Italy Halts Austerity Plan Leaving EU In Turmoil

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Photo Credit: Max RossiThree years of German-led austerity and budget cuts aimed at saving the euro and retooling the European economy was left facing one of its biggest challenges as Italian voters’ rejection of spending cuts and tax rises opened up a stark new fissure in European politics.

The governing stalemate in Rome and the vote in the general election – by a factor of three to two – against the austerity policies pursued by Italy’s humiliated caretaker prime minister, Mario Monti, meant that the spending cuts and tax rises dictated by the eurozone would grind to a halt, risking a re-eruption of the euro crisis after six months of relative stability.

Fears that the deadlock will lengthen Italy’s near two-year recession and spill over into the rest of the eurozone hit markets across Europe. The Italian banking sector fell 7% in value, dragging the main MIB stock market index 4% lower.

The market turmoil in Milan spread to Germany, France and the UK, with domestic banks among the biggest fallers. Deutsche Bank saw almost 5% knocked off its value, while Barclays suffered a 4% decline. The FTSE 100 fell 1.4%. The German Dax slumped more than 2% and the Paris Cac was down 2.75%.

The cliffhanger vote saw the maverick comedian Beppe Grillo’s 5 Star movement take almost one in four of the votes and the political revival of the ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. But the narrow victor, Pier Luigi Bersani, on the centre-left, claimed the mantle of the premiership, although it was unclear if he would be able to form a government.

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President Obama’s Sequester Strategy: Divide And Conquer

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Photo Credit: APPresident Barack Obama broke Republicans once on taxes — and his risky strategy for winning the sequester fight assumes he’ll do it again.

He will divide, isolate and defeat Republicans using all the powers of his office and all his skills as a political campaigner. As Americans grow frustrated with the cuts, Republicans will reject their party’s no-tax mantra and demand that Congress end the standoff, even if it means raising some new revenue – just the way Obama is demanding.

Obama’s trying to speed this result, by releasing state by state details of the pain and suffering the sequester will cause, all meant to get Republicans to cave. And he’s got the biggest megaphone, hammering this message over and over in a way the divided Republican party cannot.

Except that message could cut both ways. What if the public agrees that yes, there is a lot of pain and suffering – and turns to Obama wondering, why didn’t you do more to prevent it? That’s what makes some Democrats nervous about the White House’s supreme level of confidence.

Democratic lawmakers, who are unclear about the end game, could succumb to the same public offensive that Obama has been ginning up against Republicans and start demanding that the White House cut its losses and move on to other important second-term initiatives. A GOP proposal to give flexibility to the agency heads on deciding how to administer the cuts could start looking attractive to Democrats as a way out.

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Poll Finds 15-Point Drop In Dem Support For Health Law

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photo credit: andrew aliferisDemocratic support for President Obama’s healthcare law has dropped 15 points since November, contributing to a rise in negative attitudes toward the reform, according to a new poll.

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act currently outnumber supporters (42 percent to 36), according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s (KFF) latest tracking survey. Public opinion has switched back and forth since the law passed in 2010, and in November, support for the law was 4 percent higher than opposition (43 percent to 39).

Kaiser attributed the marked slide in support among Democrats to a “post-presidential election fade.” In November, 72 percent of that group expressed support for the law, compared with 57 percent who feel favorably toward it now.

Unaffiliated voters saw a similar but less dramatic decline in support, with 32 percent approving of the healthcare law compared with 37 percent in November.

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Video: Controversial Pastor Punches Back After Tebow Cancellation, Rips ‘Wimping Out’

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Photo Credit: Alex Trautwig The controversial pastor of a megachurch in Dallas spoke to his congregation on Sunday about “a wild week,” which centered around a scheduled appearance by Jets backup quarterback Tim Tebow.

Tebow canceled his April 28 visit to First Baptist Dallas on Thursday amid a firestorm, sparked by past comments from the church’s head, Dr. Robert Jeffress, who has made headlines for his comments on gays and religions other than Christianity.

On Twitter, Tebow cited “new information” as the reason he scratched the date off his calendar.

Jeffress thanked his supporters during services at First Baptist Dallas, and then appeared to take a swipe at Tebow without using the quarterback’s name.

“I am grateful for men of God like these who are willing to stand up and act like men rather than wimping out when it gets a little controversial and an inconvenient thing to stand for the truth,” Jeffress said on Sunday. “God bless men like that.” The news of Tebow’s cancellation broke last last week while Jeffress was appearing on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas.

Watch video here:

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Will Climate Scamsters Be Jailed for Fraud?

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Photo Credit: WNDIt’s official. What I was howled down and banned for telling the recent U.N. climate conference in Doha is true. There has been no global warming for 17 years.

Rajendra Pachauri, the railroad engineer who heads the U.N.’s accident-prone climate panel, the IPCC, recently admitted this fact here in Australia.

The Hadley/CRU temperature record shows no warming for 18 or 19 years. RSS satellites show none for 23 years. Not one computer model predicted that.

Pachauri said the zero trend would have to persist for 30-40 years before it mattered. Scientists disagree. In 2008 the modelers wrote that more than 14 years without global warming would indicate a “discrepancy” between their predictions and reality. By their own criterion, they have grossly, persistently, profitably exaggerated manmade warming.

The 17-year flatline gives Australia’s $180,000-a-year, part-time climate kommissar, Tim Flannery, a problem. In January he crowed that extreme weather like Sydney’s recent heatwave had been predicted for decades.

