Boy Scouts Likely to Approve Gay Leaders in Major Policy Reversal

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The Boy Scouts of America announced today, under pressure from questions raised by The Christian Post, that the organization is likely to allow professed homosexuals to become scout leaders and that a vote on the matter is scheduled at the group’s executive meeting in Irving, Texas, the first week of February.

When asked about the change by The Christian Post, BSA officials confirmed the major policy reversal just days before Scout Sunday, February 3, an annual event held in many churches around the country to promote and encourage participation in scouting. The organization originally planned to make the announcement at the Boy Scouts of America Annual Meeting in May.

A source who has knowledge of the situation told The Christian Post last week that the BSA’s top executives had met with top leaders at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, among others, over the last few weeks to inform them of the possibility of this policy shift.

Early Monday morning, the BSA responded to CP’s inquiry and released the following statement via email:

“For more than 100 years, Scouting’s focus has been on working together to deliver the nation’s foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training. Scouting has always been in an ongoing dialogue with the Scouting family to determine what is in the best interest of the organization and the young people we serve,” wrote Deron Smith, BSA’s Director of Public Relations.

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Sessions: Large-Scale Amnesty Likely to Add Trillions to Debt

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Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions voiced concerns over the bipartisan proposal for immigration reform introduced on Monday by eight senators, saying the plan will substantially increase the already sky-high national debt and criticizing the federal government for inadequately enforcing existing immigration laws.

“No one should expect the members of the Senate are just going to rubber stamp what a group who met decided,” Sessions said on the Senate floor.

While immigration system needs to be reformed, Sessions said, the country has been through this dance before.

The Alabama senator recalled the failed promise of enforcement following immigration reform in 1986, as well as the aborted attempts at immigration reform in 2006 and 2007.

The latter efforts, Sessions said, didn’t succeed “because it did not do what they said it would do. It did not end the illegality. It did not set forth a proper principle of immigration for America, [and] it did not sufficiently alter the nature of our immigration system to advance the national interest of the United States.”

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North Korean Cannibalism Fears Amid Claims of Starvation

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Reports from inside the secretive famine-hit pariah state, North Korea, claim a man has been executed after murdering his two children for food.

The grim suggestion that North Koreans are turning to cannibalism were reported by the Asia Press, and published in the Sunday Times.

They claim a ‘hidden famine’ in the farming provinces of North and South Hwanghae has killed 10,000 people, and there are fears that cannibalism is spreading throughout the country.

The reports come as sanctions are tightened against the backdrop of angry rhetoric over missile testing.

In one particularly disturbing report, a man was said to have dug up his grandchild’s corpse. Other lurid reports included the suggestion that some men boiled their children before eating them.

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Government Scraps Position Dedicated to Closing Prison at Guantanamo

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The State Department office responsible for helping facilitate the relocation of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has been closed, The New York Times reports.

The paper reports that Daniel Fried, who served as the special envoy for Guantanamo Bay since the position’s inception in 2009, has been reassigned. He will not be replaced, and his duties will now be “assumed” by the State Department’s legal adviser, according to an internal personnel announcement.

Relocating detainees had been seen as a vital step in the president’s promise to close the prison, which was frequently and vociferously criticized by liberal activists before Obama’s election.

“I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that,” Obama told CBS’ Steve Kroft in November 2008.

Obama also signed an executive order shortly after taking office that declared the prison for suspected terrorists would be shuttered “no later” than January 2010.

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Milwaukee County Sheriff: Don’t Wait For Police; Arm Yourselves

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Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. has a message for residents in his jurisdiction: You can’t rely on him anymore. You need to arm yourself.

On Friday, the nominally Democratic sheriff issued a recorded public safety announcement on the radio and on the Web that encouraged residents to take their lives into their own hands.

Here’s the full transcript: “I’m Sheriff David Clarke and I want to talk to you about something personal: your safety. It’s no longer a spectator sport; I need you in the game. But are you ready? With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option. You can beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back. But are you prepared? Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there. You have a duty to protect yourself and your family.”

Crime is relatively rare in Clarke’s jurisdiction: In 2010, the Sheriff’s Department reported two burglaries, nine robberies and zero murders. (Preliminary data from 2012 were not available, and it’s not clear if the department submitted its crime statistics to the FBI for 2011.)

Also rare are justifiable homicides in the U.S.: About 260 private citizens lawfully killed someone committing a felony in 2011, or less than one case per every 1 million people in the nation.

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Evidence Grows for Narcolepsy Link to GSK Swine Flu Shot

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(Reuters) – Emelie Olsson is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares. When she wakes up, she’s often paralyzed, unable to breathe properly or call for help. During the day she can barely stay awake, and often misses school or having fun with friends. She is only 14, but at times she has wondered if her life is worth living.

Emelie is one of around 800 children in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe who developed narcolepsy, an incurable sleep disorder, after being immunized with the Pandemrix H1N1 swine flu vaccine made by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline in 2009.

Finland, Norway, Ireland and France have seen spikes in narcolepsy cases, too, and people familiar with the results of a soon-to-be-published study in Britain have told Reuters it will show a similar pattern in children there.

Their fate, coping with an illness that all but destroys normal life, is developing into what the health official who coordinated Sweden’s vaccination campaign calls a “medical tragedy” that will demand rising scientific and medical attention.

Europe’s drugs regulator has ruled Pandemrix should no longer be used in people aged under 20. The chief medical officer at GSK’s vaccines division, Norman Begg, says his firm views the issue extremely seriously and is “absolutely committed to getting to the bottom of this”, but adds there is not yet enough data or evidence to suggest a causal link.

