Public Nudity Ban Eyed in Fed-up San Francisco

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photo credit: APSAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco may be getting ready to shed its image as a city where anything goes, including clothing.

City lawmakers are scheduled to vote Tuesday on an ordinance that would prohibit nudity in most public places, a blanket ban that represents an escalation of a two-year tiff between a devoted group of men who strut their stuff through the city’s famously gay Castro District and the supervisor who represents the area.

Supervisor Scott Wiener’s proposal would make it illegal for a person over the age of 5 to “expose his or her genitals, perineum or anal region on any public street, sidewalk, street median, parklet or plaza” or while using public transit.

A first offense would carry a maximum penalty of a $100 fine, but prosecutors would have authority to charge a third violation as a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $500 fine and a year in jail. Exemptions would be made for participants at permitted street fairs and parades, such as the city’s annual gay pride event and the Folsom Street Fair, which celebrates sadomasochism and other sexual subcultures.

Wiener said he resisted introducing the ordinance, but felt compelled to act after constituents complained about the naked men who gather in a small Castro plaza most days and sometimes walk the streets au naturel. He persuaded his colleagues last year to pass a law requiring a cloth to be placed between public seating and bare rears, yet the complaints have continued.

Read more from this story HERE.

Retiring Ron Paul to Make His Case for Liberty on College Campuses Next Year

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photo credit: gage skidmoreRetiring Rep. Ron Paul plans to deliver speeches on college campuses next year and beyond, continuing his message of liberty and reducing the size of the federal government.

In an interview with The Hill, the Texas Republican clearly indicated that he isn’t ready for the rocking chair.

The 77-year-old physician-politician said, “I’m excited about spending more time on college campuses, not less. College campuses will still be on my agenda. That’s where the action is.”

He added, “The young people don’t like the debt they are inheriting, the violation of their civil liberties. They don’t like the war and it’s a fertile field. The people up here sort of ignore them.”

During the 2012 GOP presidential primary campaign, Paul said that he visited at least 36 college campuses. He was surprised that the best turnout occurred at the historically liberal bastion, U.C. Berkeley, where 8,500 students attended his event.

Read more from this story HERE.

Iran Hacks Into Israel’s Military: ‘Gaza will become the graveyard of your soldiers’

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photo credit: _skender_The terrorist group Islamic Jihad, which answers to Iran, has launched a massive cyber attack on the Israeli army in the wake of fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

According to Mashregh, an Iranian media outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards, Islamic Jihad’s Beitol Moghadas (Jerusalem) unit obtained detailed information on 5,000 high-ranking Israeli military personnel. The information includes names, telephone numbers, addresses, emails and rankings, even within the Israeli intelligence division.

The Islamic Jihad unit then emailed those Israeli personnel that it obtained their personal information and that “Gaza will become the graveyard of your soldiers and Tel Aviv a ball of fire,” Mashregh said.

Mashregh published information on 92 of the Israelis, but it also attached a downloadable file with information on the rest of the military personnel.

Reuters reported from Jerusalem Sunday that the Israeli government has come under a massive cyber attack since the Gaza conflict broke out last week. More than 44 million hacking attempts have been made on various Israeli government sites since Wednesday.

Read more from this story HERE.

Investment Falls Off a Cliff

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U.S. companies are scaling back investment plans at the fastest pace since the recession, signaling more trouble for the economic recovery.

Half of the nation’s 40 biggest publicly traded corporate spenders have announced plans to curtail capital expenditures this year or next, according to a review by The Wall Street Journal of securities filings and conference calls.

Nationwide, business investment in equipment and software—a measure of economic vitality in the corporate sector—stalled in the third quarter for the first time since early 2009. Corporate investment in new buildings has declined.

At the same time, exports are slowing or falling to such critical markets as China and the euro zone as the global economy downshifts, creating another drag on firms’ expansion plans.

Corporate executives say they are slowing or delaying big projects to protect profits amid easing demand and rising uncertainty. Uncertainty around the U.S. elections and federal budget policies also appear among the factors driving the investment pullback since midyear. It is unclear whether Washington will avert the so-called fiscal cliff, tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to begin Jan. 2.

Read more from this story HERE.

A View From Israel: Gaza Missiles Launching from Oslo

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[Editor’s note: This article was written by Moshe Feiglin, regarded by some as a Tea Party leader in Israel. In this article, Mr. Feiglin describes his conversation with residents of Sderot, a southern Israel community adjacent to Gaza that Joe Miller visited this past fall. Sderot has been hit by many missiles from Gaza this past week]

On Tuesday of this week, I was at a campaign rally in Sderot. “I would like to ask what some of you may see as a strange question,” I said to the audience in the packed hall. “In the war that is raging right now (this was before the major fighting began on Wednesday) between us and the Gazans, who is right?”

The hall fell silent. The audience looked uncomfortable and curious. “They are right,” one woman said. “We are right,” said another. Most of the audience just looked baffled.

“Look at what is happening “, I continued. “Even here in Sderot, we cannot get a clear answer to the most fundamental of questions. So who is right?”

An endless stream of commentators, security experts and politicians visit Sderot. One advocates targeted assassinations, the other conquest, one says we should talk and the other says we should disengage. When all is said and done, it is clear to all that not one of them has gotten to the root of the real problem and is still incapable – after 12 years of Sderot being on the receiving end of incoming missiles – of relieving the misery of the residents of southern Israel.

