Protesters Interrupt Obama Counterterrorism Speech (+video)

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Photo Credit: ReutersThe woman who heckled President Barack Obama during his speech at the National Defense University on Thursday gained access to the closed event by saying she was a member of the press, the university said.

Medea Benjamin, the leader of the human rights activist group Code Pink, stood and shouted several times as the president gave his national security speech focused on drone use and closing down the Guantanamo detention center.

Officials at the university, located at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., later said Benjamin was able to get into the invite-only speech by saying she was with the news media. It was unclear which media outlet she told them she was with.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Official on Leave Refused to Resign, Says GOP Senator

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Photo Credit: Vimeo By Fox News. First she refused to testify. Now Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the tax agency scandal, is refusing to resign, according to a top Republican senator.

Sources confirmed to Fox News earlier Thursday that Lerner, the head of the IRS division that oversaw the unit targeting conservative groups, had been placed on administrative leave, with pay.

But Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, claimed she was only put in that status after refusing to step down.

He said the commissioner was in his right to demand her resignation, and said taxpayers should not continue to pay her salary indefinitely.

“My understanding is the new acting IRS commissioner asked for Ms. Lerner’s resignation, and she refused to resign. She was then put on administrative leave instead,” Grassley said in a statement. “The IRS owes it to taxpayers to resolve her situation quickly. The agency needs to move on to fix the conditions that led to the targeting debacle.” Read more from this story HERE.

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IRS Source: Lerner Placed On Administrative Leave

By Eliana Johnson. Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service’s director of exempt organizations, has been placed on administrative leave, according to a source in the agency’s Cincinnati office.

Lerner on Thursday afternoon sent an e-mail to employees in the exempt-organizations division she oversees stating, “Due to the events of recent days, I am on administrative leave starting today. An announcement will be made shortly informing you who will be acting while I am on administrative leave. I know all of you will continue to support EO’s mission during these difficult times.” Read more from this story HERE.

Lesbian Sex Offender Supporters Clamor for Special Treatment

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Photo Credit: RedStateBy Adam Cassandra. We have become accustomed to public outrage and protests based on claims that homosexuals are discriminated against and given unequal treatment under the law, but a recent petition campaign receiving an explosion of media coverage argues that homosexuals should not be treated equally under the law, and implicitly supports criminal sexual activity with a minor.

Kaitlyn Hunt, an 18-year-old Florida high school student, is facing two felony charges of “lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12 to 16” for engaging in sexual activity with a 14-year-old female student at her school. Hunt’s parents launched a petition on Change.org alleging their daughter “is not guilty of anything other than a high school romance,” and blamed the 14-year-old child’s parents for pressing charges because “they are against the same-sex relationship.” The petition has over 145,000 signatures, and a Facebook page in defense of Hunt has over 39,000 supporters.

The charges against Hunt are punishable by up to 15 years in prison and could require her to register as a sex offender. She has until May 24 to accept an agreement with prosecutors to plead no contest to a lesser charge of child abuse which would likely result in house arrest and probation, but no jail time or registration as a sex offender.

Left-leaning advocacy groups and the media are defending Hunt, insisting without proof that she is being discriminated against because she is a homosexual-discriminated against in order to equally apply the law. Their main argument is that 18-year-old boys and 14-year-old girls have sex all the time without charges filed or parents seeming to mind, so Hunt is obviously being singled out. Besides being completely untrue that males are not charged with such crimes, or that the parents of the victims don’t care, the argument is irrelevant. Once authorities know a crime has been committed, they have a duty to enforce the law no matter the offender’s sexual orientation.

“If this was an 18-year-old male and that was a 14-year-old girl, it would have been prosecuted the same way,” Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar told reporters during a press conference Monday. And despite claims by Hunt’s defenders that the 14-year-old child victim was “in love” and consented to the sexual acts, Florida state attorney Bruce Colton told the media, “The idea is to protect people in that vulnerable group from people who are older, 18 and above … The statute specifically says that consent is not a defense.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Taxpayers Spend $536,526 on Study Regarding Stopping Homosexual Smoking

By Fred Lucas. The National Institutes of Health issued a $536,526 grant to the University of Illinois, Chicago, for a two-year program ending in July to study the smoking cessation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population.

“The purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate the benefits of culturally targeted smoking cessation intervention for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender smokers,” the NIH grant description said. “Findings will contribute to the scientific literature on reducing smoking-related health disparities among underserved populations.”

The funding began on Sept. 30, 2010 and will conclude on July 31, 2013.

“NIH research addresses the full spectrum of human health across all populations of Americans. Research into unhealthy human behaviors that are estimated to be the proximal cause of more than half of the disease burden in the U.S. will continue to be an important area of research supported by NIH,” the NIH press office said in a statement to CNSNews.com.

“Only by developing effective prevention and treatment strategies for health-injuring behaviors such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, drug abuse, inactivity and poor diet, can we reduce the disease burden in the U.S. and thus, enhance health and lengthen life, which is the mission of the NIH,” it added. Read more from this story HERE.

