Russia Dramatically Expands Definition of “Treason,” Move Will Further Strengthen Putin’s Hand

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By Charles Clover. Russia has broadened its definition of treason, in a move prompting fears that state authorities will have a new weapon to clamp down on the press and non-governmental organisations.

The law was passed on Tuesday by the lower house of parliament, one of several pieces of legislation overseen by President Vladimir Putin and seemingly designed to clamp down on political opposition.

The changes and additions to an existing law on state secrets will make it illegal not only to pass on state secrets but also to receive, transmit or publicize them.

“It is a very worrying situation, you could become a traitor or a spy without even knowing it,” said Igor Kolyapin, head of the Nizhny Novgorod-based Committee Against Torture.

“Anyone who does not have access to state secrets does not, by definition, know what is secret and what isn’t. How thus can they thus be understood to carry responsibility for this?” Read more from this story HERE.

Comparison of New Treason Law and Law it is Replacing

By BBC. Under the proposed new law, high treason and espionage will include supporting “those seeking to damage Russia’s security”.

Those illegally obtaining secret state information could face an extended prison sentence.

The bill is expected to be swiftly passed by parliament’s upper house.

The legislation, which was voted through the Duma 375 votes to two, will then need to be signed into law by President Vladimir Putin.

Current law describes high treason as espionage or other assistance to a foreign state damaging Russia’s external security. Read more from this story HERE.

“Ethicist” Peter Singer Surprises, Calling Abortion the Killing of a Human Being But Supports it Anyway

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Peter Singer’s analysis of abortion surprised me. First of all, he agreed with many pro-lifers that a fetus, even at six weeks, is a “living human being.” He showed us slides of fetuses, because we should not “run away from what abortion is.”

Singer nonetheless believes that abortion is ethical, because even a viable fetus is not a rational, self-aware person with desires and plans, which would be cut short by death; hence it should not have the same right as humans who have such qualities. Abortion is also justified, Singer added, both as a female right and as a method for curbing overpopulation.

Singer further surprised me—and showed his meta-commitment to democracy and reason–when he said that he, like Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan, disliked Roe V. Wade. That 1973 Supreme Court decision, Singer felt, provides a flimsy rationale for abortion and has corrupted the process whereby Supreme Court Justices are chosen. Ideally, Singer said, voters rather than unelected judges should determine the legal status of abortion. Singer nonetheless acknowledged that if Roe V. Wade is overturned, some states might outlaw or severely restrict abortion. “I’m torn,” he admitted.

Neither Presidential candidate, Singer pointed out, has expressed concern for the more than 1 billion people in the world enduring extreme poverty, defined by the United Nations as an income of less than $1.25 a day. This year almost 9 million extremely poor children will die of preventable causes, including malnutrition, malaria and other treatable diseases.

Singer suggested, a bit ironically, that American taxpayers may be prepared to pay much more to help impoverished children. He cited a poll that asked Americans how much of the federal budget goes to humanitarian foreign aid. Respondents came up with a median guess of 25 percent. Asked how much the percentage should be, respondents said 10 percent.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin. Website Refers Pregnant Women to Planned Parenthood

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Yep, you read that headline correctly. WomensHealth.gov is a “Project of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health.” This federal site has a page with a pretty long title: “Pregnancy > Before you get pregnant: Information for all women > If you are sexually active.”

And, near the bottom of the page, there’s a section called “Connect with other organizations.” Most of the organizations are generally well-recognized medical groups – like the American Academy of Family Physicians. But two non-profits make the list as well: March of Dimes and Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood is also listed as an organization to “connect with” on the “Knowing if you are pregnant” and “Unplanned pregnancy” pages. Of course, this should come as no surprise, since Kathleen Sebelius, Planned Parenthood supporter extreme, is the secretary of Health and Human Services.

Lest anyone question why I state that the federal government “refers” women to Planned Parenthood, let’s cover the definition of “refer.” Refer is defined as “to direct to a source for help or information.” By telling women that Planned Parenthood is an organization to connect with, the federal government is clearly directing women to the abortion giant for help.

Interestingly, on the “Unplanned pregnancy” page, women are referred to a fact sheet on the “consequences” of unplanned pregnancy. The fact sheet does not give women the whole range of facts they need. But it begins by mentioning abortion…

Read more from this story HERE.

Letter Shows Michelle Obama Backing Partial-Birth Abortion

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First Lady Michelle Obama has come under criticism before for a fundraising letter she wrote for her husband during his 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate that has her defending partial-birth abortions.

Today, LifeNews is posting a rarely-seen image showing the copy of the actual letter, written to Obama financial supporters, which opposes a ban on the gruesome abortion procedure.

