Sharpton Pushes Back on Report He was Mob Informant

/8 Comments/in , /by
Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

Al Sharpton on Monday dismissed a report portraying him as a one-time mob informant for the FBI, calling the claims old news and a “crazy” attempt to discredit him.

“I don’t see this as news,” Sharpton told FoxNews.com. “This has been brought up three or four times now. I don’t understand. It’s crazy.”

TheSmokingGun.com story describes in detail how Sharpton in the mid-1980s secretly recorded Mafia bosses and other underworld figures for an FBI-NYPD crime task force.

The 12,196-word story — in which he is referred to as CI-7, short for confidential informant #7 — says investigators got Sharpton to “flip” after getting him close enough to agreeing to broker a drug deal connected to boxing promoter Don King that they could threaten him with charges.

Though the task force took a “shotgun” approach in giving Sharpton a variety of snitching assignments, they ultimately wanted inroads into the corrupt New York music industry and realized he had the connections, according to the story.

Read more from this story HERE.

Parental Revolt Against Common Core Prompts States to Take Action

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Eleven-year-old Leo Tuttle is a fifth-grader at an Indianapolis private school, where he struggles to keep up with the demanding curriculum.

But the school is where Leo’s mother, Erin Tuttle, wants him to be, rather than a public school or even the Catholic school he previously attended.

Erin Tuttle moved Leo to the private school when her home state of Indiana, along with 45 other states, agreed to follow the Common Core State Standards Initiative for all its public schools and those following the charter school program, such as the Catholic school. The Common Core standards are a set of guidelines for schools, initiated federally, to improve and make consistent education standards in math and English language arts.

The goal of Common Core is to “… articulate what students need to know in grades K-12 in order to be ready for college or a career after they graduate,” said Mike Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools, which supports and promotes the standards.

Many students and teachers saw the standards for the first time this year, as the program was being phased in nationwide. And now that they’ve seen it, many are not happy with it, and they’re joining an ever-increasing group of critics who are lining up against it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pope Francis: ‘The Image of God is the Married Couple: The Man and the Woman’

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP / Gabriel Bouys

Photo Credit: AP / Gabriel Bouys

Although the national gay magazine The Advocate named Pope Francis its “Person of the Year” in December 2013, the Pope repeated on Apr. 2 the Catholic Church’s teaching that marriage is reserved for one man and one woman, adding that this is part of “God’s design” and that “the image of God is the married couple: the man and the woman ….”

During his General Audience speech at St. Peter’s Square on Apr. 2, before a crowd estimated at 45,000, Pope Francis first cited Genesis, saying, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them. … Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

“The image of God is the married couple: the man and the woman; not only the man, not only the woman, but both of them together,” said the Pope. “God’s covenant with us is represented in that covenant between man and woman. And this is very beautiful.”

“When a man and a woman celebrate the Sacrament of Matrimony, God as it were ‘is mirrored’ in them; He impresses in them his own features and the indelible character of his love,” said Pope Francis. “Marriage is the icon of God’s love for us.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Team Boehner to Drudge: We Didn’t ‘Expand’ Obamacare, We Repealed It

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

Hours after the Drudge Report suggested on Sunday that “Republicans expand[ed] Obamacare” in the headline for the site’s lead story, an “alert” from the office of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, countered that they had actually “chip[ped] away another piece” of the law.

The recent change “eliminated a cap on deductibles for small group policies offered inside the law’s health care exchanges as well as outside,” the Associated Press explained.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fort Hood Shooter Snapped Over Denial of Request for Leave, Army Confirms

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: U.S. Army

Photo Credit: U.S. Army

Fort Hood shooter Ivan Lopez’s rampage followed an argument over the denial of his request for leave and did not appear to be due to some ongoing mental problem, an Army official said Monday.

The word came as officials announced findings of their ongoing investigation, which included interviews with more than 1,100 people and a recreation of the shooting last Wednesday, which left four dead including Lopez, and 16 injured.

“We only have one suspect,” said Chris Grey, spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command. “We are fully committed to this investigation and we will continue to pursue investigatively all leads.”

Grey, who was flanked by other law enforcement officials, did not take questions at the brief Monday news conference, and said he would not divulge any information that could jeopardize the investigation. But confirmation that an argument of a request for leave had immediately preceded the shooting seemed to further put to rest prior speculation that the 34-year-old Army specialist’s Lopez’s spree may have been related to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Although he had reportedly been treated for mental issues including depression, military officials had expressed skepticism that his four-month tour in Iraq as that war wound down could have caused PTSD.

One complicating issue in the probe is the sheer size of the crime scene, Grey said, noting that it was comparable to two city blocks. The spree began in one building of the sprawling complex, where Lopez, who was 34, first pulled his .45-caliber Caliber Smith & Wesson handgun and killed one, injuring 10.

Read more from this story HERE.

Why is New York City Bullying Christians?

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A federal appeals panel has ruled that New York City has a right to ban churches from holding worship services in school buildings. In essence, it means Christians have officially become second-class citizens in the nation’s largest city.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District is just the latest twist in a legal saga pitting the Bronx Household of Faith against the NYC Board of Education. The court found that New York City’s ban on renting schools to churches for weekend worship services did not violate the First Amendment right to free expression.

