Students Made To Wear Burqas In U.S. Schools

/11 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: WNDThere’s a new controversy in Texas involving the online public school curriculum called CSCOPE, which already has been the subject of heated debate and state legislative hearings. There are reports now that students were made to wear Muslim burqas as part of their public school lessons.

CSCOPE has been facing criticism over its alleged Islamic and anti-American bias. It is a “curriculum management system” now used in 80 percent of Texas classrooms – and recently was the subject of a heated inquiry that culminated in hearings conducted by the Texas Senate Education Committee chaired by Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston.

According to a joint press release by Sen. Patrick, State Board of Education Chairperson Barbara Cargill and CSCOPE representatives, CSCOPE ultimately agreed to “significant changes,” but it is unclear when these changes will take place, and whether or not the pledged cooperation is legally binding or simply to mollify critics.

WND contacted Sen. Patrick’s office but has been unable to obtain documentation confirming whether CSCOPE compliance is required or optional.

He did release a statement: “Be assured we are working on this issue as is the SBOE almost every day. The hearing was step one, the letter step two. The only thing that is binding from a legislative standpoint is legislation. We are working on those issues based on what we are discovering now. We are doing our job, one that must be thorough and will take time.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Blacks Who Back Gun Control Need to Study History of Slavery and Jim Crow

/1 Comment/in , , /by

At a Friday event billed as a Black History Month press conference, Star Parker said African Americans in Congress who support gun control efforts by President Barack Obama and his administration should consider the history of blacks in this country and people around the globe who were oppressed, including being banned from owning firearms.

CNSNews.com asked Parker, who is the founder and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE): “There are a lot of African Americans and people of color in Congress who are backing Obama’s plan for gun control. What would you say to them because today [at this event] it was revealed that there is a direct effect on the African American community with this gun control?”

Parker said: “Well, I’d say they need to revisit their history – black history, black slave history, black Jim Crow history — and they should visit the histories of other tyrant nations where we had people like Hitler and Stalin and Mao. Every single time there is someone who wants to take away all other rights of the people, the first right they take away is your right to bear arms.”

“I believe that the the Congressional Black community, or the Congressional Black Caucus is absolutely out of step with black America today on this issue,” Parker said.

Watch video here:

Read more from this story HERE.

Liberal Astroturf Group Offering $9 To $11 Per Hour To Join Its Gun-Control Campaign

/2 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller The liberal organization Progressive USA Voters, which is housed in the same progressive Denver office building as a chapter of the infamous left-wing astroturf group ProgressNow, is offering an hourly wage of between $9 and $11 to join its gun-control campaign in Chicago, according to a flyer that was photographed and posted to Reddit Friday. “Join the Campaign to Stop Gun Violence” reads the flyer, which also notes, “Hourly Wage: $9-11/hr.”

Progressive USA Voters is specifically focused on the April 2013 special election for Jesse Jackson Jr.’s vacated House seat in Illinois’ Second Congressional District. The group is targeting Democratic primary candidate Debbie Halvorson, who accepted more than $10,000 from the National Rifle Association, according to the Progressive USA Voters website.

Halvorson is running against former state representative Robin Kelly, who has received the endorsement of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s super PAC, Independence USA, which is also attacking Halverson on the issue of Gun Control.

“Progressive USA will be going door-to-door in this important race in the coming weeks in order to educate voters about Halvorson’s record,” according to the group’s website.

Progressive USA Voters is a project of Progressive USA, which claims to “advocate for sensible policy solutions, hold our nation’s elected officials accountable for their actions and take head-on the flawed policies and hypocrisy of the radical right.” The group does not list its staff or directors on its website, and does not

Read more from this story HERE.

The Case Of The Phantom Ballots: An Electoral Whodunit

/1 Comment/in , , /by

Photo Credit: Tim Chapman The first phantom absentee ballot request hit the Miami-Dade elections website at 9:11 p.m. Saturday, July 7.
The next one came at 9:14. Then 9:17. 9:22. 9:24. 9:25.

