NC High School Football Coach Ordered To Cease Baptisms, Leading Prayers

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Photo Credit: SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty ImagesHead football coach of Mooresville High School, Hal Capps, has been ordered to stop baptizing players and leading them in prayer following criticism from a national organization promoting constitutional separation of church and state.

The Wisconsin-based nonprofit Freedom from Religion Foundation wrote a request last fall that coach Capps cease leading prayers and joining baptisms for his players as a base rule of separating public school activities and religious ceremonies. School Superintendent Mark Edwards met with Capps, who said, “he understood” the violation and would no longer participate in such religious observances, the Charlotte Observer reports.

“It is a violation of the Constitution for the Mooresville High School football coach to organize, lead, or participate in prayers or other religious proselytizing before, during, or after games and practices,” Patrick Elliott, attorney for Freedom from Religion Foundation, wrote to the school’s district attorney last fall.

“It is well settled that public schools, and by extension public school officials, may not advance or promote religion.”

Elliott emailed the Observer a picture from the Blue Devils’ team Twitter, reportedly showing Capps at a team baptism. But Superintendent Edwards said the photo is from a baptism performed at the Charles Mack Citizen Center, a church that many team members attend and Capps was simply invited to attend.

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Chuck Grassley Demands Legal Arguments Behind Obama’s ‘Pen and Phone’ Strategy

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Photo Credit: APA top Senate Republican wants access to the legal opinions that justify President Obama’s plans to step up his use of executive orders.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter Monday to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, asking for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to disclose to the public its opinions and analyses of the president’s executive orders.

Grassley’s request comes a week after Obama promised “a year of action,” which he would undertake even if Congress does not vote in favor of his proposals.

“In his State of the Union address earlier this week, the President made plain his intention to implement his agenda through aggressive use of these orders, whether or not the Congress and the American people agree,” Grassley wrote to Holder. “I am gravely concerned that the system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution is threatened by the President’s determination to take unilateral action if he cannot persuade Congress and the American people of the merits of his ideas.”

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Conservative Legal Activist, Who Succeeded at Trial Court, Asks Supreme Court to Hear NSA Case

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Photo Credit: APThe conservative legal activist who won the first court ruling questioning the legality of the National Security Agency’s massive phone-call tracking database is asking the Supreme Court to short circuit the normal appeals process and take up the case directly.

Attorney Larry Klayman said he sent the unusual petition to the high court on Monday.

“We went to the Supreme Court because, unlike the government, we’re not dragging our feet. We want a quick decision here,” Klayman said in a brief phone interview Monday afternoon.

A Justice Department spokesman had no immediate comment on the submission

The filing, known as a petition for writ of certiorari before judgment, is granted exceesingly rarely by the court. Usually, the justices prefer for cases to have full appellate review and in many cases review by appeals courts from more than one circuit.

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Farm Bill Moves Forward in Senate with Final Passage Expected Tuesday

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Photo Credit: ThinkstockThe Senate moved forward Monday on long-awaited legislation to authorize farm spending, voting to end debate on the measure so that the chamber can vote on final passage Tuesday.

Two years in the making, the $1 trillion bill ends a decades-old policy of providing taxpayer subsidies directly to farmers.

The five-year plan cuts spending by $16.6 trillion over a decade, including an $800 million annual reduction to the food stamp program.

The vote was 72-22, and included opposition from Republicans who wanted deeper cuts and Democrats who opposed the food stamp reduction.

The House approved the measure last week by a bipartisan 251-166 vote.

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Farewell to Henry Waxman, Maker of Bad Laws

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott ApplewhiteAfter 40 years in Congress, California Democrat Henry Waxman is calling it quits. His legacy includes a toxic fuel additive (a boondoggle known as ethanol), a failed pork-fest of a climate bill and the devastation of small businesses — to name a few of his legislative accomplishments.

Washington Post correspondent Karen Tumulty praised Waxman, calling him “one of the last to whom the word ‘lawmaker’ still applied.”

