Transgender Teacher to Return to California Classroom as ‘True Self’

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Photo Credit: Kellie ParkerParents of students at a California high school are reacting to news that a long-time male high school science teacher is going to return after spring break as a woman.

The teacher, Gary Sconce, informed the Yosemite School District that he will be back in the classroom April 22 as his “true self,” a woman by the name of Karen Adell Scot, KFSN-TV reported Thursday.

“When you aren’t who you really are, it’s like being smothered. It’s like being rolled in a wave, if you’ve ever been rolled in a wave in the ocean where you can’t find your way up, you don’t know which direction you’ve been turned,” Scot told the station.

The 56-year-old husband, father and award-winning teacher came out to his family last April. Since then he has been undergoing hormone replacement therapy to transition to the person he says he is intended to be. He has been a teacher for 24 years

School district Superintendent James Sargent announced that Sconce was “in the midst of gender transition” in a March 19 letter to the parents of all 650 students at Yosemite High, the Fresno Bee reported.

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Wyoming Welder Faces $75,000 a Day in EPA Fines Over What He Built on His Own Property

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Photo Credit: Andy Johnson/FacebookAndy Johnson, a hardworking welder in Wyoming, and his wife put their “blood, sweat and tears” into building a stock pond on their 8-acre farm. They constructed it with their bare hands, filling it with brook and brown trout and even bringing in ducks and geese to float on the clear water.

However, Johnson’s dream of a pond quickly turned into a nightmare when the federal government stepped in and threatened him with civil and criminal penalties, including a potential $75,000-a-day fine.

In an interview with FoxNews.com, Johnson defiantly proclaimed: “I have not paid them a dime, nor will I.”

“I will go bankrupt if I have to fighting it. My wife and I built [the pond] together. We put our blood, sweat and tears into it. It was our dream,” he added.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims Johnson violated the Clean Water Act by “building a dam on a creek without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers,” according to the FoxNews.com report. The federal agency also says material from his pond is leaking into other waterways.

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Louisiana Bans Use of Welfare Benefits for Tattoos, Lingerie, Jewelry

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Photo Credit: APLouisiana welfare recipients will be prohibited from spending the federal assistance at lingerie shops, tattoo parlors, nail salons and jewelry stores, under new limits enacted by state social services officials.

The Department of Children and Family Services announced the emergency regulations late Thursday. They cover the Family Independence Temporary Assistance Program — commonly known as welfare benefits — and the Kinship Care Subsidy Program.

Both programs pay cash assistance to low-income families for items like food, clothing and housing.

DCFS Secretary Suzy Sonnier said the agency decided to ban the use of electronic benefit cards, which work as debit cards, at stores that don’t sell items that are considered basic needs for families.

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Pelosi is No Longer Even Trying to Appear Sane… (+video)

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Photo Credit: SS&SS / Creative Commons By Sam Rolley.

Cue up the laugh track. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) delivered some real gut-busters Thursday as she talked to reporters about President Barack Obama’s record and explained the finer points of his healthcare overhaul.

Pelosi has claimed that midterm voters will support Democratic candidates because November leaves time enough for them to reap the benefits of Obamacare and look past damning headlines from earlier in the year.

She doubled-down during her press conference, telling reporters that it simply isn’t true that Democrats are running away from Obamacare.

“This isn’t about politics. This is about the health of America,” she said. “We don’t weigh its value as to what it means politically. We weigh its value as to what it means to the health, well-being, economic and health security of America’s families. Just because people say, I don’t want to repeal it, but I do want to fix it, doesn’t mean they’re walking away from it.”

She also went off on a reporter who called the healthcare law Obamacare, contending that it was a derogatory moniker designed to make Americans forget that the coverage is affordable.

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Pelosi: Stop calling it ObamaCare. It’s the Affordable Care Act. Affordable, affordable, affordable.

By Erika Johnsen.

Maybe if you just keep saying it, it will actually come true.

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‘LIBERTY TAX’: White House, Media Attack After Drudge Pays ObamaCare Opt-Out Penalty

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Associated PressA White House aide set off a stampede of liberal media criticism for Internet news pioneer Matt Drudge over Obamacare – but his critics don’t seem to understand how small businesses pay taxes.

The brouhaha started when Drudge tweeted, “Just paid the Obamacare penalty for not ‘getting covered’… I’M CALLING IT A LIBERTY TAX.”

Jesse Lee, the Director of Progressive Media at Barack Obama’s White House, responded that that was a “Flat lie, no fee for previous year,” adding, “Scary how much influence he once had.”

Lee’s response to Drudge set off a firestorm in the liberal media, with many mainstream media and left-wing reporters countering him on Twitter and in their own articles to claim he does not have to pay Obamacare’s Individual Mandate tax until next year. The individual mandate went into effect Jan. 1 of this year, and most people paying their taxes right now are paying taxes for 2013…

Drudge indicated in his followup tweets that since he is self-employed as the proprietor of The Drudge Report, he files as a small business. According to the IRS’s website for self-employed individuals, they are required to pay taxes quarterly.