In February 2004, Michelle Obama penned a fundraising letter to help her husband Barack raise funds for his Illinois-based Senate seat. The letter contends the federal ban on partial-birth abortions “is clearly unconstitutional” and “a flawed law.”

Though the three-day-long partial-birth abortion procedure involves the partial birth of a baby during the middle trimester of pregnancy and the jamming of scissors into the back of her head to kill her, Obama’s wife describes it as “legitimate” medicine.

“The fact remains, with no provision to protect the heath of the mother, this ban on a legitimate medical procedure is clearly unconstitutional and must be overturned,” Michelle Obama writes in the letter.

Read more from this story HERE.

Palestinians Fire Dozens of Rockets at Civilian Areas, May Have Used Advanced Libyan Antiaircraft Missile, Too

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By Ben Hartman. Palestinian terrorists fired 50 rockets and mortars into southern Israel Wednesday morning, injuring five and sending local residents fleeing for cover. IAF strikes targeting Palestinian rocket-launching squads killed three Hamas operatives but did little to stem the flow of rockets at Israel’s south.

Of the projectiles fired by the terrorists, 22 landed in the Eshkol region while 21 landed in the Lachish region, according to the Israel Police. The Iron Dome intercepted seven rockets, according to an IDF spokesman. The barrage follows 10 rockets fired on Tuesday evening, for a total of 67.

Two of he victims, foreign workers, suffered critical injuries and were evacuated via helicopter to Soroka Medical Center. Two more victims were lightly hurt, and one was being treated for shock, according to MDA.

IDF Home Front command instructed residents living within 10 km of Gaza to remain indoors and take shelter.

Air raid sirens went off during the attacks and local residents fled for cover. Southern municipalities canceled schools amid the ongoing escalation. Police have heightened patrols around Gaza in the south, including bomb sappers to deal with the heightened threat. Read more from this story HERE.

Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Fired at Israeli Helicopter Over Gaza

By Yaakov Lappin. The IDF has refused to officially comment on reports that Palestinian terrorists fired a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile at an IAF helicopter over Gaza last week.

According to the report, which appeared in Yediot Aharonot on Tuesday, the missile – identified as the low-altitude Strela SA-7 – missed its target. It was the first known attempt to bring down an IAF craft using advanced missiles in Gaza.

“Certainly, the threat of anti-aircraft missiles is a serious worry, but it won’t disrupt the air force’s activities over Gaza,” terrorism expert Yoram Schweitzer, of the Institute for National Security Studies, told The Jerusalem Post.

Schweitzer, who has served as consultant on counterterror strategies to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Defense Ministry, noted that the period of instability rocking the Middle East has allowed terrorists to smuggle strategic weapons into the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula.

Israeli security officials believe some of the weapons are being smuggled in to the region from Libya. Last year, ABC News reported on White House assessments that some 20,000 heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles were unaccounted for in Libya. Read more from this story HERE.

Insecure Obama, Insecure World

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The United States has had good presidents and bad, but it has never had a leader who came to a debate on national security with so much insecurity. It was a small petty man who sat on the other side of the screen, alternately smirking and scowling, grinding his teeth and launching attack after attack instead of finally taking the opportunity to set the record straight with the American people.

Barack Obama came to the debate with a roster of prepared speeches, few of them about foreign affairs and most of them about the economy. Even while his Secretary of Defense has given an unprecedented order to top military officials to stonewall the congressional investigation into Benghazigate, even as it has become known that his administration watched four Americans be murdered in real time and did not lift a finger to save their lives, talking points prepared by highly paid speechwriters fell out of his mouth assuring the American people that everything was going well. There was nothing wrong except for a few non-optimal bumps in the road made up of dead Americans.

Anyone listening to Obama would have to conclude, like Voltaire’s Pangloss, that we truly live in the best of all possible worlds. During the Bush administration, liberal pols like Obama liked to claim that they were part of the reality-based community. But as Calvin of “Calvin and Hobbes” said, “I’m not in denial. I’m just very selective about the reality I accept.” Obama would appear to have joined Calvin’s selective reality community.

Instead of discussing foreign affairs and national security, the Contender-in-Chief did his best to divert the debate with a talking point that he called “Nation Building at Home.” “Nation Building” is usually a term reserved for the reconstruction of backward or broken nations. That Obama insisted on applying it to the United States was telling, but even more telling was that his big idea for the debate was not only a distraction but a call to repeat the same disastrous stimulus and shovel-ready project boondoggles that had dug the country 16 trillion dollars into debt.

Obama’s idea of a foreign policy agenda is to borrow trillions of dollars from China to invest in green energy and teachers unions while calling it nation building. Left unasked was the question of what nation would we be building—America or China?

Read more from this story HERE.

