Glenn Beck Tried to Buy Al Gore’s Current TV but Sold to Al Jazeera Instead

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photo credit: gage skidmore

Before Al-Jazeera, there was Glenn Beck.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Glenn Beck’s media company, The Blaze, approached Current Media about a sale last year, but was told in the words of one source that “the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.”

The Blaze “reached out to them to buy it,” a source familiar with the talks told POLITICO. “They would have replaced Current programming with The Blaze programming, but were told on initial calls that [Current] wouldn’t sell to someone they weren’t ideologically in line with.”

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Why Are People Stocking Up On Guns? Fear Of Government

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A new-year stampede is developing that we have not seen for a long time. Gun stores are swamped with panicking customers. They are looking for handguns, semiautomatic rifles and as much ammunition as they can afford.

But buyers are not just camouflaged hunters, conspiracy theorists and gun hoarders. Instead, many of those purchasing firearms and ammo are so-called ordinary people, convinced that this administration will soon begin to centrally register — then ban — far more than assault rifles.

There were probably lots of reasons Adam Lanza shot 26 innocent children and adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

But so far the government and media are not focusing much on his prior obsessions with violent video games, on society’s seeming inability to hospitalize the unstable or on the crude violence peddled in Hollywood and through popular music that portrays shooting people as a sort of cheap fantasy without consequences.

Instead, the administration is zeroing in on the ability of Lanza’s mother to legally buy semiautomatic weapons that her son then stole to murder her and the schoolchildren and employees.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hobby Lobby CEO: “Government Cannot Force You to Follow Laws That Go Against Your … Religious Belief”

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When my family and I started our company 40 years ago, we were working out of a garage on a $600 bank loan, assembling miniature picture frames. Our first retail store wasn’t much bigger than most people’s living rooms, but we had faith that we would succeed if we lived and worked according to God’s word. From there, Hobby Lobby has become one of the nation’s largest arts and crafts retailers, with more than 500 locations in 41 states. Our children grew up into fine business leaders, and today we run Hobby Lobby together, as a family.

We’re Christians, and we run our business on Christian principles. I’ve always said that the first two goals of our business are (1) to run our business in harmony with God’s laws, and (2) to focus on people more than money. And that’s what we’ve tried to do. We close early so our employees can see their families at night. We keep our stores closed on Sundays, one of the week’s biggest shopping days, so that our workers and their families can enjoy a day of rest. We believe that it is by God’s grace that Hobby Lobby has endured, and he has blessed us and our employees. We’ve not only added jobs in a weak economy, we’ve raised wages for the past four years in a row. Our full-time employees start at 80% above minimum wage.

But now, our government threatens to change all of that. A new government health care mandate says that our family business MUST provide what I believe are abortion-causing drugs as part of our health insurance. Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions, which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs. It goes against the Biblical principles on which we have run this company since day one. If we refuse to comply, we could face $1.3 million PER DAY in government fines.

Our government threatens to fine job creators in a bad economy. Our government threatens to fine a company that’s raised wages four years running. Our government threatens to fine a family for running its business according to its beliefs. It’s not right. I know people will say we ought to follow the rules; that it’s the same for everybody. But that’s not true. The government has exempted thousands of companies from this mandate, for reasons of convenience or cost. But it won’t exempt them for reasons of religious belief.

So, Hobby Lobby and my family are forced to make a choice. With great reluctance, we filed a lawsuit today, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, asking a federal court to stop this mandate before it hurts our business. We don’t like to go running into court, but we no longer have a choice. We believe people are more important than the bottom line and that honoring God is more important than turning a profit.

My family has lived the American dream. We want to continue growing our company and providing great jobs for thousands of employees, but the government is going to make that much more difficult. The government is forcing us to choose between following our faith and following the law. I say that’s a choice no American and no American business should have to make.

The government cannot force you to follow laws that go against your fundamental religious belief. They have exempted thousands of companies but will not except Christian organizations including the Catholic church.

Since you will not see this covered in any of the liberal media, pass this on to all your contacts.

University Hosts Former Most-Wanted Criminal Suspect/Communist/Black Panther for “Great Conversations” Series

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Angela Davis, a retired professor, political activist and the third woman ever named to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, will be in Grand Forks Feb. 6 as a diversity speaker selected by the UND University Program Council.

Davis will be part of UND’s “Great Conversations” program; a faculty member will interview her at 7 p.m. at Chester Fritz Auditorium. The event will be free and open to the public.

Davis, 68, a distinguished professor emerita in the History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, became a nationally recognized activist in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party with close relations to the Black Panther Party.

Read more from this story HERE.

Day Traders: How Congress, Wall Street and the Media Traded America’s Future for the Next Short Term Fix

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If someone had woken you from a dead sleep 20 years ago and asked what the Republican Party stood for, you would’ve had no trouble answering: Fiscal restraint, a strong national defense and lower taxes. Those were the three pillars of the GOP. The party’s brand was clear. Voters understood it, and many approved. In the days before Obama, Republicans won seven out of ten presidential elections.

Things have changed for the muddier. Scratch the surface and you’ll find there is no longer a consensus among Republicans on foreign policy. Fiscal restraint? Years of earmarks, record deficits and at least one new federal entitlement under Republican congresses make that idea a bitter joke.

Of the three principles that have united the party since Reagan, only taxes remain. Republicans have been able to claim — sincerely, and with continuing success at the ballot box — that they are for lower taxes. Until Tuesday.

Here’s what happened: For reasons that aren’t entirely clear but are probably related to panic and a basic lack of principle, the Speaker of the House and other Republicans in Congress signed on to Democratic calls for “balance” between tax hikes and spending cuts — this despite the overwhelming evidence that spending is the real problem.