The Path to Hitler’s Eugenics Paved with Legal Abortion

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“People have often asked, and we’ve asked ourselves—how could Nazi Germany participate in the Holocaust? How can you take entire segments of your society, Jews as well as Gypsies as well as dissenting pastors, and round them up, and exterminate them in the millions?” Brock Thoene says, “Germany was widely regarded as the most advanced, the most civilized, most cultured nation in Europe of that era. It seems almost imponderable. How can you reconcile those things?”…

Speaking on the phone from his office, Brock Thoene offers his own theories on the questions he has just posed to me. First, he notes, the Nazi regime demonized the Jews and other dissenters as the root of Germany’s economic problems. However, one of his theories touches rather shockingly on a very controversial issue: Abortion.

“There’s the other thing that’s often overlooked,” Thoene notes, “In the year before Hitler came to power, 1932 in Germany, there were one million abortions. Germany was not even that populous a nation—I don’t know what the German population was in 1932, but a million! A million is a significant number. If you don’t have regard for the segment of your society that is least able to defend itself, that being the unborn, then why do you accord protection to anybody else?”

This, of course, is a controversial point to say the least—but one that demands attention. Once the concept of “personhood” is separated the status of being a human being, it becomes an arbitrary label to be bestowed or rescinded by the state. Historical circumstances surrounding the denial of personhood, of course, differ widely—with one brutally evident similarity: in each case where personhood was denied to human beings—Jews, African Americans, Native Americans, and now the pre-born, the youngest members of our species—atrocities resulted. Or, in the case of abortion, are still ongoing.

To Brock Thoene, the logical progression from killing one subset of human beings into killing another is almost inevitable. “The only people who can protect the unborn are folks…who have the ability to stand up for themselves,” Thoene tells me, “Once you’ve made that decision that as a society you don’t extend the protections of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to the unborn, it’s not really much of an issue then to say, the elderly are a drain on society, so whether they live or die is up to the state. The physically handicapped are a drain on society, so whether they live or die is up to the state. The mentally challenged, the mentally ill, all of these groups—and then it’s really not much of a stretch, it’s just one more step to say, ‘Well, the Jews…’ or whoever you want to target, Christian pastors, dissenting politicians, and so on. They are a drain on society because they are in opposition to what we know is progress.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Boy Scouts Approve Plan to Accept Openly Gay Scouts

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Photo Credit: APThe Boy Scouts of America threw open its ranks Thursday to gay Scouts but not gay Scout leaders — a fiercely contested compromise that some warned could fracture the organization and lead to mass defections of members and donors.

Of the roughly 1,400 voting members of the BSA’s National Council who cast ballots, 61 percent supported the proposal drafted by the governing Executive Committee. The policy change takes effect Jan. 1.

“This has been a challenging chapter in our history,” the BSA chief executive, Wayne Brock, said after the vote. “While people have differing opinions on this policy, kids are better off when they’re in Scouting.”

However, the outcome will not end the bitter debate over the Scouts’ membership policy.

Liberal Scout leaders — while supporting the proposal to accept gay youth — have made clear they want the ban on gay adults lifted as well.

Read more from this story HERE.

Assault on our Free Press Could Make America no Better than a Banana Republic

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Photo Credit: Irish Central Totalitarian governments have long known, if you control the press, you control the country.

The main watch dog that protects citizens from the evil deeds and intent of its government is a free press. A free press can expose the blunders, malfeasance and criminality of a government that would rather keep that information from the public view. When the freedom of the press is being assaulted, the very foundation of a free society is being eroded.

When nations fall to a coup; the first move is the seizing of broadcast stations and other media, so that the new rulers can control the information given to the public.

China censors the information its citizens are allowed to hear, like North Korea and other totalitarian states, if you write or speak out against the government, you can disappear.

In Mexico, drug cartels, which have a large influence on the country, kill reporters and editors if they write on their illegal activity. The result of this intimidation has meant many news agencies and journalists refuse to report on the drug violence. See reporters deaths

Americas press is under an insidious assault by the government using the guise of protecting “national security.”

Shocking revelations of seizing phone records and other privileged communications of the Associated Press by Eric holders Justice Department, sparked alarm last week by even stalwart Democrats like Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York, who said:

“I am quite concerned by the appearance of overreach by the Justice Department in its pursuit of records from the Associated Press.” In a key part of his statement he finished up with: We must also examine the use of the Espionage Act to criminalize whistle blowers and leaks. While the government has a legitimate need for secrecy – especially to protect the lives of operatives abroad – the aggressive use of this powerful law in recent years needs to be reviewed to ensure that its use is appropriate and not a hindrance to journalistic freedom or the free flow of ideas and information.”

But Nadler’s statement was made before revelations that Fox News had its communications under surveillance and its Washington correspondent, James Rosen, was the target of a criminal probe involving leaks of national security. It is reported that communications records of other Fox News employees were investigated as well.

