Michael Savage on George Zimmerman: ‘You Have to Find this Man Guilty’ (+video)

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By Jeff Poor. On his show on Tuesday night, talk show host Michael Savage said that George Zimmerman, who is currently on trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin, should be found guilty of second-degree manslaughter based on two things: 1) The state of his firearm and 2) The language he allegedly used on a 911 call when he was first reporting his suspicions about Martin.

But first Savage explained why his insight should be valued over others in the media covering the trial.

“I’m about to break an analysis that no one yet in the media has done, as you would expect from me — being the senior member of the American media and possibly the most insightful,” Savage said. “And I have to blow my own horn because everyone else tries to break my horn.”

“I will tell you that I broke the case down as follows,” Savage continued. “You want to hear it, or don’t you want to hear it? I know your mind is made up: White people generally think Zimmerman is innocent, except for liberals who are sure he is guilty; black people probably to the 99th percentile are sure Zimmerman’s a murderer. So where does Michael Savage fit in? I’m an independent observer and I call them as I see them, and I think Zimmerman committed what he’s being charged with: manslaughter. He didn’t intend to kill him, but he may as well have intended to kill him.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Medical examiner who called Zimmerman injuries ‘insignificant’ no stranger to controversy

By Chuck Ross. An investigator in the Jacksonville, Fla. Public Defender’s office tells the Daily Caller that he is “skeptical” of the testimony given by Dr. Valerie Rao, the medical examiner called by the prosecution to testify in the George Zimmerman trial on Tuesday.

Rao, a state witness and the chief medical examiner for Florida’s 4th district, called Zimmerman’s injuries “very insignificant” and testified that they were not life threatening. Zimmerman’s face and head injuries are central to his claim of self-defense in the February 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Rao reviewed photographs of both Zimmerman and Martin as well as a re-enactment video recorded by Zimmerman with Sanford police investigators. In direct examination by state prosecutor John Guy, Rao said that as little as one impact could have caused the injuries to the back of Zimmerman’s head.

On cross-examination, Zimmerman attorney Mark O’Mara pushed Rao to admit that it was possible that Zimmerman’s injuries could be consistent with several more blows and impacts.

David Douglas, who investigates in the same 4th district out of Jacksonville as Rao, said that he listened to Dr. Rao’s testimony yesterday and said he “was a bit skeptical of her motives and conclusions.” Read more from this story HERE.

CBO on Amnesty Bill: Probably Would Not Even Stop Half of Illegal Border Crossings

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Photo Credit: Gregory BullBy Stephen Dinan. Spending $35 billion on new Border Patrol agents and fencing would keep tens of thousands of new illegal immigrants from crossing the border each year, but would still only stop between a third and half of future illegal immigration, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s latest analysis released Wednesday.

The CBO looked at the latest version of the Senate’s immigration bill, which cleared the chamber in a 68-32 vote last week, and said it would reduce but not eliminate illegal immigration.

The “CBO estimates that the net inflow would be reduced by between one-third and one-half compared with the projected net inflow under current law. That effect would not be immediate, as it would take several years before [the Department of Homeland Security] could hire the full number of Border Patrol agents called for in the act,” the nonpartisan agency said in the section of its new analysis dealing with future illegal immigration.

The CBO also had continued good news about an immigration bill’s effects on the federal budget, saying that the additional legal workers will boost the economy and lead to nearly $1 trillion in new tax revenue over the next 20 years.

Wednesday’s analysis was an update to the CBO’s first crack last month at the Senate bill as it emerged from the Judiciary Committee. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APTea Party groups ramp up fight against immigration bill, as August recess looms

By Fox News. After spending weeks dealing with the fallout from the IRS targeting scandal, Tea Party groups are starting to focus their energy on the immigration bill — a development that could imperil President Obama’s hopes for a speedy approval.

Before adjourning for the Fourth of July holiday break, the Senate easily approved its version of the legislation. The bill now rests with the House, where Republicans say they will take up their own version.

Obama, during his Africa trip, called on the House to “get this done” before the August recess.

But House lawmakers already are hearing conservative calls to slow things down. And if the debate leaks into August — when Congress takes a nearly month-long recess — the prospects could get even more wobbly. The Tea Party, during the 2009 August recess, famously helped stall ObamaCare by storming town hall meetings and other events.

Tea Party groups may be preparing to again mount demonstrations during the summer break. And even if the House passes a bill this month, it’s unlikely the two chambers would be able to agree on a unified piece of legislation by August — leaving the work unfinished going into recess. Read more from this story HERE.