Within 2½ weeks, 2,552 online requests arrived from voters who had not applied for absentee ballots. They streamed in much too quickly for real people to be filling them out. They originated from only a handful of Internet Protocol addresses. And they were not random. It had all the appearances of a political dirty trick, a high-tech effort by an unknown hacker to sway three key Aug. 14 primary elections, a Miami Herald investigation has found.

The plot failed. The elections department’s software flagged the requests as suspicious. The ballots weren’t sent out. But who was behind it? And next time, would a more skilled hacker be able to rig an election?

Six months and a grand-jury probe later, there still are few answers about the phantom requests, which targeted Democratic voters in a congressional district and Republican voters in two Florida House districts.

The foreman of that grand jury, whose report made public the existence of the phantom requests, said jurors were eager to learn if a candidate or political consultant had succeeded in manipulating the voting system. But they didn’t get any answers. “We were like, ‘Why didn’t anyone do something about it?’ ” foreman Jeffrey Pankey said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Secret Colorado Energy Lab Spawns Million Dollar Government Employee

/5 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: Watch DogThe federal government’s dream of a renewable energy empire hinges on a scrubby outpost here, where scientists and executives doggedly explore a new frontier.

If you live outside Colorado, you probably haven’t heard of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory – NREL for short. It’s the place where solar panels, windmills and corn are deemed the energy source of the future and companies who support such endeavors are courted.

It’s also the place where highly paid staff decide how to spend hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars.

And the public pays those decision-makers well: NREL’s top executive, Dr. Dan Arvizu, makes close to a million dollars per year. His two top lieutenants rake in more than half a million each and nine others make more than $350,000 a year.

But what is really going on there? Energy expert Amy Oliver Cooke drove out to the site, which looks something like Nevada’s Area 51 with its remote location and forbidding concrete buildings. NREL had started a construction project and Cooke wanted to see for herself. She didn’t get far: a man in an SUV seemingly appeared out of nowhere, stopped her car, and told her to leave.

Read more from this story HERE.

New York Army Vet Facing 7 Years In Prison Over Empty Ammo Magazines

/6 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: WGRZ-TV An Army veteran in New York is facing up to seven years in prison for possessing five empty 30-round ammunition magazines.

Nate Haddad told WGRZ-TV he was parked on a road last month waiting to meet someone interested in buying them off him when police approached. According to the station, the magazines were for an AR-15 rifle, the same type of weapon Haddad once carried in combat. Magazines over 10 rounds have been illegal in New York since 1994, unless they were manufactured before the law went into effect. Haddad says he thought his were legal, until he found out otherwise.

“I certainly did not think I was committing a felony crime by having these,” Haddad told WGRZ. “My understanding of what I had in my possession was that it was manufactured before 1994, but the arresting officers told me otherwise after I showed them the magazines that I had in my possession.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Florida Doesn’t Have Enough Doctors For Medicaid Expansion, Lobby Group Says

/4 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: Mike StockerBrace yourself for longer lines at the doctor’s office. Whether you’re employed and insured, elderly and on Medicare, or poor and covered by Medicaid, the Florida Medical Association says there’s a growing shortage of doctors — especially specialists — available to provide you with medical care.

And if the Florida Legislature goes along with Gov. Rick Scott’s recommendation to offer Medicaid coverage to an additional 1 million Floridians — part of the Affordable Care Act that takes effect next January — the FMA says that shortage will only get worse. “Florida needs more doctors and it needs more nurses, and it needs them working together in teams,” said Rebecca O’Hara, a lobbyist for the FMA.

About 15 million Floridians have health insurance today, and Obamacare, which requires most adults to have coverage by January, could add as many as 2.5 million more. One million would come through a potential expansion of the federal-state Medicaid program that Scott announced this week he was backing. The others would be the result of new mandates requiring employers and individuals to have insurance or be fined.

Currently, the state has 44,804 doctors, but about 5,600 of them are expected to retire in the next five years. And even though Florida has opened three new medical schools in the past dozen years, the state isn’t producing as many doctors as it needs. Scott’s budget this year has $80 million to fund programs to train 700 new residents a year, in hopes they’ll remain in the state.

