Saudi Cleric Confesses To Murdering 5-Year-Old Daughter Over Virginity Concerns – Gets A Fine And Brief Jail Time

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: The BlazeA prominent Saudi cleric has received a light prison sentence after confessing to beating his 5-year-old daughter to death over concerns about her virginity.

Saudi media reports say Fayhan al-Ghamdi, a frequent guest on Islamic television programs, also raped his daughter before being charged with murder in November.

Gulf News has some of the horrifying details: “[5-year-old] Lama Al Ghamdi was admitted to hospital on December 25, 2011 with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, extensive bruising and burns, the activists said. She died last October 22.

Fayhan Al Gamdi, an Islamic preacher and regular guest on Muslim television networks, confessed to having used cables and a cane to inflict the injuries, the activists from the group “Women to Drive” said in a statement.

They said the father had doubted Lama’s virginity and had her checked up by a medic.”

Read more from this story HERE.

The President Shoots??

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Bruce KrastingAnyway, I know a thing or two about skeet shooting. In this sport you have beginner shooters who don’t really know what they are doing, you have amateurs that are “regular” shooters who take it seriously, and you have guys and gals that shoot 25 out of 25, again and again.

The following is a picture of a person who has not shot skeet before. This person doesn’t know how to hold the gun properly. This person is going to get a big recoil in the arm that will hurt. No one has bothered to show this person how to hold a gun. This person has not been taught how to position the body to make a successful shot. This person has no chance of hitting a moving target. This person is not wearing the proper clothing for a skeet range (padded vest that has pockets for 25 shells). This person is pretending to shoot skeet. This is a photo-op:

I don’t mean to make fun of the President’s shooting skills. New shooters are always welcome on skeet ranges. I’m glad to see the Prez give this sport a shot, so to speak.

But the spin from the White House on this story is that Obama is banging away every weekend and he is an avid shooter. The president was quoted:

“I do it all the time”

Read more from this story HERE.

Famed Navy SEAL Chris Kyle Murdered at Gun Range in N. Texas

/38 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: G Laury PhotographyGLEN ROSE, Texas — A former U.S. Navy SEAL who gained recognition during the Iraq War was one of two people fatally shot southwest of Fort Worth on Saturday, KHOU 11 News has learned.

Sources close to the investigation identified the former SEAL as Chris Kyle, 39, author of the New York Times bestselling book, “American Sniper.”

Kyle was shot point-blank while helping another soldier who was recovering from post traumatic stress syndrome, officials said. The murders happened at a shooting range near the town of Glen Rose, about 53 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

The Erath County Sheriff’s Office issued an alert for the arrest of the suspect, who was later identified as Eddie Routh, 25. Officials warned that Routh was traveling in a Ford F-150 pickup with large tires and rims. They said he was believed to be highly trained with military experience.

Routh was reportedly later captured in Lancaster, south of Dallas.

Read more from this story HERE.

One Hundred Years of Income Tax

/8 Comments/in , /by

Sunday, February 3, is the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, which makes it the one hundredth birthday of the income tax. It has grown rather ill-tempered in its dotage.

Americans for Tax Reform commemorated the occasion by publishing a few fun facts about the income tax. Among other interesting statistics, the initial top tax bracket was only 7 percent, and it didn’t kick in until income reached a whopping $11.6 million in 2013 dollars. Only 358,000 people had to fill out 1040 forms at first, because the standard family deduction was an adjusted $93,000.

Over the past hundred years, the tax code has swelled from 400 pages to almost 74,000. The top rate is 39.6 percent; add in state and local taxes, and you’ve got the government soaking up over half of every marginal dollar earned by the Evil Rich. And the top bracket crashes down on those who earn over $450k, which is the new functional definition of a “millionaire.” Every new tax – from the income tax itself, to the Alternative Minimum Tax and its prospective stepchild, the “Buffett Rule” – is sold as a small levy on the vast wealth of millionaires. The AMT was only supposed to affect a couple of hundred people when it was implemented in 1969, but now it’s on the verge of grabbing 50 million taxpayers, if it’s not “fixed.” In the early years of the income tax, Americans were likewise assured that it would only slip a few dollars from the bulging wallets of the wealthy.

Allowing the government to sink its feeding tubes into the veins of American income has fueled astonishing government growth. That first itty bitty tax levy brought in a paltry $16.6 billion in revenue, adjusted for the past century of inflation. Today the income tax brings in $2.7 trillion. Government inevitably grows to fill, and exceed, the space made available for it.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this tax is the way it is collected. As we were all reminded during the row over presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s remarks about the “47 percent,” the “progressive” tax system has moved an increasingly large cohort of Americans out of the system entirely, while placing an ever-greater share of the burden upon a dwindling group of high wage earners. Remarkably, this group is perpetually accused of “greed” and refusing to pay its “fair share,” even though the relationship between its tax burden and the amount of income it earns has long since exceeded any reasonable definition of “fairness.” Even before the new Obama tax increases kicked in, the Heritage Foundation noted that the top 10 percent of income earners were carrying 71 percent of the federal income tax burden, even though they earned only 43 percent of all income. The bottom 50 percent, meanwhile, earned 13 percent of all income but paid only 2 percent of the income tax.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Radical Friends: OFA 2.0 Considering Merger with Radical Left-Wing Groups

/6 Comments/in , /by

The new Obama advocacy nonprofit Organizing for Action is reportedly considering a merger with a left-wing umbrella group whose financiers have ties to Palestinian terrorists and Central American Marxists.

