Eric Holder a Convert on State’s Rights?

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The 10th Amendment long has been a favorite of more conservative- and libertarian-leaning Americans for limiting the power of the federal government with respect to the states.

The amendment particularly has been invoked by opponents of President Obama’s many moves to expand the federal government’s reach, including in health care and state law enforcement.

So when Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, invoked the 10th Amendment in the Justice Department’s decision to not challenge state lawmakers in Colorado and Washington who challenged federal statutes by passing laws legalizing possession of marijuana, a Colorado congressman wanted to know the extent of Holder’s conversion.

“The real question is, ‘Does this mean that states now have the right to pre-empt federal law under the 10th Amendment?’” wrote Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., in a letter to Holder.

The letter came after Holder confirmed publicly that the Department of Justice, which repeatedly has said that states cannot deviate from federal law, would defer to Colorado and Washington state laws regarding marijuana.

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Syria Crisis: Kerry Says West Must Not Be ‘Silent Spectators to the Slaughter’

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

Barack Obama is keeping his options open and is yet to decide whether the US will delay possible military action against the Syrian government until after a United Nations report on the Assad regime’s alleged chemical weapons attack, John Kerry said on Saturday.

The US secretary of state travelled to Europe on Friday for a three-day visit, aiming to boost international backing for a possible strike in retaliation for the suspected use of chemical weapons in Damascus on 21 August.

Kerry addressed reporters in Paris alongside Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister. France has emerged as the US’s key ally as it attempts to persuade the international community to support action against Syria.

While European Union foreign ministers issued a strongly-worded statement on Saturday, condemning the attack and suggesting there is “strong evidence that the Syrian regime is responsible”, the EU said that military retaliation should not occur until the UN inspectors have delivered their report.

Kerry compared Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, to Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler, repeating his contentious claim, made earlier in the week, that the trio are the only leaders to have used chemical weapons since the Geneva Protocol against such methods was signed in 1925.

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Clash over Common Core: Opposition Grows as National Education Standards Approach

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Erika Russell, a mother of four from Maine, had no intention of embroiling herself in the fight over Common Core.

As she put it, “I sent my kids to public school, so I wouldn’t have to worry about what they’re learning.”

Then her then-9-year-old, second-grade daughter returned home from school one day in January of 2012 with a frown.

“She asked me, ‘Mom, Can you home school me?’ I said, ‘What about your friends?’ and she just told me she would see them at sports. Then, I knew something was wrong and I should start looking into this.”

Over the next 18 months, the 36-year-old Russell, who resides in Sidney in the central part of the state, helped found “No Common Core Maine,” a coalition of concerned parents, educators and activists– and one of a growing number of organizations nationwide who have made it their mission to stop Common Core’s implementation.

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Clinton. Christie. Cringe.

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

On Jan. 20, 1981, Michael Deaver, a political aide, peered into a bedroom in Blair House, across from the White House, and said to the man still abed, “It’s 8 o’clock. You’re going to be inaugurated as president in a few hours.” From beneath the blankets, Ronald Reagan said, “Do I have to?”

Some are so eager to be inaugurated in 2017 that the 2016 campaign has begun 28 months before the 1.4 percent of Americans who live in Iowa and New Hampshire express themselves. It is, therefore, not too soon to get a head start on being dismayed. Consider two probable candidates.

Hillary Clinton comes among us trailing clouds of incense, so some acolytes will call it ill-mannered, even misogynistic, to ask: What exactly is it about the condition of the world, and about America’s relations with other nations, that recommends the former secretary of state for an even more elevated office?

Granted, neither she nor any other U.S. official can be blamed for the world’s blemishes. To think otherwise is to embrace what Greg Weiner, an Assumption College political scientist, calls “narcissistic polity disorder.” It is the belief that everything everywhere is about us. Today, it is the delusion that, although events in Egypt and Syria look like violent clashes between Egyptians and Syrians concerning what those countries should be, the events really are mostly about what America has or has not done.

That said, however, this also should be said: Clinton’s accomplishments are not less impressive than those of many who have sought, and some who have won, the presidency. But the disproportion between the thinness of her record and the ardor of her advocates suggests that her gender is much of her significance.

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Man Charged With Smuggling Meth In Frames Of Religious Art

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Photo Credit: KDKA

Photo Credit: KDKA

It’s a drug-smuggling scandal straight out of a movie.

Federal agents say they’ve uncovered a scheme in which meth was hidden in the frames of religious artwork and shipped to Pittsburgh from Mexico, according to an affidavit filed in court.

Carmelo Rojas-Perez is charged with smuggling.

He lived in an apartment in Oakland, but according to court papers, he’s a Mexican citizen who came here illegally in 1993. The man who owns the store below Rojas-Perez’s apartment says he came into the store regularly, but the owner says he had no idea what was allegedly going on.