Nugent’s 2016 Presidential Slogan: “I Have 9 Kids from 7 Women”

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Photo Credit: Raw Story Nugent’s 2016 slogan: ‘I have 9 children from 7 women, and I’m running for president’

By David Edwards. Conservative rocker Ted Nugent says he’s considering running in 2016 and already has a campaign pitch: “Hi, I’m Ted Nugent. I have nine children from seven women, and I’m running for president.”

In a Washington Post Magazine story published this week, Nugent told Steve Hendrix that he was “thinking about it.”

Nugent’s wife of 24 years, Shemane, explained that he had talked about running before, “but this time he seems more serious. People are constantly asking him to run.”

In the 1980s and the mid-2000s, 66-year-old brother brother Jeff Nugent helped him do polling for a possible run for Michigan governor. At one point, New Mexico Republicans also attempted to draft him to run for governor of their state.

In the end, Nugent said that campaigning and governing would disrupt his hunting plans. Read more from this story HERE.

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Ted, white and blue: How Ted Nugent has rocked politics

By Steve Hendrix. On the final morning of the 2013 NRA annual convention in May, the day was bright, the mood was festive and Ted Nugent was neither dead nor in jail.

It was almost exactly a year earlier that Nugent, speaking on video at the NRA gathering in St. Louis, had made headlines by predicting one or the other would be his fate should Barack Obama become a two-termer. As far as incendiary rhetoric by the rocker-hunter-conservative firebrand goes, this was pretty tame stuff.

He has referred to Obama as a “piece of s–t” and members of his administration as “criminals,” and implored the president to “suck on my machine gun.” The “dead or in jail” comment was notable mostly for prompting a visit by the Secret Service, a meeting Nugent laughed off as a pro forma check-in from agents he described as more star-struck than suspicious…

Now, the constant beseeching from fans and followers has Nugent eyeing a run for the Republican nomination, the party he aligns with as the lesser of two feebles. (He is one of the few Republicans who will disparage Ronald Reagan, mainly for signing a bill restricting machine-gun sales.)

“Things are just so wrong in the country now,” Nugent said. “And I know that my answers would make things wonderful, unless you just refuse to produce, and then I’d recommend that you move to Canada. Or Illinois.” Read more from this story HERE.

Bill Awaiting Gov. Brown’s Signature Will Allow Boys to Use Girls’ Public School Bathrooms, Locker Rooms (and Vice-Versa)

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Photo Credit: mgrayflickrTransgender students in California would be able to choose which school bathrooms and locker rooms to use and which sport teams to join based on their gender identity under a measure approved this week by the California Legislature.

The proposal now awaits the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown, whose office has declined to comment on whether he will sign it.

The proposal would be the first state law in the nation that specifically requires equal access to public school facilities and activities based on gender identity, though some states have general policies to the same effect, said Shannon Price Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, one of several groups backing the legislation.

But enactment of the measure would “simply mean that California will be catching up with other states that already have enacted regulations based on a general prohibition of gender identity discrimination in schools,” Minter told CNN.

“Our view is that California’s existing law should already require schools to provide transgender students with equal access to facilities and activities, but in practice, many schools are not complying with that requirement and will not do so unless the Legislature provides specific guidance on this issue,” Minter said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video Appears to Show Activist Adam Koresh Loading a Shotgun in Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza

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Photo Credit: YouTube An activist who planned, and then canceled, an armed march into the District on July Fourth posted online what appeared to be a video of himself loading a shotgun in Freedom Plaza.

Adam Kokesh can be seen in the 22-second YouTube video in a suit jacket and an open collar loading four shells into a shotgun and pumping a shell into the chamber.

The video is stamped with the date July 4, 2013.

As he loads the shotgun, Mr. Kokesh recites the closing lines of his Final American Revolution Pledge of Resistance, which was posted on his website Wednesday.

“We will not be silent. We will not obey. We will not allow our government to destroy our humanity. We are the final American revolution,” he said, before closing with, “See you next Independence Day.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Civil Liberties and the Civil War

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Photo Credit: Tom GillOne hundred and fifty years ago, on July 4, 1863, twin Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg decisively turned the course of the Civil War. One consequence of that victory was the emancipation of slaves in America. Another consequence has been the invention of a dangerous myth: that the federal government is the best vehicle for protecting civil liberties.

This myth has been so potent that when the Supreme Court ruled this June that the “preclearance” provisions of the Voting Rights Act no longer applied to suspect jurisdiction, which included nearly all of the South, self-anointed “civil rights” leaders warned of great dangers. Even among many conservatives, there is the false understanding that the Bill of Rights was intended to protect our liberties from all government.