The Common Purpose Project (CPP), an affiliation of left-wing activist groups, may merge with Organizing for Action, the new 501(c)4 iteration of the Obama campaign’s 527 group, Organizing for America.

The Common Purpose Project held periodic meetings attended by top liberal groups during President Barack Obama’s first term. Top White House officials regularly attended the meetings and the president himself has even attended one.

Erik Smith and Laura Burton Capps—CPP’s founder and the group’s managing director, respectively—have reportedly attended at least 50 “planning sessions” at the White House.

Among CPP’s donors are Sandor and Faye Straus, founders of the left-wing Firedoll Foundation. The couple has funneled money to a host of radical organizations through Firedoll.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senate Plan Would Give Napolitano Final Say on Border Security

/24 Comments/in , /by

Under a bipartisan Senate framework, Democrats say, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano would have final say over whether the border is secure enough to put 11 million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship.

If Napolitano does not provide the green light for putting illegal immigrants on a pathway to citizenship, the responsibility for judging whether the metrics for border security have been met will be given to her successor.

The early debate over immigration reform has yielded two thorny questions: What metrics will be used to determine whether the goals for border security and other safeguards against illegal immigration have been met? Who will decide whether the metrics have been achieved?

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the lead Democratic sponsor of the bipartisan immigration reform framework unveiled this past week, said Napolitano should decide.

“What we’ve proposed is that the DHS secretary, whomever it is, will have final say on [whether] whatever metrics we proposes are met,” Schumer said. “We think those metrics will be quite objective.”

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Creative Accounting’ at the Federal Reserve?

/1 Comment/in , /by

As the story goes, the Federal Reserve”made” $91 billion dollars last year, sending $89 billion of that to the U.S. Treasury. Until 2008, about the only earning assets the Fed owned were U.S. Treasury bonds.

Let’s stick with that for the moment.

The interest the Fed earns on those bonds is paid by the U.S. Treasury! The Fed keeps 1 percent of the earnings to pay its rent and sends the rest back to the Treasury. So every dollar the Treasury pays to the Fed is returned, less a 1 cent handling cost. So the interest cost the Treasury incurs is magically turned into Treasury income!

There is no limit in principle to the amount of Treasury debt the Fed can buy so it can makes lots of money!! The Fed has increased its assets by over $2 trillion since 2007, a real money-maker!

Yes, the Fed has also purchased a lot of mortgage backed securities, but those have a Treasury guarantee, so same deal, in terms of who bears the risk, but of course mortgage holders are paying the interest and giving it to the Treasury (that lent them the money in the end).

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Petition Demands Secret Service be Replaced by Gun-Free Zone

/8 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Saul Loeb/Getty ImagesA petition demanding that the Secret Service be replaced by a floating gun-free zone has crossed the original threshold for White House action, a blog post at Weasel Zippers said Monday.

“Gun Free Zones are supposed to protect our children, and some politicians wish to strip us of our right to keep and bear arms,” the petition says. “Those same politicians and their families are currently under the protection of armed Secret Service agents. If Gun Free Zones are sufficient protection for our children, then Gun Free Zones should be good enough for politicians.”

As of this writing, the petition has over 31,000 signatures. Unfortunately, the White House recently increased the threshold for action from 25,000 to 100,000 signatures.

Since the Sandy Hook shooting, the concept of gun-free zones has come under fire. For critics, the designations amount to little more than a magnet for criminals with guns. The signs announcing gun-free zones, for them, are nothing more than an invitation to armed criminals.

Read more from this story HERE.

Source: Obama ‘Couldn’t Have Been More Uncomfortable’ at Skeet Shooting Event

/11 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: jurvetsonIn a recent interview with The New Republic, President Obama claimed that he goes skeet shooting “all the time” while at Camp David. But a source who said he has been to the retreat on a half-dozen visits with the president said that’s not the case, Fox News reported Wednesday.

“The only time he shot skeet was for President’s Cup,” the unnamed source told Fox News, referring to a shooting competition tradition involving the president’s Marine guards. “I was there. He stayed for about five minutes, and couldn’t leave fast enough.”

The source told Fox that shooting skeet “is very hard.”

“Especially for someone not used to guns … He couldn’t have been more uncomfortable,” the source said.

Complicating matters is a report at the Washington Post fact-checker that noted Obama’s silence on his alleged fondness for the sport.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Faces Tough Sell With Sheriffs on Gun Control

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Washington ExamerPresident Obama will travel to Minnesota on Monday with hopes of building support in the law enforcement community for his set of gun control initiatives.

However, public safety officials outside urban pockets are increasingly hostile toward a sweeping set of proposals they say would do nothing to curtail violence.

As the details of Obama’s gun plan emerged — a ban on assault weapons, a prohibition on high-capacity ammunition clips and universal background checks — urban law enforcement officials were among the most vocal proponents of the blueprint. However, over time, police officials in suburban and rural areas have expressed misgivings, with some becoming outspoken critics of the president’s ideas.

That cultural gap has remained, and some analysts said it has become imperative for Obama to at least partially bridge it. ,/p>

“It’s essential for advocates of gun control to have the support of the law enforcement community,” said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of the book “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.” “Americans are willing to give so much deference to first responders, but the problem is that many in law enforcement don’t think the president’s ideas are aimed at crime.”

Read more from this story HERE.