Michelle Obama Wants Textbooks to Swap Cupcakes for Apples in Math Problems

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Photo Credit: APFirst Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative is praising textbook publishers for “swapping out cupcakes for apples in math problems,” in a campaign to incorporate health information into the learning resources for kids.

“Today at the White House, we celebrated a group of educational publishers on their development of voluntary guidance to incorporate health information into textbooks and other learning materials,” Let’s Move! said in a blog post entitled, “Cookies 2 Carrots,” on Wednesday.

“Publishers are making simple changes, like swapping out cupcakes for apples in math problems,” the anti-obesity initiative noted. “They are also finding ways to include physical activity in lesson plans – discussing the history of little league baseball and using sports in word problems.”

Let’s Move! – a government initiative started by Mrs. Obama – aims to curb the obesity rate among children in the U.S. Mrs. Obama has recently expanded her campaign to museums and zoos asking them to change their menus, and also wants to “impact the nature of food in grocery stores.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Breaks with Tradition, Fails to Return Marine’s Salute (+video)

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Photo Credit: GOP The Daily DosePresident Obama, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, broke with the tradition of returning the salute of the U.S. Marine outside Marine One Friday morning.

Perhaps Obama suddenly realized, or perhaps someone onboard the helicopter said something to him, because Obama promptly walked back down the steps to go shake hands with the Marine.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Meets In Oval Office With Illegal Aliens

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Photo Credit: Official White House Photo/Pete SouzaPresident Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met in the Oval Office on Tuesday with three people who are in the country in violation of U.S. immigration laws but who have received “deferred action” allowing them to stay in the country under the terms of a “memorandum” issued unilaterally last year by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

While conceding that she had no legal authority to change the “immigration status” of illegal aliens or provide them with a “pathway to citizenship,” Napolitano instructed the top officials at Customs and Border Protection, Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use what she called “prosecutorial discretion” in not enforcing the immigration laws against certain classes of immigration lawbreakers.

These included illegal aliens who arrived in the United States before their sixteenth birthday, had graduated from high school or served in the military, had not been convicted of “significant” or “multiple” misdemeanors, and had not yet turned thirty.

Before Napolitano issued this unilateral order allowing the illegal aliens to remain in the country in violation of the law, President Obama’s allies in Congress had failed to secure passage of the Dream Act, which would have allowed such persons to became legal residents in the United States.

In all, Obama and Biden met on Tuesday with eight people who are advocating immigration reform, according to White House readout of the meeting. The White House readout listed three of those as having received “deferred action.” Most others were legally in the United States with relatives who were illegal aliens.

Read more from this story HERE.

Comedian Calls Out Muhammad for Pedophilia, Gets Hammered With Death Threats (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeComedian Steven Crowder’s recent “Jesus vs. Muhammad” video – just posted this week – has gone viral, generating almost 250,000 views.

Why? Its content is a bit edgy, calling out Muhammad for pedophilia and the Koran for its incitement of violence.

As one might expect, that has generated significant backlash. Crowder is reporting from his Twitter account that he has received many death threats, profanity-laced insults, and other not-so-nice reactions from Muhammad defenders on social media.

Here’s the video that’s created all the fuss:

His Days are Numbered: Holder Personally OK’d Search Warrant for Fox News Reporter’s Private Emails

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Photo Credit: Chip SomodevillaAttorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.

The disclosure of the attorney general’s role came as President Barack Obama, in a major speech on his counterterrorism policy, said Holder had agreed to review Justice Department guidelines governing investigations that involve journalists.

“I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” Obama said. “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs.”

Rosen, who has not been charged in the case, was nonetheless the target of a search warrant that enabled Justice Department investigators to secretly seize his private emails after an FBI agent said he had “asked, solicited and encouraged … (a source) to disclose sensitive United States internal documents and intelligence information.”

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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.