Even CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who has been aggressively looking into the Benghazi scandal, stated her work and home computers seem to have been compromised. Attkisson suggested “there could be some relationship between these things and what’s happened to James Rosen.” Read more in World Net Daily

Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” said: The Justice Department’s secret seizure of phone records from a top Fox News reporter is “disturbing” and suggests the agency is “out of control.” He went on to say: “It would be one thing if you’re monitoring MSNBC’s number … but you talk about the Fox News bureau, that’s what makes it so damning for this White House.”

Congressman Ted Poe (R) Texas, member of a group of bi partisan Congress members who are pushing for greater press protection, said:

“We all agree that free press is extremely important for a democracy, especially America’s democracy,” Poe said at a press conference. “This May should probably be renamed ‘May Intimidation Month’ because of what has happened in the month of May.”

“First, earlier this month, we learned that the Department of Justice secretly launched an investigation to find out who leaked information to the press that was justified by saying it was taken in the interest of national security. But it was nothing short of, in my opinion, a massive intimidation fishing expedition where the government seized phone records of journalists.” Read more about this in Politico

Both left and right agree, this intrusion by the government into our free press needs to be checked now, before they checkmate our free press and put us on the slippery slope of many totalitarian states.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

House Committee Wants to Hear From Anyone Targeted by the IRS

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Photo Credit: kenteegardinClaims of political targeting by the Internal Revenue Service are flooding into the House Ways and Means Committee, bolstered by evidence that includes secretly recorded conversations with IRS officials.

Ways and Means has created a website inviting Americans who believe they were targeted to share their stories, and among the information being forwarded to committee investigators are surreptitious recordings of interviews with the IRS. The recordings and other evidence are coming from conservatives who believe they were subjected to tax audits because of their political activism, or from members of conservative groups who believe their organizations’ requests for tax-exempt status was subjected to extra scrutiny.

Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, a member of Ways and Means, confirmed to The Washington Examiner on Thursday that the evidence being sent to the committee includes secret recordings with IRS officials. This information comports with legal sources who have clients who believe they were targeted by the IRS because they are politically active conservatives who opposed President Obama’s re-election.

Read more from this story HERE.

Jay Leno Jokes Target President Obama’s Problems (+video)

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Photo Credit: Screenshot On the late night talk show circuit lately, President Barack Obama has been on the receiving end of a barrage of jokes from “The Tonight Show” host Jay Leno, who has spent the past week opening his nightly monologue with a series of jokes at the White House’s expense.

In reaction to news of a prostitution ring being run out of a retirement home. “Boy, that Obamacare is amazing! It just provides everything!”

On a new IRS commissioner: “They’re called ‘acting commissioner’ because you have to act like the scandal doesn’t involve the White House.”

On comparisons to Nixon: “At least he’s not being compared to President Carter.”

On the Miami Heat beating Obama’s beloved Chicago Bulls: “You now what that means? LeBron James is going to get audited by the IRS.”

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Conservative’ Virginia Now Embracing Homosexual Marriage

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Photo Credit: Matt WuerkerWelcome to the gay rights battleground of Virginia.

Yes, you read that right. In the 2013 off-year elections, a state that once leaned solidly to the center-right has become the newest focal point in the national debate over same-sex relationships. A gubernatorial race already defined partly along culture-war lines has grown even more contentious since last weekend, when Virginia Republicans nominated as their lieutenant governor candidate a firebrand minister who has called gays “very sick people psychologically” and suggested a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.

Remarkably, in a New South battleground where Democrats have traditionally won by carving out independent, non-partisan reputations, it’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe who’s most eager to keep gay rights on the political front burner.

When McAuliffe first ran for governor in 2009, he ran a conventionally cautious Democratic campaign, endorsing civil unions for gay couples but warning that Virginia would be unlikely to accept gay marriage. After all, it was only a few years earlier – in 2000 – that Republican George Allen ridiculed then-Democratic Sen. Chuck Robb for representing “Vermont values,” after his vote against the Defense of Marriage Act.

This year, McAuliffe fully supports same-sex marriage.

Read more from this story HERE.

Family Of Former Marine Kidnapped In Mexico Speaks Out, Hopes He’s Alive

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Photo Credit: TORRES FAMILYThe family of a former U.S. Marine is hoping he’s still alive despite not having heard from him since he was kidnapped in Mexico.

The whereabouts of Armando Torres, 27, who served in Iraq in 2009 as a mechanic fixing military vehicles, are still unknown. The FBI and Mexican authorities are investigating the case and a fellow Marine continues lobbying for congressional help.

Torres’ relatives told Fox News Latino in an exclusive interview that he was likely taken, along with his father and uncle, by gang members or a drug cartel. They were kidnapped in Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas.

The FBI is investigating Torres’s disappearance as a kidnapping and are working with local Mexican officials to find him, according to the FBI.

Armando Torres crossed the border to Mexico last week on Tuesday night to visit his father. His relatives, who spoke to Fox News Latino on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, said they were last seen being escorted out of the father’s home by armed men. Family members describe seeing a white truck outside.

Read more from this story HERE.