Of all patients, people covered by Medicaid may have the hardest time finding a doctor; only 59 percent of the state’s physicians are taking new Medicaid patients, according to a Kaiser Health News study.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Threatening Veterans’ Gun Rights

/4 Comments/in , , , /by

In an apparent threat to Second Amendment rights, some American military veterans have received a letter from the Veterans Administration warning that their competency to handle their own affairs is under review, and if determined by government bureaucrats to be “incompetent,” they would be barred from possessing weapons.

The issue is being raised by the United States Justice Foundation, which defends civil and religious rights.

In a statement on the organization’s website, Executive Director Michael Connelly said his organization is pursuing a Freedom of Information Act demand to the Department of Veterans Affairs to “force them to disclose the criteria they are using to place veterans on the background check list that keeps them from exercising their Second Amendment rights.”

“Then we will take whatever legal steps are necessary to protect our American warriors,” he wrote. He said he’s been approached by a significant number of veterans who have received letters from the VA.

An image of a letter dated Dec. 20, 2012, has been posted online at Red Flag News. The letter states that the Department of Veterans Affairs has “received” information about the veteran that “because of your disabilities you may need help in handling your Department of Affairs (VA) benefits.”

Read more from this story HERE.

The ObamaCare War On Marriage

/3 Comments/in , , /by

Photo Credit: Human Events“Companies have a new solution to rising health-insurance costs: Break up their employees’ marriages,” says the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch:

By denying coverage to spouses, employers not only save the annual premiums, but also the new fees that went into effect as part of the Affordable Care Act. This year, companies have to pay $1 or $2 “per life” covered on its plans, a sum that jumps to $65 in 2014. And health law guidelines proposed recently mandate coverage of employees’ dependent children (up to age 26), but husbands and wives are optional. “The question about whether it’s obligatory to cover the family of the employee is being thought through more than ever before,” says Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health.

But… but… “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”

Such exclusions barely existed three years ago, but experts expect an increasing number of employers to adopt them: “That’s the next step,” Darling says. HMS, a company that audits plans for employers, estimates that nearly a third of companies might have such policies now. Holdouts say they feel under pressure to follow suit. “We’re the last domino,” says Duke Bennett, mayor of Terre Haute, Ind., which is instituting a spousal carve-out for the city’s health plan, effective July 2013, after nearly all major employers in the area dropped spouses.

MarketWatch cites anecdotal evidence that some people are dropping their personal coverage so they can migrate to joint coverage provided by companies that do continue to offer it. That’s a nice near-term solution… if you happen to be married to someone who works for such a company. In the longer-term, what happens to the remaining plans that offer spousal coverage, after they’ve attracted all of those expensive spouses?

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama, The Puppet Master, Weaves his Tales with the Mastery of Technology

/1 Comment/in , , /by

Photo Credit: Pete SouzaPresident Barack Obama is a master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House.

Not for the reason that conservatives suspect: namely, that a liberal press willingly and eagerly allows itself to get manipulated.

Instead, the mastery mostly flows from a White House that has taken old tricks for shaping coverage (staged leaks, friendly interviews) and put them on steroids using new ones (social media, content creation, precision targeting). And it’s an equal opportunity strategy: Media across the ideological spectrum are left scrambling for access.

The results are transformational. With more technology, and fewer resources at many media companies, the balance of power between the White House and press has tipped unmistakably toward the government. This is an arguably dangerous development, and one that the Obama White House — fluent in digital media and no fan of the mainstream press — has exploited cleverly and ruthlessly. And future presidents from both parties will undoubtedly copy and expand on this approach.

“The balance of power used to be much more in favor of the mainstream press,” said Mike McCurry, who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Nowadays, he said, “The White House gets away with stuff I would never have dreamed of doing. When I talk to White House reporters now, they say it’s really tough to do business with people who don’t see the need to be cooperative.”

McCurry and his colleagues in the Clinton White House were hardly above putting their boss in front of gentle questions: Clinton and Vice President Al Gore often preferred the safety of “Larry King Live” to the rhetorical combat of the briefing room. But Obama and his aides have raised it to an art form: The president has shut down interviews with many of the White House reporters who know the most and ask the toughest questions. Instead, he spends way more time talking directly to voters via friendly shows and media personalities. Why bother with The New York Times beat reporter when Obama can go on “The View”?

Read more from this story HERE.