Tea Party House Members Take on Establishment Senators in Fight to Defund Obamacare

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Photo Credit: majunznkBy Elise Viebeck. The Tea Party is ready to take a stand on defunding the divisive healthcare law and willing to risk a government shutdown in the process.

Establishment Republicans worry the strategy will repeat the Clinton-era government shutdown showdown, which hurt Republicans in the 1996 elections.

Tensions will reach a boiling point after the August recess, when lawmakers start negotiations over how to keep the government open.

In the meantime, old-guard Republicans are sending a clear message to conservatives: The shutdown isn’t worth the risk.

On Friday, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said that a plan to shut down the government to block funds for ObamaCare would cost the GOP control of the House and could destroy the party. Read more from this story HERE.

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Sen. Cruz: Defund Obamacare before Americans become ‘addicted’ to subsidies

By Valerie Richardson. Sen. Ted Cruz urged conservatives Saturday to join a petition drive to defund Obamacare, calling it their last chance to stop the national health-care plan before its implementation in January.

“On Jan. 1, the exchanges kick in and the subsidies kick in,” said the Texas Republican in a speech Saturday at the Western Conservative Summit. “Once those kick in, it’s going to prove almost impossible to undo Obamacare. The administration’s plan is very simple: Get everyone addicted to the sugar so that Obamacare remains a permanent feature of our society.”

He asked foes of the Affordable Care Act to sign a national petition launched Saturday that calls for Congress to approve the Sept. 30 continuing budget resolution only if it eliminates funding for Obamacare.

The online petition, called Don’t Fund It, is located at www.dontfundobamacare.com

Opposing Mr. Cruz’s defunding plan was Republican strategist Dick Morris, who urged Republicans to “let the consequences of Obama’s policies happen.” Read more from this story HERE.

Edward Snowden’s Not the Story. The Fate of the Internet Is

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Photo Credit: Tatyana Lokshina/APRepeat after me: Edward Snowden is not the story. The story is what he has revealed about the hidden wiring of our networked world. This insight seems to have escaped most of the world’s mainstream media, for reasons that escape me but would not have surprised Evelyn Waugh, whose contempt for journalists was one of his few endearing characteristics. The obvious explanations are: incorrigible ignorance; the imperative to personalise stories; or gullibility in swallowing US government spin, which brands Snowden as a spy rather than a whistleblower…

As an antidote, here are some of the things we should be thinking about as a result of what we have learned so far.

The first is that the days of the internet as a truly global network are numbered. It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty.

Second, the issue of internet governance is about to become very contentious. Given what we now know about how the US and its satraps have been abusing their privileged position in the global infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to continue to control it has become untenable.

Third, as Evgeny Morozov has pointed out, the Obama administration’s “internet freedom agenda” has been exposed as patronising cant. “Today,” he writes, “the rhetoric of the ‘internet freedom agenda’ looks as trustworthy as George Bush’s ‘freedom agenda’ after Abu Ghraib.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Coffee Drinking Tied to Substantially Lower Risk of Suicide

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Photo Credit: Harvard Gazette Drinking several cups of coffee daily appears to reduce the risk of suicide in men and women by about 50 percent, according to a new study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The study was published online July 2 in The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry.

“Unlike previous investigations, we were able to assess association of consumption of caffeinated and non-caffeinated beverages, and we identify caffeine as the most likely candidate of any putative protective effect of coffee,” said lead researcher Michel Lucas, research fellow in the Department of Nutrition at HSPH.

The authors reviewed data from three large U.S. studies and found that the risk of suicide for adults who drank two to four cups of caffeinated coffee per day was about half that of those who drank decaffeinated coffee or very little or no coffee.

Caffeine not only stimulates the central nervous system but may act as a mild antidepressant by boosting production of certain neurotransmitters in the brain, including serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline. This could explain the lower risk of depression among coffee drinkers that had been found in past epidemiological studies, the researchers reported.

Read more from this story HERE.

New Colorado Gun Control Law Forces Cancellation of Boulder Gun Buy Back Program

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Photo Credit: Camera file photoOrganizers have canceled a gun buyback at the request of Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle, who said Colorado’s new gun laws would make the Aug. 4 event nearly impossible to stage.

“The bottom line is what we anticipated doing would still be legal — but procedurally we can’t follow through with it at this time,” Pelle said Tuesday.

A stricter law that went into effect July 1 requires buyers to go to a licensed firearms dealer and undergo a background check. The InstaCheck systems used in the checks are not mobile, which means they couldn’t be used at the sheriff’s compound where the buyback was planned.

“It’s not a portable system,” Pelle said. “It can’t be done at the site.”

Essentially, for the event to work, Pelle said the group would have to find a licensed firearms dealer to host the event and then pay the dealer per transaction, “which becomes very unproductive,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Can Software that Predicts Crime Pass Constitutional Muster?

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Photo Credit: APTypically, police arrive at the scene of a crime after it occurs. But rather than send cops to yesterday’s crime, a new trend in law enforcement is using computers to predict where tomorrow’s crimes will be — and then try to head them off.

The software uses past statistics to project where crime is moving. Police in Los Angeles say it’s worked well in predicting property crimes there. Now Seattle is about to expand it for use in predicting gun violence.

