Despite Objections, Prayer Goes on at High School Graduation (+video)

/7 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Nancy LeedyDespite the opposition of at least six students, Lincoln County High School kept to its tradition of student-led prayer during its graduation ceremony Friday.

Class of 2013 President Jonathan Hardwick received a standing ovation after he prayed for about one minute during Friday’s commencement ceremony at the school. Many audience members echoed his closing of “Amen.”

A video of Hardwick’s prayer quickly hit social media websites such as YouTube and Topix, with most online comments supporting Hardwick’s decision.

Part of the class president’s prayer was the following, “Thank you for helping us get here safely today, Lord, and thank you for the many blessings you have given us.”

In an interview with The Advocate-Messenger earlier this month, Principal Tim Godbey acknowledged that six students — including at least one atheist — had pleaded with him not to allow student-led prayer to be a part of the school’s graduation ceremony. Godbey, a self-professed Christian who says he prays for each of his students daily, said under separation of church and state laws, faculty members have never been able to pray publicly on school grounds or during school-sponsored functions. However, he noted that the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit students from doing so as long as they are not otherwise disruptive.

Read more from this story HERE.

Charlie Daniels Unloads on Obama’s ‘Cowardice’

/10 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WNDCountry-music legend Charlie Daniels isn’t buying the White House line that President Obama simply “didn’t know” about the scandalous actions plaguing his administration.

From the gun-running “Fast & Furious” debacle of 2011 to recent revelations the Internal Revenue Service has been targeting tea-party groups, Obama has denied knowledge of his underlings’ actions, even stating he only discovered the improprieties after the evening news reported them.

But in an exclusive interview with WND, the ever-outspoken Daniels blasted the president’s “excuses.”

“If I had a drunk bus driver, for instance, and I told everybody, ‘Don’t tell me about that, I don’t want to know about it,’ and that way if we get sued I can say, ‘I didn’t know it,’ basically that’s got to be what’s happened,” Daniels said. “[But] when you hide behind plausible deniability, that is not leadership. That is cowardice. You’re not leading the country, you’re misleading the country.”

Daniels further charged the blame-shifting is “pervasive” throughout the Obama administration.

Read more from this story HERE.

Student Tweets that School Should Enact Budget Cuts, Starting With Principal’s Job, Gets Suspended

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WNDA high-school student in upstate New York has been suspended and accused of trying to incite “a social media riot” after he suggested budget cuts for his public school – beginning with elimination of his principal’s job.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that students have a right to self-expression, as long as that expression doesn’t disrupt classwork or school activities or invade the rights of others.

And that’s where the conflict about the student’s action lies, because the Syracuse Post-Standard reports the superintendent of Cicero-North Syracuse High School accused senior Patrick Brown of using Twitter to incite “a social media riot.”

Whether the purported “social media riot” was disruptive to classwork or school activities remains unclear.

Brown was suspended for three days Thursday after starting a Twitter hashtag, #s–tCNSshouldcut, that solicited ideas for district budget cuts for next year after voters rejected a $144.7 million budget plan. The hashtag quickly became popular, and students posted ideas during the school day.

Read more from this story HERE.

In Time of Sequesters, Federal Government Posts 27,000 Job Openings

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Charles DharapakThe budget cuts known as sequestration were supposed to wreak havoc, forcing the shrinking of critical workforces including airport security officers and food inspectors. But since sequestration kicked in March 4, the government has posted openings for 4,300 federal job titles to hire some 10,300 people. The median position has a salary topping out at $76,000, and one-fourth of positions pay $113,000 or more, according to an analysis by The Washington Times of federal job listings.

Altogether, the jobs will pay up to $792 million per year. Including job postings that have been open since before sequestration, the government is in the market for 27,000 employees who will make up to $1.8 billion a year.

The jobs posted since sequestration include 2,800 positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs, 519 at the Indian Health Service and 50 at the Smithsonian Institution.

They also include service jobs seemingly designed to ensure that existing government employees live well.

The Defense Department is recruiting 71 bartenders and 123 waiters. If they worked full-time, these employees would earn more than $3.4 million a year. Nearly half of these positions were first posted after sequestration kicked in.


Read more from this story HERE.

Cold War? Russia Seeks to Replace U.S.

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: WNDRussia has been exerting pressure on Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to cancel weapons deals with the U.S. and instead sign with Moscow at cheaper prices, according to an informed Egyptian security official.

The official said Russia is also attempting to exert its influence at the expense of the U.S. throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Western Asia, including in Turkey.

Currently, Russia is urging Egypt to sign a deal for the creation of a 155-mm guided shell for U.S.-provided M-109 howitzers, which are being used on tanks sold to the Egyptian army by the U.S.

Moscow officials told Egyptian leaders that Russia is interested in replacing the U.S. as the Middle Eastern country’s main weapons dealer, the Egyptian official said.

Similar messages were sent to Turkey, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia and other countries, the official said.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Warned of Iranian Cyber Attacks

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WNDAmerican officials say Iran is behind a new wave of destructive cyber attacks on American corporations and energy firms, according to a report by the New York Times — a wave that WND warned about nearly two years ago.

