Nadine Schweigert, North Dakota Woman, ‘Marries Herself,’ Opens Up About Self-Marriage (+video)

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Photo Credit: Anderson Cooper

Photo Credit: Anderson Cooper

A 36-year-old North Dakota woman who married herself in a commitment ceremony last March has now spoken about her self-marriage choice in an interview with Anderson Cooper.

The marriage took place among friends and family who were encouraged to “blow kisses to the world” after she exchanged rings with her “inner groom”, My Fox Phoenix reports.

“I feel very empowered, very happy, very joyous … I want to share that with people, and also the people that were in attendance, it’s a form of accountability,” Nadien Schweigert told Anderson Cooper.

Schweigert said the ceremony was a celebration of how far she’d come since her painful divorce six years ago that led to her two children to decide to live with her ex-husband.

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Airmen say Air Force is Punishing Evangelical Christians

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091229-A-3108M-001Evangelical Christian airmen at Lackland Air Force Base are facing severe threats and retribution for their religious beliefs and some personnel have been ordered to publicly express their position on gay marriage.

“There is an atmosphere of intimidation at Lackland Air Force Base,” said Steve Branson, the pastor of Village Parkway Baptist Church in San Antonio. “Gay commanders and officers are pushing their agenda on the airmen. There is a culture of fear in the military and it’s gone to a new level with the issue of homosexuality.”

Branson tells me at least 80 airmen attended a private meeting at the church where he heard them voice their concerns about religious hostilities at the Air Force base. It was a standing-room only crowd.

“The religious persecution is happening,” the pastor said. “It’s getting bigger every day. Gay and lesbian airmen can talk about their lifestyle, but the rest have to stay completely quiet about what they believe.”

Among those at the church meeting was Senior Master Sgt. Phillip Monk. The 19-year veteran was punished after he refused to tell his lesbian commander his position on gay marriage. I was the first reporter to tell his story.

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U.S. to Teach Mexicans to Game American System

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

It’s an expenditure of only $100,000 – mere pocket change in the vast labyrinth of federal spending – but the funds are for the creation of a manual to teach people how to get more money from the U.S. government.

And the recipients aren’t even citizens of the United States.

The U.S. Trade & Development Agency, an independent White House agency, is laying the foundation for the government of Mexico to infuse hundreds of billions of dollars into modernizing its roads, bridges and other critical infrastructure.

While it remains to be seen how much direct financial assistance the U.S. will provide, even the looming threat of a government shutdown has failed to curb President Obama’s plan to cut U.S. Treasury checks for the Mexican endeavor.

The industry-crafted report likewise will serve as a corporate-welfare roadmap for U.S. businesses seeking future contracts awarded under the massive project, according to a USTDA planning document that WND located via routine database research.

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Muslim Man Becomes Christian after Recovering From Brain Aneurysm

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Syrian-born Alabama man says he was a Muslim when a brain aneurysm left him in a prolonged coma, but when he surprised doctors with his recovery, it started him on a path to Christianity.

Karim Shamsi-Basha was raised in Syria with parents he says were tolerant of all faiths. His family practiced Islam mostly culturally, but Shamsi-Basha says he was “very serious” about his religion as a teenager. “I prayed five times a day. I walked to the mosque before sunrise. I fasted the month of Ramadan,” Shamsi-Basha told the Christian Post.

Weary of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, Shamsi-Basha immigrated to the U.S. when he was 18, to attend the University of Tennessee. After that, he married, had his first son, and moved to Birmingham, Ala. In 1992, he suffered a brain aneurysm that left him in a coma for almost a month.

When he awoke from the coma, his rare, almost total recovery amazed his neurosurgeon, who told Shamsi-Basha he was extremely fortunate and needed to find out why he survived.

That question started Shamsi-Basha on a 20-year journey that he says led him to Jesus Christ…

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Showdown on Meet the Press and Ted Cruz Doesn’t Back Down (+video)

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Screen shot 2013-09-30 at 12.41.00 AMNBC’s David Gregory repeatedly pressed Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz Sunday, over his strategy aimed at defunding President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law.

The showdown came on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” with Gregory taking issue with Cruz’s characterization that the Democrats in Congress and the president won’t compromise over their stance on Obamacare.

“There are not protests in the streets arguing to do away with this law in the way that you’d like. Again 56% in one poll said let’s uphold the law,” Gregory continued. “I’m focusing on results. Where have you moved anything?”

Cruz responded, noting even unions are asking for exemptions to the law, but that answer did not satisfy Gregory who continued to grill the Texas firebrand.

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Who’ll Blink? Dems, GOP in Shutdown Stare Down

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

With the government teetering on the brink of partial shutdown, congressional Republicans vowed Sunday to keep using an otherwise routine federal funding bill to try to attack the president’s health care law.

