Cruz to Get Hero’s Welcome in Iowa and New Hampshire

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreConservatives in Iowa and New Hampshire are preparing a hero’s welcome for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) after he showed up Senate Republican leaders during a crucial vote on the debt limit.

Cruz infuriated his Senate Republican colleagues this week when he filibustered a clean bill to raise the debt limit. His objection forced Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and 11 other Republicans to vote with Democrats to advance the legislation.

But in Iowa and New Hampshire, two important presidential primary states, conservative activists are cheering Cruz’s stand and buzzing about a possible presidential run in 2016.

Activists in the two states said they plan to show Cruz their appreciation when he visits in March and April.

“A tickertape parade,” said Steve Deace, a conservative radio host based in Iowa when asked what kind of reception Cruz will receive from activists next month.

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Zogby Grades the President: Blowing it Over ‘Half-Baked’ Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner Pollster John Zogby reports in our weekly White House report card that President Obama has to finally take responsibility for Obamacare and fix it fast or see his legacy tarnished.

“Responders to this column have noted how easy I am as a grader, at least when the president is concerned. I do think a good professor is a nurturer, as well as one who demands high standards. So when a student comes to me and says his paper was rushed and he faced all sorts of problems at home, I give him a pass.

“When he comes back to me with a half-baked version and says he was bullied, I say take some more time and get it right. But when he says he needs even more time to get it right even if it takes him until after the semester ends, I say enough already. So it goes with the latest postponements with Obamacare.

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Rand Paul: GOP ‘Will Not Win Again in My Lifetime’ the Presidency, Absent Change

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Photo Credit: Timothy D. EasleyBy Cheryl K. Chumley.

Sen. Rand Paul from Kentucky warned his fellow Republican politicos that without change, the GOP would fail miserably in the upcoming White House contest — and that goes for the next few decades.

“I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime for the presidency unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party,” he said, during an interview with Glenn Beck on TheBlaze that aired on Thursday, Politico reported. “And it has to be a transformation, not a little tweaking at the edges.”

In fact, the GOP needs a complete overhaul that includes a “better message” that resonates with a wide population, “in a way they can understand it,” he said, on the show. One example: Rather than talking taxes, talk civil liberties, he suggested.

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Rand Paul: Republican Won’t Be President Until There’s a ‘New GOP’

By Courtney Coren.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has an ominous prediction for the future of his party: It won’t win the White House unless it undergoes a major transformation.

“I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime for the presidency, unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican party, and it has to be a transformation, not just a little tweaking at the edges,” Paul said in an interview with conservative talk show host Glenn Beck on The Blaze.

Paul said he thinks it’s better to find what those in the party can agree on and unite around those things instead of focusing on the disagreements. That is is one of the reasons why he decided to endorse the re-election bid by fellow Kentucky Sen. and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

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Report: Feds Want to Track Your DNA Like a License Plate

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Photo Credit: WNDThe federal government doesn’t just want the ability to track down your car; it wants to be able to track down your body as well.

Just as details are emerging about a controversial, nationwide vehicle-surveillance database, WND has learned the federal government is planning an even more invasive spy program using “physiological signatures” to track down individuals.

The goal of this research is to detect – as well as analyze and categorize – unique traits the government can exploit to “identify, locate and track specific individuals or groups of people.”

According to the program’s statement of objectives, “The scope of human-centered [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR] research spans the complete range of human performance starting at the individual molecular, cellular, genomic level.”

Documents WND located through routine database research reveal the ability to follow people by detecting “certain characteristics of operational interest” is designed for U.S. military and intelligence-gathering superiority.

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Americans Get Biggest Hockey Win Since ‘Miracle’

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe puck went five-hole off the stick off T.J. Oshie to win a hockey game for the United States against Russia just the way the puck went five-hole off the stick of Mike Eruzione to win one against the Soviet Union in a different time and place.

Except that this time and this place, Saturday in Sochi, there was nothing miraculous about the goal that went between the legs of goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky to lift the USA to a 3-2 shootout-decided, preliminary round victory; nothing, in fact, miraculous about any of the four shootout goals recorded by Oshie that ultimately determined the outcome of this extremely entertaining, up-tempo match.

While NHL hockey turns into a kind of a one-on-one game after 65 minutes of tied score, Olympic hockey can turn into a literal one-on-one affair once a shootout enters the tie-breaking fourth round of the tie-breaking skills competition.

It can be one shooter for the duration, as it was for the USA and coach Dan Bylsma with Oshie, 7-for-10 with St. Louis this season and 25-for-46 in his NHL career in the competition, who went 4-for-6 in extra innings.

The ultimate team game distilled to “One for All.”

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Mitch McConnell on Debt Ceiling: I ‘Protect’ the Country

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Photo Credit: APSenate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he voted to advance a clean debt-ceiling bill this week because his job is “to protect the country” when he can.