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Abdication: Senate GOP Ponders Shifting Power To Obama

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Photo Credit: John Shinkle Days before the March 1 deadline, Senate Republicans are circulating a draft bill that would cancel $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts and instead turn over authority to President Barack Obama to achieve the same level of savings under a plan to be filed by March 8.

Congress would retain the power to overturn the president’s spending plan by March 22, but only under a resolution of disapproval that would demand two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate to prevail over an Obama veto.

The proposal would require — like the sequester — that no more than $42.6 billion of the cuts come at the expense of defense programs. But the elaborate, almost Rube Goldberg construct is already provoking sharp criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike and reflects a political scramble to escape the fallout from the sequester.

Indeed, a rival Republican proposal to instead come up with alternative cuts and not cede power to the president was already circulating Tuesday night, a 31 page draft bill crafted by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.)

The sweep of the first GOP option, which has leadership support, is striking. If Congress were to follow this course, significant power would be shifted to the president, an unusual maneuver that even Obama himself and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have scoffed at. But the plan is being advanced by some conservative Republicans who don’t want the White House to continue using the sequester as a public relations hammer.

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Father Wants School Dress Code Changed After Son Asked To Remove Marines T-Shirt

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Photo Credit: Daniel McIntyre An Illinois father wants a school district to reconsider its dress code after his son was asked to remove a U.S. Marines T-shirt or be suspended, FoxNews.com has learned.

Daniel McIntyre, 44, of Genoa, told FoxNews.com that his 14-year-old son, Michael, was asked to remove the T-shirt by eighth-grade teacher Karen Deverell during reading class at Genoa-Kingston Middle School on Monday. Deverell, citing the school’s dress code, said the garment’s interlocking rifles was problematic and had to be removed from sight, McIntyre said.

“My son is very proud of the Marines, and, in fact, of all the services,” McIntyre said. “So he wears it with pride. There are two rifles crossed underneath the word ‘Marines’ on the shirt, but to me that should be overlooked. It’s more about the Marines instead of the rifles.”

McIntyre said his son was initially threatened with suspension before complying with Deverell’s request to turn it inside out. He has worn the T-shirt to school many times before without incident, McIntyre said.

“He was upset, he couldn’t understand it,” he continued. “He couldn’t understand why a teacher would make him do that.” Brett McPherson, the school’s principal, referred questions to Genoa-Kingston Superintendent Joe Burgess, who reiterated that the shirt is not in violation of the district’s dress policy.

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GOP Blasts Decision To Release Illegal Immigrants Due To Sequester

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore Republicans are condemning the Obama administration’s decision to release several hundred illegal immigrants from detention facilities because of possible funding cuts from the sequester.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) blasted the move and said he would be looking for more information.

“This is very hard for me to believe that they can’t find cuts elsewhere in their agency,” he said in an interview set to air Tuesday night on CBS. “I frankly think this is outrageous. And I’m looking for more facts, but I can’t believe that they can’t find the kind of savings they need out of that department short of letting criminals go free.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said the move jeopardized public safety and cut into the trust Republicans and the White House have tried to cultivate in discussions on immigration reform.

“It’s abhorrent that President Obama is releasing criminals into our communities to promote his political agenda on sequestration,” Goodlatte said in a statement. “By releasing criminal immigrants onto the streets, the administration is needlessly endangering American lives.”

Goodlatte, who will play a key role in the immigration debate as Judiciary’s chairman, said the move “undermines our efforts to come together with the administration and reform our nation’s immigration laws.”

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Palin Donates Iron Dog Winnings to Chris Kyle Memorial Fund

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Todd Palin, the husband of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, donated his winnings from the Iron Dog race in Alaska to the Chris Kyle Memorial Fund. Todd raced with a Chris Kyle decal honoring the fallen American sniper and hero on his snow machine.

“Todd’s race winnings are donated to The Chris Kyle Memorial Fund,” Sarah Palin wrote Saturday evening in a Facebook note. “For the kids and me, we’re proud of our Iron Dogger, especially his dedication to family and freedom.”

. . . The Palins attended Kyle’s funeral on February 11 at Cowboys Stadium in Dallas, Texas and Sarah said President Barack Obama should “pay his respects” to the fallen American hero with a “gesture of condolence,” which Obama has yet to do.

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Federal Court Blocks Fla. Law Requiring Drug Testing For Welfare Recipients

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Photo Credit: LYNNE SLADKYA federal appeals court Tuesday agreed to block enforcement of a Florida law that requires people who apply for welfare to submit to drug testing, calling it an unreasonable search.

The U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta unanimously upheld a lower court’s injunction, which stops drug testing for applicants of the state’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

“The simple act of seeking public assistance does not deprive a TANF applicant of the same constitutional protection from unreasonable searches that all other citizens enjoy,” the judges said.

The ACLU of Florida, with the Florida Justice Institute, challenged the 2011 law on behalf of Luis Lebron, a Navy veteran and single father who applied for welfare to support his 4-year-old son.

“I am thrilled for Luis and his family, and for the thousands of class members he represents, that yet another court has affirmed that all of us are protected from unreasonable, invasive, suspicion-less searches,” Maria Kayanan, associate legal director for the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement. “The state of Florida can’t treat an entire segment of our community like suspected criminals simply because they are poor and are trying to get temporary assistance from the government to support their families.”

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