Custom agents at the FedEx hub in Memphis caught on to the hidden drugs.

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Why Can’t the Community Organizer, Organize a Community?

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Photo Credit: ABC

Photo Credit: ABC

As you may recall, much of Senator Obama’s message in 2008 was about international coalitions. He mocked President Bush for “going at it alone.” I guess that 40-something countries in Iraq was not a big enough coalition. Or, having UK, Canadian and other NATO soldiers take bullets in Afghanistan was not enough either.

Today, President Obama stands alone in the world. He can’t even get the UK in Syria. He has found some “moral support” but no one is offering airplanes or missiles.

President Obama is saying that the world drew a “red line.” However, no one seems ready to enforce it or fight for the innocent people of Syria.

President Obama is painfully learning that it was easier to build coalitions in the campaign trail than from The Oval Office.

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Tsunami Study Finds Southern California at Risk

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A large tsunami hitting California would cause major flooding in Long Beach and parts of Orange County and force 750,000 people to evacuate coastal areas in just a few hours, according to an extensive simulation published Wednesday by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The study, released two years after a tsunami killed thousands in Japan, identified several communities that are particularly vulnerable to flooding because of their low elevation and lack of protection from waves.

They include Marina del Rey and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach as well as the low-lying coastal areas extending from the ports to Newport Beach.

The report, compiled by dozens of scientists, emergency responders and industry representatives, is the most extensive examination of what a tsunami would do to California’s coastline. The research simulated a 9.1 quake off the Alaska coast that would send damaging waves to California.

While waves would be larger in Northern California — between 10 and 23 feet — the damage could be greater in Southern California because the region has more coastal development and fewer coastal cliffs.

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Emperor Obama’s Parlor Games

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

‘One thing I’m proud of,” cultural icon Barack Obama boasted to MSNBC’s crack team of sycophants in 2006, “is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.” On this, he has certainly been true to his word. Brevity and candor, shall we say, are not among our smartest president’s strengths nor, outside the abstract, is he much of a salesman.

Nevertheless, as gauche as it might sound to those who make a living being inscrutable, sometimes in politics questions really do have simple answers. Yesterday, speaking to journalists at the G20 summit in Russia, Obama was asked again and again what he planned to do if Congress refused to authorize action in Syria. The president brushed away the question as if it were an irrelevance. “You’re not getting a direct response,” he told journalists. When they pushed him anyway, he termed the matter a “parlor game.”

If you’re thinking that it is little short of breathtaking that a man who is content to talk at length to the press about a gay basketball player could have the temerity to characterize a question about the constitutional order of the United States as an intrusion, you’re absolutely right. What the president should have said is: “This is straightforward. If Congress refuses to authorize me to order action, I will not order any action.” This would not only have comported admirably with his own on-the-record profession that it remains illegal for the executive branch to order “military action” sans the blessing of the legislative branch, but it would also have been the only possible answer that tallies with his having asked for permission in the first place.

It will no doubt prove easy for the keener apologists of the fast-waning Obamacult to convince themselves that their much-assailed hero is merely being magnanimous. Indeed, we have already heard such spin: The president is admitting to Congress an “unprecedented” “consulting” role; or he is “democratically” recruiting a skeptical public to take part in his difficult decision; or — most amusingly, perhaps — he is trying finally to reverse the long and checkered history of executive military usurpation . . . which includes his unilateral decision to bomb Libya in 2011.

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Is Pornography Killing the Economy?

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The adult film industry appears to have made a disappointing August jobs report look even worse.

The report shows carnage in the movie business. It lost 22,000 jobs on the month, or nearly 6 percent of its total jobs:

Photo Credit: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Photo Credit: Bureau of Labor Statistics

That’s a huge drop. It’s probably enough to change how analysts see this jobs report, from kinda gloomy to really gloomy. But what’s behind it?

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Iran Threatens Brutal Attacks on Americans, Obama Family if US Hits Syria (+video)

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

As Congress debates whether to support President Obama’s call for a limited strike against Syria for the alleged use of chemical weapons, Iran is vowing to back Bashar al-Assad’s regime to the hilt and threatening to unleash terrorism should the U.S. strike.

Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Forces, Wednesday told the Assembly of Experts — the body that chooses the supreme leader — that “[w]e will support Syria to the end.”

And in an unprecedented statement, a former Iranian official has warned of mass abductions and brutal killings of American citizens around the world and the rape and killing of one of Obama’s daughters should the United States attack Syria.

Alireza Forghani, the former governor of southern Iran’s Kish Province, threw down the gauntlet last week. Forghani is an analyst and strategy specialist in the supreme leader’s camp and closely aligned with Mehdi Taeb, who heads the regime’s Ammar Strategic Base, a radical think thank, and thus speaks with the blessing of the Islamic regime.

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