Religious Liberty on Trial Before the Supreme Court

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Photo Credit: Patriot Post

Photo Credit: Patriot Post

The Affordable Care Act is the law that keeps on giving. Last time it was before the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts validated the horror that is ObamaCare when he declared the individual mandate penalty to be a tax, and thus within the constitutional power of Congress to create. Tuesday, the Supremes heard another challenge to the law in the form of Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius – both cases dealing with mandates and religious liberty.

Hobby Lobby is an arts and crafts chain owned by evangelical Christians. With more than 13,000 employees, the company faces potential fines of almost $475 million a year if it fails to comply with ObamaCare’s demands. Conestoga Wood Specialties is a kitchen cabinet manufacturer owned by Mennonites, and, with almost 1,000 employees, it faces penalties of $35 million per year for failure to comply. The owners of both companies contend that complying with ObamaCare’s mandate that employer-provided health insurance cover contraceptives – even more specifically the mandate that coverage include abortifacients – would force them to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. More than 300 plaintiffs in over 90 lawsuits have joined them in the fight.

The suit pits the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) against ObamaCare. Under RFRA, the government may not substantially burden the free exercise of religion unless it can show that the burden advances a compelling interest using the least restrictive means of achieving that interest. (This is the federal law that is mirrored in Arizona, the amendment of which was the subject of the kerfuffle there last month.)

The Obama administration argues that business owners from the corner dry cleaner to corporate giants like Exxon give up their constitutional right to exercise their religion when they establish a business. And in essence, leftists want the government to stay out of their bedroom, but they want taxpayers and employers to pay for what happens in it.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Jeremiah Denton–Who Spent 7 and a Half Years as POW in Vietnam–Dies at 89

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Photo Credit: AP / Mobile Register, Bill Starling

Photo Credit: AP / Mobile Register, Bill Starling

Former Alabama Sen. Jeremiah Denton, who survived 7½ years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam and alerted the U.S. military to conditions there when he blinked the word “torture” in Morse code during a television interview, has died. He was 89.

Prisoner of war Jeremiah Denton declared his loyalty to the U.S. government during a 1966 interview for what was supposed to be a propaganda film. But his enraged captors missed his more covert message: “T-O-R-T-U-R-E,” blinked into the camera in Morse code, a dispatch that would alert the U.S. military to the conditions he endured.

Denton, who would survive 7½ years confined in a tiny, stinking, windowless cell at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” and other camps before his release in 1973, died of heart problems Friday in Virginia Beach, Va., at age 89, his grandson Edward Denton said.

The elder Denton later became the first Republican from Alabama elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction, though the iron will that allowed him to persevere in captivity gave rise to criticism he was too rigid a politician.

In July 1965, a month after he began flying combat missions for the U.S. Navy in Vietnam, the Mobile native was shot down near Thanh Hoa. He was captured and recalled his captivity in a book titled “When Hell Was in Session.”

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New Questions About ex-CIA Director’s Benghazi Claims Ahead of Testimony

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

New allegations are raising additional questions about former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell’s involvement in crafting the administration’s flawed narrative on the Benghazi attack, ahead of his scheduled testimony next week on Capitol Hill.

Morell is set to testify publicly for the first time on Wednesday about his role in crafting the controversial Benghazi “talking points,” which initially blamed a protest for the deadly attack.

The former acting director, and deputy director, was called to testify to explain potentially conflicting testimony he gave Congress about the talking points and the administration’s role. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers told reporters this week — before news of his retirement was made public — that the rare, open session should “allow Mr. Morell to answer the questions that we know many people have about what he knew and when he knew it.”

But another detail is raising questions. According to a source with first-hand knowledge of events, during a secure video conference call two days after the Sept. 11, 2012 attack, Morell told the team in Libya that there was intelligence a demonstration preceded the assault. With that statement, Morell apparently dismissed the reporting of U.S. personnel on the ground, including the CIA’s top officer, known as the chief of station.

“We’ve done a forensic on that event. We never found a reference to demonstrations from individuals who were on the ground,” Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., told Fox News in a recent interview. Burr sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee which conducted its own investigation on Benghazi. The bipartisan findings released in January were highly critical of the State Department and the administration’s resistance to fully explain its role in the flawed talking points.

Read more from this story HERE.

Facebook Drones to Offer Low-Cost Net Access

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Photo Credit: BBC

Photo Credit: BBC

Facebook has ambitious plans to connect the two-thirds of the world that has no net access, using drones, satellites and lasers.

The move was announced on the social media platform by founder Mark Zuckerberg.

It will put it in direct competition with Google, which is planning to deliver net access via balloons.

Both of the net giants want to extend their audiences, especially in the developing world.

Details about Facebook’s plan were scant but it will include a fleet of solar-powered drones as well as low-earth orbit and geosynchronous satellites. Invisible, infrared laser beams could also be used to boost the speed of the net connections.

Read more from this story HERE.

Condi Rice Campaigns for McConnell, Sullivan and Other GOP Establishment Candidates

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Weekly Standard

Weekly Standard

House majority whip Kevin McCarthy introduced [Former Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice [at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner Wednesday night in Washington, D.C.] and raised the prospect that she might become even more involved in politics in two years. After listing various prestigious positions she’s held, he noted, “There’s one thing that’s not on her resume and I want her to put her mind to it to resolve that in 2016.”

Rice has downplayed those suggestions and there’s little reason to believe she’s angling for a run. Still, she has been increasingly active on behalf of her fellow Republicans. Earlier this month, Rice spoke at a Kentucky fundraiser for Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and the spring convention for the California Republican party. Rice appeared in an ad touting Alaska Senate hopeful and Marine reservist Dan Sullivan, a spot paid for by Karl Rove’s super PAC, American Crossroads. In the coming months, she will make appearances for the National Republican Senatorial Committee….