The May 24 Times article said the targets included American oil, gas and electric companies with a goal of finding ways to seize control of critical processing systems.

The Department of Homeland Security warned this month about the cyber attacks, and one government official told the Times, “Most everything we have seen is coming from the Middle East.”

Government officials and other experts, according to the report, confirmed a report in the Wall Street Journal that the source of the attacks had been narrowed down to Iran.

However, America had earlier been warned of cyber attacks by Iran.

Read more from this story HERE.

Russell Brand: Blame Madness, Not Islam, for Woolwich Attack

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Breitbart Nutty British star Russell Brand took to the pages of The Sun today to pretend that there is no relationship between radical Islam and the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby by Islamists in Woolwich. Brand tweeted within hours of the murder, “That bloke is a nut. A nut who happens to be Muslim. Blaming Muslims for this is like blaming Hitler’s moustache for the Holocaust.”

Actually, Russell, it isn’t. Blaming Islamism for what happened to Lee Rigby is sort of like blaming Nazism for the Holocaust. In other words, it’s accurate. But Brand believes that only the insane take murderous action. “In spite of his dispassionate intoning the subject is not rational,” licensed psychiatrist Brand wrote in The Sun. “Of course he’s not rational, he’s just murdered a stranger in the street, he says, because of a book. In my view that man’s severely mentally ill and has found a convenient conduit for his insanity – in this case the Koran.”

Brand actually compared the Islamist murderers to John Lennon’s murderer, Mark Chapman, who said he was inspired by The Catcher in the Rye. Neither book, said Brand, could be linked with murder. “I’ve read that book and I’ve read some of the Koran, and nothing in either of them has compelled me to do violence,” wrote Brand.

Except, of course, that there isn’t an entire movement of would-be murderers and murder-sympathizers who claim their authority from Salinger. There are millions of such would-be murderers and murder supporters around the globe who claim authority from the Koran.

Read more from this story HERE.

Kenyan Woman Claims She Was Kept as Domestic Slave by Saudis near DC for Months (+video)

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: taberandrewA 25-year-old Kenyan woman has come forward with allegations that she was kept as a domestic slave for three months by Saudi Arabian diplomats living in Northern Virginia.

The allegations come to light two weeks after News4 first reported an investigation into possible human trafficking at a Saudi-owned compound in McLean, Va.

The Kenyan woman — who goes by the name Sheila — said she was brought to the U.S. from Kenya by way of Saudi Arabia last summer, by people who forced her to work long hours each day, seven days a week, as a domestic worker.

“I used to work from 6 in the morning to 8, 10 in the evening,” Sheila said by cell phone to News4’s Jackie Bensen. “From Monday to Monday.”

Did you ever have a day off? Bensen asked. “No,” Shelia replied.

Read more from this story HERE.

German Railways to use Mini Drones to Stop Graffiti

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: France 24Germany’s railway operator plans to deploy mini drones to catch vandals who deface its trains with graffiti, with the aerial vehicles shooting thermal images of its train depots at night.

Deutsche Bahn plans to soon start testing the vehicles which have four helicopter-style rotors and can shoot high-resolution pictures.

“We are going to use this technology in problem areas, where taggers are most active,” a spokesman who asked not to be named told AFP.

A “pilot” remotely steers the vehicles at heights of up to 150 metres (500 feet) and speeds of up to 54 kilometres (33 miles) per hour.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Problem of Muslim Leadership

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Reuters I’ve seen this before. A Muslim terrorist slays a non-Muslim citizen in the West, and representatives of the Muslim community rush to dissociate themselves and their faith from the horror. After British soldier Lee Rigby was hacked to death last week in Woolwich in south London, Julie Siddiqi, representing the Islamic Society of Britain, quickly stepped before the microphones to attest that all good Muslims were “sickened” by the attack, “just like everyone else.”

This happens every time. Muslim men wearing suits and ties, or women wearing stylish headscarves, are sent out to reassure the world that these attacks have no place in real Islam, that they are aberrations and corruptions of the true faith.

But then what to make of Omar Bakri? He too claims to speak for the true faith, though he was unavailable for cameras in England last week because the Islamist group he founded, Al-Muhajiroun, was banned in Britain in 2010. Instead, he talked to the media from Tripoli in northern Lebanon, where he now lives. Michael Adebolajo—the accused Woolwich killer who was seen on a video at the scene of the murder, talking to the camera while displaying his bloody hands and a meat cleaver—was Bakri’s student a decade ago, before his group was banned. “A quiet man, very shy, asking lots of questions about Islam,” Bakri recalled last week. The teacher was impressed to see in the grisly video how far his shy disciple had come, “standing firm, courageous, brave. Not running away.”

Bakri also told the press: “The Prophet said an infidel and his killer will not meet in Hell. That’s a beautiful saying. May God reward [Adebolajo] for his actions . . . I don’t see it as a crime as far as Islam is concerned.”

Read more from this story HERE.