Obamacare. Many conservative members of the House and Senate are pushing to cut off funds, while leadership has been very cool to the idea.

Now, with Obama weakened by stumbles over Syria, at least 43 Republican lawmakers claim it’s time to wage all-out war on the president’s signature legislation.

Mulvaney said starving Obamacare makes perfect sense, and there are enough members committed to this course of action to force the issue.

“I don’t think the support exists within the Republican Party now to not fight. We have to fight,” Mulvaney said. “It’s not just folks you might think of ordinarily, the extreme right wing of the party. It’s a lot of the guys more in the center who are hearing from their districts back home that folks don’t want to fund Obamacare. I can’t imagine us not dealing with Obamacare in some fashion as part of this discussion.”

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Major US Security Company Warns Customers Not To Use NSA Encryption Formula

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Photo Credit: EPA

Photo Credit: EPA

A major American computer security company has told thousands of customers to stop using an encryption system that relies on a mathematical formula developed by the National Security Agency (NSA).

RSA, the security arm of the storage company EMC, sent an email to customers telling them that the default random number generator in a toolkit for developers used a weak formula, and they should switch to one of the other formulas in the product.

The abrupt warning is the latest fallout from the huge intelligence disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden about the extent of surveillance and the debasement of encryption by the NSA.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Snowden’s cache of documents from his time working for an NSA contractor showed that the agency used its public participation in the process for setting voluntary cryptography standards, run by the government’s National Institute of Standards (NIST) and Technology, to push for a formula it knew it could break. Soon after that revelation, the NIST began advising against the use of one of its cryptographic standards and, having accepted the NSA proposal in 2006 as one of four systems acceptable for government use, said it would reconsider that inclusion in the wake of questions about its security.

RSA’s warning underscores how the slow-moving standards process and industry practices could leave many users exposed to hacking by the NSA or others who could exploit the same flaw for years to come.

Read more from this story HERE.

Steyn: American Banana Republic

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Photo Credit:spdracerkmw

Photo Credit:spdracerkmw

“This is the United States of America,” declared President Obama to the burghers of Liberty, Mo., on Friday. “We’re not some banana republic.”

He was talking about the Annual Raising of the Debt Ceiling, which glorious American tradition seems to come round earlier every year. “This is not a deadbeat nation,” President Obama continued. “We don’t run out on our tab.” True. But we don’t pay it off either. We just keep running it up, ever higher. And every time the bartender says, “Mebbe you’ve had enough, pal,” we protest, “Jush another couple trillion for the road. Set ’em up, Joe.” And he gives you that look that kinda says he wishes you’d run out on your tab back when it was $23.68.

Still, Obama is right. We’re not a banana republic, if only because the debt of banana republics is denominated in a currency other than their own — i.e., the U.S. dollar. When you’re the guys who print the global currency, you can run up debts undreamt of by your average generalissimo. As Obama explained in another of his recent speeches, “Raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt.” I won’t even pretend to know what he and his speechwriters meant by that one, but the fact that raising the debt ceiling “has been done over a hundred times” does suggest that spending more than it takes in is now a permanent feature of American government. And no one has plans to do anything about it. Which is certainly banana republic-esque.

Is all this spending necessary? Every day, the foot-of-page-37 news stories reveal government programs it would never occur to your dimestore caudillo to blow money on. On Thursday, it was the Food and Drug Administration blowing just shy of $200 grand to find out whether its Twitter and Facebook presence is “well-received.” A fifth of a million dollars isn’t even a rounding error in most departmental budgets, so nobody cares. But the FDA is one of those sclerotic American institutions that has near to entirely seized up. In October 1920, it occurred to an Ontario doctor called Frederick Banting that insulin might be isolated and purified and used to treat diabetes; by January 1923, Eli Lilly & Co were selling insulin to American pharmacies: A little over two years from concept to market. Now the FDA adds at least half-a-decade to the process, and your chances of making it through are far slimmer: As recently as the late Nineties, they were approving 157 new drugs per half-decade. Today it’s less than half that.

