Syrian Tinderbox: Israel Threatens Intervention

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Amos Ben Gershom

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has affirmed that Israel is prepared to conduct military action inside Syria to keep “game-changing” weapons out of terrorists’ hands. In an interview with the BBC in London Wednesday, Netanyahu also warned of a possible backlash if the international community decides to arm rebel groups.

“The main areas of concern to us are the arms that are already in Syria — these are anti-aircraft weapons, these are chemical weapons and other very, very dangerous weapons that could be game-changers,” he said. “They will change the conditions, the balance of power in the Middle East. They could present a terrorist threat on a worldwide scale. It is definitely our interest to defend ourselves, but we also think it is in the interest of other countries.”

Netanyahu was in London to attend the funeral of Baroness Margaret Thatcher, and after the ceremony met with UK Prime Minister David Cameron at Downing Street.

Israel has been training a wary eye on developments in Syria, and particularly on the Golan Heights, where the fighting has on several occasions spilled across the border in the form of stray mortar rounds and sporadic fire on Israeli soldiers. Last week, IDF troops fired a guided missile at a Syrian army post after shots from the position damaged an IDF vehicle. Earlier in the month, IDF tanks fired at a Syrian position after small arms fire was directed at Israel.

The prime minister warned of possible dangers should the international community begin to supply rebels with weapons in addition to training and the nonlethal equipment, such as vehicles and communications devices, that has already been deployed in the field..

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul Opens 2016 Bid, Plans Primary Trips (+video)

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Tea Party favorite and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday said he is strongly considering a 2016 bid for the Republican presidential nomination, announcing plans to travel to at least three key primary states this summer.

“We’re considering it,” he said at a morning newsmaker breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Paul, heir to his father former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s libertarian voting and fundraising base, said that he is already planning to visit three early primary states this summer — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. And Paul said he “will continue to travel to the early primary states.”

The plain-spoken senator has been hinting of a 2016 run, saying it helps to give him a national voice on key issues. While his comments Wednesday were much stronger, he said he will not make a final decision until next year.

He joins Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as the other Tea Party leader planning to run for president in what is expected to be a crowded field. Rubio told radio host Andrea Tantaros Wednesday that he isn’t planning his 2016 travel yet, but called Iowa and New Hampshire “really great states.”

Read more from this story HERE.

'Threatened' Student Files Complaint Against Allen West

/15 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

After sternly warning college students to stop harassing his wife or they would face consequences, former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., now finds himself the target of a complaint.

West, a retired Army colonel who narrowly lost his congressional seat after serving a notable freshman term, had responded on Twitter and Facebook to students at Florida Atlantic University, where his wife, Angela, serves on the Board of Trustees. He explained in a Facebook post Wednesday that students had gone to his wife’s office, “stalked her at the FAU Board of Trustee meetings, and sent letters to her company headquarters.”

“How dare you animals attack my wife and her professional reputation. This is your one and only advisory notice,” West said.

He clarified: “This is not a threat, it is a promise that if Angela calls and tells me of one more incident, you will face me, the side of me that you do not want to see.”

He sent a similar message on Twitter: “To FAU students stalking my wife at Bd of Trustee mtgs, end it now. If u believe you can intimidate her, u are mistaken. Nxt time u face me.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Deal Approved in Muslims' Suit Against McDonald's

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: björn hornemann

A judge on Wednesday finalized a $700,000 settlement between McDonald’s Corp. and members of Michigan’s Muslim community over claims a suburban Detroit restaurant falsely advertised its food as prepared according to Islamic law.

Ahmed Ahmed, the Dearborn Heights man who represents plaintiffs in the class-action suit, claims he bought a chicken sandwich in September 2011 at the restaurant but found it wasn’t halal. Islam forbids consumption of pork, and God’s name must be invoked before an animal providing meat for consumption is slaughtered.

The McDonald’s restaurant chain and one of its franchise owners agreed in January to the tentative settlement that would be shared by Ahmed, as well as a Muslim-run Detroit health clinic, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn and lawyers.

