Two NYPD Officers Slain in Apparent Retribution Attack

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

NEW YORK – A gunman shot dead two New York City police officers in what officials called an “assassination”, hours after warning on social media that he planned an attack in retribution for recent U.S. police killings of unarmed black men.

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday ordered flags flown at half staff around the city, hours after the city’s main police union harshly criticized the city’s first Democratic mayor in two decades for being insufficiently supportive of the department during recent waves of anti-police violence.

The shooter, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Abdula Brinsley, traveled from Baltimore, where police said he had shot and wounded his girlfriend, to New York and during the day posted on the social media service Instagram that he would be “putting wings on pigs today,” using an anti-police slur.

Baltimore police said they learned of the suspect’s posts on Saturday afternoon and called NYPD officials to alert them that digital data showed he had traveled to the city’s borough of Brooklyn. But the call came in less than an hour before officials said Brinsley, who was black, shot and killed two officers as they sat in their patrol car near a major housing project.

The officers he killed were Hispanic and Asian-American.

Read more HERE.

Obama Does Not Have Authority to Change Cuba Policy

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Credit - Washington Post

Credit – Washington Post

By Mike Gonzalez

Exchanging three hardened Cuban spies for American hostage Alan Gross establishes a wrong moral and legal equivalency. Worse, extending recognition to Cuba’s dictatorial regime harms U.S. national interests and fails to advance freedom in Cuba.

The White House “Fact Sheet” on Cuba makes clear that the Obama administration received nothing in exchange for its many and substantial concessions to Havana’s Communist regime. In essence, after five years of “negotiations,” the White House ended up where Raul Castro started: Gross would be exchanged for three Cuban spies whose activities led to the death of an American in the 1990s.

The administration’s announcement that “the president has instructed the secretary of state to immediately initiate discussions with Cuba on the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba,” also gives in to a longstanding Castro demand. Cubans will not gain freedom of expression, of association, of thought or of anything else as a result.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Obama announces the ‘most significant changes’ in Cuba policy in more than 50 years

By Katie Zezima

President Obama announced the normalization of relations with Cuba Wednesday, stating that while the decades-old policy toward Cuba was “rooted in the best of intentions,” it has had little effect.

In what Obama called the “most significant changes” in Cuba policy in more than 50 years, the president announced that the United States plans to reopen its embassy in Cuba and ease travel and trade restrictions. The changes end an “outdated approach,” Obama said.

“Neither the American nor the Cuban people are served by a rigid policy that’s rooted in events that took place before most of us were born,” Obama said.

While the policy was “rooted in the best of intentions,” Obama said, “…it has had little effect.”

Obama said he spoke with Cuban President Raul Castro yesterday, the first time the leaders of the two countries have spoken since the Cold War. Obama said he told Castro that Cuban society remains constrained due to restrictions, and said that he is under “no illusion” that barriers to freedom remain for Cuban citizens.

Read more from this story HERE.

Shocking Video: Christian Man Asks 13 Gay Bakeries To Bake Him Pro-Traditional Marriage Cake; They All Said No

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Credit - Shoebat.com

Credit – Shoebat.com

“Support Gay Marriage” is one Christian bakery was sued for refusing to put that slogan on a cake for an event to support the gay agenda.

Christian bakeries that refuse to make pro-homosexual marriage cakes are getting sued, they get fined, they get death threats, and they lose their businesses.

So Shoebat.com called some 13 prominent bakers who are pro-gay and requested that they make a pro-traditional marriage cake with the words “Gay marriage is wrong” placed on the cake. Each one denied us service, and even used deviant insults and obscenities against us. One baker even said that she would make me a cookie with a large phallus on it. We recorded all of this in a video that will stun the American people as to how militant and intolerant the homosexual agenda is:

If anyone who objects saying that our request for the cake was hateful, this is exactly the type of thing the homosexual activists do to Christian bakeries when they use the state to coerce them to make a cake with an explicitly anti traditional marriage slogans on it.

Read more from this story HERE.

WATCH: 100-Year-Old Math Teacher Shreds Common Core

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Credit - Rare News

Credit – Rare News

At 100 years old, Madeline Scotto knows a thing about teaching. She’s been doing it for decades and still teaches at the school she graduated from in 1928.

Scotto, who teaches math, recently sat down with Business Insider to share some of her complaints about Common Core.

Read more from this story HERE.

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‘It Stinks’: 10-Year-Old Says Common Core Is ‘Nonsense’

By Fox News

It Stinks’: 10-Year-Old Says Common Core Is ‘Nonsense’

10-year-old Elizabeth Blaine dropped the mic at a Montclair, New Jersey, school board meeting Monday night, sharing her support for a policy that lets parents opt out their children from taking the Common Core test, also known as PARCC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers).

