Kelsey Grammer as "Boss" Comes Back on Blu-Ray to Portray Politics in Chicago

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Photo Credit: IrishCentral

When the brilliant television series Boss didn’t get renewed for a third season, superstar Kelsey Grammer didn’t hold back when he voiced his opinion that politics was behind the decision.

“Boss” featured Grammer as the all powerful, amoral/corrupt Tom Kane,Mayor of Chicago, who knew how to keep the city running by political patronage, outright corruption and making offers you better not refuse.

Grammer, an unapologetic republican, has publicly stated his conservative political leaning has made him a target in Hollywood and might have something to do with the shows cancellation. He also thought his politics had something to do with his Emmy snub last year, after he earned a Golden Globe for the role.

But the Starz Network, who brought the show to the screen, said that declining audience numbers were behind the decision to cancel the show after only two seasons.

Grammers acting was superb and showcased his talent that transformed him from the likable character he played in “Cheers” and “Frazier,” into a ruthless politician in “Boss.” He deserved the Golden Globe for his acting ability and fans also thought he deserved the Emmy as well.

As Mayor, he secretly suffers from a debilitating brain disease which must be kept from his enemies as well as his allies…they remind you of what it would be like to hold a rabid wolf by the ears. Finding the right drug treatment keeps him publicly on an even keel, but just below the surface he is plagued by demons which the disease manifests.

His wife Meredith, brilliantly played by Connie Nielsen, (Starred in Gladiator) is just as addicted to the reins of power as her husband. She can be as cold and ruthless as Grammer in order to maintain that power. But the marriage is more a political partnership than a real marriage and there is little, if any love between them.

Their daughter Hannah, is a 20 something drug addict, a product of the loveless marriage of convenience. Hannah Ware, plays the role perfectly as she rebels against the facade her family has created. She delves into the world of drugs and has a love affair with a low level drug dealer affiliated with Chicago gang violence.

The cast of characters in the show are gritty and realistic and portray a corrupt world of politics that probably is uncomfortably close to the truth, for many of Americas big cities.

Boss season 2 is available on Blu-Ray and DVD starting April 9 from Lionsgate Home Entertainment

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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.

Obama: Sexual-Harasser-in-Chief?

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

President Barack Obama knows a good-looking attorney general when he sees one — but some think that his noting it publicly was not so gentlemanly. Obama sparked criticism when he spoke about California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris at a suburban San Francisco fundraiser Wednesday night.

“You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake,” Obama said of Harris. He then added, “She also happens to be, by far, the best-looking attorney general in the country.”

“Obama’s comment about Kamala Harris is disgraceful and really terrible for workplace equality,” tweeted Jonathan Chait of New York magazine.

“Give @BarackObama a break, everyone in CA is pretty,” tweeted David M. Drucker, senior editor at Roll Call.

“Does merely stating the obvious make the president sexist?” Robin Abcarian wrote in The Los Angeles Times. “More wolfish than sexist, I’d say.”

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Political Resurrection: Sanford Says SC Will Judge Him, Not His Affair

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Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford — running again for the U.S. House seat he held for three terms — says he’s prepared to be hammered over the steamy extramarital affair that tarnished his rising political star.

“It goes with the territory,” Sanford told Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show,” two days after beating former Charleston County Councilman Curtis Bostic for the GOP nomination.

“The folks in the media, what do they want to do? They want to take one chapter of your life and completely define your life by that chapter.

“But what many people here along the coast of South Carolina said to me is, ‘You know, Mark, I’m no sooner going to judge you by your worst day than I’ll judge you by your best day. I’m going to look at the totality.’”

Sanford, a two-term governor, triggered a political scandal when he vanished for five days in 2009. Reporters were falsely told he was hiking along the Appalachian Trail.

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Judge: Catholic Company Doesn’t Have to Follow Obama HHS Mandate

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A federal judge in Minnesota has given a Catholic-owned and operated business a reprieve from the onerous provisions of the Obamacare HHS mandate. The mandate compels companies to pay for birth control and drugs for their employees that may cause abortions.