The two sides met Wednesday for final approval before Wayne County Circuit Judge Kathleen Macdonald, who has overseen the case and refereed objections by outside groups since a preliminary deal was announced in January. The settlement was originally set to be finalized March 1, but Macdonald extended the public comment period after pressure from Dearborn lawyer Majed Moughni, who criticized the class-action settlement on Facebook and was temporarily barred from communicating publicly about the case.

Ahmed’s portion of the settlement is considered an “incentive award” and represents his work on the case, his attorneys say.

Read more from this story HERE.

Wife of ex-Justice of Peace Now Charged With Murder in Texas DA Killings

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: CNN

The wife of a former justice of the peace in Texas is being held on murder charges in connection with the killings of Kaufman County District Attorney Michael McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, county officials announced Wednesday.

Kim Lene Williams, 46, is also charged with murder in the death of prosecutor Mark Hasse.

She is in jail, with bail set at $10 million. The Kaufman County jail website lists her as being booked about 3 a.m. Wednesday.

The McLellands were killed in March, and Hasse was killed in January.

The arrest warrant said she confessed in detail to her involvement and her husband, Eric Williams’, role in the scheme.

Read more from this story HERE.

Another Letter, this One to Obama, Tests Positive for Ricin; Suspect Claims He's on the 'Front Lines of a Secret War'

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty

Mississippi man arrested in connection to ricin letters sent to Obama, lawmakers

By Fox News. A Mississippi man has been arrested as a suspect in connection to the mailing of three letters sent to President Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and a Mississippi official that initially tested positive for ricin, Fox News confirms.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Daniel McMullen said the man was arrested Wednesday at approximately 5:15 p.m. CT. It is unclear if charges are getting filed tonight or if they will be filed tomorrow.

The Department of Justice said he was arrested at his Corinth, Miss., home following an investigation conducted by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Memphis, Tenn., and Jackson, Miss., the U.S. Capitol Police, and the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Secret Service.

The suspect has been identified as 45-year-old Paul Kenneth Curtis of Tupelo, Miss., a source told Fox News. Tupelo is also the hometown of Wicker and his wife.

The FBI confirmed earlier Wednesday that a letter addressed to President Obama had “preliminarily tested positive” for ricin, a day after lawmakers said another letter sent to the Capitol Hill office of Sen. Roger Wicker tested positive for the same substance. Read more from this story HERE.

Letter to Obama Tests Positive for Ricin

By Associated Press. Police swept across the U.S. Capitol complex to chase a flurry of reports of suspicious packages and envelopes Wednesday after preliminary tests indicated poisonous ricinin two letters sent to President Barack Obama and a Mississippi senator.

In an intelligence bulletin, the FBI said that the letters to Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, were postmarked Memphis, Tenn. Both letters say: “To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance.” Both are signed, “I am KC and I approve this message.”

Reports of suspicious letters also came in from congressional offices in Michigan and Arizona as police investigated the discovery of at least three questionable packages in Senate office buildings.

The rush of activity came as tensions were high in Washington and across the country following the twin bombings on Monday at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured more than 170. The FBI said there was no indication of a connection between the letters and the bombing. The letters to Obama and Wicker were postmarked April 8, before the marathon.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, said that police have a suspect in mind in the Obama and Wicker mailings, someone who “writes a lot of letters to members.” She made the comment Tuesday as she emerged from a briefing by law enforcement on the Boston bombing. Read more from this story HERE.

Mind-boggling details emerge about ricin letter suspect: ‘I’m on the hidden front lines of a secret war’

By News Editor. TheBlaze is reporting that the individual arrested today in connection with the ricin letters had formerly been fired from a medical facility for allegedly uncovering an illicit trade in body parts. He likely filed the following petition on Change.org:

To:
The President of the United States
The U.S. Senate
The U.S. House of Representatives
The Governor of MS
Sen. Thad Cochran, MS
Sen. Roger Wicker, MS
Rep. Travis Childers, MS-01

I am petitioning for legislation on a federal level as well as investigations into the secret world wide business of illegal bone, tissue, body parts and organ harvesting.