It all started as a research project. Jeff Brantingham, an anthropologist at UCLA, wanted to see if computers could model future crime the same way they model earthquake aftershocks. Turns out they can.

“It predicts sort of twice as much crime as any other existing system, even going head-to-head with a crime analyst,” Brantingham says…

Brantingham and his colleagues are now selling the predictive system to police departments with the name PredPol. At this point, you may be thinking about the sci-fi movie Minority Report. But this is different. No psychics sleeping in bathtubs, for one. More to the point, this doesn’t predict who will commit a future crime, just where it is likely to happen.

Read more from this story HERE.

The McWeiners of the World

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Most news accounts treated these as two separate scandals: Anthony Weiner, the disgraced Democratic congressman and would-be mayor of New York, had been exposed again as a digital flasher, sending “selfie” pictures of his privates to women. Bob McDonnell, the Republican governor of Virginia, was found to be taking gifts and loans from a businessman McDonnell had helped…

By coincidence, both men found themselves apologizing for their misdeeds on the same day, July 23. McDonnell’s was cowardly, done via Twitter while he was out of the country; Weiner’s was handled in yet another bizarre news conference. But both were reluctant, their statements less expressions of contrition than naked efforts to make the problems go away. These were the apologies of narcissists…

Their offenses are similarly pointless: Weiner threw away a promising career by exchanging smut with women he claims he never met. McDonnell, once mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, undid his reputation by accepting sums — a $6,500 Rolex, a $15,000 splurge at Bergdorf Goodman — that were trivial compared to those he could have earned after leaving office.

Both men seem to have the condition that afflicts so many officeholders who get into trouble, from Clinton to Foley to Sanford to Spitzer: a sense of invincibility, and a belief that the usual rules don’t apply to them. They take ever bigger risks, as if it is a form of thrill-seeking, or they can no longer gauge risk…

The narcissistic strain is common, and it predates the rise to power. It takes a certain personality to believe that one is meant to lead. This is reinforced once in power by sycophantic staffers. The problem has become worse as congressional redistricting leaves more lawmakers with safe seats, but the phenomenon is not Washington’s alone: McDonnell honed his invincibility in Richmond, and Weiner continued his behavior after resigning his House seat.

Read more from this story HERE.

Polygamy Foes Look to Amend Constitution

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Photo Credit: WNDThe American Family Association is urging support for a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution by Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., that would define marriage as one man and one woman.

The proposal comes after a legal scholar admitted that the arguments used to justify same-sex marriage will pave the way for legalization of polygamy and incest.

“We have a reached a frightening impasse,” said AFA President Tim Wildmon. “I fear the day just years from now when marriage has absolutely no definition at all.”

He cited a recent commentary by Kent Greenfield, a Boston College law school professor and Law Fund Research Scholar…

“As a matter of constitutional rationale, there is indeed a slippery slope between recognizing same-sex marriages and allowing marriages among more than two people and between consenting adults who are related,” Greenfield, a professor of law at BC, said in a recent online column.

Read more from this story HERE.

Over 1000 Inmates Escape Libyan Jail Near Benghazi

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Photo Credit: David Holt LondonMore than 1,000 detainees escaped from a prison near the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi in a massive jailbreak Saturday, as protesters stormed the offices of political parties in Libya’s main cities.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the jailbreak at the Koyfiya prison came as part of the protests or if inmates received outside help. Protesters had massed across the country angry over the killing of an activist critical of the country’s Muslim Brotherhood group.

Those who escaped either face or were convicted of serious charges, a security official at Koyfiya prison said, confirming the jailbreak. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to speak to journalists.

There also was confusion initially about how many prisoners broke out, with numbers of escapees ranging as high as 1,200.

Benghazi’s security situation is among the most precarious in post-revolution Libya. Last year, the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed in an attack there.

Read more from this story HERE.

Australia Adopts Draconian Policy Against Illegal Aliens (+video)

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Photo Credit: Immigration DepartmentPrime Minister Kevin Rudd says asylum seekers who arrive by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees.

Mr Rudd has confirmed a deal that will see asylum seekers sent to Papua New Guinea for assessment, and if they are found to be refugees, they will be resettled there…

“I understand this is a very hard-line decision. I understand the different groups in Australia and around the world will see this decision in different ways,” he said.

“But our responsibility as a government is to ensure we have a robust system of border security and orderly migration on the one hand, as well as fulfilling our legal and compassionate obligations under the Refugees’ Convention on the other.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Horror as Swarm of 30,000 Bees Attack Couple and Kill Two Horses and Five Hens in North Texas

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Photo Credit: CorbisA swarm of about 30,000 bees attacked a North Texas couple as they exercised their miniature horses, stinging the animals so many times they died.

Kristen Beauregard, 44, was stung about 200 times, and her boyfriend about 50 times, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Saturday.

But the horses, Chip and Trump, were so covered in bees they shimmered. Neither could be saved.

‘They were chasing us down, they were following us,’ Beauregard said of the incident Wednesday evening. ‘We swept up piles and piles of them … it was like a bad movie.’

The bees are being tested to see whether they are Africanized or ‘killer’ bees. It is unclear what prompted them to leave the hive.

Read more from this story HERE.