Twitter Blocking Petition Supporting Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson

73209af646d9424593de8dcc0c3b19d7-e1387841168146Twitter is blocking links to a website set up in support of “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson, who was suspended by the A&E network last week following  an interview in which he was critical of homosexuality.

The petition, which is directed at A&E and has gathered nearly 200,000 signatures after four days online, says “I am asking your network to immediately reinstate Mr. Robertson to Duck Dynasty, and to formally apologize to him, his family, and the millions of viewers who tune in every week, stand by him, and share his worldview.”

“Mr. Robertson’s comments in GQ Magazine are simply reflective of a Biblical view of sexuality, marriage, and family — a view that has stood the test of time for thousands of years and continues to be held by the majority of Americans and today’s world as a whole,” reads the petition.

But Twitter isn’t allowing its users to circulate the petition.

Read more from this story HERE.

Krauthammer: ‘Huge Gov’t Bailout’ of Health Insurance Industry at End of 2014

Photo Credit: Image from Fox News's 'O'Reilly Factor'

Photo Credit: Image from Fox News’s ‘O’Reilly Factor’

President Obama, by issuing new rules that erode Obamacare’s “financial structure,” is putting the health insurance industry — and taxpayers — at risk, author and conservative political analyst Charles Krauthammer said on Sunday.

“The insurers understand that they’re going to be completely ruined,” Krauthammer said on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace. “And what’s going to happen as a result of this? There’s only one way out, a huge government bailout of the insurers is waiting at the end of next year.”

That’s the issue Republicans should be focusing on right now, Krauthammer said.

On Thursday, the Obama administration unilaterally delayed another provision of the law, saying there will be no tax penalty for people who had their existing health insurance canceled because of the Affordable Care Act and who did not find new coverage as required by law.

“There still may be a small number of consumers who are not able to renew their existing plans and are having difficulty finding an acceptable replacement,” Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote to Senate Democrats. “These consumers should qualify for this temporary hardship exemption,” the Associated Press quoted her as saying.

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Edward Snowden, after Months of NSA Revelations, Says his Mission’s Accomplished

Photo Credit: AFP-Getty Images

Photo Credit: AFP-Getty Images

…During more than 14 hours of interviews, the first he has conducted in person since arriving here in June, Snowden did not part the curtains or step outside. Russia granted him temporary asylum on Aug. 1, but Snowden remains a target of surpassing interest to the intelligence services whose secrets he spilled on an epic scale.

Late this spring, Snowden supplied three journalists, including this one, with caches of top-secret documents from the National Security Agency, where he worked as a contractor. Dozens of revelations followed, and then hundreds, as news organizations around the world picked up the story. Congress pressed for explanations, new evidence revived old lawsuits and the Obama administration was obliged to declassify thousands of pages it had fought for years to conceal.

Taken together, the revelations have brought to light a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations. One of the leaked presentation slides described the agency’s “collection philosophy” as “Order one of everything off the menu.”

Six months after the first revelations appeared in The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Snowden agreed to reflect at length on the roots and repercussions of his choice. He was relaxed and animated over two days of nearly unbroken conversation, fueled by burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastry.

Snowden offered vignettes from his intelligence career and from his recent life as “an indoor cat” in Russia. But he consistently steered the conversation back to surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed.

Read more from this story HERE.

Duck Patriarch: Man-Man Sex ‘Not Logical’; CDC Data Concurs: ‘Highest Risk Sexual Behavior’

Photo Credit: A&E/Karolina Wojasik 2013

Photo Credit: A&E/Karolina Wojasik 2013

By Michael W. Chapman.

Although some liberal observers criticized Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson’s remarks about homosexual behavior as “disgusting” and “vile and extreme stereotypes,” the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), one of the federal government’s leading health voices, uses nearly identical and even more graphic language in describing some of the sexual practices of male homosexuals.

“Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) represent approximately 2% of the United States population, yet they are the population most severely affected by HIV,” says the CDC. “Most HIV infections in men are transmitted through sexual contact, especially anal sex.”