Sderot’s problem is not military in nature. Clearly, we are stronger than they are. The reason that we cannot deal with murderous attacks on our citizens is not military – it is spiritual. We have lost our belief in the justice of our cause. A mistake of this proportion cannot be rectified with shortcuts. We must return to the point at which we strayed from the path. That point is Oslo. It is there that we declared that this land is not our land. It is there that we recognized the rights of a different sovereign on our country’s heartland. It is there that we lost the legitimacy for our existence in Sderot and as a result, the ability to fight against an enemy who does believe in the justice of his cause.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dead Palestinian Boy Used As Symbol of Israeli Aggression Apparently Killed by Hamas

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Egypt’s Prime Minister Hisham Kandil cried on Friday and kissed the dead child’s forehead, calling him a “martyr.” CNN called him “another victim of an [Israeli] airstrike.” Newspapers showed his photo as an example of the Palestinian civilians killed by Israel’s ongoing military campaign against militants in Gaza.

The only problem with that narrative is that 4-year-old Mahmoud Sadallah was killed by a Hamas rocket that fell short in Gaza instead of its intended target: Israel. According to an Israeli military statement Sunday, “Ninety-nine rockets fired from Gaza have crashed back into Gaza in the last four days. Hamas fires from civilian areas…and hits its own people.”

Pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon reviewed media reports on the incident and wrote: “The IDF did not launch any airstrikes in Gaza while Egyptian PM Kandil was in Gaza.” Israel had agreed to a temporary ceasefire while Kandil was visiting Gaza on Friday, as a gesture to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. Even so, terror groups continued firing on Israel during the diplomatic visit.

Elder of Ziyon pointed out that the Associated Press reported from Gaza that not only where there no eyewitnesses to the strike, no evidence remained onsite for examination. The AP said: “Israel vehemently denied involvement, saying it had not carried out any attacks in the area at the time” and that “…neighbors said local security officials quickly took what remained of the projectile, making it impossible to verify who fired it.”

The New York Times also visited the home and wrote: “. . . the damage was nowhere near severe enough to have come from an Israeli F-16, raising the possibility that an errant missile fired by Palestinian militants was responsible for the deaths.”

See CNN report below:

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI Opens Fire on Unarmed Girl During Unexplained Raid of DC-Area Home (+video)

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An early morning FBI raid has a District Heights family in fear. The agents came into the house and drew their guns at the family’s daughter, but she wasn’t armed.

“They almost hit my daughter, man,” says Emory Hughley. “If I hadn’t told her to go back in her room they probably would have shot her.”

Hughley says he was asleep in the basement when he heard a bang at the front door. His 18-year-old daughter Myasia was upstairs in her room with two friends who were spending the night. Around 6 a.m. he says he came up to the living room and saw 15 FBI SWAT agents coming inside, guns drawn.

“I’m shouting ‘Nobody is armed, nobody has a gun!’ and then all of a sudden I heard ‘She’s got a gun!’ and they just opened fire,” he says.

Hughley says he looked up and saw his daughter standing outside her bedroom in the hallway. Then he heard gunfire. Read more from this story, including a statement that the man’s young daughter was hit by bullet shrapnel in the back of the neck, HERE.

Arizona Gun Store Tells Obama Voters to ‘Turn Around and Leave’

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photo credit: mike saechang An Arizona gun store has a simple message for Barack Obama voters: you’re not welcome here.

The Southwest Shooting Authority in Pinetop, Ariz. posted a sign on its door and took out a newspaper ad declaring that if you voted for the president last week, you’re not allowed in.

“If you voted for Obama, please turn around and leave! You have proven that you are not responsible enough to own a firearm!” the sign states.

Owner Cope Reynolds conceded that he can’t really tell who voted for Obama unless they “own up to it” — but if they do, they’re out.

“If they don’t say anything, we’ll never know,” Reynolds said in an email to the Phoenix New Times. “However, if they own up to it, we will not serve them.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Cardinal Dolan: Catholics Won’t ‘Give In’ on HHS Mandate

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Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), said that the Catholic Church will continue to move ahead with challenges to the Obama administration’s HHS mandate.

Dolan asserted that the Church will not comply with the mandate that requires most employers, even those affiliated with religious organizations, to provide free contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients through health insurance plans.

“The only thing we’re certainly not prepared to do is give in,” Dolan said at a news conference. “Not violate our consciences, and not obey what we consider to be something immoral. That we’re committed on.”

Dozens of Catholic dioceses and other Catholic organizations have filed lawsuits in federal courts over the mandate, which is included in ObamaCare.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Lawmakers Blast Obama Over Release of Iraqi Terrorist

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photo credit: isafmediaRepublicans on the Hill are blasting President Obama for failing to stop the Iraqi government from releasing a Hezbollah commander suspected in the killing of five Americans.

The State Department confirmed Friday that Iraqi officials released Ali Mussa Daqduq, despite repeated pleas from the Obama administration to keep him in custody. Even Vice President Joe Biden made a personal entreaty as recently as Tuesday, a White House official told POLITICO.

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham said the release shows America’s influence is waning because of Obama’s “failed foreign policy.”

“The United States now has so little influence that it could not prevail upon the Iraqi government to extradite Daqduq to the U.S. to stand trial for his crimes,” they said in a joint statement.

Over in the House, the chairs of the Armed Services, Intelligence, Judiciary, and Foreign Affairs committees blamed Obama for turning over Daqduq to Iraqi authorities in the first place and for failing to secure a long-term cooperation agreement with Iraq that also may have averted his release.

Read more from this story HERE.