Alaska’s Young May Have Met His Match In Backlash Over Slur, Ethics Probe

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Photo Credit: Marc Lester

Rep. Don Young is a survivor. But he may have met his match. He’s beaten back six years worth of federal investigations, 40 years of unsuccessful Republican challengers, and one of the most expensive and highly criticized earmarks.

But now the 21-term Alaska Republican is facing a freshly launched Ethics investigation and perhaps his biggest hurdle of all: his own mouth.

On Friday, Young came under heavy fire from Republicans and Democrats for using a racial slur to refer to hired laborers who were once employed at his father’s ranch. Young used the term “wetbacks” to describe the laborers.

GOP leaders immediately distanced themselves from the veteran lawmaker, who has not always had a pleasant relationship with his own party, saying that he should apologize without delay.

Young did apologize, twice. But the political heat came less than 10 days after the House Ethics Committee announced it was investigating Young on charges that he may have violated the chamber’s rules.

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Obama Booed at DC Basketball Game…After Golf Outing

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Nearly half of the crowd at Saturday’s Elite 8 game between Syracuse and Marquette at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. booed President Barack Obama when he was shown on the big screen with just over ten minutes to play in the first half. After the boos erupted, a contingency of Obama supporters countered with cheers…

Obama also golfed on Saturday for the first time since the sequester cuts went into effect at the beginning of March and then took some of his foursome–and his Secret Service detail–to watch Syracuse oust Marquette and secure a trip to the Final Four.

One would have expected a friendlier crowd for the President, but there are still several possible explanations for the boos.

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Krauthammer: Gay Marriage Cases May Presage ‘Assault On Religion’

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

On this weekend’s broadcast of “Inside Washington,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said the two gay marriage cases currently before the Supreme Court could lead to an all-out assault on religion in the United States…

“It gets really sticky,” Krauthammer said. “If the court were to decide that to deny same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, then you got Georgetown University – a Jesuit university [that offers] married student housing. It’s a Catholic University. So [when] it says it’s only going to allow heterosexuals, it will get sued. This will become an assault on religion. And the religions, which I think are sincere in their beliefs, are going to be under assault and under attack.”

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Oklahoma to Allow Horses to be Slaughtered for Human Consumption

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Photo Credit: Christinamari

Oklahoma took a step toward allowing livestock owners to slaughter horses for food on Friday when the governor signed a bill that permits the practice, but processing plants must first be authorized by the federal government…

Governor Mary Fallin’s action legalized the slaughter of horses so that their meat may be prepared and packaged for export. But slaughterhouses must get U.S. Department of Agriculture authorization, Fallin said.

The slaughter of horses for food had been illegal in Oklahoma since 1963 and was carried out only in Texas and Illinois until Congress stopped it in 2006. The congressional ban was lifted in 2011.

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Obama’s Easter Message: I’m Following Jesus by “Seeing Everyone, Especially The Least Of These, As A Child Of God” (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

In his weekly address on Saturday, President Barack Obama said he was recommitting himself to following the example of Jesus Christ in “seeing everyone, especially ‘the least of these,’ as a child of God.”…

The president appeared to be alluding to Matthew 25, where Jesus says:

“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry, and ye did not give me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me. And these shall go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous into eternal life.”

Here is the complete text of President Obama’s address:

Watch video here:

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Mike Huckabee, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer Threaten To Leave GOP Over Gay Marriage (+video)

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Photo Credit: On Top Mag

Social conservatives Mike Huckabee, Tony Perkins and Gary Bauer are threatening to leave the Republican Party if it softens its stance against gay marriage.

After the Republican National Committee (RNC) released a report which called for less vocal opposition to gay rights, several conservatives reacted angrily.

“The vast majority of the GOP base believes that marriage is a non-negotiable plank of the national platform,” said Perkins, president of the Christian conservative Family Research Council (FRC). “If the RNC abandons marriage, evangelicals will either sit the elections out completely, or move to create a third party. Either option puts Republicans on the path to a permanent minority.”
In an interview with Newsmax, Huckabee, a former GOP candidate for president, said the GOP risks alienating its base over the issue.

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Time Magazine: Your Child’s Religion May Be ‘Mental Illness’

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Photo Credit: WND

According to an article published this week on Time magazine’s website, your child’s “fastidiousness to religious practices” may be a sign of mental illness.

“Religion can be a source of comfort that improves well-being,” begins the article by author Francine Russo. “But some kinds of religiosity could be a sign of deeper mental health issues.”

