Judge Michael McConnell: Obama Suspends the Rule of Law

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Photo Credit: David G. KleinPresident Obama’s decision last week to suspend the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act may be welcome relief to businesses affected by this provision, but it raises grave concerns about his understanding of the role of the executive in our system of government.

Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution states that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.

This matter—the limits of executive power—has deep historical roots. During the period of royal absolutism, English monarchs asserted a right to dispense with parliamentary statutes they disliked. King James II’s use of the prerogative was a key grievance that lead to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The very first provision of the English Bill of Rights of 1689—the most important precursor to the U.S. Constitution—declared that “the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal.”

To make sure that American presidents could not resurrect a similar prerogative, the Framers of the Constitution made the faithful enforcement of the law a constitutional duty.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president on legal and constitutional issues, has repeatedly opined that the president may decline to enforce laws he believes are unconstitutional. But these opinions have always insisted that the president has no authority, as one such memo put it in 1990, to “refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Homosexuals Organize Blood Drive to Circumvent FDA’s Safeguards Against Spread of AIDS

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesActivists are organizing the first national gay blood drive Friday in an effort to combat the Food and Drug Administration’s ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men.

The FDA bans donations from men who have had sex with other men since 1977, saying there is an increased risk of exposure to and transmission of infectious diseases — including HIV — in male-to-male sexual encounters.

“FDA uses multiple layers of safeguards in its approach to ensuring blood safety,” the government agency’s website says. The FDA screens all potential blood donors based on risk factors and signs of infections.

Blood banks have been instructed to ask male donors if they have ever had sex with a man. If the potential donor responds “yes,” he is instantly removed from the donor pool for life.

The policy started in the 1980s when people didn’t know how the deadly virus that causes AIDS spread. At the time, there wasn’t a good test to detect whether HIV was present in donated blood, and HIV was getting into the nation’s blood supply. Scientists also knew that a disproportionate number of gay men were affected by the virus.

Read more from this story HERE.

Chechens Call for Terrorist Attacks on Russian 2014 Winter Olympics

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Photo Credit: WNDThe head of the Chechen Islamist militants has put out a call to all North Caucasus militants to begin planning attacks to disrupt the February 2014 Winter Olympics to be held at the Russian Black Sea resort in Sochi, according to report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Doku Umarov, who wants to establish a Caucasus Emirates in the North Caucasus region that includes the predominantly Muslim Russian provinces of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagastan, has issued the call to “do their utmost to derail” the games.

Umarov’s call is the realization of Moscow’s worst fear, since it sees security of the games as one of its highest priorities. It is estimated that Moscow will spend more than $51 billion to make a success of the games which it sees as a showpiece for its economic and technological achievements.

Umarov’s call is a reversal of his previous position that he would not launch attacks on civilian targets, although his group’s previous attacks on the Moscow subway a few years ago was a sign of that change.

The location of the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi butts up against those predominantly Muslim provinces which Umarov has declared constitute the Caucasus Emirates.

Read more from this story HERE.

Live TV Newscast Shaken as House Blast Creates Huge Shock Wave (+video)

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Photo Credit: CNNResidents of a Corpus Christi, Texas, neighborhood had the kind of wake-up call no homeowner wants to get.

An early morning explosion Friday shook the area, sparking a fire that rushed through the neighborhood. In the end, three homes were flattened and about 70 others were damaged, the Red Cross told CNN affiliate KIII.

Two people injured were in critical condition Saturday night. They were first taken to a local hospital and then flown to the burn unit at San Antonio’s Brooke Army Medical Center, according to the Corpus Christi Fire Department.

KIII news anchors, in the studio nearly two miles away from the blast site, were in the middle of their live morning newscast Friday when they — and their viewers — heard a loud boom. The room appeared to shake slightly.

Read more from this story HERE.

Study: Home Ownership Not the Key to Happiness

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Photo Credit: Patrick GeorgeIf trying to buy an apartment in New York City has been making you miserable, consider this: actually getting that home may not make you happy.

A growing body of research suggests that spending money on real estate doesn’t necessarily mean investing in contentment. Indeed, the conventional advice to cut back on vacations, restaurant meals and other extras in order to save money for a home may actually be detrimental to felicity. Experts in happiness — an increasingly popular field focused on the scientific understanding of emotional well-being — say that people are happier when they spend money on experiences instead of material goods, whether it be a new car or a bigger apartment.

