College Enrollment Falls as Economy Recovers

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Photo Credit: William Widmer The long enrollment boom that swelled American colleges — and helped drive up their prices — is over, with grim implications for many schools.

College enrollment fell 2 percent in 2012-13, the first significant decline since the 1990s, but nearly all of that drop hit for-profit and community colleges; now, signs point to 2013-14 being the year when traditional four-year, nonprofit colleges begin a contraction that will last for several years. The college-age population is dropping after more than a decade of sharp growth, and many adults who opted out of a forbidding job market and went back to school during the recession have been drawn back to work by the economic recovery.

Hardest hit are likely to be colleges that do not rank among the wealthiest or most prestigious, and are heavily dependent on tuition revenue, raising questions about their financial health — even their survival.

“There are many institutions that are on the margin, economically, and are very concerned about keeping their doors open if they can’t hit their enrollment numbers,” said David A. Hawkins, the director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, which has more than 1,000 member colleges.

The most competitive colleges remain unaffected, but gaining admission to middle-tier institutions will most likely get easier.

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Health and Human Services Department Sought to Spend an Estimated $159 MILLION Per Year on New Employees to Help Run Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Reuters Documents obtained from the Health and Human Services Department through a Freedom of Information Act request show that on the day the Affordable Care Act became law, the agency received fast-track authority to hire 1,814 new high-level employees to put Obamacare into practice, at a likely cost of more than $159 million per year.

It’s unclear whether those employees were ever hired. HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

But the hiring request was approved by the Obama administration’s Office of Personnel Management despite a government-wide hiring freeze.

Judicial Watch, a nonprofit that has told MailOnline it files ‘hundreds’ of such FOIA requests, showed MailOnline the documents on Thursday. They show that HHS designated the hiring as a project worthy of ‘direct-hire appointing authority,’ a mechanism designed to sidestep normal restrictions on how much federal agencies can spend on personnel.

An analysis by MailOnline indicates that the annual base pay for those 1,814 employees, many of them slated for hiring at the highest salary levels available, would exceed $127.7 million.

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Oil Giant Halliburton Pleads Guilty to Destroying Crucial Evidence About the Deadly Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

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Photo Credit: EPAHalliburton Co has agreed to plead guilty to destroying computer test results related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday.

The government said Halliburton’s guilty plea is the third by a company over the spill and requires the world’s second-largest oilfield services company to pay a maximum $200,000 statutory fine.

Halliburton also agreed to three years of probation and to continue cooperating with the criminal probe into the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

The company said in a statement Thursday night that it had agreed to plead guilty ‘to one misdemeanor violation associated with the deletion of records created after the Macondo well incident, to pay the statutory maximum fine of $200,000 and to accept a term of three years probation.’

The Justice Department has agreed it will not pursue further criminal prosecution of the company or its subsidiaries for any conduct arising from the 2010 spill, Halliburton’s statement said, adding that federal officials have also ‘acknowledged the company’s significant and valuable cooperation during the course of its investigation.’

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Obama Killing Race Relations in U.S.

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Photo Credit: WNDPublic attitudes about race relations have drastically worsened since Americans elected the first black president, according to a new poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, and talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh has an explanation for the disturbing trend.

According to the survey, 52 percent of whites and 38 percent of blacks now have a favorable opinion of race relations in the U.S.

In just four-and-a-half years, since the election of President Obama, those numbers have dropped sharply. In the month of Obama’s inauguration, January 2009, 79 percent of whites and 63 percent of blacks held a favorable view of race relations. The data show a decline of 27 points for whites and 25 points for blacks today.

Limbaugh weighed in on the news, telling his listeners Thursday that while many expected the election of a half-black president would ease racial strife in American, it is worse than ever now.

“You know what’s kind of stunning about this to me?” he asked. “You would think – and I hope all of you white people that voted for Obama hoping it was gonna end racism, that 63 percent, why isn’t that higher? I mean, it was truly historic – electing the first African-American to the highest office in the land.

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Atheist Group Opposes Holocaust Memorial on Ohio Statehouse Grounds

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Photo Credit: daniel-libeskind.comA Wisconsin-based atheist group has expressed its opposition to a Holocaust memorial set to be built on the ground of the Ohio statehouse, arguing that its location violates the separation of church and state and calling the Star of David “exclusionary” in memorializing victims of the Nazis.

But Ohio Gov. John Kasich and proponents of the memorial say it will teach people about man’s inhumanity to man and that, contrary to the atheists’ claim, it will include all those killed by the Nazis — including U.S. soldiers, ethnic and religious minorities, homosexuals and the mentally ill.

Joyce Garver Keller, executive director of Jewish Communities, an organization that represents Jewish groups across the state, said the memorial is intended “mostly to honor those who had survived and who had come to Ohio to build a life.”

Keller said it is appropriate to build the structure on state grounds because it will “remind lawmakers and those who work in and around government of the important role and responsibility they have in speaking out in the face of hatred, anti-Semetism and genocide.”

“The Holocaust did not begin in concentration camps in the ovens with smoke stacks and mass graves,” Keller told FoxNews.com. “It began in the halls of government with the passage of laws that targeted Jews, taking their properties, their businesses, their home, their freedom and ultimately their lives.