In an interview with GQ magazine, which sparked a national controversy and his indefinite suspension from the hugely popular A&E reality-TV show, “Duck Dynasty,” head-of-household Phil Robertson, a self-described Bible-thumping Christian said, “It seems like, to me, a vagina—as a man—would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”

Robertson was also asked in the interview, “What in your mind, is sinful?” and he said, “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.” Robertson then paraphrased Corinthians (I,6:9-10), “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

Shortly after those comments were leaked from the interview, the pro-homosexual activist group GLAAD issued a statement on Dec. 18. GLAAD said that GQ’s profile of Robertson “included some of the vilest and most extreme statements uttered against LGBT people in a mainstream publication. His quote was littered with outdated stereotypes and blatant misinformation.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/A&E, Zach Dilgard

Photo Credit: AP Photo/A&E, Zach Dilgard

Sponsor sends a message with statement on Phil Robertson, ‘Duck Dynasty’ Controversy

By Jason Howerton.

Realtree, a hunting and outdoors company, released a statement Monday reaffirming its partnership with the Duck Commander team, including Phil Robertson. The company also made it clear that they support “everyone’s right to their opinion” and made no attempt to apologize or clarify for Robertson.

“Realtree’s partnership with Phil Robertson and the Duck Commander team has remained strong for nearly a decade. Our plan is to continue that partnership,” the statement reads. “As a company, our values align well with the Robertson’s. Realtree’s “Family, Friends and the Outdoors” slogan is one we take to heart. We support everyone’s right to their opinion, and we certainly support Phil’s right to his.”

The statement comes as other companies contemplate their relationship with the “Duck Dynasty” crew.

Read more from this story HERE.

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‘Duck Dynasty’ Star’s Firing Proves You Will be Made to Care

By Steve Deace.

A nation founded by pilgrims seeking out religious freedom, and the chance to worship the God of the Bible without interference from big government or persecution from the culture, has now come full circle.

In August, Duck Dynasty returned for another season with a record 12 million viewers, which was the largest audience for an original show in the history of cable television.

Four months later one of its stars, Phil Robertson, was essentially fired today by A&E Network which carries the show because he’s a Christian that believes the Bible. And the Bible teaches homosexuality is a sin and goes against God’s plan for His creation.

You will be made to care.

When a network fires arguably its biggest star for believing the Bible, and expressing those views in a way that was not inflammatory or incendiary, it’s essentially saying it would rather bow at the altar of political correctness than make a profit. Duck Dynasty has become A&E’s biggest cash cow. If Duck Dynasty and all the wealth, jobs, and prosperity its success provides cannot trump the homosexual agenda, then nothing can. Pop culture is essentially choosing the promotion of sexual deviancy even over its own greed. The truth is many companies in corporate America have been doing the same for years now, and so does most of the media as well. The tolerance mob and its gaystapo are out to silence all opposition to their brave new world of deviancy.

You will be made to care.

Read more from this story HERE.

One Percent Pay Raise Latest Pinch for Troops, Veterans Struggling to Pay Bills

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

President Obama on Monday signed an executive order giving military personnel and civilian federal workers a 1 percent pay raise, the first raise for civilians in four years. But for military families, it was another hit.

Military members had been receiving an annual pay increase of 1.8 percent, and ther order comes as more benefit cuts loom on the horizon for military families due to tightening budgets.

For active-duty troops and veterans, making financial ends meet has gotten increasingly difficult in the past four years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-profit think tank, which estimates nearly 340,000 veterans receive public money for housing and 900,000 veterans live on food stamps.

A further 5,000 active-duty troops are currently receiving SNAP, or food stamp assistance. Most are junior troops with large families, according to the Pentagon, which points out that those on active duty who need this help represent .01 percent of the 44 million Americans who qualify for food stamps.

For Pvt. Heather Kready, who served with an Army medical support team, explaining to her kids why they have so little money is difficult.

Read more from this story HERE.

NSA Panel Member Recommends Increased Data-Collection

Photo Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Photo Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA and a member of President Obama’s task force on surveillance, said in an interview on Sunday that a controversial telephone data-collection program conducted by the National Security Agency should be expanded to include emails. He also said the program, far from being unnecessary, could prevent the next 9/11.

Morell, seeking to correct any misperception that the presidential panel had called for a radical curtailment of NSA programs, said he is in favor of restarting a program the NSA discontinued in 2011 that involved the collection of “metadata” for Internet communications. That program gets only a brief mention in a footnote on page 97 of the task-force report, “Liberty and Security in A Changing World.” “I would argue actually that the email data is probably more valuable than the telephony data,” Morell told National Journal in a telephone interview. “You can bet that the last thing a smart terrorist is going to do right now is call someone in the United States.”

