High School Senior Suspended for Year After Hugging Teacher

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Photo Credit: ben swann

Photo Credit: ben swann

A high school senior won’t graduate on time after being suspended for one year for hugging a teacher.

CBS Affiliate WGCL reports that a hearing officer at Duluth High School found that the boy violated the Gwinnett County Public Schools’ rules on sexual harassment.

Surveillance camera video captured Sam McNair, 17, entering a room, placing his arms around the back and front of the teacher and tucking his head behind her neck.

The teacher alleged in a discipline report that McNair’s cheeks and lips touched the back of her neck and cheek, according to WGCL.

The 17-year-old denied he sexually harassed his teacher or that he kissed her. He said he has hugged his teachers many times before, including this one, and has never been warned about doing so. WGCL reports McNair has previous suspensions, but none for sexual harassment.

CBS Atlanta News

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Atheist Dies, Meets Jesus, Returns to Life (+video)

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Ian_McCormack_MDIn 1982, Ian McCormack of the film The Lazarus Phenomenon was an adventurous 26-year-old. He was diving for lobster on the island of Mauritius (in the southwest Indian Ocean) one evening and was stung by five box jellyfish – one of the most venomous creatures in the world. Its poison can kill a person in four minutes. When an ambulance came, his body was completely paralyzed, and necrosis had started to set into his bone marrow.

On the way to the hospital, McCormack began to see his life flash before him. He knew he was near death. He was an atheist and didn’t know whether or not there was an afterlife. As he lay dying, he saw a vision of his mother, who was the only Christian in his family, praying for him. She encouraged McCormack to cry out to God from his heart and God would hear him and forgive him. He didn’t know what to pray, so he cried out that if God was real, God would help him pray. Instantly, God showed McCormack the Lord’s Prayer.

DEATH AND THE VERY DARK PLACE

The ambulance reached the hospital and they brought McCormack inside. The doctors tried to save his life by injecting anti-toxins and dextrose into his body, but it didn’t help. Within a few minutes, his body lay lifeless for about 15 minutes.

During this time, McCormack was in a very dark place, and he didn’t know where he was. As he reached out, he found he wasn’t touching anything. When he tried to touch his face, his hand would go right through it. McCormack began to sense that it wasn’t just a physical darkness, but a spiritual darkness. He had a cold eerie feeling that there was something or someone else there, and it or he was looking at McCormack.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: CBN

Pope Tells America: Time to Reject Abortion and Accept Life at Every Stage

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

The same day that he was chosen as TIME magazine’s Person of the Year – Pope Francis exhorted North and South America to “accept human life at every stage, from the mother’s womb to old age.”

Amid misinterpretations of the pontiff’s pro-life stance in the mainstream media, the Holy Father continues to affirm his unwavering belief, completely united to that of the Catholic Church, that human life is sacred from conception to natural death.

He said (emphasis added):

Tomorrow is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patroness of the Americas. I would like to greet all my brothers and sisters on that continent, and I do so thinking of the Virgin of Tepeyac.

When Our Lady appeared to Saint Juan Diego, her face was that of a woman of mixed blood, a mestiza, and her garments bore many symbols of the native culture. Like Jesus, Mary is close to all her sons and daughters; as a concerned mother, she accompanies them on their way through life. She shares all the joys and hopes, the sorrows and troubles of God’s People, which is made up of men and women of every race and nation.

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Dr. Oz Sounds Alarm on Dangers of Processed Chicken from China

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Photo Credit: Fox screencap

Photo Credit: Fox screencap

Dr. Oz said there are serious public-health risks associated with processed chicken from China and said we should take action now to stop these products from coming to the United States.

“This has me outraged,” Dr. Oz said on the Dec. 10 episode of his show. “I’m calling on the USDA to shut down this proposal. You have America’s health in your hands.”

As early as next summer, chicken nuggets and other chicken products (such as canned soup, frozen chicken wings and breaded chicken patties) made from chicken processed in China could be sold in grocery stores around the country.

Under the proposal, chickens that are raised and slaughtered in the U.S. and Canada will be sent to China for processing and then returned to the U.S. for mass consumption.

This was a recent decision made by President Barack Obama to address a decade-long trade dispute. Since 2003, China has refused to import U.S. beef, citing concerns over mad-cow disease, so we’re effectively trading chickens for beef in this quid-pro-quo political scenario. Obama has been widely criticized over this move.

