Labor Secretary Nominee Accused of 'Quid Pro Quo' Deal

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Thomas Perez, President Obama’s nominee for Labor secretary, “manipulated” federal law as assistant attorney general by negotiating a so-called “quid pro quo” deal in which he persuaded a Minnesota city to drop a Supreme Court lawsuit in exchange for the Justice Department staying out of whistleblower cases brought against the city, according to a joint congressional Republican report.

In the report obtained by Fox News, Republican investigators conclude Perez “manipulated the rule of law and pushed the limits of justice to make this deal happen.”

The 67-page report also states that the Justice Department opting out of the cases resulted in taxpayers paying nearly $200 million in un-recouped damages.

The cases dropped by the agency were against the city of St. Paul and alleged the city received millions in Department of Housing and Urban Development fund, but failed to file the requisite paperwork regarding the hiring of low-income workers.

In exchange, St. Paul dropped its appeal to the Supreme Court in an unrelated case in which property owners said the city made extraordinary efforts, through strict code enforcement, to condemn their properties.

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Wealth Tax to Pay for EU Bail-Outs

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Senior advisers to Chancellor Angela Merkel are pushing for better-off households to pay towards the cost of any future bail-outs for the weaker members of the single currency.

The proposals, from members of Germany’s council of economic experts, raise the prospect of taxes being imposed on property in a country like Spain if its government was forced to seek a bail-out.

The council, known as the “Five Wise Men”, is often used to test new policies that are later adopted officially.

The German suggestion is the latest sign that Berlin is intent on imposing even tougher rules on weaker southern euro members in exchange for using its economic might to support their finances.

As well as inflaming tensions between Germany and its smaller southern partners, the suggestion could also mean that Britons with holiday homes are dragged deeper into the eurozone crisis.

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Here Come Obama's Middle-Class Tax Hikes

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President Obama’s budget spin-meisters at the Office of Management and Budget deserve nomination for the Biggest Whopper of 2013 Award, thanks to their claim that the chief executive’s 2014 budget proposal “represents more than $2 in spending cuts for every $1 of new revenue from closing tax loopholes and reducing tax benefits for the wealthiest.” Sounds like smart budgeting, but is that statement true? As the Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell put it, “In a word, no.”

Look beyond the rhetoric at the concrete numbers in the Obama budget — which, let it not be forgotten, was submitted two months late and after both the Senate and House adopted their own versions of 2014 spending blueprints — and what becomes clear in three ways is that the president and his key advisers are intrigued by the figure $1.1 trillion. First, remember the sequestration budget cuts that were supposed to produce Armageddon if actually implemented? Those cuts totaled — can you guess? — $1.1 trillion over 10 years.

Second, as Morning Bell ably notes, the Treasury Department calculates that the Obama 2014 budget proposal contains new tax increases totaling $1.1 trillion. Third, remember the 2011 Grand Bargain That Never Was? That was when House Speaker John Boehner insisted on a lengthy list of spending cuts and conceded to $800 billion in new revenues by closing tax loopholes? It never happened because at the last minute Obama demanded another $400 billion in new revenues, which Boehner wisely rejected. Well, now Obama is endorsing Boehner’s spending cuts, which just happen to total $1.1 trillion.

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Study Finds New Way to Clear Cholesterol from Blood

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Scientists led by Prof David Ginsburg of the University of Michigan’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute inhibited the action of a gene responsible for transporting a protein that interferes with the ability of the liver to remove cholesterol from the blood in mice. Trapping the destructive protein where it couldn’t harm receptors responsible for removing cholesterol preserved the liver cells’ capacity to clear plasma cholesterol from the blood, but did not appear to otherwise affect the health of the mice.

In the research, scientists found that mice with an inactive SEC24A gene could develop normally. However, their plasma cholesterol levels were reduced by 45 percent because vesicles from liver cells were not able to recruit and transport a critical regulator of blood cholesterol levels called proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9).

PCSK9 is a secretory protein that destroys the liver cells’ receptors of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, the so-called ‘bad cholesterol), and prevents the cells from removing the LDL.

“Inhibiting SEC24A or PCSK9 may be an alternative to statins, and could work together with statins to produce even greater effects,” said first study author Dr Xiao-Wei Chen from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “Also, they might be effective on patients who are resistant to or intolerant of statins.”

Initial studies of anti-PCSK9 therapies in humans have shown that eliminating PCSK9 can lower cholesterol dramatically and work with statins like Lipitor to lower it even further. The new study points to a new area for study: rather than inhibiting PCSK9 itself, perhaps future therapies could block the transport mechanism that allows the destructive protein to reach the LDL receptors.

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Sen. Mike Lee: Gun Bill Contains ‘Tomorrow’s Loopholes’

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photo credit: gage skidmore

Republican Sen. Mike Lee, of Utah, said Sunday he will not support the gun-control legislation being authored in the Senate because it contains loopholes and imposes limits on law-abiding gun owners.

Lee, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said despite the national tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December of 2012, politicians’ efforts to do the right thing have resulted in a flawed approach.

