Video: University of Chicago Ignores Protests, Destroys Ronald Reagan's Childhood Home

Photo Credit: chicagogeek

Despite appeals to the University of Chicago to stop the destruction of Ronald Reagan’s childhood home, the university went forward with its demolition yesterday.

Why? The university-land owner wants to build a parking lot.

Here’s a short video of what happened:



As we noted last month, it’s hard to even believe that Reagan served in most of our lifetimes. In this video, he comes to us now as an obscure figure out of the not-so-distant past.

His simple and straightforward faith in God, and in America, was winsome and poignant.

One cannot help but be struck by the stark contrast to the current occupant of the White House, 21st Century America, and of the vanguard of the GOP.

Ronald Reagan spoke deeply to the American soul.

Political Resurrection: Sanford Says SC Will Judge Him, Not His Affair

Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford — running again for the U.S. House seat he held for three terms — says he’s prepared to be hammered over the steamy extramarital affair that tarnished his rising political star.

“It goes with the territory,” Sanford told Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show,” two days after beating former Charleston County Councilman Curtis Bostic for the GOP nomination.

“The folks in the media, what do they want to do? They want to take one chapter of your life and completely define your life by that chapter.

“But what many people here along the coast of South Carolina said to me is, ‘You know, Mark, I’m no sooner going to judge you by your worst day than I’ll judge you by your best day. I’m going to look at the totality.’”

Sanford, a two-term governor, triggered a political scandal when he vanished for five days in 2009. Reporters were falsely told he was hiking along the Appalachian Trail.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Insulting Salary Stunt

Photo Credit: EPA/Tannen Maury

I once had a boss who was independently rich, and when I asked him for a raise, he turned me down, adding that he, too, had forsaken a raise that year. A surge of anger, resentment and sheer hatred welled up in me, and were it not that I needed the job, I would have gone for his throat. His unthinking and unthinkable attempt to make common cause with me brought to mind Anatole France’s observation that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Now it brings to mind Barack Obama.

The president yesterday announced that he would return 5 percent of his salary to the Treasury Department. This is an effort to make common cause with federal employees who may have to take a similar paycut. This is the way this tone-deaf White House put it:

The president has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury.
The president makes $400,000 a year…

Read more from this story HERE.

Iran’s Incitement to Genocide: It's Not Just Ahmadinejad

Photo Credit: Parmida76

Over the years, Americans have come to discount statements on Israel and Zionism by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Repetition has rendered them unremarkable.

Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Zionism is a “germ of corruption” that “will be wiped off the face of the earth.” It is a “cancer cell” that must be “removed from the body.” The Zionist regime is “heading toward annihilation.” “They should know that they are nearing the last days of their lives.” “Israel is destined for destruction and will soon disappear.”

One is tempted to add: blah, blah, blah. It is easy to dismiss this rhetoric as being designed for domestic consumption. And soon after Iran’s June election, Ahmadinejad will be out of a job — history’s most persuasive argument in favor of term limits.

But the problem is this: Ahmadinejad’s language is not exceptional within the Iranian regime.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also has referred to Israel as a “cancerous tumor.” “The perpetual subject of Iran,” he has explained, “is the elimination of Israel from the region.” “There is only one solution to the Middle East problem, namely the annihilation and destruction of the Jewish state.” In recent weeks, Khamenei has promised, if the Iranian nuclear program is attacked, to “level down Tel Aviv and Haifa.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Judge: Catholic Company Doesn’t Have to Follow Obama HHS Mandate

Photo Credit: LifeNews

A federal judge in Minnesota has given a Catholic-owned and operated business a reprieve from the onerous provisions of the Obamacare HHS mandate. The mandate compels companies to pay for birth control and drugs for their employees that may cause abortions.

U.S. District Court Judge John R. Tunheim issued a ruling yesterday for an injunction against complying with the mandate for American Manufacturing Company. The attorney for the client, Thomas Mathews, told a news outlet, “He was conflicted with owning a company that would provide the types of insurance that he finds morally offensive and objectionable.”

More from the report:

In working with its current insurance company, Medica, American Manufacturing was able to cut the birth control coverage from an existing group health insurance plan…

Read more from this story HERE.

Saying "The Lord Made Homosexuals," Another US Senator Jumps on the Gay Marriage Bandwagon

Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) announced his support for gay marriage Thursday, becoming the 51st senator to do so.