More Problems for Obama: Irreligious Americans Less Likely to Vote

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A new poll released on Monday from Public Religion Research Institute finds that Americans who are unaffiliated in their religious views or who are less religious are less likely to head to the polls this election season. If the findings from this survey hold true, it could spell troubling news for the Obama campaign since voters who are less religious are more likely to support the president.

Americans who identify themselves as religiously unaffiliated are the fastest growing segment in America’s religious landscape. The annual PRRI survey found that 19 percent of Americans consider themselves part of this group. However, only 7 percent say they were raised in a religiously unaffiliated household.

Interestingly, President Obama, who has said he is a Christian, has a substantial lead among the religiously unaffiliated with 73 percent of those polled, while only 23 percent of that group say they support Mitt Romney, who is Mormon.

Americans who are affiliated to a religious group are much more likely to vote than those unaffiliated to a particular religion by a margin of 73 to 61 percent. For this reason, President Obama could be losing votes if the religiously unaffiliated choose not to vote in large numbers.

“The majority of Americans who are now religiously unaffiliated were raised in a particular faith,” said Daniel Cox, PRRI Research Director and report co-author. “Their reasons for leaving vary widely, ranging from a rejection of the teachings of their childhood faith or a fading belief in God, to antipathy toward organized religion, to negative personal experiences with religion or life experiences generally.”

Read more from this story HERE.

ER Doctor: Obamacare Death Panels Are Here

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Today while working my shift in the emergency room, an old lady was brought in very sick and in fact near death. I did my usual workup and evaluation and attempted to administer life saving treatment. It was my plan to admit this woman to the hospital. I found out a little later that this same woman had been a patient here just slightly more than 2 weeks ago with a DIFFERENT DIAGNOSIS. I was told that if this woman was admitted, the hospital would not be paid.

The new Medicare rule now is that if the same Medicare patient is re-admitted to the hospital within 30 days, the hospital will not be paid. When they first started this nonsense they said this only applied to patients with the same diagnosis. Now they have “expanded” the rule to include re-admissions for any reason. So if you’re in the hospital for pneumonia, and 3 weeks later, you break your leg…….too bad. Medicare will not pay the hospital to fix your leg.

A little later a man was brought in by ambulance, very sick, in pain, and near death. I did my usual evaluation and treatment, doing my best to ease pain and stabilize this man’s illness. He needed to be admitted. To my chagrin I found out that he had been treated for the SAME problem at a DIFFERENT HOSPITAL about 10 days prior. If I admitted this man, our hospital would be paid nothing. I admitted the man.

My friends I am caught in a terrible position. I could have given treatment to both of these people and sent them out. There is no doubt that both of them would have died. Oh, I could also be sued for malpractice, but nobody cares about that. That’s why we have insurance, right?

My other choice is to admit the person, knowing full well that the hospital will have to absorb the cost of care without hope of remuneration.

Read more from this story HERE.

Clinton Has Apparently Researched What Countries He Can Now Run For President In

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Former President Bill Clinton talked about his eligibility to serve as the leader of both Ireland and France in an exchange with CNN host Pierce Morgan last month.

Morgan, who is from Great Britain said, “We’re trying to change the rules in Britain, actually, because if you can’t be president again here, we’d quite like you to be prime minister in our country. Are you available if it comes to — I get this through?”

Clinton did not answer specifically on Britain during his Sept. 30 appearance on the program.

“There are only two countries I’m eligible to run for the leadership position is if I move to Ireland and buy a house, I can — I can run for president of Ireland, because of my Irish heritage,” Clinton said. “And because I was born in Arkansas, which is part of the Louisiana Purchase, any person anywhere in the world that was born in a place that ever was part of the French empire, if you move to — if you live in France for six months and speak French, you can run for president.”

Clinton said he was popular in France, but had doubts that popularity would hold up.

Read more from this story HERE.

Justice Kagan: I’m Probably a Supreme Court Justice Because I’m a Woman

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Justice Elena Kagan said she was “not sure” if President Barack Obama would have nominated her to the Supreme Court if she had not been a woman.

During a talk before law students on Friday at the University of Tennessee Law School, Kagan said, “And to tell you the truth, there were also things that I got because I was a woman. I mean I’m not sure I’d be sitting here.”

“I’m not sure that I would’ve been President Obama’s nominee if I weren’t a woman,” she said. “And if he wasn’t as committed as he was to ensuring that there was diversity on the Supreme Court.”

“So, mostly what I think when I think about this question is how far we’ve come and how much I owe — and all the women who have come after me owe– to people like Justice Ginsburg and Justice O’Connor,” she said.

Kagan was initially asked by Dean of Tennessee Law School Doug Blaze, “It’s been a remarkable career, and you’ve been quite a pioneer along the way. [The] first woman to be Dean of the Harvard Law School, first woman solicitor general of the United States. You’re now the fourth woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court and one of three presently serving.”

Read more from this story HERE.