The Republican leader said at a Friday campaign event in Louisville, Ky., that he has long preferred making structural changes to fiscal policy as a condition to raising the debt ceiling.

But given that the House could pass only a clean debt ceiling — every policy rider Speaker John Boehner tried to attach failed to garner sufficient support — McConnell said he was left with one option: Avoid economic catastrophe.

McConnell and most of his leadership team voted to break a filibuster demanded by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), to the ire of many conservatives and surprise of Capitol Hill, given his recently stated opposition to any clean lift of the debt ceiling.

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Fed. Judge Misquotes Constitution in Marriage Ruling, ‘All Men’ Are Created Equal? NYT and NBC News Do Too

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Photo Credit: APIn her ruling yesterday that Virginia’s ban against gay marriage was unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen confused language from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, an error that was quoted in a New York Times story but not corrected by the “newspaper of record,” and also was repeated by NBC News and not corrected.

In the first paragraph of her Feb. 13 ruling for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge Allen wrote, “Our Constitution declares that ‘all men’ are created equal. Surely this means all of us.” (See edva-ssm-opinion.pdf)

However, the Constitution does not say that; in fact, the words “all men” do not appear as a phrase in the Constitution at all.

The second paragraph in the Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

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ObamaCare Patients with Serious Pre-Existing Diseases Could Face Expensive Drug Costs

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Photo Credit: REUTERSBy Jim Angle.

People with serious pre-existing diseases, precisely those the president aimed to help with ObamaCare, could find themselves paying for expensive drug treatments with no help from the health care exchanges.

Those with expensive diseases such as lupus or multiple sclerosis face something called a “closed drug formulary.”

Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute explains,”if the medicine that you need isn’t on that list, it’s not covered at all. You have to pay completely out of pocket to get that medicine, and the money you spend doesn’t count against your deductible, and it doesn’t count against your out of pocket limits, so you’re basically on your own.”

The plan had claimed it would rescue those with serious pre-existing conditions.

“So it could be that a MS patient could be expected to pay $62,000 just for one medication,” says Dr. Daniel Kantor, who treats MS patients and others with neurological conditions near Jacksonville, Florida. “That’s a possiblity under the new ObamaCare going on right now.”

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Uh-oh look whose health plan got canceled

By WND.

Six million-plus Americans have gotten notices that their health insurance plans have been canceled because of Obamacare, and undoubtedly there were some celebrities among them.

Adolf Hitler was distinctly unhappy with his notice, as a parody video reveals.

But at least he knows who to blame: Sen. Ted Cruz.

It’s the latest YouTube parody rewriting the subtitles in the Hitler-rant scene from the 2004 German-language movie “Downfall,” which recounts the Nazi dictator’s final days in his Berlin bunker.

The scene has been the source of numerous political and pop-culture parodies, including Hitler’s outrage at Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012.

(Warning: Some of the videos contain language that may be offensive to some readers.)

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US Army Misconduct Firings Skyrocket

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The number of U.S. soldiers forced out of the Army because of crimes or misconduct has soared in the past several years as the military emerges from a decade of war that put a greater focus on battle competence than on character.

Data obtained by The Associated Press shows that the number of officers who left the Army due to misconduct more than tripled in the past three years. The number of enlisted soldiers forced out for drugs, alcohol, crimes and other misconduct shot up from about 5,600 in 2007, as the Iraq war peaked, to more than 11,000 last year.

The data reveals stark differences between the military services and underscores the strains that long, repeated deployments to the front lines have had on the Army’s soldiers and their leaders.

It also reflects the Army’s rapid growth in the middle part of the decade, and the decisions to relax standards a bit to bring in and retain tens of thousands of soldiers to fill the ranks as the Pentagon added troops in Iraq and continued the fight in Afghanistan.

The Army grew to a peak of about 570,000 soldiers during the height of the wars, and soldiers represented the bulk of the troops on the battlefields compared with the other services.

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Volkswagen Workers Reject United Auto Workers

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Photo Credit: APVolkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., have rejected the United Auto Workers, shooting down the union’s hopes of securing a foothold at a foreign-owned auto plant in the South.

The vote was 712 to 626, said the UAW, which blamed the loss on “politicians and outside special interest groups.”

The vote, announced late Friday night after three days of balloting, is a devastating loss for the UAW, whose membership has plummeted from a high of 1.5 million in 1979 to around 400,000 today. Outgoing UAW President Bob King had staked his legacy on organizing a Southern auto plant for the first time.

But the decision is a triumph for Tennessee Republicans like Sen. Bob Corker, who lured Volkswagen to Chattanooga as mayor in the early 2000s. Corker and other Republicans warned workers that the UAW’s presence would irreparably harm the plant, and in recent days he claimed — with little evidence — that Volkswagen would choose not to expand the plant if workers unionized.

“Needless to say, I am thrilled for the employees at Volkswagen and for our community and its future,” Corker said in a brief statement Friday night.

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