“I love to read. I love to write. I love to do math. But I don’t love the PARCC. Why? Because it stinks,” Elizabeth said.

“This is crazy!” she continued. “I am one of the most gifted students in my grade (or so my mom says) and I have not even the slightest clue as to what this means.”

“I am glad my mom and dad are letting me opt out, because I don’t want to deal with this nonsense.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Cruz's 2016 Strategy for Victory

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Credit - Getty Images

Credit – Getty Images

To hell with the independents. That’s not usually the animating principle of a presidential campaign, but for Ted Cruz’s, it just might be.

His strategists aren’t planning to make a big play for so-called independent voters in the general election if Cruz wins the Republican nomination. According to several of the senator’s top advisers, Cruz sees a path to victory that relies instead on increasing conservative turnout; attracting votes from groups — including Jews, Hispanics, and Millennials — that have tended to favor Democrats; and, in the words of one Cruz strategist, “not getting killed with independents.”

Twenty-three months from the presidential election, it seems all but a given that the freshman senator, who has been in Congress just two years, will mount a bid for the White House. “He’s looking at the race very seriously,” says a senior adviser, who confirms that Cruz’s campaign headquarters would be based in Houston. Cruz strategists see a way to win both the nomination and the general election. They are assiduously cultivating the party’s top-dollar donors, almost all of whom remain uncommitted. Internally, the senator has shaken up his staff to address problems and to set the stage for a presidential bid. All that’s left, it seems, is an official announcement.

It’s almost conventional wisdom now that presidential candidates woo the party faithful in primary contests and tack to the middle in the general election to attract more-moderate voters. Not Cruz. As one of his advisers puts it, “winning independents has meant not winning.” The adviser says the moderate fiscal- and social-policy positions that candidates need to adopt to win independent voters have dampened base turnout.

He points to the examples of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. Bush won independents in 2000 but lost the popular vote, while both John Kerry in 2004 and Mitt Romney in 2012 won them and, of course, still lost. Beyond that, the strategist explains, conservative turnout peaked in 2004, declined in 2008, and declined again in 2012. Recapturing those votes, he says, is the key to a potential Cruz victory. The senator’s advisers believe they can increase turnout to between 2004 and 2008 levels, at least, by energizing the grassroots and recapturing Reagan Democrats.

Read more from this story HERE.

Issa Subpoenas Gruber For Everything on ObamaCare

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Credit - The Signal

Credit – The Signal

Rep. Darrell Issa subpoenaed Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber late Thursday for all the professor’s documents about the health-care law.

Gruber faced the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday and apologized profusely for his many comments over the past several years in which he called the American voters stupid and boasted that a “lack of transparency” helped get the Affordable Care Act passed by Congress.

But while Gruber was contrite, he refused to provide much new information to the committee, most notably stonewalling the total amount he made consulting on Obamacare through federal and state contracts. (RELATED: Gruber Hides Behind Lawyers)

Instead of admitting how much he made off the health-care law, Gruber repeatedly referred the committee to his attorney. He said that he believed his financial disclosures from the previous two fiscal years, which doesn’t encompass his consulting in the lead-up to Obamacare’s passage, were all that was required.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Jonathan Gruber Subpoenaed After Refusing to Disclose How Much Government Paid Him

By Melissa Quinn

After refusing to tell Congress how much money he received from taxpayers, Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber was served with a subpoena by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee yesterday.

“This week, Dr. Gruber repeatedly refused to answer several key questions, including the amount of taxpayer funds he received for his work on Obamacare,” chairman Darrell Issa said in a statement. “The American people deserve not just an apology, but a full accounting, which Dr. Gruber must provide.”

Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology health economics professor, testified before the committee this week after making derogatory comments about how the Affordable Care Act was passed. In several videos uncovered by a Philadelphia investment adviser last month, Gruber mocked the American people and discussed how Democrats deliberately crafted the law under a veil of secrecy.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cruz Challenges Constitutionality of Cromnibus Over Immigration

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Bloomberg via Getty Images

Bloomberg via Getty Images

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) late Friday formally challenged the constitutionality of the $1 trillion spending bill, and launched a process that could force the Senate to vote on whether the bill violates the Constitution because it allows President Barack Obama to implement his executive action on immigration.

Cruz took to the floor Friday evening, and said Obama’s immigration action violates the Constitution and is closer to the act of a monarch than a president.