But they’ve got $182,000 to splash around on finding out whether people really like them on Facebook, or they’re just saying that. So they’ve given the dough to a company run by Dan Beckmann, a former “new media aide” to President Obama. That has the whiff of the banana republic about it, too.

Read more from this story HERE.

Source Reveals What Happened to Body of Missing DA in Penn State Sex Scandal Case

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Photo Credit: Associated Press

Photo Credit: Associated Press

One of the most shocking things about the Penn State sex abuse scandal when it came to light in 2011, was the fact that the local District Attorney who knew about the case back in the 1990s disappeared.

The mother of one of the children abused by football coach Jerry Sandusky, reported the crime to DA Ray Gricar in 1998 but he decided not to bring up charges.

Gricar, 59, was never able to explain why he let Sandusky slip away, since Gricar himself vanished in 2005.

After the sex scandal revelation, some hypothesized that Gricar’s disappearance was somehow tied to Penn State.

But now a former person of interest in his disappearance has told the Altoona Mirror that it was a former Hell’s Angel that carried out the killing and had nothing to do with Penn State.

Read more from this story HERE.

17,679 Things the Federal Government Has Done Since Sequestration

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Opponents of the sequester say budget cuts are ruining America and that austerity kills. Reason offers a look at what the feds have been up to since the cuts kicked in.

Over at Politico, they’re quasi-blaming the Navy Yard shooting on cuts.

The president of MIT says sequestration is “choking the innovation
economy.”

The Center for American Progress frets that “austerity kills.”

The Atlantic says cuts are “undermining what makes America great.”

The FBI is threatening a 10-day shutdown.

And President Barack Obama said in a speech this week that the sequester cuts “have cost jobs, harmed growth, are hurting our military readiness. And top independent economists say this has been a big drag on our recovery this year. Our economy is not growing as fast as it should and we’re not creating as many jobs as we should, because the sequester is in place. That’s not my opinion. That’s the opinion of independent economists.”

See what the feds have been up to since sequestration and read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Murphy: Congress Morally Justified In Forcing Americans to Violate Their Religious Beliefs (+video)

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Photo Credit: The Washington Times

Photo Credit: The Washington Times

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that it would be morally justifiable for Congress to pass a continuing resolution that forces Americans to buy health care plans covering abortion-inducing drugs even if doing so violates their religious beliefs.

CNSNews.com asked Murphy about funding the controversial provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, following a press conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

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Israel at a Sea Change: Experiencing Second Zionist Revolution

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Photo Credit: acroll

Photo Credit: acroll

In May, Dershowitz wrote in The Jerusalem Post and The Huffington Post: “I have now joined this distinguished company of people who get booed for advocating territorial compromise in the interest of peace. I was booed and jeered at the Jerusalem Post Conference on April 28, 2013 when I proposed an idea for restarting peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority … These same people cheered loudly when Glick, a right-wing opponent of any territorial compromise, announced that: ‘There are no competing narratives. There is only the truth.’ For her, the only truth lies in history and archeology.”

Briefly, here are four relevant voices today:

Dershowitz told Newsmax this week: “I think a lot of Israelis are today thinking — as many have thought in the past — that they can’t outsource the defense of their own people, that they have to make their own decisions, make their own judgments and take their own actions as they did when they destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and various Syrian reactors more recently.”

Glick wrote in a January blog: “Next week we’re going to vote and it is already clear that Israel is in the midst of the Second Zionist Revolution. The first Zionist revolution was a socialist revolution. The second Zionist revolution is Jewish. Israel is coming into its own. Judaism is flourishing, changing, living and breathing here like it never has anywhere since the destruction of the Second Commonwealth. The secular Left has been eclipsed by the Jewish Right. I don’t call it the religious Right because that is too limiting. What’s happening isn’t just about religion, it’s about everything and that is why non-observant hipsters in Tel Aviv are voting for the Jewish Home party. Non-observant and observant Jews are joining forces and the anti-religious are being left behind.”