“If we are endowed by our Creator with rights, then why shouldn’t those be attainable by gays and lesbians?” Nelson told the Tampa Bay Times. “Simply put, if The Lord made homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, why should I discriminate against their civil marriage? I shouldn’t, and I won’t.”

Nelson’s support came after numerous Democratic senators backed gay marriage in advance of Supreme Court cases on the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s gay marriage ban, Proposition 8. Two Democratic senators, Bob Casey (Pa.) and Tom Carper (Del.), declared their support earlier this week. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) became the second Republican senator to back gay marriage, following Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio.

Read more from this story HERE.

China Flaunts Its Influence Over Golden Triangle in Capture of Drug Lord

Photo Credit: Adam Dean

It was 100 miles downstream from China, on the banks of the Mekong River, where a notorious drug lord slipped ashore in the dusk into the hands of law enforcement.

Security officials from Laos arrested the trafficker, Naw Kham, but the international manhunt that led to his capture was organized in Beijing, by top Chinese government officials intent on making him pay for the killings of 13 Chinese seamen on the river, which has become a major trade route into China.

The bodies of the Chinese, the crew of two cargo boats, were found badly mutilated on the Thai side of the river in early October 2011. The killings, the worst slaughter of Chinese citizens abroad in recent memory, angered the Chinese public. Chinese investigators insist that Mr. Naw Kham was the mastermind of the murders.

China’s search for Mr. Naw Kham, overseen by its powerful Ministry of Public Security, was a hard-nosed display of the government’s political and economic clout across Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, the three countries of Southeast Asia that form the Golden Triangle. The capture shows how China’s law enforcement tentacles reach far beyond its borders into a region now drawn by investment and trade into China’s orbit, and where the United States’ influence is being challenged.

It took six months for China to catch Mr. Naw Kham, a citizen of Myanmar in his 40s, a man of many aliases who was at the center of the booming synthetic drug business in the Golden Triangle, once known for its opium.

Read more from this story HERE.

Déjà Vu, Alaska: State Legislator Wore FBI Wire in NY Bribery Case

Photo Credit: Chang W. Lee

Two days after a political corruption scandal rocked Albany, a new, unrelated bribery scheme emerged on Thursday, adorned with a can-you-top-this quality: For more than a year, a sitting state legislator wore a wire intended to catch at least one of his colleagues.

The secret recordings helped lead to the arrest of Eric A. Stevenson, a Democratic state assemblyman representing parts of the South Bronx, who was charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with accepting more than $22,000 in bribes to help developers open adult day care centers in his district. Mr. Stevenson was also accused of introducing legislation to block competing developers from building new centers for three years.

He seemed keenly aware of the risk of getting caught, as so many of his colleagues in Albany had been before, according to a criminal complaint released on Thursday.

“Be careful of those things, man, the recorders and all those things,” he was recorded saying. “A lot of guys,” he continued, were “working to put a lot of people away, man, believe that.”

Mr. Stevenson’s wariness was well founded: conversations were being recorded by two cooperating witnesses, including Assemblyman Nelson L. Castro, who had agreed to work with investigators as part of a deal to avoid prosecution on state perjury charges. Mr. Castro agreed to resign once his cooperation led to an arrest; he announced his departure on Thursday afternoon.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: US Representative Mocks Senior Citizen Who Asks How He Can Defend Himself if His Guns Are Taken

Photo Credit: YouTube

At a gun rights forum in Denver, US Representative Diana DeGette, who apparently doesn’t know the difference between gun magazines and bullets [see a clip of that astonishing statement HERE], belittled an elderly citizen who asked how he could defend himself with new gun control restrictions.


Representative Diana DeGette callously responded, “The good news for you, you live in Denver. The Denver PD would be there within minutes. You’d probably be dead anyway.”

See it here:

President Obama Would Get 3 Terms Under Pending House Resolution

Americans around the nation were shocked Friday as they heard about H.J.Res. 15. H.J.Res 15 proposes an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the Twenty-second Amendment. This would remove the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President. Rep. José Serrano (D- NY15) introduced the controversial joint resolution on Friday, the second day of the 2013 legislative session…

The last President to serve more than two terms was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt served three full terms as President and was elected to a fourth term. Roosevelt died 83 days into his fourth term in office.

Congress passed the Twenty-second Amendment on March 21, 1947. The required number of states ratified it in 1951.

Read more from this story HERE.