Naval Cuts Jeopardize US War Readiness, Experts Say

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Photo Credit: AP/US NavyThe threat of sequestration and looming budget deficits is already impacting the military readiness of the U.S., according to some defense analysts.

A recent Defense Department memo outlined the difficult steps the armed services must take to cope with the nation’s perilous fiscal situation. The memo recommended that the department fire administrative personnel, cut down on research and development, and cancel routine maintenance checks for naval ships.

“Cancel 3rd and 4th quarter ship maintenance availabilities and aviation and ground depot level maintenance activities,” the memo suggested.

The maintenance recommendations are particularly worrisome, and impact the U.S.’s naval preparedness, said Brian Slattery, a defense expert at the Heritage Foundation.

“The military is already having trouble in some circumstances meeting its readiness requirements,” he said in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Maintenance is already a pretty significant concern, particularly with the navy.”

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Emails Expose Southern Poverty Law Center Collaboration With DOJ

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Judicial Watch (JW), a Washington D.C. based non-partisan educational foundation, released some two dozen pages of emails it obtained on Tuesday revealing connections between the Department of Justice Civil Rights and Tax divisions and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

According to JW, the e-mails reveal “questionable behavior by agency personnel while negotiating for Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) co-founder Morris Dees to appear as the featured speaker at a July 31, 2012, “Diversity Training Event.” Judicial Watch obtained the records pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) submitted to the DOJ on September 10, 2012:

The Judicial Watch FOIA request was prompted by an apparently politically motivated shooting at the Family Research Council (FRC) headquarters in August, 2012. At the time of the shooting, FRC president Tony Perkins accused the SPLC of sparking the shooting, saying the shooter “was given a license to shoot… by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organizations as hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy.” On its website, the SPLC has depicted FRC as a hate group,” along with such mainstream conservative organizations as the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, and Coral Ridge Ministries.

The FOIA request specifically requested “any and all records concerning, regarding, or relating to the Sothern Poverty Law Center” between January 1 and August 31, 2012, including the Dees’ presentation sponsored by the Civil Rights and Tax divisions of the DOJ.

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Former Reagan Budget Director Warns Of New Housing Bubble

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerThe market may be rising, but according to one expert, all is not well on the home front.

David Stockman, former director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan administration, insists that the housing market outlook is not as cheery as some say.

“I would say we have a housing bubble … again,” Stockman told the Daily Ticker. “We don’t have a real organic sustainable recovery, because in a world of medicated money by the central bank, things aren’t what they appear to be.”

Stockman pointed to artificially low interest rates and speculation in the real-estate market as culprits.

“It’s happening in the most speculative subprime markets, where massive amounts of ‘fast money’ is rolling in to buy, to rent, on a speculative basis for a quick trade,” he said. “And as soon as they conclude prices have moved enough, they’ll be gone as fast as they came.”

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Biden Says Obama Agrees With French Socialist On Climate Change

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Photo Credit: U.S. Embassy Jakarta, Indonesia

Vice President Joe Biden says President Barack Obama and France’s new socialist president share the same ambition to regulate carbon emissions.

“I could have been sitting in a private meeting with President Obama [and] he would have not said it in French, he’d say it in English, but you said the same thing,” Biden told President Francois Hollande during a brief Feb. 4 public appearance at the French presidential palace in Paris, France.

“The [French] President pointed out that there … is a need to set out a vision for the young people in both our countries [and] a rallying cry that can be a call for a united effort and support in both our countries to deal with Global Warming,” declared Biden, who is buffing his foreign-policy credentials prior to a possible run for the presidency in 2016.

In his Jan. 21 presidential inauguration address, Obama touted his support for an extremely expensive wave of “Global Warming” regulation.

“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations … we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God,” he claimed in his controversial speech . . .

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Israeli Strike Into Syria Said to Damage Research Site

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Photo Credit: Goran Tomasevic/ReutersWASHINGTON — The Israeli attack last week on a Syrian convoy of antiaircraft weapons appears to have damaged the country’s main research center for work on biological and chemical weapons, according to American officials who are sorting through intelligence reports.

While the main target of the attack on Wednesday seems to have been SA-17 missiles and their launchers — which the Israelis feared were about to be moved to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon — video shown on Syrian television backs up assertions that the research center north of Damascus also suffered moderate damage.

That complex, the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, has been the target of American and Western sanctions for more than a decade because of intelligence suggesting that it was the training site for engineers who worked on chemical and biological weaponry.

A senior United States military official, asked about reports that the research center had been targeted, said that any damage was likely “due to the bombs which targeted the vehicles” carrying the antiaircraft weapons, and from “the secondary explosions from the missiles.”

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence reports, said that “the Israelis had a small strike package,” meaning that a relatively few fighter aircraft slipped past Syria’s air defenses and that targeting both the missiles and the research center “would risk doing just a little damage to either.”

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Alaska Brewery Plans To Use Beer As A Source Of Green Energy

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Photo Credit: Associated PressJUNEAU, Alaska – The Alaskan Brewing Co. is going green, but instead of looking to solar and wind energy, it has turned to a very familiar source: beer.

The Juneau-based beer maker has installed a unique boiler system in order to cut its fuel costs. It purchased a $1.8 million furnace that burns the company’s spent grain — the waste accumulated from the brewing process — into steam which powers the majority of the brewery’s operations. Company officials now joke they are now serving “beer-powered beer.”