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Campaign Puts ‘Gay Rights’ Behind Constitution

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Photo Credit: WNDThe cases are well known: The Colorado baker in trouble because he declined to violate his faith and promote same-sex “marriage” with his work, the Washington florist who made the same decision and the New Mexico photographer who was fined by the state for turning down a request to promote lesbianism with her services.

More and more people who adhere to the biblical definition of marriage are finding themselves in that no-win situation of being forced by “nondiscrimination” laws to endorse and support “alternative lifestyles.”

An attorney whose work on constitutional issues is well known says such conflicts shouldn’t happen. Matt Barber, vice president for Liberty Counsel Action, told WND that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is supreme, and local ordinances that demand people violate its precepts must fall.

But some place their own agenda above the Constitution, and therein lies the conflict, he said.

The solution?

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Two Americans Added to Food Stamp Rolls for Every Job Created

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Photo Credit: WonderlaneWhite House Press Secretary Jay Carney said yesterday that the Obama administration has pulled the nation from the depths of the “Great Recession” with the creation of 7.2 million private sector jobs.

“And what is absolutely true is that we have come a long way since the depths of the Great Recession. We’ve created over 7.2 million private sector jobs,” Carney told reporters at a press briefing.

Here’s what Mr. Carney didn’t say:

Since February of 2009, the first full month of Obama’s presidency, 9.5 million Americans have dropped out of the labor force. Nearly 90 million Americans are not working today!

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Congress to Probe Lethal Crash that Killed SEAL Team 6 Members

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Congress has launched an investigation of the helicopter crash that killed 30 Americans in Afghanistan, including members of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6 unit, The Hill has learned.

The victims’ families say the Pentagon hasn’t provided answers to their many questions about the deadly attack, which took place on Aug. 6, 2011, three months after Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by Team 6 forces.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on National Security, told The Hill, “We’re going to dive into this.”

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Sen. Coons Denies Knowledge of or Involvement with Christine O’Donnell Tax Breach

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As unanswered questions swirl around Christine O’Donnell and the breach of her personal tax records, the other key figure in Delaware’s 2010 U.S. Senate race said neither he nor his campaign had anything to do with it.

Democratic Sen. Christopher A. Coons, who handily defeated Ms. O’Donnell three years ago in the contest to fill Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s Senate seat, says he hasn’t been contacted by congressional investigators or the Treasury Department watchdog responsible for looking into the improper use of Americans’ private tax records.

“Any political abuse of the government’s power is inappropriate, wrong and ought to be investigated fairly,” said Ian Koski, a spokesman for the senator. “This particular matter was already subject to a months-long investigation by the Treasury Department — which found no wrongdoing — and no evidence has been presented that indicates that the Treasury investigation was unfair or inadequate.”

The Washington Times first reported last week that Ms. O’Donnell’s personal tax records were accessed by a Delaware official, who has now been identified as David Smith, an investigator with the state’s Division of Revenue. The breach occurred in March 2010, the same month Ms. O’Donnell announced she would challenge Republican Michael Castle in the party’s Senate primary.

The timing and release of information related to Ms. O’Donnell’s taxes to the media raises questions about the possible role her political enemies played, and whether Delaware state officials used a backdoor into Americans’ confidential IRS tax records.

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Al Qaeda’s Jailbreaks Fuel the Fight

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Al Qaeda’s jailbreaks have been an all too common occurrence in the post-9/11 world. And they have directly fueled the fight. Chances are the massive jailbreak in Iraq this week will cause significant problems for the U.S. and its allies down the road. History tells us as much. There are numerous examples of once-detained al Qaeda operatives rejoining the terror network. Consider just two examples.

The current head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Nasir al Wuhayshi, escaped from a Yemeni jail in 2006. Along with a hardened crew of other escapees and ex-Guantanamo detainees, Wuhayshi went on to rebuild al Qaeda’s Arabian franchise after it had been decimated by years of counterterrorism operations.

It didn’t take long for Wuhayshi’s group to start targeting the U.S. AQAP was reborn in early 2009. On Christmas Day 2009, a would-be suicide bomber who was recruited and trained by AQAP nearly detonated a clever underwear bomb on board a Detroit-bound airliner. AQAP has launched other attempted attacks against the U.S. since then. The organization has also built an irregular army to challenge the Yemeni state, meaning many security challenges will have to be met for years to come.

Abu Yahya al Libi, who rose through al Qaeda’s ranks to become one of the organization’s most senior leaders in Pakistan, also escaped from a prison. In July 2005, al Libi and several others escaped from Bagram Air Base. Unlike Wuhayshi, who served as bin Laden’s aide-de-camp and protégé during the 1990s, al Libi was, as the New York Times put it, “an obscure militant preacher” when he slipped out of custody. Three years later, in 2008, the American press was discussing al Libi’s “meteoric ascent,” as he became one of al Qaeda’s most recognized figures. And four years after that, in June 2012, al Libi was killed in a U.S. drone strike. Al Libi’s death was, in turn, cited by the Obama administration as proof that al Qaeda’s death also neared.

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