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Mark Levin: Obama Isn’t Destroying the GOP, the Republican Establishment Is (+Audio)

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On Monday’s broadcast of Sean Hannity’s radio show, Mark Levin said the Republican Party is destroying itself from within.

“[I]s Obama destroying the Republican Party?” Levin said. “No, the Republican establishment is destroying the Republican Party.

The only reason they’re in the majority in the House is because of conservatives — conservatives across the country, the grassroots. They lost the Senate.

They like to point to two races, one in Missouri and one in Indiana. I can point to 10 races where there were liberal-to-moderate Republicans who lost, and of course they never mention that.”

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Obama’s Unbridled Hubris: “I Go Shooting All the Time,” “Football is Too Violent,” “Gays in Military Caused No Controversy”

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In an extraordinary interview just published yesterday in the New Republic, Obama makes a number of outlandish statements.

On the gun control issue, Obama apparently tries to establish some relevant personal experience, bragging that he goes “shooting all the time.”

To most, the idea of Obama with a gun is laughable. And a quick search of Google images unsurprisingly fails to produce a single picture of the President with a gun.

One would think that any activity that Obama engages in “all the time” – like golf – would result in at least one picture circulating through the public domain. And maybe, by the time you read this, one will appear. But compared to the thousands of pictures of his other “all the time” pastime of golf (or romancing his teleprompter), there’s no comparison.

But that’s not the only ridiculous statement from Obama on guns. This supposed constitutional scholar takes a page from the Slick Willie playbook that suggested Americans should only be able to own guns needed for duck hunting. Like most liberals, Obama intentionally ignores that troublesome Second Amendment, suggesting the real reason Americans are reacting angrily to his moves against gun ownership is because of their love of hunting:

…I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.

Part of being able to move [gun control] forward is understanding the reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas. And if you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were ten, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family’s traditions, you can see why you’d be pretty protective of that.

For gun control advocates to move their agenda forward, Obama claims that they’ll “have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes.”

From there the interviewer takes the President to the US “culture of violence” and how it’s encouraged by football. Obama, not skipping a beat, takes the bait, suggesting that we must change football to make it less violent:

I’m a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I’d have to think long and hard before I let him play football. And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won’t have to examine our consciences quite as much.

The President continues to show his disconnect from Americans – particularly within the US Military – by stating that having practicing homosexuals in the armed forces has “caused almost no controversy. It’s been almost thoroughly embraced …”

Perhaps John Edwards was right, there really are two Americas; the corner of DC that Barack Hussein Obama occupies, and the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave where people actually have a nodding acquaintance with reality.

Cops’ Seattle Gun Buyback Transformed Into Gun Show By Eager Private Buyers With Wads of Cash

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In the wake of the Newtown massacre, cities across the United States are funding gun-buybacks in a stated effort to get “guns off the street.” In reality, these efforts are just for show, typically bringing in just a few dozen to a few hundred weapons, many of which are old and inoperable.

Given the enormous number of guns in the U.S., the minuscule number of buyback guns will likely have no statistical impact on gun crime rates. Moreover, many of the folk turning in the guns and collecting gift cards or other trackable means of payment, are unlikely to have criminal records and/or a propensity for violence.

Nevertheless, the photo-op buybacks are providing communities with at least one tangible benefit: the opportunity for 2nd Amendment afficionados to attend the buybacks and bid against the police for seized guns.


This happened at a Tuscon buyback earlier this month as well as the recent Seattle buyback this past Saturday. With respect to Seattle, gun buyers were especially active:

Officers stood by as makeshift gun shows sprang up on the sidewalks, just steps away from the buyback tents, as gun enthusiasts and collectors waved wads of cash for the guns being held by those standing in line.

“I’d prefer they wouldn’t sell them,” [Seattle Police Chief] Diaz said of the people in line making deals with the gun buyers.

Some people saw the event as a way to make some money while others came in the spirit of a gun-buyback program, he said.

Albert Coburn, of Seattle, was standing in line with two rifles from his father, weapons that he had no use for. “Instead of selling them, I’d like to see them get out of circulation.”

Some in the long lines lost patience and gave in to the people who surrounded the parking lot with signs saying “Cash for guns.”

One man jumped out of his vehicle as he was waiting in bumper-to-bumper traffic at the buyback and asked how much the gun enthusiasts and collectors were willing to pay for his three guns. He pocketed $500.

Some might argue that these gun-buybacks are not for show but are instead being used to normalize the American people to the concept of the government taking their guns for payment. Whether you believe that or not, there is no denying that the buybacks have – so far – been utter failures from the government’s perspective, less so from the private buyer’s perspective.

Video: CBS Runs Segment Called ‘Let’s Give Up On The Constitution’

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From Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman:

I’ve got a simple idea: Let’s give up on the Constitution. I know, it sounds radical, but it’s really not. Constitutional disobedience is as American as apple pie. For example, most of our greatest Presidents — Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, and both Roosevelts — had doubts about the Constitution, and many of them disobeyed it when it got in their way.

To be clear, I don’t think we should give up on everything in the Constitution. The Constitution has many important and inspiring provisions, but we should obey these because they are important and inspiring, not because a bunch of people who are now long-dead favored them two centuries ago. Unfortunately, the Constitution also contains some provisions that are not so inspiring. For example, one allows a presidential candidate who is rejected by a majority of the American people to assume office. Suppose that Barack Obama really wasn’t a natural-born citizen. So what? Constitutional obedience has a pernicious impact on our political culture. Take the recent debate about gun control. None of my friends can believe it, but I happen to be skeptical of most forms of gun control. I understand, though, that’s not everyone’s view, and I’m eager to talk with people who disagree.

See video:

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