10 Year Old Brooklyn Boy Picks Up Robber’s Gun, Fires it, Scaring Off Intruders (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

A 10-year-old Brooklyn boy picked up a gun that was dropped in his home by a would-be robber dressed as a deliveryman and fired a shot, helping to chase away the intruder and a partner, police said Tuesday. No injuries were reported.

Two men in disguise knocked on the door to the Brooklyn house on Monday evening, and two teenage sisters opened the door, police said. In video released Tuesday, one man is seen carrying an open cardboard box and pushing his way into the home; a second man quickly follows.

The intruders went upstairs to the second floor. A woman, the owner of the home, then slammed a bedroom door on one of the men’s arms.

The man dropped his gun, police said, and it was picked up by the owner’s son, who fired a round that hit a wall.

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John Bolton: Christie Decision to Hold Special Election ‘Mind-boggling’

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Former Ambassador John Bolton says he’s perplexed at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s surprise decision to hold a special election to replace late Sen. Frank Lautenberg instead of appointing a Republican.

“I’m mystified by this decision,” Bolton told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.

“It is just mind-boggling and it will expose him to criticism from nearly everybody — and that’s what happens when you make a decision that’s too cute by half.”

Christie on Tuesday set a special election for October to fill the seat of Lautenberg, a move that could cost taxpayers as much as $20 million. He will appoint someone to temporarily fill in, but hasn’t said who yet.

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Gitmo Offers ‘Resume Writing’ Class for Terrorists

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Photo Credit: AP

The 166 terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay are offered a course in “interviewing and resume writing” as part of their indefinite stay at the prison camp.

Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) lists the variety of classes and activities it offers to the terrorist trainers, financiers, bomb makers, recruiters and facilitators who are housed at Gitmo.

Among them: “Interviewing and Resume Writing “and “Writing Success.”

The classes are part of “The Instructional Program” at Gitmo, which teaches literacy, English as a second language and art.

The prison that houses 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, also offers prisoners a “Life Skills” class, “Computer Familiarity,” “Personal Health and Wellness,” and “Personal Finance and Business.”

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Fighting the Education Anti-Gun Fanatics

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Photo Credit: Corey Lowenstein

For a while, I’ve been wondering if it’s parental malpractice to put your kids in public schools. More and more, it’s gone beyond wondering. For example, last week the Washington Post reported a nasty case of abusive behavior by school officials in Calvert County, Maryland: A five-year-old who brought a cowboy-style cap pistol on a school bus — orange-tipped, and something that no one could possibly mistake for a real gun — was interrogated for two hours (an interrogation that was so long, or so stressful, that he wet his pants) and then suspended for 10 days. Who treats a five-year-old that way?

The Post reports: “…children in first and second grade have been disciplined for pointing their fingers like guns and for chewing a Pop-Tart-like pastry into the shape of a gun. In Pennsylvania, a 5-year-old was suspended for talking about shooting a Hello Kitty bubble gun that blows soap bubbles.”

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, another kindergartner was punished for bringing a tiny Lego gun — the illustration in the Boston Herald places it next to a quarter coin — with detention, and forced to write a letter of apology to the school bus driver. For bringing a tiny piece of plastic.

What’s up with this? It’s not based on any concern with safety. Lego guns, cap guns, bubble guns, nibbled Pop Tarts, and fingers are no threat to safety. And the wild overreaction in these cases says there’s more going on here than simple school discipline. As I said, who treats a 5-year-old this way? It smacks of fanaticism.

In fact, it seems like a kind of quasi-religious fanaticism … doing its best to exterminate the very idea of guns. It’s some sort of wacky moral-purity crusade. If a few toddlers have to suffer along the way, that’s tough. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

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See the Viral Video of the Week: Father and Infant Son Sing Beatles Tune Together

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Two-year-old Diogo Mello and his father sing and play the classic ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ by The Beatles.

Over the weekend, this father-son duet has been seen more than one million times.

Watch it, and you’ll see why!

Postal Worker Appears on Price is Right, Convicted of Disability Fraud (+video)

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A former Fayetteville postal carrier who was receiving worker’s compensation payments after injuring herself on the job pleaded guilty to fraud in federal court Monday.

Cathy Wrench Cashwell’s claim that she couldn’t lift mail trays into a truck due to a 2004 on-the-job shoulder injury was called into question in September 2009 when she appeared on “The Price is Right” and spun the “big wheel” twice.

According to an indictment filed in September 2012, Cashwell “raised her left arm above her head and gripped the handle with her left hand.” On a second spin, she “raised both arms above her head and gripped the same handle with both hands.”

In August 2010, the indictment alleges, Cashwell and her husband went ziplining as part of a Carnival Cruise vacation. She was also seen lifting and carrying furniture and bags of groceries with both arms on two different occasions in 2011.