In the article titled “Can Your Child Be Too Religious?” Russo continues, “If your child is immersed in scripture after school and prays regularly throughout the day, you may breathe a sigh of relief. She’s such a good girl. … Or maybe not. Your child’s devotion may be a great thing, but there are some kids whose religious observances require a deeper look. For these children, an overzealous practice of their family faith – or even another faith – may be a sign of an underlying mental health issue.”

The article explains therapists report seeing children and teens who dive into excessive religiosity as an unhealthy coping mechanism, a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, that’s “no more spiritual than fanatical hand washing.”

The article describes a type of OCD called scrupulosity, where children “obsessively worry that they have committed blasphemy, been impure or otherwise sinned” and warns against religious delusions or hallucinations that parents may be less attuned to “when it occurs under the guise of faith.”

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State Grants Secret Service Vast New Powers to Circumvent Sheriffs

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Photo Credit: WND

A bill is heading to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s desk that Republican lawmakers say would give members of the Secret Service broad arrest powers in the state and could provide a framework for federal agents eventually to enforce gun restrictions.

“This is absolutely insane,” Rep. Lori Saine, R-Dacono, said. “In theory if a Secret Service agent is in a county where the sheriff has refused to enforce some of the recent unenforceable gun laws, the agent could arrest an individual if he believes the law has been broken.”

The idea actually aligns with an Obama agenda to create vast new restrictions and regulations on guns. WND has reported that hundreds of sheriffs nationwide, including many in Colorado, have said they cannot enforce federal restrictions that would violate the Second Amendment.

In Colorado, Weld County Sheriff John Cooke said he and many other county sheriffs “won’t bother” with several laws poised to go into effect in Colorado because they would be impossible to enforce.

One of the laws would require private sellers to do a background check on purchasers in private gun transaction, but the sheriffs wonder how to keep track of whether gun owners are meeting the new requirements.

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Obama Accused of Trying to ‘Nationalize’ Elections

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President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order Thursday establishing a Presidential Commission to deal with “election administration” that critics say is an attempt to nationalize the country’s elections for partisan advantage.

The Executive Order states the Commission “shall identify best practices and otherwise make recommendations to promote the efficient administration of elections in order to ensure that all eligible voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots without undue delay.”

The Commission will focus on polling places, how better to train and recruit poll workers, managing voter rolls and poll books, voting machines, ballot simplicity, English proficiency, and absentee ballots. The states–not the federal government–traditionally have responsibility over such matters.

Obama will appoint no more than nine members to the Commission and appointees will be drawn from among individuals with “knowledge about or experience in the administration of State or local elections, as well as representatives of successful customer service-oriented businesses, and any other individuals with knowledge or experience determined by the President to be of value to the Commission.”

Election law expert and former Department of Justice official J. Christian Adams labeled such a Commission a “solution in search of a problem.”

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The Death of the Family: Delusion and Parochialism About Marriage

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Photo Credit: National Review

Gay marriage? It came up at dinner Down Under this time last year, and the prominent Aussie politician on my right said matter-of-factly, “It’s not about expanding marriage, it’s about destroying marriage.”

That would be the most obvious explanation as to why the same societal groups who assured us in the Seventies that marriage was either (a) a “meaningless piece of paper” or (b) institutionalized rape are now insisting it’s a universal human right. They’ve figured out what, say, terrorist-turned-educator Bill Ayers did — that, when it comes to destroying core civilizational institutions, trying to blow them up is less effective than hollowing them out from within.

On the other hand, there are those who argue it’s a victory for the powerful undertow of bourgeois values over the surface ripples of sexual transgressiveness: Gays will now be as drearily suburban as the rest of us. A couple of years back, I saw a picture in the paper of two chubby old queens tying the knot at City Hall in Vancouver, and the thought occurred that Western liberalism had finally succeeded in boring all the fun out of homosexuality.

Which of these alternative scenarios — the demolition of marriage or the taming of the gay — will come to pass? Most likely, both. In the upper echelons of society, our elites practice what they don’t preach. Scrupulously nonjudgmental about everything except traditional Christian morality, they nevertheless lead lives in which, as Charles Murray documents in his book Coming Apart, marriage is still expected to be a lifelong commitment. It is easy to see moneyed gay newlyweds moving into such enclaves, and making a go of it. As the Most Reverend Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, said just before his enthronement the other day, “You see gay relationships that are just stunning in the quality of the relationship.” “Stunning”: What a fabulous endorsement! But, amongst the type of gay couple that gets to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury, he’s probably right.

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