Before turning to foreign policy, Rice urged the crowd, including many Republican House members, to keep America a “nation of immigrants” and strafed liberals who send their kids to private schools but write New York Times op-eds claiming that school choice will ruin public schools.

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John Cornyn Rips Chuck Schumer’s Media ‘Shield Law’

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Photo Credit: Reutets

Photo Credit: Reutets

The number two Republican in the Senate is lambasting a media “shield law” proposed by New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer, potentially imperiling its shot at passage.

“This is a bad idea and one whose time has not come,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the Senate minority whip, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview. “Believe me, we will not be rolled over.”

Schumer’s “Free Flow of Information Act” passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, and he recently said he already has the 60 votes needed to pass the bill on the floor. “We’ll get a few more Republicans, not many more, but we have the 60 votes,” Schumer told reporters in New York last week.
He’s bluffing, Cornyn retorts.

“If he had the votes to pass it, it already would have been passed,” Cornyn says, adding, “This isn’t about passing legislation, this is about distracting the public’s attention and changing the subject from the failed policies of this administration. I think you could put this in that same category.”

Schumer’s proposal would exempt a “covered journalist” from subpoenas and other legal requirements to expose their confidential sources in leak investigations and other areas. Other lawmakers have proposed similar ideas in the past, but the effort gained new momentum after a series of revelations about controversial tactics the Justice Department was using to target journalists.

Read more from this story HERE. But to find out more about Cornyn, read these stories HERE and HERE.

Common Core Shows Fourth Graders Gory, Painful Ways to Kill Class Pets

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Common Core math has gotten a lot of negative attention.

However, the Common Core standards also mandate a nonfiction-heavy reading regime that devalues literature tremendously. Specifically, under the Common Core standards, “informational texts” must constitute a huge part of what students read.

So, what exactly is in these “informational texts”?

In the idyllic expanses of New York’s Lakeland Central School District, the “informational texts” for fourth graders are disturbing agitprop from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

As EAGnews.org reports, the entire text forced on the fourth-grade kids was taken word-for-word from the PETA website PETAkids.com—home of the “30-day vegan pledge,” militant screeds against KFC and statement such as: “Zoos collect animals and put them on display to make money.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Poll: Twice as Many Feel Safer with Gun in the House than Without

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

By a margin of slightly more than two-to-one, Americans overall would feel safer with a gun in their house than not, but less than a quarter of Democrats agree, according to a new survey.

Pollster YouGov found that 42 percent would feel safer with a gun in the home. Just 20 percent would feel “less safe.”

But the findings were divided politically. Most Republicans, 59 percent, would feel safer with a gun nearby, but only 24 percent of Democrats agree.

Read more from this story HERE.

Oversight Democrats Demand End to Benghazi Probe

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Photo Credit: Getty

Photo Credit: Getty

By John Bre Snahan.

All 17 Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are demanding that Chairman Darrell Issa end his year-and-a-half-long probe into the Benghazi attacks, which left four Americans dead and have become a catchphrase signifying conservative suspicion of the Obama administration.

Led by ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the move to end what Democrats dismiss as a “partisan investigation” is part of a broader effort by party leaders on Capitol Hill to finally move past the political furor surrounding the incident.

Democrats and Obama administration officials complain that the probe has cost millions of dollars while forcing the Pentagon and other federal agencies to respond to seemingly endless congressional demands for more information, all without yielding any coverup or conspiracy. They argue that the investigation has not produced any information related to allegations that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to “stand down” military units that could have been sent to Benghazi in a bid to save U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and the other besieged Americans.

Democrats privately believe that Issa is using Benghazi to try to hurt Clinton’s possible presidential ambitions in 2016. “This is all about putting up points against Hillary,” complained a Democrat close to the issue. “It’s clear what they’re trying to do.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Townhall

Photo Credit: Townhall

Remembering HillaryCare, Benghazi and “What Difference at This Point Does it Make?”

By Donald Lambro.

The end of Barack Obama’s presidency effectively began after the 2010 congressional elections when Republicans took control of the House.

Obama and the Democrats have been tumbling into a political abyss ever since, hurtling toward major Senate losses this fall, if not a decisive Republican takeover of the Democratic-run chamber.

He has been robotically going through the motions of being the president, but he no longer steers the nation’s agenda or is seen as a catalyst for change or as a leader who gets things done — as his job approval polls sink into the low 40s and the lethargic U.S. economy shows no sign of serious improvement.

His grand plan to further push our country in a sharply leftward direction has turned into a disaster for his party. Democrats have been thrown on the defensive as a result of his unpopular healthcare law that is coming apart at the seams, driving up medical insurance costs, and most likely facing some dismantlement in the courts.

Vulnerable, frightened Democrats running for re-election talk now of “fixing” Obamacare rather than preserving it as it is presently shaped — while Obama orders one year long delay after another in its full implementation in the face of devastating losses in November.

Read more from this story HERE.

Coming Soon: DMV Facility Solely for Illegal Immigrants

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Photo Credit: Tomas / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Tomas / Creative Commons

Lompoc is slated to house a DMV processing center for undocumented immigrant driving privilege applications later this year. The state will start issuing those cards in January 2015. A building on North H Street, which has been vacant for a very long time, will house the facility according to Mayor John Linn.

The DMV location will serve as a regional center, taking applications from a broad geographic area, including San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties.

Read more from this story HERE.