Morell also said that while he agreed with the report’s conclusion that the telephone data program, conducted under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, made “only a modest contribution to the nation’s security” so far, it should be continued under the new safeguards recommended by the panel. “I would argue that what effectiveness we have seen to date is totally irrelevant to how effective it might be in the future,” he said. “This program, 215, has the ability to stop the next 9/11, and if you added emails in there it would make it even more effective. Had it been in place in 2000 and 2001, I think that probably 9/11 would not have happened.”

The presidential panel’s 304-page report touched off a fresh backlash against NSA surveillance programs, coming only days after U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that the agency’s regular collection of most Americans’ phone records was probably unconstitutional. The panel, which consisted of Morell; former counterterrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke; University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone; Peter Swire, an expert in privacy law at the Georgia Institute of Technology; and former Obama administration regulation czar Cass Sunstein, concluded that the Section 215 program needed to be substantially reined in. It said the telephone metadata collection—involving the tracking of numbers of calls and where, when and to whom they’re made, without examining content—should be taken out of the hands of the government and left to the service providers, or to a private “third party,” and subjected to individual court orders.

Read more from this story HERE.

W.H.: Obama has Signed Up for Insurance Under Obamacare

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Barack Obama has signed up for health insurance through an Affordable Care Act exchange, the White House said Monday.

In what an official acknowledged is a “symbolic” move since the president gets his medical care from the military, Obama selected a low-cost bronze plan through the District of Columbia exchange. He made the pick over the weekend while vacationing in Hawaii.

Obama “was pleased to participate in a plan as a show of support for these marketplaces which are providing quality, affordable health care options to more than a million people,” the official added.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Navy’s Amazing Ocean-Powered Underwater Drone

Photo Credit: NATO

Photo Credit: NATO

While you were out shopping Sunday for those last-minute holiday gifts, the Navy pushed ahead with its own vision of an underwater sugar plum: a fleet of “long endurance, transoceanic gliders harvesting all energy from the ocean thermocline.”

And you thought Jules Verne died in 1905.

Fact is, the Navy has been seeking—pretty much under the surface—a way to do underwater what the Air Force has been doing in the sky: prowl stealthily for long periods of time, and gather the kind of data that could turn the tide in war.

The Navy’s goal is to send an underwater drone, which it calls a “glider,” on a roller-coaster-like path for up to five years. A fleet of them could swarm an enemy coastline, helping the Navy hunt down minefields and target enemy submarines.

Unlike their airborne cousins, Navy gliders are not powered by aviation fuel. Instead, they draw energy from the ocean’s thermocline, a pair of layers of warm water near the surface and chillier water below.

Read more from this story HERE.

Eagles Honor Cheerleader Turned Soldier

Photo Credit: CNN

Photo Credit: CNN

Rachel Washburn once carried pompoms. Now she carries an M4 carbine.

The military brat who became an NFL cheerleader is today a first lieutenant in the United States Army.

On Sunday, she was honored as a Hometown Hero by the Philadelphia Eagles, the team she cheered for from 2007 to 2009.

The Bronze Star recipient served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, including one as a member of the Army’s new Cultural Support Program.

It was a dangerous and stressful job, where she would go on missions with special operations forces and help search and talk to Afghan women and children.

Read more from this story HERE.

New Armored Tank for Town Police Sparks Fear, War of Words

Photo Credit: bizpacreview

Photo Credit: bizpacreview

A war of words has broken out over police force in California getting a new armored vehicle built more for a state of war than patrolling in the Golden State.

The Salinas Police Department recently issued a news release proudly announcing the arrival of the armored truck built to survive minefield explosions, which it got compliments of federal taxpayers as part of a program to convert military equipment to law-enforcement use.

Critics took to the police department’s Facebook page to ask exactly why a city of 150,000 on the northern California coast really needs a vehicle designed for battlefield use. It’s more likely to be used against its own citizens, they said..

“That vehicle is made for war. Do not use my safety to justify that vehicle,” one wrote. “The Salinas Police Department is just a bunch of cowards that want to use that vehicle as intimidation and to terrorize the citizens of this city.”

‘To stop gang members?” another wrote. “Hmmm gang members don’t riot in mass numbers. It’s right in front of our faces and we don’t see it. Why would the ARMY!!! give something like that for FREE!!! Let’s think for once people.”

Read more from this story HERE.