What to do with spent grain was seemingly solved decades ago by breweries operating in the Lower 48. Most send the used grain, a good source of protein, to nearby farms and ranches to be used as animal feed.

But there are only 37 farms in southeast Alaska and 680 in the entire state as of 2011, and the problem of what to do with the excess spent grain — made up of the residual malt and barley — became more problematic after the brewery expanded in 1995

The Alaskan Brewing Co. had to resort to shipping its spent grain to buyers in the Lower 48. Shipping costs for Juneau businesses are especially high because there are no roads leading in or out of the city; everything has to be flown or shipped in. However, the grain is a relatively wet byproduct of the brewing process, so it needs to be dried before it is shipped — another heat intensive and expensive process.

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Obama Says U.S. Needs Revenue Along With Spending Cuts

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Photo Credit:Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg President Barack Obama said there is “no doubt” the government needs new revenue from closing tax “loopholes” and limiting deductions, along with enacting spending cuts, to reduce the federal deficit.

There’s “no reason why we can’t have really strong growth in 2013,” the president said in an interview with CBS television yesterday before the network’s Super Bowl broadcast. He cited a recovering housing industry, strong manufacturing and rising car sales.

Revenue could be raised through an overhaul of the tax code, he said, “and we can do it in a gradual way so that it doesn’t have a huge impact.”

“There is no doubt we need additional revenue, coupled with smart spending reductions in order to bring down our deficit,” he said. “I don’t think the issue right now is raising rates.”

Two reports last week suggested worrying signs about the economy. The Commerce Department said Jan. 30 that the gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced, dropped at a 0.1 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the worst performance since the second quarter of 2009, when the world’s largest economy was still in the recession.

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Voter Fraud Group Sues Over Allen West Recount (+video)

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Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty ImagesTrue the Vote, a watchdog group dedicated to protecting against voter fraud, on Monday filed suit against the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections in Florida, demanding the release of “all records pertaining to the recent 18th Congressional District election and subsequent recounts between Rep. Allen West and Patrick Murphy be reviewed in order to perform a comprehensive third-party audit.”

Here’s True the Vote president Catherine Engelbrecht explaining what the group hopes to accomplish from the lawsuit:

As Engelbrecht notes in the video, the group does not expect to overturn Rep. Murphy’s narrow victory over Allen West. Rather, True the Vote wants the election board’s recount process to be made public so that similar debacles can be avoided in the future.

“This dramatic recount was an extraordinary example of how our elections can suffer systematic failure,” said Engelbrecht.

“We run the risk seeing episodes like this becoming ordinary if citizens do not demand answers and hold election officials accountable. The American people own the voting system — we have the right to ask tough questions when we witness the failure of one of America’s core functions,” she adds.

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University Allegedly Kicks Christian Club Off Campus Over ‘Non-Discrimination Policy’

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Photo Credit: Asian InterVarsity/Todd StarnesClashes between Christian clubs and college campuses have been heating up across the country, with numerous schools telling evangelical groups that they cannot require their members and leaders be believers. The latest debate is erupting at the University of Michigan, where the college is being accused of booting an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapter off campus for requiring its leaders to be Christians.

According to Greg Jao, InterVarsity’s field director, the university gave the Asian chapter of the group two options — either reverse its constitution to be in compliance or leave campus. The problem apparently began last December when group members were brought before officials to discuss a problematic part of the Asian InterVarsity group’s constitution. The document required club leaders to sign a statement affirming their Christian faith — something the university said was a violation of its non-discrimination policy.

While students were given an option to submit a new constitution that complied with these rules, they decided to refrain from doing so and to stick with their values. From a practical standpoint, it is understandable why a faith-based club would want its leaders to share theological values, something that a statement of faith would ensure.

“The university is sending the message that religious voices are suspect and should be marginalized,” Jao told Fox News’ Todd Starnes. “I think it sends the message that the university does not understand the nature of religious beliefs and the convictions of religious students.”

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Karl Rove Declares War On Tea Party

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The battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party has begun. On one side is the Tea Party. On the other side stand Karl Rove and his establishment team, posing as tacticians while quietly undermining conservatism.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the “biggest donors in the Republican Party” have joined forces with Karl Rove and Steven J. Law, president of American Crossroads, to create the Conservative Victory Project. The Times reports that this new group will dedicate itself to “recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s effort to win control of the Senate.” The group points to candidates like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Richard Mourdock in Indiana as examples of Tea Party primary picks going sideways in major Senatorial battles.

But it is American Crossroads and its ilk that have run the GOP into the ground. Spending millions of dollars on useless 30,000-ft. advertising campaigns during the last election cycle, training candidates to soften conservatism in order to appeal to “moderates,” blowing up the federal budget under George W. Bush as a bipartisan tactic – all of those strategies led the party to a disastrous defeat in 2012. The Tea Party, which may nominate losers from time to time, also brought the Republicans their historic 2010 Congressional victory. If Tea Party candidates lose, it’s because they weren’t good candidates; if GOP establishment candidates lose, it’s because they weren’t good conservatives. The choice for actual conservatives should be easy.

But it isn’t. The Bush insider team that helped lead to the rise of Barack Obama insists that they, and only they, know the path to victory.

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