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State That Has Long Been Disgraced by Some of the Strictest Gun-Control Laws, Now Has ‘Shall-Carry’

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Photo Credit: HeatherMG / Creative Commons Hawaii, a state that has long been disgraced by some of the strictest gun-control laws in the country, now has “shall-issue” concealed-carry — for now, at least. Per Guns.com:

In a decision released Thursday by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in the case of Baker v. Kealoha, the court followed the lead of the recent Peruta case to declare Hawaii’s restrictions on firearms carry unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

The case was heard by the same trio of judges who sat on the earlier Peruta and Richards cases in California, which challenged the state’s restrictive ‘may issue’ policies that required concealed carry permit applicants to show “good cause” to warrant a permit. The judges, Diarmuid O’Scannlain, Sidney Thomas and Consuelo Callahan, heard Baker in December 2013 and issued their findings Thursday.

“In Peruta, we concluded that the Second Amendment provides a responsible, law-abiding citizen with the right to carry an operable handgun outside the home for the purpose of self-defense,” wrote O’Scannlain for the two-judge majority decision in a memorandum.

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Judge Rules On Obama Eligibility

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Photo Credit: WNDOne of the last remaining court battles over Barack Obama’s presidential eligibility has gone down in flames in a 7-2 decision by the Alabama Supreme Court to render “no opinion.”

However, the dissenting minority of Justice Tom Parker and Chief Justice Roy Moore concluded the case has serious constitutional significance, warranting an investigation of the qualifications of 2012 presidential candidates by Alabama’s secretary of state.

Moore wrote in his dissent that the circuit court should have granted the plaintiffs’ request to order the state secretary of state “to implement the natural-born-citizen requirement of the presidential-qualifications clause in future elections.”

“Although the removal of a president-elect or a president who has taken the oath of office is within the breast of Congress, the determination of the eligibility of the 2012 presidential candidates before the casting of the electoral votes is a state function,” Moore argued.

He said the case was of “great constitutional significance in regard to the highest office in our land.”

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Judge Strikes Down Michigan’s Voter-Approved Ban on Gay Marriage

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Michigan’s ban on gay marriage, approved by voters in a landslide in 2004, was scratched from the state constitution by a federal judge who said the ballot box is no defense to a law that tramples the rights of same-sex couples.

Clerks who handle marriage licenses in Michigan’s 83 counties said they would start granting them to gays and lesbians — three as early as Saturday — although Attorney General Bill Schuette asked a higher court Friday to freeze the landmark ruling while an appeal is pursued. It was not known when a federal appeals court in Cincinnati would respond.

Schuette noted that the U.S. Supreme Court in January stepped in and suspended a similar decision that struck down Utah’s gay-marriage ban.

“A stay would serve the public interest by preserving the status quo … while preventing irreparable injury to the state and its citizens,” he said.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman was historic, following a two-week trial that explored attitudes and research about homosexual marriage and households led by same-sex couples. The judge rejected the conclusions of experts hired by the state to defend the rationale behind a constitutional amendment that recognizes marriage only as between a man and a woman.

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Holder Denies Cruz’s Request for Special Prosecutor in IRS Targeting

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHoteyAttorney General Eric Holder has denied Sen. Ted Cruz’s demand for a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS’s targeting of tea party groups – a rejection the Texas Republican is slamming as “the height of hypocrisy” by the Obama administration.

The tea party favorite had called for the appointment on Jan. 22, writing the nation’s top prosecutor that it had been eight months “since both you and President Obama professed outrage at the IRS’s wrongful conduct,” and yet no legal action had been taken.

But in a March 10 reply, the Department of Justice curtly asserted “such an appointment is not warranted” because the case doesn’t present a conflict of interest, adding that “career prosecutors and law-enforcement professionals” were conducting the probe.

“The Department remains committed to integrity and fairness in all of its law-enforcement efforts, without regard to politics,” the letter stated. It was signed by Peter Kadzik, principal deputy assistant attorney general.

Republicans have pointed out the investigator in the Justice department probe is a partisan donor to President Obama and Democratic causes.

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Feminist: Babies are ‘Time-Sucking Monsters’

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Photo Credit: WNDBy WND.

Babies are “time-sucking monsters,” according to a feminist blogger who says she considers abortion “kind of my jam.”

Amanda Marcotte, in a recent post at Rawstory.com that blasted Republicans and “anti-choicers,” said abortion “may roll itself into the world of obsolescence.”

“Let me just put a stop to this **** right now,” Marcotte wrote. “You can give me gold-plated day care and an awesome public school right on the street corner and start paying me 15 percent more at work, and I still do not want a baby. I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly and, above all other things, demanding.

“No matter how much free day care you throw at women, babies are still time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness,” she declared

Marcotte said she is pleased with her present life, which gives her the “ability to do what I want when I want without having to arrange for a babysitter.”

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Photo Credit: APPelosi to Receive Planned Parenthood Award Honoring Eugenicist

By Penny Starr.

Next week, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America will present House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) with the Margaret Sanger Award. The award is the group’s “highest honor” and is named for a woman who believed in breeding better humans through eugenics.

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s leading abortion provider, having performed 327,166 of the procedures in 2012, according to its latest annual report.

Pelosi, a Catholic, will receive the Margaret Sanger Award at the PPFA’s annual gala in Washington, D.C. on Mar. 27. She is being honored, according to PPFA, because of her “leadership, excellence, and outstanding contributions to the reproductive health and rights movement over the course of her career.”

Planned Parenthood, according to its website, traces its origins to 1916 when Sanger opened a birth control office in Brooklyn, N.Y. (In 1917, she started publishing The Birth Control Review.) In 1923, Sanger opened the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in Manhattan to provide contraceptives to women and collect data on their effectiveness.

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