Ted Cruz at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, as reported by The Christian Post: “‘I commend everyone here for respecting the biblical admonition to stand with Israel,’” he said, praising their ‘commitment to speak the truth in an era when so many believe they know better than eternal truths. ‘The alliance between the United States and Israel must remain completely and entirely unshakeable.’”

Moshe Feiglin, Knesset member, wrote in his newsletter this week: “I demand, at the first stage, to close the Temple Mount to Moslems during the Sukkot holiday just as the Mount was closed to Jews for the month of Ramadan.”

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Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning magazine writer and has worked more than 30 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and book, movie, music and art reviewer. His essays on politics and world affairs have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and other newspapers and magazines. He has published poetry in Painted Bride Quarterly and has written dozens of magazine articles. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He has written hundreds of columns for “Pundits Blog” in “The Hill” a political journal in Washington, D.C. He lives in the White Mountains with his wife and four children.

Democrat Official to Ted Cruz Aide: I hope your kids ‘die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases’

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picture - Democrat to Ted Cruz AideWhen a speechwriter for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, took to Twitter to tout her boss’ recent work, a California Democrat Party official blasted back, wishing death and “debilitating diseases” upon her children.

Amanda Carpenter, a speechwriter and senior communications adviser to Cruz, tweeted out Friday morning, “GOP beat gun control, changed Obama’s mind on Syria, is holding the line on amnesty. We can defund Obamacare, too!”

But Allan Brauer, who works as the communications chair for the Democratic Party of Sacramento County in California, fired back a shocking reply, “@amandacarpenter May your children all die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases…”

And after catching heat online over his comments toward Carpenter and her children, Brauer initially defended himself with equally personal attacks.

He posted a status update on Twitter about the criticism he’d received, stating, “Busy blocking the tapeworms that have slithered out of hellspawn @amandacarptenter’s a–hole. How’s your day?”…

Eventually, even Brauer apologized, tweeting, “I am truly sorry for my tweet. I was very upset and lashed out. Your kids are not fair game either. My apologies.” Carpenter accepted the apology.

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Mystery Priest’ and ‘Miracle’ Car Crash Survivor Katie Lentz Hold Emotional Reunion (+video)

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picture - priest car accidentKatie Lentz, a college student who nearly died in the mangled wreckage of a car crash last month, and the “mystery priest” who appeared out of nowhere to minister to her held an emotional reunion Friday at her Illinois home.

“I was just so thrilled he was there,” Katie told FoxNews.com about her meeting with Father Patrick Dowling on the same day she celebrated her 20th birthday.

“I thanked him for being there (at the crash scene) that day and he said he was very happy I could walk with my walker…”

“They were just very happy to see each other,” said Katie’s mother, Carla Lentz. “She said she was so grateful he’d been there and he offered a prayer….”

The priest’s appearance at the Missouri crash scene baffled police, who said he seemed to mysteriously appear from behind a police line to pray with Katie, then disappeared into the night…

Her family credits two occurrences for her survival: Katie’s plea for first responders and witnesses to “pray out loud” as she lay with her head on the pavement and the arrival of Dowling, who anointed her with oil and prayed at her side…

“The Bible tells us the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord,” said Katie’s mother.. “And I believe Father Dowling was at the right place at the right time.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Abortion Nation – The United States is an Outlier

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

It’s easy to become inured to the state of abortion in the United States, but every so often someone sends a shock to the system.

In a new book about the history of Roe, Abuse of Discretion, lawyer Clarke Forsythe combs through the historical record of the Supreme Court’s decision, from case files to personal papers, to show exactly how pell-mell the verdict was. And in the course of all this he highlights how out-of-the-norm America’s abortion regime is.

The United States is an outlier when it comes to the scope of the abortion “right.” The United States is one of approximately ten nations (of 195) that allow abortion after fourteen weeks of gestation.

Read more from this story HERE.