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Most Uninsured Don’t Know if they’ll use Obamacare, Most in US Think Healthcare Will Suffer

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Photo Credit: CNBC

There’s no assurance folks will be buying insurance under Obamacare, and that could spell trouble for the Affordable Care Act.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans who currently lack health insurance don’t know yet if they will purchase that coverage by the Jan. 1 deadline set by the ACA, a new survey revealed Monday.

And less than half of those in the survey released by InsuranceQuotes.com think they’ll get better health care after Obamacare takes full effect. Nearly 50 percent believe the ACA will make it more difficult for them to get tests and procedures done in a timely manner, according to the phone survey of 1,001 adult Americans conducted in early May.

And a whopping 68 percent of low-income Americans aren’t sure they qualify for tax credits that would subsidize their purchase of health insurance—despite they fact that they almost invariably will qualify, the survey found. That population is most likely to benefit from government subsidies under the health-care reform law.

Laura Adams, senior insurance analyst at InsuranceQuotes.com, said public uncertainty about Obamacare—particularly a lack of commitment to signing up—could end up driving up health-insurance costs under the program because not enough healthy people will participate to offset benefits payouts.

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Campaign Manager Indicted in Growing Email Scandal in New Mexico

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

A former campaign manager for New Mexico governor Susana Martinez was indicted in federal court Thursday on 12 counts of illegally intercepting emails intended for members of Martinez’s 2010 campaign, including some sent to Martinez herself. Now, some are questioning whether the current Democratic attorney general (and a potential opponent for Martinez in the Republican’s reelection bid next year) and a liberal activist connected to Bill Richardson, Martinez’s Democratic predecessor, were involved in the distribution of some of those illegally obtained emails.

Jamie Estrada, who first joined the Martinez’s campaign staff in July 2009, was fired in December of that same year for, among other reasons, accessing Martinez’s personal email, a New Mexico Republican tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Estrada later failed to win an appointment in the new Martinez administration in 2011. According to the indictment, Estrada was contacted in July 2011 by a member of the Martinez campaign requesting a username and password to the campaign’s Internet domain, susana2010.com, for the purposes of renewing the domain contract. Estrada reportedly refused to provide the information and, as a federal investigation later found, used the information to renew the domain himself under a false name, even while the Martinez campaign had exclusive rights to renew the contract.

After renewing the domain, Estrada altered the settings so that incoming emails sent to susana2010.com addresses (that is, to former Martinez campaign staffers) were redirected to a Gmail account Estrada had created. The intended recipients of those emails, which included Martinez, never received those emails. Many of these contained private, sometimes sensitive information: receipts from Martinez’s purchases of songs on iTunes, a staffer’s bank statement, and confirmation of an online purchase by Martinez of several pairs of underwear.

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Struggle for China Continues

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Deng’s economic reforms … opened China to foreign investment and freed thousands of Chinese students to travel abroad, exposing them to the subversive influence of Western ideas. Deng knew the risks he was taking, given the dramatic events unfolding in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Yet, he bravely pushed forward.

The Chinese people responded enthusiastically to Deng’s initiatives. In the spring of 1989, millions gathered peacefully to support his program and urge further political reforms. Led at first by students, the demonstrations soon drew in peasants, workers, professionals, people from across Chinese society. They called for evolutionary change, not political revolution.

But frightened Communist Party hardliners knew that real political reform would lead China inexorably along a democratic path and end their monopoly on power. The symbol the students erected in Tiananmen Square, the paper-mache Goddess of Democracy with torch held aloft, bore an unmistakable resemblance to America’s Statue of Liberty.

Deng was China’s paramount leader in name and in fact. He had bested the old-line Communists who opposed his economic reforms and was now at the peak of his popularity and power. As Party leader, he enjoyed the loyalty of the People’s Liberation Army. The entire nation was poised to take the next historic step with him.

But then Deng flinched, disastrously. He would not cross the democratic Rubicon, and ordered the People’s Army to violate its sacred tradition of never turning its guns on the Chinese people. The attacks in Tiananmen Square and in other cities killed thousands of demonstrators and denied subsequent generations of Chinese their long-sought chance for equal democratic citizenship in the international community.

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Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Government Imprisons 43 Pro-Democracy Activists

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Photo Credit: Zuma Press

A Cairo court on Tuesday sentenced 43 democratic activists to up to five years in prison. The charges include operating illegal nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and receiving foreign funds without permission. Egypt’s spiral down continues.

Robert Becker of the National Democratic Institute is the only American citizen who remained in Egypt to face the charges. He and four others were given a two-year sentence. Twenty-seven other foreign employees were sentenced in absentia to five years each, while 11 Egyptians received one-year suspended sentences.

The 43 worked for such nonsubversive outfits as Freedom House, the International Center for Journalists and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Working for unlicensed NGOs is illegal under Egypt’s 2002 Associations Law. The statute, a relic of the Mubarak era, was applied selectively in pre-revolution Egypt, mainly to squelch the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists.

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