University Settles Case with Student Kicked Out of Program for Christian Beliefs

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DETROIT (LifeSiteNews.com) – A nearly three-year ordeal has come to an end for a Christian psychology student kicked out of a public university’s program because she would not compromise her belief that homosexuality is sinful.

Eastern Michigan University has settled out of court with Julea Ward. In March 2009, the Ypsilanti-based university ejected her from its graduate counseling program because she would not affirm a patient’s homosexual lifestyle. Ward said her deeply held religious beliefs would not make her a good counselor for this person and that she wished to make a referral to another counselor.

Instead, EMU forced her into a “remediation” program designed to change her “belief system.” She responded by filing Ward v. Wilbanks.

Under the terms of the settlement, the university will pay Ward an undisclosed monetary settlement, and the expulsion will be stricken from her record.

U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh agreed to dismiss the suit with prejudice on Monday.

Read more from this story HERE.

Welcome to QE4!

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photo credit: dctim1

The actions of the Federal Reserve over the past 4 years exemplify insanity more than anything else in politics. They continue implementing one monetary stimulus policy after another in an attempt to jumpstart the economy, even though they keep failing in that goal. We had QE1,2,3 and Operations Twist 1 and 2. Now the Fed’s Open Market Committee has announced a new monetary stimulus package that can only be described as QE4.

Evidently, the economy was recovering enough for Obama to win reelection, but not enough to end the market distorting, dollar-destroying stimulus from the unelected governors at the Fed. So not only will the Fed continue purchasing $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities per month, they will engage in another round of buying long-term treasuries:

“To support a stronger economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at the rate most consistent with its dual mandate, the Committee will continue purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month. The Committee also will purchase longer-term Treasury securities after its program to extend the average maturity of its holdings of Treasury securities is completed at the end of the year, initially at a pace of $45 billion per month. The Committee is maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities and, in January, will resume rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction. Taken together, these actions should maintain downward pressure on longer-term interest rates, support mortgage markets, and help to make broader financial conditions more accommodative.”

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“There Will Be Blood”: Union Violence in the Age of Obama

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photo credit: soulstealer.co.uk

Not so many moons ago, President Obama urged us all to “make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.” He Who Heals advocated “a more civil and honest public discourse” in the wake of the January 2011 Tucson massacre. As usual, though, the White House has granted Big Labor bullies a permanent waiver from the lofty edicts it issues to everyone else.

This week, menacing union goons unleashed threats, profanity and punches in Michigan, which is now poised to become a “right-to-work” state. Obama met the initial outbreak of violence with the same response he’s given to every other union outbreak of violence under his reign: dead silence.

On the floor of the Michigan legislature on Tuesday, Democratic state Rep. Douglas Geiss thundered: “We’re going to pass something that will undo 100 years of labor relations, and there will be blood. There will be repercussions!” Geiss referenced the Battle of the Overpass, a violent 1937 incident between the United Auto Workers and corporate security officers for the Ford Motor Company. Dozens of union activists were beaten.

But Geiss wasn’t crying victim. This was clearly a signal to the brass-knuckled Big Labor bosses, whom Obama egged on during his Monday visit to the state. Obama inveighed against right to work with his usual class warfare dog-whistle. The thugs heard it loud and clear.

As the Michigan House voted inside to approve right-to-work legislation allowing workers to choose whether or not to join/fund unions as a condition of employment, protesters outside the state Capitol ambushed a tented information booth sponsored by the pro-right-to-work state chapter of Americans for Prosperity. Angry union mobsters were filmed cursing and screaming just before the attack.

Read more from this article HERE.

The Sebelius Coverup

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Many states are wisely signaling that they aren’t interested in doing the Obama administration’s bidding on Obamacare. As a result, many if not most of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges — the heart of the beast — will have to be set up and run by the Obama administration at the federal level.

States are not required to set up Obamacare exchanges, but it seems to have surprised observers that many are choosing not to. Politico reports that, with only 17 states so far having said they will set up the exchanges, the “Department of Health and Human Services’s role in bringing the law to life is going to be a lot bigger than originally thought.” More than a third of all states have already said they won’t set up the Obamacare exchanges. Among others, Republican governors Scott Walker, John Kasich, Sam Brownback, Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley, Nathan Deal, Paul LePage, Robert Bentley, Mary Fallin, and Sean Parnell have said they’ll refuse to set up the exchanges in their states.