U.S. District Court Judge John R. Tunheim issued a ruling yesterday for an injunction against complying with the mandate for American Manufacturing Company. The attorney for the client, Thomas Mathews, told a news outlet, “He was conflicted with owning a company that would provide the types of insurance that he finds morally offensive and objectionable.”

More from the report:

In working with its current insurance company, Medica, American Manufacturing was able to cut the birth control coverage from an existing group health insurance plan…

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Poll: Support Rising for Hillary Clinton in 2016

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Hillary Clinton has hit a new high in support for a potential presidential run.

Sixty-four percent of Democratic voters surveyed by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) support the former secretary of State as the party’s nominee for president in 2016, with every other potential candidate trailing by huge margins. Vice President Biden, in second, got only 18 percent support.

Clinton has majority support among every age group polled, nearly every ethnic group and both men and women, as well as a majority of support from liberals and moderates.

But a Clinton run isn’t a sure thing, and if she decides against it, Biden’s a shoe-in for the nomination, taking 49 percent support to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) 11 percent support. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo takes 10 percent support, and every other candidate is in single digits.

Clinton fares better than Biden against every potential GOP contender tested, leading all of them by margins ranging from four percentage points to seven. Among the top four GOP contenders, Biden leads Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), but by slighter margins than Clinton, and he trails New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie by nine percentage points.

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Two Female Marines Fail to Pass All-Male Infantry Course

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Photo Credit: Lance Cpl. Vincent White

Two female Marine lieutenants have failed in their bid to complete the Corps’ grueling, all-male Infantry Officer Course (IOC). The women’s recent washout after only a few days in the course follows the failure of two other female officers attempting to complete the same program in October.

The Corps now stands 0-4 in its search to find female Marines who have the physical strength and endurance to complete one of the most rigorous infantry schools in the military, located at the Quantico, Va., base.

Of 110 lieutenants in the first phase of the course, called the Combat Entrance Test, 14 failed, including the only two women, according to the Marine Corps Times.

“We will continue to solicit women to take part in the IOC program,” Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Richard Ulsh told The Washington Times. “I don’t know how [the failures] could stretch to mean something broader than what you’ve got.”

In January, then-Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, announced that the Pentagon had lifted a longtime ban on women serving in direct land combat jobs in infantry, armor and special operations units.

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USA Today: The War on Christians

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“Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world.” So asserted German Chancellor Angela Merkel late last year, causing a stir. Merkel echoed a concern expressed by then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who warned in a 2011 speech that Christians face a “particularly wicked program of cleansing in the Middle East, religious cleansing.”

Not ‘War on Christmas’

Now, this is not about clerks who say “Happy Holidays” or bans of nativity scenes in public schools. Merkel spoke of real persecution of hundreds of millions of Christians around the world. Indeed, a 2011 Pew Forum study found that Christians are harassed in 130 countries, more than any of the world’s other religions.

The just-released book Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians provides the gory details behind these statistics. Persecuted is a collaboration of the Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea, Paul Marshall and Lela Gilbert to catalog the human rights abuses visited upon Christian believers from North Korea to Mali. They define this persecution as Christians “who are tortured, raped, imprisoned, or killed for their faith.” It’s a worldwide phenomenon, but Shea points out a troubling acceleration in the cradle of Christianity’s birth: the Middle East and North Africa. As London Guardian columnist Rupert Shortt wrote in January, “The religious ecology of the Middle East looks more fragile than ever, as the Arab Spring gives way to Christian Winter.”

Tragically, Christians have been forced to abandon homelands they have occupied for thousands of years. Up to two-thirds of Christians have fled Iraq in the past ten years to escape massacres, church burnings and constant death threats. Many Christians fled to Syria, where they are experiencing persecution anew. In Iran, U.S. pastor Saeed Abedini has been sentenced to eight years in prison for preaching Christianity.