“Following the tragedy at Sandy Hook, Americans have been rightfully focused on how to prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future,” he said. “But unfortunately, the proposals we’ve seen would serve primarily to limit the rights of law-abiding citizens while doing little, if anything, to actually prevent tragedies like this from occurring in the future.”

Lee said he “can’t support” the bill named after Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.

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Iran Warns of World War III

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Iran ratcheted up its vitriol against Israel and the United States over the weekend, warning that an attack on the Islamic regime’s nuclear facilities could lead to global war.

The rhetoric eerily matched that currently coming out of North Korea against its perceived enemies.

“Iran will not stand by in the face of such aggression,” Ali Ahani, Iran’s ambassador to France, said Sunday, according to the Islamic regime’s PressTV. “This can entail a chain of violence that may lead to World war III. A potential Israeli attack against Iran with an objective of destroying its scientific and nuclear facilities is sheer madness. Its consequences are disastrous and uncontrollable.”

The deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Brig. Gen Masoud Jazayeri, warned the United States on Saturday that Iran would continue its nuclear program.

“We would not trade off our rights,” he said, adding that Iran would stand with North Korea in its faceoff with America.

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Obama’s ‘Tax Freedom Day’ Was March 5…the Average American’s Isn’t Until April 18

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As TheBlaze reported on Friday, President Barack Obama and wife Michelle paid 18 percent in taxes for 2012. That 18 percent tax rate means the Obamas worked just more than 64 days in order to earn the money they needed to pay the government their “fair share.”

The top tax rate charged by the federal government for high earners like the Obamas would be 35 percent. If the president and his wife paid the 35 percent rate, they would have had to work until May 8 (128 days) in order to meet their obligation to the nation.

But is 18 percent really a fair share for the first family? Let’s remember the 2012 presidential campaign that regularly featured many media outlets slamming Mitt Romney for paying around 15 percent in taxes in 2011.

It also should be noted that today, the average American has to work until April 18 in order to pay their tax obligations to the nation. (And according to one online report, April 18 is a full five days longer than last year’s Tax Freedom Day.) By the way, from January 1 to April 18 is 108 days.

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Arctic Man Fatality: Nine Year Old Fairbanks Boy Killed After Falling into Glacial Crevasse

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FAIRBANKS, Alaska – Climbers descended into an estimated 200-foot-deep crevasse on an Alaska glacier to reach a 9-year-old boy, who is feared dead after crashing his snowmobile.

Investigators believe the boy is under the machine in deep snow in the hole, Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said.

She said that crews were on the scene late Sunday night and would attempt a recovery.

The climbers spotted the snowmobile driven by Shjon Brown of Fairbanks.

Peters said she didn’t have further details of the recovery effort.

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UPDATE: Eleonore Falke Waller commented on Facebook concerning her 9 year old son that she was able to “hug & kiss our little man goodbye tonite. He looked so peaceful & it eases my heart that he did not suffer at all. Thank you to the US ARMY Black Rapids Mountian Rangers for all they did to bring him to me. I am forever grateful.”

The US Abortion Lobby is 'Engaged in a Pedophile Protection Racket'

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Photo Credit: WND

In what has been called the worst child sex abuse scandal in American history, the abortion industry could soon find itself beleaguered by multiple lawsuits from trial lawyers representing hundreds of thousands of victims of statutory rape.

“The abortion lobby is engaged in a pedophile protection racket and protecting pedophiles who rape underage girls,” Mark Crutcher, founder of Life Dynamics, said. “These abortion clinics receive money from the federal government. We are literally paying for the rape of our young daughters.”

Life Dynamics conducted extensive research into why 60-80 percent of teen pregnancies were the result of being impregnated by an adult.

“We realized that something had to have accounted for how this occurred beneath the radar to the point where no one except those who study it would know about it,” he explained. “The only way this could happen is if the institutions and the entities out there who should be reporting this were not doing so. We talked to people we knew in the medical community who worked in environments where they would have access to children or worked in the emergency room hospitals and started asking them about it.”

He said they quickly discovered the problem was not in the hospitals, but in the vast numbers of abortion clinics around the country where employees and managers were ignoring state laws mandating they report instances of possible child abuse to law-enforcement.

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Video: Conflict Between Pro-Obama Prosecutor and Armed Fort Hood Soldiers Reaching Boiling Point

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The conflict between law enforcement and armed military personnel in the community around Fort Hood, one of America’s largest military bases, has recently and repeatedly involved the issue of gun control — and the tension has been exacerbated in part by an Obama-supporting prosecutor described as a “bandleader” of anti-gun efforts in the heavily conservative community.

The conflict reached a fever pitch last month, when Texas police arrested an active-duty Army sergeant for “rudely displaying” a hunting rifle. The sergeant, C.J. Grisham, established an online legal defense fund after he was, in his words, “illegally arrested and disarmed” for carrying the firearm.

“While out hiking with my son through backcountry roads to help him earn his Eagle Scout rank, I was illegally arrested and disarmed without cause. I was thrown in jail and my lawfully owned weapons were confiscated without receipt or notice,” Grisham wrote on the website for the defense fund.

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