In Missouri, voters took matters into their own hands, approving a ballot measure to vest authority over the decision in the Republican-led state legislature, rather than leaving it up to the Democratic governor. Missouri will not be establishing an exchange. Utah governor Gary Herbert, meanwhile, has opted for a sort of mild civil disobedience, saying that his state will continue to pursue “our version of an exchange based on defined contribution, consumer choice, and free markets” — a type of exchange that is rather plainly banned by Obamacare.

States’ refusal to be complicit in this crucial aspect of Obamacare should shine a spotlight on the development of the federal exchanges — and what it illuminates won’t be pretty.

The Obama administration’s congressional allies botched the drafting of this aspect of the health care overhaul, as the plain language of Obamacare doesn’t empower federal exchanges to distribute taxpayer-funded subsidies to individuals; it empowers only state-based exchanges to distribute the subsidies. (The administration pretends otherwise.) Moreover, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is lagging behind in developing the federal exchanges.

Read more from this story HERE.

It’s Good to be Connected: Goldman Sachs’ Miniscule CFTC Fine Is A Joke

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photo credit: erikdanieldrost

Last week, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) slapped Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) with a $1.5 million fine over inadequate control measures in its trading system which allowed an employee to falsify trades worth $8.3 billion in 2007. (CFTC Orders Goldman, Sachs & Co., a Commission Registrant, to Pay $1.5 Million for Supervision Failures, CFTC Press Releases, Dec 7 2012)) Goldman lost $118 million in the process of unwinding the positions.

We believe the global investment bank has been lucky on both fronts: while the fine amount in itself is too small to be material to the bank, the loss from the position is but a fraction of what the bank could have potentially lost. After all, we have witnessed the damage that wrong multi-billion dollar trading decisions by a single individual can do to a bank’s reputation and business on two distinct occasions in the recent past – the unauthorized trading incident at UBS (NYSE:UBS) last year (see Questionable Risk Controls Cost UBS More than Rogue Trades) and the hedging portfolio loss at JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) this June (see JPMorgan’s Trading Losses Could Climb, Sold Profitable Securities To Cushion Impact).

We maintain a $127 price estimate for Goldman’s stock, which is about 5% above the current market price.

Read more from this story HERE.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder Signs Right to Work Legislation Into Law

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It’s official: Michigan has become the 24th Right to Work state:

At a news conference at the George W. Romney Building steps away from the state Capitol, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) announced that he’d signed the contentious right-to-work measures that have sparked protests in the state.

Before dozens of reporters assembled inside a conference room on the building’s second floor, Snyder defended his move as one that would lead to ”more jobs coming to Michigan.”

The two bills bar unions from making contracts that require employees to pay labor dues. One bill dealt with public sector unions, exempting firefighters and police officers. The other covered the private sector.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Military Sends Mystery Space Drone back Into Orbit, Mission Unknown

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The U.S. military launched its highly secretive unmanned $1 billion X-37B space plane into orbit today from Cape Canaveral on top of an Atlas V rocket.

The U.S. Air Force which operates the small, top-secret version of the space shuttle still will not say how long the third X-37B mission will last, nor what the vehicle will be doing in orbit.

Cloud coverage in the area had threatened to scupper today’s launch, but the skies cleared sufficiently for the classified mission to take-off on time at 1.03 p.m from the Florida space center.

It is the second flight for this original X-37B spaceplane. The craft circled the planet for seven months in 2010. A second X-37B spacecraft spent more than a year in orbit.

The high-tech mystery machines – 29 feet long – are about one-quarter the size of NASA’s old space shuttles and can land automatically on a runway.

The two previous touchdowns occurred in Southern California; this one might end on NASA’s three-mile-long runway once reserved for the space agency’s shuttles.

The military isn’t saying much if anything about this new secret mission known as OTV-3, or Orbital Test Vehicle, flight No. 3. In fact, launch commentary ended 17 minutes into the flight and a news blackout followed.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Obama Jobs Council Chairman Says ‘State-Run Communism Works’

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photo credit: eschipul

Yes, that’s right! The Chairman of Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness said it.

In a discussion with Charlie Rose this week, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt actually defended the Chicoms’ model of government. Little wonder that he was appointed by Obama, given that numerous White House appointees have confessed to being admirers of Chairman Mao.

But why shouldn’t Immelt do the president’s bidding. The system has worked well for him. What big business wouldn’t want a crony directed economy in which one’s corporation had to pay zero taxes, while the competition had to pay the highest corporate tax rate in the world?

What’s not to like about the command and control model of economics, if your crony runs the government and wields it to your advantage?