So, even before the negotiation began, they abandoned decades of principle on taxes. The result: Two months later, we have a deal, but no balance. It’s all tax hikes. Zero spending cuts. Nice job.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hezbollah Joining Cartels in Mexico’s War

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The Mexican Drug War has killed an estimated 60,000 people since 2006, but the violence has stayed out of the minds of most US citizens. That is about to change as Islamic extremist groups setting up shop in Mexico.

The House Committee on Homeland Security released a November 2012 report that reveals Islamic terror organizations and networks are indeed exploiting profits from narcotics, and the ease of weapons attainment, and the vast technological abilities of Mexican and other southern cartels that are thriving in Mexico’s lawlessness, along with other southern regions. The report, titled A Line In The Sand: Countering Crime, Violence, and Terror at the Southwest Border, details the growing involvement of Iran and Hezbollah in Mexico and other countries south of the southern US border.

“In 2006, the Subcommittee reported on the presence of both Iran and Hezbollah in Latin America. Since then, that presence has continued to grow with Iran now having embassies in 11 Latin American countries that include Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua and Uruguay.

This unsettling trend was the reason for a Subcommittee-led Congressional Delegation to Latin America in August 2012. The Delegation traveled to Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay, Argentina, as well as the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, for a first- hand assessment of the increasing threat posed by Iran and Hezbollah in Latin America.”

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Al Gore and Partners Sell Current TV . . . to Al Jazeera

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photo credit: mooks262

Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news giant, has long tried to convince Americans that it is a legitimate news organization, not a parrot of Middle Eastern propaganda or something more sinister.

It just bought itself 40 million more chances to make its case.

Al Jazeera on Wednesday announced a deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore, a former vice president, and his business partners seven years ago. Al Jazeera plans to shut Current and start an English-language channel, which will be available in more than 40 million homes, with newscasts emanating from both New York and Doha, Qatar.

For Al Jazeera, which is financed by the government of Qatar, the acquisition is a coming of age moment. A decade ago, Al Jazeera’s flagship Arabic-language channel was reviled by American politicians for showing videotapes from Al Qaeda members and sympathizers. Now the news operation is buying an American channel, having convinced Mr. Gore and the other owners of Current that it has the journalistic muscle and the money to compete head-to-head with CNN and other news channels in the United States.

Al Jazeera did not disclose the purchase price, but people with direct knowledge of the deal pegged it at around $500 million, indicating a $100 million payout for Mr. Gore, who owned 20 percent of Current. Mr. Gore and his partners were eager to complete the deal by Dec. 31, lest it be subject to higher tax rates that took effect on Jan. 1, according to several people who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. But the deal was not signed until Wednesday.

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Obama’s Tax Evaders of the Year

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President Obama will kick off the new year the same way that he kicked off the old year: by demanding that the wealthy pay their “fair share” in taxes. But while millions of small-business owners, struggling entrepreneurs, inventors, and investors brace for a double whammy of fiscal-cliff tax hikes and new Obamacare taxes, the class-warrior-in-chief’s richest pals are getting a pass.

It’s a golden pass for liberal millionaires and billionaires who support higher Obama taxes for everyone but themselves. Meet the Democratic tax evaders of the year.

Google. The left-wing Internet giant provided Silicon Valley’s biggest campaign-finance boost to Obama, with individual-employee donations supporting the tax-hiking candidate by a ratio of more than 31-to-1. Google rank-and-file workers pitched in some $800,000 to Obama. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, co-founder Sergey Brin, chief legal officer and senior vice president David Drummond, and vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vint Cerf are all vocal Obama supporters and top donors.

In December, Google’s Netherlands subsidiary disclosed in a tax filing that it had shifted nearly $10 billion in revenues to a Bermuda shell company. That’s “almost double the total from three years before,” according to Bloomberg News. In response to criticism, Google defended the scheme as a legal response to government incentives. “It’s called capitalism,” Schmidt snarked defiantly.

Wonder what all of Obama’s operatives and media lapdogs who bashed evil, selfish Republican offshore tax havens have to say about that? Cue crickets chirping.

Read more from this article HERE.

Video: Mark Steyn: Biden-McConnell Fiscal Cliff Negotiation ‘Deeply Embarrassing,’ ‘A Mark of Shame’

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(DC) On Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade & Friends” on Wednesday, National Review columnist Mark Steyn expressed strong dissatisfaction with the process that led to Tuesday’s fiscal cliff agreement.

“I think it ought to be deeply embarrassing to any developed society that 300 million people are sitting there on Monday, and they don’t know what their tax rates are going to be on Tuesday,” Steyn said. “That’s the mark of shame.”

Steyn, the author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” told host Brian Kilmeade that the fiscal cliff negotiations resembled a scene from the Soviet Union.

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Photo of Baby Reaching Out From Womb During C-Section Goes Viral

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A new photo of a baby reaching out of the womb and holding a doctor’s finger during a Caesarian section delivery has gone viral and is being passed around Facebook by tens of thousands of people.

A Phoenix-area couple took the picture during the delivery of Nevaeh — Heaven spelled backward — and a local news report says even the physician and hospital nursing staff were surprised by what unfolded.

“It was such an amazing photo. [Hospital staff] had possibly heard of it happening but they had never seen a photo of it,” said Alicia Atkins, Nevaeh’s mother.

Few lives will be as well documented as little Nevaeh’s. Her mother is a professional photographer who owns A Classic Pin-Up in Glendale. However, it was her dad, Randy, who snapped the picture.

Read more from this story HERE.