In 2000, I was fired & banned from the largest non-metropolitan charity hospital in the United States of America after questioning unfair employment practices and ethics. I filed suit against this organization, was re-hired for a period of two months and then ultimately terminated and banned for life from the hospital as well as every government affiliated business associated and/or connected to this so-called charity, tax exempt health care organization.

It is my firm belief I was terminated & banned in an effort to silence me immediately after I questioned several employee’s in the ER about a refrigerator full of body parts, organs, bones and tissue. I further believe hospital administrator’s manipulated employment records & documents in an effort to reduce risk of public attention & legal actions in which I informed hospital CEO Dr. Jeff Barber & Director of Human Resources would be taken by myself. Dr. Jeff Barber was terminated within a few months upon my filing lawsuit along with a dozen other hospital employee’s. Two high profile Mississippi millionaire attorneys I turned to for help are now in prison. These and other questions remain by myself and others. If something illegal was not taking place in the hospital in December of 1999, then why was I forced into a private room, interrogated by administrative officers, threatened & told to forget about the body parts I saw? Death threats followed.

Since 2000, I have investigated the secret world of illegal organ harvesting while contacting hundreds of investigator’s, reporters & news media outlets via fax, telephone & internet connection all over the United States and I am confident that my research, countless court hearings & tireless efforts to take a stand, make sense & expose this horror has contributed to class action lawsuits & investigations all over the United States of America thus bringing criminals such as Michael Mastromarino to Justice.

Why should the lives & careers of innocent people be at risk and/or destroyed due to legal loop holes and an industry which is yet to be regulated by our federal government?

I urge you today to take action and help pass House Bill 6631 into law making it illegal to remove, distribute, buy or sell any bones, tissue, body parts or organs from any person(s) in the United States of America before and/or after victim’s death.

Thank you in advance & God bless…

When Your Surgery Goes Wrong, Hospitals Profit

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Washington Post

For a patient, a surgical complication can be a painful, even deadly. For a hospital, a surgical complication can be incredibly profitable.

A surgical complication increases a procedure’s average contribution margin by 330 percent for the privately insured and 190 percent for Medicare patients, according to a study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study underscores how ludicrous the incentives are in the American health care system, generally paying doctors for each medical service they provide, even if some of that care is the result of a surgery gone wrong.

“If you personalize this and a relative is having heart surgery, which gets complicated by pneumonia, I don’t think we would want a hospital’s profit to go up as a result of that pneumonia,” said study co-author Barry Rosenberg, a partner in Boston Consulting Group’s health care practice.

The study does not imply that hospitals intentionally complicate surgeries to bring in more revenue. Most surgeries, about 95 percent, go off without a hitch. What it does suggest to the surgeon, writer and Harvard professor Atul Gawande is that hospitals now see little reason to invest in technologies that would reduce complications when the only prize at the end would be lower income.

Read more from this story HERE.

Teamsters Pension Crisis Sapping Hoffa’s Support, Power

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

International Brotherhood of Teamsters general president Jimmy Hoffa Jr.’s response to his union’s pension crisis is sapping Hoffa’s support among Teamsters members, according to insiders.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is one of the forces lobbying Congress for legislation based on the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans’ report “Solutions, Not Bailouts.” The report urges new congressional legislation to allow “deeply troubled” funds to cut employees’ pensions.

The Central States Pension Fund, which serves Teamsters members across the country and which also happens to be “deeply troubled,” has joined the Teamsters in lobbying for the new legislation. Insiders believe that the Fund plans to make across-the-board pension cuts.

The Teamsters’ unwillingness to allow companies to move Teamsters members out of the fund and into more secure retirement plans has enraged Teamsters members and sparked backlash against Hoffa.