“People are making so many trade-offs in order to have that home,” said Elizabeth Dunn, an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia who studies consumerism and happiness. She recently explored the impact of housing on people’s happiness while compiling studies for a new book, “Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending,” which she wrote with Michael Norton, who teaches at the Harvard Business School.

The recession forced many people to curb their spending habits and re-evaluate their overall lifestyles. But after saving money for years, buyers encouraged by low mortgage rates are re-entering the housing market. They find the pickings slim. In Manhattan, the number of apartments for sale for the second quarter was at a 13-year low, stoking competition and driving up prices.

Now there is research like Dr. Dunn’s, emphasizing that when it comes to your overall happiness, “there are a lot of better things you could be putting your money toward” than real estate.

Read more from this story HERE.

Heroes! Teens on Bike Rescue Girl From Kidnap (+video)

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Photo Credit: ABC 27Two teenagers are being hailed as heroes for hopping on their bicycles last week, chasing down a kidnapper and rescuing an abducted, five-year-old girl.

Young Jocelyn Rojas of Lancaster Township, Pa., had been playing in her front yard, when an unknown assailant snatched her and threw her in his car. Her mother reported the girl’s disappearance within minutes.

“It’s something you don’t wish on anybody,” Roja’s grandmother, Tracey Clay, told WHTM-TV in Harrisburg. “Horrible, horrible thoughts flashed through my mind.”

But nearby, 15-year-old Temar Boggs, who didn’t know the girl but who had seen television reports on the kidnapping and police patrolling his neighborhood, determined to do something. He gathered together six of his friends.

“We got all of our friends to go look for her,” Boggs told Lancaster Online. “We made our own little search party.”

See what happened next:

Read more from this story HERE.

Proof Positive: You Are a Bio-Mechanical Machine Created by Intelligent Design (+video)

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ATP Synthase is a molecular machine found in many living organisms. It serves as a miniature power-generator, producing an energy-carrying molecule, adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.

The ATP synthase machine has many parts we recognize from human-designed technology, including a rotor, a stator, a camshaft or driveshaft, and other basic components of a rotary engine.

This machine is just the final step in a long and complex metabolic pathway involving numerous enzymes and other molecules—all so the cell can produce ATP to power biochemical reactions, and provide energy for other molecular machines in the cell.

George Zimmerman: NOT GUILTY (+video)

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By Yamiche Alcindor. George Zimmerman, the man accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, has been found not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter.

The verdict is the culmination of a case that captured the nation’s attention and will undoubtedly be imprinted in America’s history. The not guilty verdict means the jury of six women found that Zimmerman justifiably used deadly force and reasonably believed that such force was “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm” to himself— Florida’s definition of self-defense.

Zimmerman showed no emotion as the verdict was read. After the verdict was read, he smiled slightly and shook hands with one of his lawyers.

The women decided Zimmerman didn’t “intentionally commit an act or acts that caused death” or demonstrate a “depraved mind without regard for human life” –Florida’s definitions of manslaughter and second degree murder, respectively.

“Its means there was reasonable doubt,” said Susan Constantine, a jury consultant and body language expert who attended Zimmerman’s trial regularly. “They just could not put the pieces together.” Read more from this story HERE.

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State never proved its case, legal analysts say

By David Ovalle. After five weeks of trial and 56 witnesses, few legal observers believed prosecutors came close to proving Sanford, Fla., neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman committed second-degree murder when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin in February 2012.

So for many legal analysts, it was no surprise that jurors rejected even a lesser “compromise” verdict of manslaughter, acquitting Zimmerman outright of all criminal charges and deciding he acted in a reasonable way to protect his own life.

The acquittal was a stinging blow for prosecutors and their decision to file the second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman, who was not initially arrested by Sanford police after claiming self-defense. And it was a resounding embrace of the defense’s strategy during closing arguments not just to establish that prosecutors hadn’t proven Zimmerman guilty, but also to show he was “absolutely” innocent.

“The jury clearly believed that you have a right to defend yourself,” said Jude M. Faccidomo, the former president of Miami’s Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “Especially when cases are so gray, like this one was, self-defense really resonates because people can associate with being afraid.”

And while some also have questioned the state attorney’s office acceptance of a mostly white jury, a more diverse panel would have returned the same verdict, lawyers who have watched the case believe. Read more from this story HERE.

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Guilty until proven innocent: how the press prosecuted Zimmerman while stoking racial tensions

By John Nolte. As we await the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman, the Florida man who claims to have shot and killed teenager Trayvon Martin in self-defense, this seems the perfect time to reflect on the media’s cynical and dishonest role in turning a local crime into a national obsession.