Actually, the Bill of Rights is intended to protect American citizens and American states from the federal government, which was understood to be the greatest threat to civil liberties. After the Civil War, the Supreme Court invented out of whole cloth the “Incorporation Doctrine” by which the Bill of Rights in the Constitution was deemed to apply to states as well as the federal government.

This was utterly unnecessary: every state has its own Bill of Rights, and the first thirteen states had these bills of rights in force before the federal Bill of Rights or even the Constitution. These state bills of rights typically provided more civil liberties than the federal Bill of Rights.

Why, then, have Americans been persuaded that we need the federal Bill of Rights, federal laws, and federal courts to protect our civil liberties? The legacy of the Civil War is the sole basis for this curious and flawed reasoning. Grasping the irrationality of this belief requires dipping into American history before the Civil War.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare to Punish Healthy Eaters as Insurance Rates Double or Triple for Those who Choose to Take Care of their Health

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Photo Credit: Natural NewsAccording to an analysis just published by the Wall Street Journal, healthy people will pay double or triple their current health insurance rates under Obamacare. Rates for those with chronic disease, however, will be reduced as all the healthy people subsidize their disease lifestyles.

The net effect is that people who choose to follow a healthy lifestyle — eating well, taking nutritional supplements, exercising and avoiding junk foods — will be financially punished by the federal government while those who choose to follow a disease and sickness lifestyle — eating junk foods, taking meds, refusing to exercise, etc. — will be rewarded by government.

This is the essence of socialized medicine: punish responsible citizens while rewarding those who refuse to take care of their health.

Disease is a matter of cause and effect, not luck

Obamacare, like all socialized medicine systems, is based on the false premise that health outcomes are a matter of pure luck. Disease just “randomly strikes people,” the thinking goes, and individuals have nothing to do with their own health. This false belief fits nicely with the financial interests of Big Pharma and doctors, of course, because it puts the power of health in the hands of corporations and medical personnel.

Read more from this story HERE.

71% of Americans Believe Nation’s Founders Would Be Disappointed With US

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As the United States celebrates Independence Day, most of its adult residents continue to say they are proud to be an American, including 57% who are extremely proud and 28% who are very proud. This high level of pride in being an American has varied only moderately over the past 12 years since the question was first asked, but has been lower since 2005 than it was in the years prior…

Conservatives and Republicans are also slightly more likely to say they are proud than are liberals and Democrats…

Despite their widespread national pride, Americans evince a much more negative response when asked if the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased or disappointed by the way the United States has turned out. Seventy-one percent of Americans say the signers would be disappointed, while 27% say they would be pleased.

Read more from this story HERE.

Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Decision Shows Roe Should be Overturned

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Photo Credit: APWhen the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on June 25, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that Congress’s actions may not be “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day.”

“Our country has changed,” he wrote. “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”

Ironically, Roe v. Wade turned 40 this year.

And in the decades since the decision was handed down, our medical knowledge — particularly that which is prenatal in nature — has changed. In fact, that knowledge has changed so much that much of what was regarded as “fact” 40 years ago has “no logical relationship to [prenatal knowledge in] the present day.”

For example, 40 years ago, many Americans were able to abide the legalization of abortion by thinking of the unborn child as a mass of DNA or a bundle of cells that felt no pain and lacked cognition.

Read more from this story HERE.

National Guard Troops and Staff to be Furloughed

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Photo Credit: APMore than 1,100 National Guard soldiers and airmen in Hawaii — and thousands in other states — will be living with 20 percent less pay over the next three months as the Defense Department carries out automatic federal budget cuts.

Guard members will be furloughed for one day a week starting Monday, so helicopter pilots and mechanics, pay and finance clerks and others who keep the guard operating will have eight hours less each week to do their jobs.

It’s not clear precisely what effects the unprecedented cuts will have. They could, however, make it more difficult for the guard to fly helicopters to help put out wildfires or rush to the scene of natural disasters in trucks.

“Our general sense is that short-term, it’s going to be a terrible hardship for those soldiers, airmen and their families. But if it goes on for any length of time, that may have a negative impact on our readiness and our ability to respond,” said Hawaii National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Chuck Anthony.

The military’s furloughs were only supposed to involve civilians, but large numbers of National Guard members who wear Army and Air Force uniforms full-time will experience them as well. The National Guard added military technicians to the furlough list in May, after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel gave official notice to begin furloughs for civilians.

Read more from this story HERE.