Congress was closed for the day after a post-midnight vote in the GOP-run House to delay by a year key parts of the new health care law and repeal a tax on medical devices, in exchange for avoiding a shutdown. The Senate was to convene Monday afternoon, just hours before the shutdown deadline, and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had already promised that majority Democrats would kill the House’s latest volley.

Since the last government shutdown 17 years ago, temporary funding bills known as continuing resolutions have been noncontroversial, with neither party willing to chance a shutdown to achieve legislative goals it couldn’t otherwise win. But with health insurance exchanges set to open on Tuesday, tea-party Republicans are willing to take the risk in their drive to kill the health care law.

Action in Washington was limited mainly to the Sunday talk shows and a barrage of press releases as Democrats and Republicans rehearsed arguments for blaming each other if the government in fact closes its doors at midnight Monday.

“You’re going to shut down the government if you can’t prevent millions of Americans from getting affordable care,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

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Boehner Slams Senate Dems’ ‘Arrogance’

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boehner_budgetSenate Democrats must meet Sunday to vote on legislation funding the government, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said, calling their failure to do so “an act of breathtaking arrogance.”

House Republicans voted early Sunday on a spending bill that delays ObamaCare by a year. Senate Democrats say they’ll vote in down when they convene Monday, all but ensuring a government shutdown come Tuesday.

“The House worked late into the night Saturday to prevent a government shutdown, and the Senate now must move quickly, today, to do the same,” Boehner said in a statement.

“If the Senate stalls until Monday afternoon instead of working today, it would be an act of breathtaking arrogance by the Senate Democratic leadership.”

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Ten States where Obamacare Wipes out Existing Health Care Plans (+video)

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

President Barack Obama famously promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” He later got even more specific.

“If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have,” Obama said.

But as Obamacare’s rollout approaches, we have learned this is not true. Here are the ten states where consumers may like their health care plans, but they won’t be able to keep them.

1) California: 58,000 will lose their plans under Obamacare. The first bomb dropped in California with a mass exodus from the most populated state’s Obamacare exchange. Aetna, the country’s third largest insurer, left first in July and was closely followed by UnitedHealth. Anthem Blue Cross pulled out of California’s Obamacare exchange for small businesses as well.

Fifty-four percent of Californians expect to lose their coverage, according to an August poll.

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The Fed has Become a Creature of Politics

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Photo Credit: Tim Evanson

Photo Credit: Tim Evanson

Because Ben Bernanke’s public persona is as mild as milk, the transformation in American governance in which he has participated is imperfectly understood and hence insufficiently deplored. The change is dramatized by two recent developments.

One was the campaigning by several constituencies for and against what supposedly were the two leading candidates — Larry Summers and Janet Yellen — to replace Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Fed can no longer be considered separated from politics.

The second, and related, development is the semantic infiltration of journalism by language that ratifies the Fed’s increasingly grandiose role. A Financial Times column on Yellen, now Bernanke’s presumptive successor, described her as “poised to take the tiller of the US economy.” Oh? The economy has a tiller? And with it the Fed chairman can steer the economy? Who knew? On the Atlantic’s Web site, a columnist defends the Fed’s recent decision not to follow through on earlier intimations about reducing its monthly purchases of $85 billion in mortgage and treasury bonds. This, the columnist said, illustrates the Fed’s admirable “nimbleness.” A touch on the tiller here, a nimble reversal there — these express the fatal conceit of an institution that considers itself capable of, and responsible for, fine-tuning the nation’s $15.7 trillion economy.

Slowing the Fed’s bond purchases is called “tapering,” which means more modest “quantitative easing.” This is how governments talk when trying not to be understood. By continuing the pace of “easing” — printing money — the Fed has acknowledged that its fine-tuning has failed. The nimble, tiller-touching Fed assumed it would be more successful at reducing unemployment.

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Justice Department to Challenge North Carolina Voter ID Law

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Justice Department will file suit against North Carolina on Monday, charging that the Tar Heel State’s new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls violates the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against African Americans, according to a person familiar with the planned litigation.

Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the lawsuit at 11 a.m. Monday at Justice Department headquarters, flanked by the three U.S. Attorneys from North Carolina.

The suit, set to be filed in Greensboro, N.C., will ask that the state be barred from enforcing the new voter ID law, the source said. However, the case will also go further, demanding that the entire state of North Carolina be placed under a requirement to have all changes to voting laws, procedures and polling places “precleared” by either the Justice Department or a federal court, the source added.

Until this year, 40 North Carolina counties were under such a requirement. However, in June, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the formula Congress used to subject parts or all of 15 states to preclearance in recent decades.

The justices’ 5-4 ruling outraged civil rights advocates, but did not disturb a rarely-used “bail in” provision in the law that allows judges to put states or localities under the preclearance requirement. Civil rights groups and the Justice Department have since seized on that provision to try to recreate part of the regime that existed prior to the Supreme Court decision.

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