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Vet Brutally Murdered Trying to Buy a Christmas Present on Craigslist

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Photo Credit: YouCaring

Photo Credit: YouCaring

I must admit that this story hit me pretty hard this morning. It’s not often that I get upset – I mean it seems like every day we’re bombarded with stories of violence, crime and debauchery, so it takes a lot these days to upset me.

I’m not really sure why this story affected me so much when I read it, but something about it hit me deep down inside. Maybe it’s because this man was a father, maybe it’s because he was just trying to do something nice for his parents, or maybe it’s because I’m so sick of seeing good people hurt by a culture that’s out of control.

Last week, National Guard Sergeant First Class Jim Vester was killed while trying to buy his parents an iPad that he found listed on Craigslist.

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Common Core Assignment: Think Like a Nazi and Explain Why Jews Are Evil (+video)

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Photo Credit: thefederalistpapers.org

Photo Credit: thefederalistpapers.org

Students in some Albany High School English classes were asked this week as part of a persuasive writing assignment to make an abhorrent argument: “You must argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince me of your loyalty to the Third Reich!”

Students were asked to watch and read Nazi propaganda, then pretend their teacher was a Nazi government official who needed to be convinced of their loyalty. In five paragraphs, they were required to prove that Jews were the source of Germany’s problems.

The exercise was intended to challenge students to formulate a persuasive argument and was given to three classes, Albany Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard said. She said the assignment should have been worded differently.

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Federal Appeals Court Rules Transsexual’s Firing was Not Discrimination

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Photo Credit: Twitter.com

Photo Credit: Twitter.com

A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court’s decision dismissing a lawsuit filed by a male-to-female transsexual who claimed his firing was discriminatory.

Jim Stacy, who had a sex change operation in 2005 and now goes by “Janis,” was laid off by Agere Systems in 2008, along with nearly 4,000 colleagues, following a merger with LSI Corporation.

Stacy, who had worked for Agere for ten years as an engineer, sued the company, claiming that he was targeted for elimination on the basis of his sex, disability and gender identity.

But the court rejected his lawsuit, ruling that the company’s explanation for his firing was satisfactory and had nothing to do with his sex change.

According to court documents, when Stacy was hired in 1998, he “had a traditional masculine appearance, wore male clothing, and went by the name ‘Jim.’” But in 2002, he was diagnosed with gender identity disorder, believing he was really a woman trapped in a man’s body. In 2005, he underwent a sex change operation and took hormones to make himself appear more female. All the while, he continued working for Agere.

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The Priest Who Faced Down the Federal Government—and Won

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Photo Credit: Nancy Reynolds for The Star-Ledger

Photo Credit: Nancy Reynolds for The Star-Ledger

The Rev. Ray Leonard knew not to wear the clerical collar identifying him as a Roman Catholic priest. It almost certainly would have gotten him deported.

He knew not to celebrate Mass, hear confession or baptize a child. The acts might have resulted in harassment—or worse, arrest and imprisonment—for the families Leonard cared about.

During a decade spent teaching and helping the needy in some of China’s most impoverished and oppressed regions, the New Jersey priest learned what it was like to live in a land without religious freedom.

It kindled a greater appreciation for his liberties at home. Which is why Leonard, 51, bristled at the U.S. government when it told him he couldn’t hold services at a Georgia naval base during October’s government shutdown. Leonard, a civilian contractor on the base, wasn’t deemed an “essential” employee.

In a case that made headlines across the country, Leonard filed suit against the Department of Defense, contending the directive violated his freedom of speech and his right to religious expression.

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Xbox Live Among Game Services Targeted by US and UK Spy Agencies

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Photo Credit: The Guardian

Photo Credit: The Guardian

To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency’s impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs.

That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency GCHQ to infiltrate the massive communities playing online games, according to secret documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The files were obtained by the Guardian and are being published on Monday in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica.

The agencies, the documents show, have built mass-collection capabilities against the Xbox Live console network, which has more than 48 million players. Real-life agents have been deployed into virtual realms, from those Orc hordes in World of Warcraft to the human avatars of Second Life. There were attempts, too, to recruit potential informants from the games’ tech-friendly users.

Online gaming is big business, attracting tens of millions of users worldwide who inhabit their digital worlds as make-believe characters, living and competing with the avatars of other players. What the intelligence agencies feared, however, was that among these clans of elves and goblins, terrorists were lurking.

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Rand Paul Wary of 2016 Run’s Impact on Family

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said Sunday he was seriously considering a run for the presidency in 2016, but acknowledged potential opposition from his wife was a complicating factor.

Mr. Paul, a favorite of tea party activists, said he would take the next year to explore further the possibility of running and to discuss the process with his family.

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