“The opinion uses the establishment clause as an excuse to treat people of faith worse than everybody else,” said the Bronx Household of Faith’s attorney, Jordan Lorence of Alliance Defending Freedom.

Circuit Judge John Walker was the lone dissenter in the 2 to 1 ruling on Thursday. He said the board of education “plainly discriminates against religious belief and cannot be justified by a compelling government interest.”

“Shutting the door to religious worship services in such a setting where every other activity is permitted strikes at the clause’s core,” he wrote in the dissent. “Of the 50 largest school districts in the United States, New York city alone entirely excludes religious worship from its facilities.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Supreme Court Rejects Christian Photographer’s Appeal of Lesbian Wedding Verdict

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

While the Supreme Court is mulling over the religious rights of Hobby Lobby owners the Greens, it decidedly denied those rights Monday morning to a small wedding photography business owned by a Christian couple.

This morning the Supreme Court rejected Elane Photography’s appeal to overturn a 2006 New Mexico ruling which said that the Christian business owners violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws by refusing to photograph a lesbian wedding ceremony.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins spoke out against the Supreme Court for its failure to protect First Amendment rights, saying:

Read more from this story HERE.

Gun Control Fail

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: IJ Review

Photo Credit: IJ Review

By April 15th, any New Yorker that owns an “assault weapon” is to have registered their gun, per the requirements of the New York SAFE act passed last year. But it’s looking more and more like a tiny percentage of New Yorkers are actually doing it.

While the state of New York has not released actual firearms registration numbers, the rumors of registrations in the 3,000-5,000 range mean that 99% of those affected gun owners are refusing to comply with the law.

Furthermore, gun manufacturers are already responding to the law by designing guns that carefully circumvent its specific requirements.

Read more from this story HERE.

Benghazi Cover-Up Was More to Protect Hillary than Obama

/8 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Bebeto Matthews / AP

Photo Credit: Bebeto Matthews / AP

By Ernest Istook.

A deeply politicized CIA acted more to protect the secretary of state than the president when it falsified its Benghazi talking points, according to Halle Dale, the Heritage Foundation’s senior fellow for public diplomacy.

At this week’s extraordinary public hearing by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell acknowledged being the ultimate editor of the CIA’s infamous talking points memo about the murders of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

The memo’s false claims became the Obama administration’s official version, broadcast by former U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice on national television as she spread the false message that the deaths resulted from a protest gone bad rather than a terrorist attack.

As a guest on my talk radio show Thursday on The Washington Times Radio Network, Ms. Dale said: “What we learned … is that the CIA is a deeply politicized agency.”

And protecting Hillary Clinton seemed a higher priority than protecting Barack Obama.

Read more from this story HERE.

_____________________________________________________________________

LIGNET Got Benghazi Right; Why Didn’t the CIA?

By Fred Fleitz.

In May 2011, I was asked by Christopher Ruddy, Newsmax Media’s President and CEO, to start a commercial intelligence analysis and forecasting service. It was an exciting project and a great opportunity after 25 years working in the national security field.

This project became known as the Langley Intelligence Group Network (LIGNET). Working with other intelligence and national security experts, we launched this project in the fall of 2011. LIGNET produces analysis in the style of the President’s Daily Brief, the classified memo that the U.S. Intelligence Community brings to the president every morning containing analysis of major security issues affecting this country.

Of the over 2,400 analyses we’ve posted since the launch of LIGNET, our work on one subject stands out: the September 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

I’m compelled to speak out about this after watching the testimony of former CIA acting Director Michael Morell before the House Intelligence Committee this week. Morell is in hot water because of controversial CIA-drafted talking points that said the attacks on the Benghazi consulate were the result of demonstrations over an anti-Muslim video and not a terrorist attack. These talking points, which were coordinated through several government agencies, were submitted to the White House and Congress on Sept. 15, 2012.

The talking points were politically convenient for the Obama administration in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election and were used by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to deny that the attacks on the consulate were related to terrorism during five Sunday morning talk show appearances on Sept. 16, 2012.

Read more from this story HERE.

Edward Snowden Addresses US Campaigners

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Frank Polich / Reuters

Photo Credit: Frank Polich / Reuters

Edward Snowden and the reporter Glenn Greenwald, who brought to light the whistleblower’s leaks about mass US government surveillance last year, appeared together via video link from opposite ends of the earth on Saturday, for what was believed to be the first time since Snowden sought asylum in Russia.

In Germany, meanwhile, a leading ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel criticised the US for failing to provide sufficient assurances on its spying tactics and said bilateral talks were unlikely to make much progress before the German leader visits Washington next month.

The interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, one of Merkel’s closest cabinet allies, told the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel: “US intelligence methods may be justified to a large extent by security needs, but the tactics are excessive and over-the-top.”

Last October, reports based on disclosures by Snowden said Washington had monitored Merkel’s mobile phone.

In Chicago, a sympathetic crowd of nearly 1,000 packed a downtown hotel ballroom at Amnesty International USA’s annual human rights meeting and gave Greenwald, who dialled in from Brazil, a raucous welcome before Snowden was patched in 15 minutes later – to a standing ovation.

Read more from this story HERE.