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Woman Sues Ohio Clinic Over Failed Abortion After Delivering Healthy 'Miracle' Baby

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An Ohio woman is suing an abortion clinic after she says she made the painful decision to terminate her pregnancy because her life was in danger, only to discover she was still pregnant after the procedure.

The northeast Ohio clinic in a court filing denied Ariel Knights’ allegations that doctors were negligent and failed to successfully perform the abortion she sought, eventually leading to the birth of her healthy baby daughter.

The Akron Women’s Medical Group and two doctors acknowledge Knights, of Cuyahoga Falls, sought an abortion March 3, 2012. However, they deny any negligence and seek to have the case dismissed, citing a long list of possible defenses.

“I believe my client absolutely met the standard of care and that this case has no basis to be in litigation,”attorney D. Cheryl Atwell, who represents the medical group and the doctors, said Monday.

Lawyers still are exchanging medical records, and Atwell said she couldn’t comment further.

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The War On Marriage And Motherhood

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Photo Credit: Alexander Hunter

President Obama and I have very different notions of what a family is. For liberals, the family can apparently be everything from “Heather Has Two Mommies” to “Daddy’s Roommate” to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “It Takes a Village.” In the opinion of electoral majorities in Kansas and 40 other states, however, that does not a family make.

For conservatives, the concept of family is the same as the Judeo-Christian model God ordained, a model supported by every other major world religion. It is the same unit recognized by the laws of nature, the laws of government, and civilized societies for thousands of years: one man, married to one woman, with so many children as God should see fit to entrust to their care through birth or adoption. In my case, that means me, Angela (my wife of 18 years), and our four children (who happen to be adopted).

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week in two landmark cases concerning homosexual marriage. The Hollingsworth v. Perry case challenges the federal constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative approved by 7 million voters to amend California’s state constitution to define marriage as an institution that involves only one man and one woman. The Windsor v. United States case challenges the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the 1996 federal statute overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 that recognizes traditional marriage for federal purposes and protects states from having homosexual marriage imposed upon them by other states.If at least five Supreme Court justices do not resist the temptation to legislate from the bench, they might overturn Proposition 8 and DOMA. If that happens, the high priests and priestesses of political correctness will have done irreparable harm to yet another pillar of the American paradigm for our patriotic, wholesome culture — “God, the flag, mom and apple pie.” Activist judges have already expelled faith from the public square (forbidding the Ten Commandments, a cross in remembrance of our military heroes, and Christmas Nativity scenes) and decriminalized burning the Stars and Stripes in public. The First Lady’s “Let’s Move!” initiative and New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s sugary-drink ban suggest the days of consuming apple pie might well be numbered.

That leaves motherhood. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Congressional Resolution that established Mother’s Day. Every president since Woodrow Wilson has issued proclamations that pay homage to the significance of motherhood. In 1981, Ronald Reagan wrote: “They shape the character of our people through the love and nurture of their children. It is the strength they give their families that keeps our nation strong.” In 2011, President Obama wrote: “[W]e celebrate the extraordinary importance of mothers in our lives. The bond of love and dedication a mother shares with her children and family is without bounds or conditions.”

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Experts: Abortion Not Medically Necessary To Save The Life Of A Mother

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Leading medical experts speaking at a major International Symposium on Excellence in Maternal Healthcare held in Dublin have concluded that “direct abortion is not medically necessary to save the life of a mother.”

Professor Eamon O’Dwyer, speaking for the Committee of the Symposium, said that the outcome of the conference “provided clarity and confirmation to doctors and legislators.” Participants in the symposium.

Experts in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, mental health, and molecular epidemiology presented new research, and shared clinical experiences on issues surrounding maternal healthcare to the packed Symposium attended by more than 140 Irish medical professionals.

Particular attention was paid to the management of high-risk pregnancies, cancer in pregnancy, foetal anomalies, mental health and maternal mortality. The Symposium’s conclusions were issued in the Dublin Declaration on Maternal Healthcare which states:

As experienced practitioners and researchers in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, we affirm that direct abortion is not medically necessary to save the life of a woman.

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