As you will see below, by hook and crook, the mainstream media did everything in its still-potent power to not only push for the prosecution of Mr. Zimmerman (the police originally chose not to charge him) but also to gin up racial tensions where none needed to exist.

It all started with the anchor of a major television network (Al Sharpton) inserting himself in the story to spread division and hate; it continued straight through to the closing days of the trial when another major news network, desperate to keep a fabricated racial narrative alive, propagated the portrayal of Zimmerman as part of a racial group that doesn’t exist — the “white Hispanic.”

In-between, there has been an astonishing amount of malicious fraud and lies, all in an effort to serve a president, stir racial hatred, and influence the justice system. Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Intentionally Paying Billions to Illegal Aliens, Won’t Turn Over Info to Immigration Officials

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Photo Credit: APThe question of whether to legalize illegal aliens and put them on a pathway to citizenship may be the most controversial legislative issue facing the U.S. Congress this year.

But, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), seventeen years have already passed since the Internal Revenue Service made its own “policy decision” to “’legalize’ illegal aliens.”

That policy, made those many years ago, not only determined that the IRS would treat illegal aliens the same as legal immigrants and U.S. citizens, but also that the IRS would not hand over to federal immigration authorities information about employers who appeared to be hiring large numbers of illegal aliens and about illegal aliens who filed false documents with the IRS.

As a result of the IRS’s policy, by 2010, according to TIGTA, the service was paying out $4.2 billion in refundable “Additional Child Tax Credits” to illegal aliens. In 2011, according to TIGTA, the IRS would pay more than $46 million in tax refunds to what theoretically were 23,994 illegal aliens who all used the same address in Atlanta.

The story starts in 1996, when Democrat Bill Clinton was president, and the Republicans controlled Congress.

Read more from this story HERE.

Journalist: US Better Not Do Anything to Snowden or Undisclosed Info Will Be Fed’s “Worst Nightmare”

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Photo Credit: ReutersSnowden documents could be ‘worst nightmare’ for U.S. – journalist

By Reuters. Fugitive former U.S. spy contractor Edward Snowden controls dangerous information that could become the United States’ “worst nightmare” if revealed, a journalist familiar with the data said in a newspaper interview.

Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who first published the documents Snowden leaked, said in a newspaper interview published on Saturday that the U.S. government should be careful in its pursuit of the former computer analyst.

“Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had,” Greenwald said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro with the Argentinian daily La Nacion.

“The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.”

Snowden, who is sought by Washington on espionage charges after revealing details of secret surveillance programs, has been stranded at a Moscow airport since June 23 and is now seeking refuge in Russia until he can secure safe passage to Latin America, where several counties have offered him asylum. Read more from this story HERE.

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The (spy) game’s afoot in hunt for NSA leaker Snowden

By Rowan Scarborough. One twist in the fugitive hunt for asylum-seeking Edward Snowden is that the man who has revealed the most secrets about the National Security Agency in history now is undoubtedly one of its chief targets.

A subplot in this international thriller is a cat-and-mouse game: Will the NSA penetrate his communications or will the master leaker outwit all the agency’s high-tech gadgets — since he, as well as anyone, knows how they work?

“NSA is probably doing what it does best, which is sweeping the ‘electronicshere’ for communications, voice and data, indicating his next chess move,” former CIA officer Bart Bechtel says. “They may also be looking at known and suspected collaborators.”

A second analyst, a former intelligence operative, says that the same methods Mr. Snowden, an ex-NSA contractor, disclosed in documents leaks to the press are now being turned on him. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AFPMorales says US hacked Bolivian leaders’ emails

By AFP. Bolivia’s leftist president Evo Morales on Saturday accused US intelligence of hacking into the email accounts of top Bolivian officials, saying he had shut his own account down.

Latin American leaders have lashed out at Washington over recent revelations of vast surveillance programs, some of which allegedly targeted regional allies and adversaries alike.

Bolivia has joined Venezuela and Nicaragua in offering asylum to Edward Snowden, the former IT contractor for the US National Security Agency who publicized details of the programs and is now on the run from espionage charges.

Morales said that he learned about the alleged US email snooping at the Mercosur regional summit in Montevideo earlier this week.

“Those US intelligence agents have accessed the emails of our most senior authorities in Bolivia, Morales said in a speech. Read more from this story HERE.