“In that they’re calling for pension cuts, they’re on the wrong track,” Ken Paff, national organizer of the reform group Teamsters for a Democratic Union, told The Daily Caller. Approximately 3,000 active and retired Teamsters converged on their Kansas City union hall Tuesday to voice their displeasure with Hoffa and the Central States Pension Fund.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senate Rejects Gun Control Bill; Obama Says 2nd Amendment Advocates 'Willfully Lied About Bill'

/17 Comments/in , /by

By Ted Barrett and Tom Cohen. In a major defeat for supporters of tougher gun laws, the U.S. Senate on Wednesday defeated a compromise plan to expand background checks on firearms sales as well as a proposal to ban some semi-automatic weapons modeled after military assault weapons.

The votes were on a series of amendments to a broad package of gun laws pushed by President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in the aftermath of the Newtown school massacre in December.

However, fierce opposition by the powerful National Rifle Association led a backlash by conservative Republicans and a few Democrats from pro-gun states that doomed key proposals in the gun package, even after they had been watered down to try to satisfy opponents.

After the votes, Obama angrily criticized the NRA and senators who voted against the expanded background checks for rejecting a compromise he said was supported by a strong majority of Americans.

“Instead of supporting this compromise, the gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill,” Obama told White House reporters. Read more from this story HERE.

Obama: Gun defeat ‘shameful day for Washington’

By Reid J. Epstein. Defeated and angry — and surrounded by Newtown families and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) — President Barack Obama blamed a gun lobby that “willfully lied” and senators who “caved to the pressure” for the defeat of his effort to pass gun control through Congress.

Obama blasted the Senate’s voting down the Manchin-Toomey amendment — a bipartisan agreement on background checks that was itself a compromise on a fraction of the comprehensive gun control package the president called for after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary.

“All in all this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” Obama said in the Rose Garden, after walking to the podium with his arm around Giffords and hugged the relatives of victims of the December shooting.

Obama directed much of his anger at Republicans and seizing the political high ground for himself and fellow Democrats as he called out the opposition for rejecting an idea that polls show 90 percent of people support. Read more from this story HERE.

Gun control: Obama’s biggest loss

By Glenn Thrush and Reid J. Epstein. Never before had President Barack Obama put the moral force and political muscle of his presidency behind an issue quite this big — and lost quite this badly.

The president, shaken to the core by the massacre of 26 innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School, broke his own informal “Obama Rule” — of never leaning into an issue without a clear path to victory — first by pushing for a massive gun control package no one expected to pass, and then sticking through it even as he retrenched to a relatively modest bipartisan bill mandating national background checks on gun purchases.

It was a bitter defeat for a president accustomed to winning, a second-term downer that may — or may not — foreshadow the slow decline suffered by so many of his predecessors. Obama seems to have the public behind him, but it illustrated his less-than-Johnsonian powers of personal persuasion, the possible shortcomings of his decision to wait a month after the killings to present a plan and above all the limits of his go-to “outside” strategy of taking his case directly to the American people.

More than anything, it was an emotional blow to Obama, who was as irritated at the four members of his own party as he was at the 90 percent of Republicans who defeated the bill. Read more from this story HERE.

Liberal Media: “We Made a Decision Not to Cover the Gosnell Trial”

/10 Comments/in , /by

The mainstream media was caught with its pants down on failing to report on the gruesome trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist who is charged with murdering one woman and seven infants born alive during abortion procedures. As might have been expected, abortion supporters are now finding ways to spin what most human beings would say is unspinnable.

The left’s talking points on the Gosnell “house of horrors” trial is that we need less restrictions on, and more funding for, abortion in order to keep the Gosnell situation from happening again.

Using “back-alley abortion” rhetoric popular in the Roe v. Wade years, Katha Pollitt of The Nation argues that, had abortion been legal in Pennsylvania past 24 weeks, and had there been more Medicaid funding of abortions, so that “poor” and “immigrant” women did not have to use Gosnell’s clinic for their abortions, the “house of horrors” could have been prevented.

Watch the Huffington Post’s confession here:

Read more from this story HERE.