But here’s the thing: If you spend four decades making laws, you’re going to make some bad laws. And Henry Waxman made a lot of bad laws.

Waxman deserves praise for many things. Together with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, Waxman passed a reform that improved the prescription drug patent system. He also passed a postal reform.

Waxman kept his hands impressively clean of K Street’s tainting influence. Despite being in Congress longer than “Wheel of Fortune” has been on the air, Waxman has only six former staffers in the “Revolving Door” database at the Center for Responsive Politics. Since 1989, Waxman averaged less than $30,000 from lobbyists per election – a modest sum for a committee chairman.

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Obama on IRS Scandal: ‘Not Even a Smidgen of Corruption’

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama, in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, tried to put behind him the scandals that have hung over his second term, suggesting his administration did not mislead the public on the Benghazi attack and going so far as to say the IRS targeting scandal had “not even a smidgen of corruption.”

Obama addressed concerns over Benghazi, the launch of HealthCare.gov and the IRS, during the interview Sunday before the Super Bowl. He adamantly rejected the suggestion that the IRS was used for political purposes by singling out Tea Party groups seeking tax exemption.

“That’s not what happened,” he said. Rather, he said, IRS officials were confused about how to implement the law governing those kinds of tax-exempt groups.

“There were some bone-headed decisions,” Obama conceded.

But when asked whether corruption, or mass corruption, was at play, he responded: “Not even mass corruption — not even a smidgen of corruption.”

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Obama to O’Reilly: Fox News Reason for My Problems

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President Barack Obama twice blamed Fox News Channel for misinforming the public on issues that have bedeviled his presidency in the past year during a pre-Super Bowl interview with the network’s Bill O’Reilly.

The two sat down in the White House on Sunday for a live pregame interview that started about 4:35 p.m. and aired for about 10 minutes.

O’Reilly first noted that Obama’s detractors believe he did not initially say the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead was terrorism because it happened in the heat of an election.

Obama had just weeks earlier said al-Qaida was on the run after U.S. Navy SEALs assassinated its leader, Osama bin Laden.

“That’s what they believe,” O’Reilly said of Obama’s detractors.

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Does the Right to Self-Defense Have Boundaries?

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Photo Credit: WNDThe U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly has sided with defenders of the Second Amendment, ruling that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to bear arms and that states cannot unreasonably restrict that right.

There’s also a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court considering whether or not states can limit the right to self-defense to a citizen’s private home.

Now, in a related move, U.S senators have proposed a law to establish that the right to bear arms cannot be restricted by political boundaries. The bill would establish that a permit to carry a concealed weapon in one state is valid in all states that allow concealed-carry.

Mississippi Republican Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran recently signed on as co-sponsors of the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2014.

The bill, they explain, “is intended to defend the 2nd Amendment rights of individuals with conceal carry permits, allowing them to carry those privileges from their home state to other states that also have conceal carry laws.”

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Obama on Benghazi: ‘We Revealed What We Knew at the Time’

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama said the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya occurred because “not all the precautions that should have been taken were taken’ and denied any effort in the immediate aftermath to downplay the role terrorism played.

“That is inaccurate,” Obama said of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly’s suggestion that the administration sought to sweep under the terrorist-nature of the attack in the final months of his 2012 re-election campaign.

“We revealed to the American people what we knew at the time,” said Obama.

n a contentious pre-Super Bowl interview with O’Reilly, Obama said early on during the attack — when then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta informed him about the assault — that U.S. officials did not tell him exactly who was involved.

“People understood at the time that something very dangerous was happening,” Obama said. “In the aftermath what became clear was the security was lax — not all the precautions that should have been taken were taken.”

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Namath Honors Navy SEAL Chris Kyle at Super Bowl

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Photo Credit: TPNNNFL legend Joe Namath honored fallen soldier Chris Kyle as he did the coin toss at the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 2nd. Namath tweeted a picture of what he would be wearing in honor of Kyle, who died one year ago on February 2, 2013

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