“The president has justified this illegal amnesty by saying he told Congress what he wanted, and Congress refused to give it to him,” Cruz said. “Well, Mr. President, the relationship in our constitutional republic between the president and the Congress is not the relationship between a parent and a child.”

“The president does not get to demand of Congress, ‘here is the policy I want; either give me what I want, or I will decree it to be so and ignore the law,’ ” he said. “That is the president’s bargaining position.”

After warning that Congress must stand its ground and fight Obama’s action, Cruz made a point of order against the spending bill by arguing it would allow Obama’s actions to stand.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Makes Up Bible Verse to Justify Amnesty

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World Net Daily

World Net Daily

When quoting the Bible, the best advice is to accurately quote the words on the page.

President Obama had some trouble with that Tuesday, as he attempted to cite Holy Scripture, but did so with a verse that simply doesn’t exist.

“The Good Book says don’t throw stones at glass houses, or make sure we’re looking at the log in our eye before we are pointing out the mote in other folks’ eyes,” Obama said during a speech in Nashville, Tennessee, as he was justifying his recent executive action granting amnesty for up to 5 million illegal aliens.

Unfortunately for the president, the Bible never mentions “glass houses.”

Obama’s remarks are coming under heavy fire from some in the media, including Jim Treacher of the Daily Caller.

“This is a new level of dishonest narcissism, even for Obama,” Treacher writes. “But I suppose it’s no surprise. He makes up stuff that isn’t in the Constitution all the time. Why not make up stuff that isn’t in the Bible? It’s all the same. Those guys are dead, and he has a lot of power, so too bad.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Reasons Jeb Bush Does Not Inspire Conservatives

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Photo: Jerry Wolford/Polaris/Newscom

Photo: Jerry Wolford/Polaris/Newscom

By Genevieve Wood

I had promised myself I wasn’t going to write about 2016 until at least Jan. 1, 2015. So much for that.

Jeb Bush announced today via Facebook that he has “decided to actively explore” a presidential run and will launch a leadership PAC early next year to help him “facilitate conversations with citizens across America.”

That’s as close as any potential GOP presidential candidate has come yet to saying, “I’m in.”

But before everyone starts dusting off their old Bush and Clinton paraphernalia for a rematch of the families in 2016, let’s consider that while Democrats may have a weak bench of candidates this go round, the same is not true for the GOP.

For the first time in a very long time, the Republican Party has not one, not two, but several would-be candidates, at both the state and national level, who are not only “viable,” but also conservative. And it’s the latter ingredient that many today question about Jeb Bush.

The GOP has not one, not two, but several would-be candidates who are not only “viable” but also conservative.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Jeb Bush’s Common Core Problem

By Kelsey Harkness

Jeb Bush has long advocated for all 50 states to adopt Common Core national standards.

Now that the former Florida governor has all but confirmed his plans to run for president in 2016, the issue threatens to overshadow his likely campaign.

Bush’s name, matched with consistently high polling numbers among potential 2016 Republican candidates, makes landing a seat in the Oval Office feasible. But in order to reach the general election—to perhaps take on Hillary Clinton—Bush must first overcome concerns about Common Core with conservative primary voters.

Bush’s longstanding support for Common Core is no secret: Over a year ago, Frederick M. Hess, an education expert at the American Enterprise Institute, predicted that if he decided to run for president, “Common Core could be his Romneycare.”

What is Common Core?

Common Core standards were created by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The goal, supported by the Obama administration, was to increase education standards in America.

Among conservatives, however, the issue one of the most controversial. Several politicians have flip-flopped on the issue, pulling their support or even abandoning the standards in their states.

Read more from this story HERE.

Americans' Support for Second Amendment on the Rise

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Credit - TPNN

Credit – TPNN

On Monday, America will mark the two-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. As Americans watched in horror as news developed on the horrific killing, they reacted in different ways; some held their children tighter and wondered how a young man could be so deranged, so cruel.

Others clamored for stricter gun laws in the wake of the violence and were egged-on by a gruesome, vulture-esque liberal media that continually denounced our Second Amendment rights as the cause of this carnage.

However, while there was a brief surge in calls for gun rights, the federal government was unable to deliver even a single gun control measure. Some states were able to sufficiently capitalize on national sorrow and ram-through state measures, but for the most part, America held strong against the onslaught of opportunistic gun-grabbing measures…

Almost two years after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Americans’ support for gun rights is rising.

By a margin of 52 percent to 46 percent, Americans say protecting the rights of gun owners is more important than gun control, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center released Wednesday. It is the first time Pew found more support for gun ownership than gun control in more than two decades of surveys on the issue.

Read more from this story HERE.