You have to see this to believe it. Our President’s pick to head his jobs council said this:

Sotomayor Memoir: Husband Brought Bag of Quaaludes to Wedding Night, Unknowingly Drove Cousin to Shoot Up Heroin

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says in her upcoming memoir that her lifelong battle against diabetes and the fear that she might die early played a big part in her decision not to have children.

The 58-year-old Sotomayor says in an unusually personal book for a Supreme Court justice that she feels an occasional tug of regret at not having borne or adopted children. The memoir, “My Beloved World,” is being published by Alfred A. Knopf in January. An early copy was sent by the publisher to The Associated Press.

Sotomayor also defends affirmative action — under which she was admitted to Princeton University and Yale Law School — as needed to get disadvantaged students to the starting line of a race to success. She grew up so poor in the South Bronx that her family never even had a bank account.

She acknowledges she entered through a special door reserved for minority students but writes that her accomplishments at Princeton, including receiving the highest prize given to seniors, earning a place in the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and graduating with highest honors, speak for themselves.

Sotomayor received an advance of nearly $1.2 million for the book, which Knopf will publish simultaneously in English and Spanish. The book does not deal with the more than three years Sotomayor has served as a justice or the previous 17 years she spent as a U.S. district and appeals court judge.

Read more from this story HERE.

NBC Must Pay for the High Tech Lynching of George Zimmerman

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If it had been up to NBC and the prosecutor in the Trayvon Martin shooting, George Zimmerman would have already been seated in Florida’s notorious “Old Sparky.”

Edited and doctored tapes of a 911 call between George Zimmerman and police dispatchers by NBC news, were used to make it look as if George Zimmerman was a racist and his shooting of Trayvon Martin racially motivated.

On top of that, just released colored photos of George Zimmerman, right after his confrontation with Trayvon Martin, graphically show a bloodied and battered George Zimmermanm. A stark contrast from the previously released black and white photos by the Florida prosecutor that did not show the extent of Zimmerman’s facial injuries.

This type of evidence should have been willingly given to Zimmermans legal team by the Florida prosecutor. But it took months of legal maneuvering to get these pictures, which hugely bolsters Zimmermans account that he acted in self defense.Even famed legal expert Alan Dershowitz thinks the prosecution against Zimmerman has been acting unethically.

If the public and Zimmermans defense team had access to these photos originally, many legal experts doubt charges could have been rightfully filed against Zimmerman in the first place. There is absolutely no doubt that if these color photos of Zimmermans beaten and bloodied face taken shortly after his confrontation with Martin would have been revealed, it would have defused the racial tensions that were boiling over.

But fortunately for Mr. Zimmerman, a brilliant attorney has come to his defense and is unraveling the web of innuendo, slander and withheld evidence being used against him. Mark O’Mara has taken command of this case and will make sure George Zimmerman isn’t the state of Floridas, or main stream medias, sacrificial goat.

In a lawsuit filed a few days ago against NBC, the Zimmerman legal team stated:

“NBC saw the death of Trayvon Martin not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to increase ratings, and so set about to create the myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain.” “Because of NBC’s deceptive and exploitative manipulations, the public wrongly believes that Zimmerman used a racial epithet while describing Martin during the call to the dispatcher on that fateful night,” the suit says.

The lawsuit accuses NBC of sensationalizing/manipulating a “racial powder keg that would result in months, if not years, of topics for their failing news program, particularly the plummeting ratings for their ailing Today Show.”

The edited recordings included “multiple deletions, removed intervening dialogue between Zimmerman and the dispatcher, and juxtaposed unrelated content “to make it appear that Zimmerman was a racist, and that he was racially profiling Trayvon Martin,” the lawsuit says.

If Mark O’Mara can prove his charges against NBC, we hope he can get a huge payday for his client as well as himself. NBC got caught trying to pervert the news we receive and manipulate public opinion.

If it is found that the Florida prosecutor willingly withheld crucial evidence in order to weaken George Zimmermans defense and cast him in a false light, then Mr. Zimmerman should demand justice for himself.

We saw another prosecutors office try to railroad innocent people into prison with withheld and manipulated evidence, in order to make a name for himself and gain political favor. North Carolina District Attorney Ken Nifong was disbarred and put in jail for withholding evidence that would have proved Duke Lacrosse team members to be innocent of charges.

Attorney Mark O’Mara is no slouch and is probably already sounding the alarm bells in this case against his client. What other evidence has this prosecutor failed to provide him in his defense of George Zimmerman?

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.