Breaking News: Man Arrested for Planned Suicide Bombing at Kansas Airport (UPDATED)

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Photo Credit: lumachrome

Photo Credit: lumachrome

By Tim Potter.

Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams says a 1 p.m. news conference Friday will address “a major situation for our city that was averted” through a collaborative investigation.

NBC News reported that federal officials arrested a man who planned to detonate a suicide bomb at Wichita’s Mid-Continent airport.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: FBI

Photo Credit: FBI

‘Brother Bin Laden is a great inspiration to me’: Authorities thwart suicide bombing ‘by Islamic extremist flight technician who plotted to blow up Kansas airport’

By Louise Boyle and Associated Press.

An aviation technician with extremist Islamic views was charged on Friday after he planned to detonate a car bomb at a Kansas airport.

Terry Lee Loewen, 58, was arrested on Friday morning at Mid-Continent regional airport in Wichita, according to U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom, after being thwarted by an undercover FBI investigation.

Grissom said Loewen planned to drive a car that he believed was full of explosives into a terminal at the airport and trigger the device in a suicide mission.

Investigators say Loewen is an avionics technician who lives in Wichita and works at the airport.

Grissom said the 58-year-old spent months developing his plan of driving a car filled with explosives into the airport, triggering the bomb and killing himself.

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Thanks to Nuclear Option, Begich and Rest Of Senate Dems Confirm Radical Judge

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RTRN4F91-e1386873210394She’s the kind of nominee the Democrats went nuclear for. Cornelia “Nina” Pillard was confirmed by a 51-44 vote in the U.S. Senate in the middle of the night last night, as a judge on the powerful D.C. Circuit court. Prior to the nuclear option, she would have been (justifiably) filibustered and blocked.

Her views on a myriad of subjects are clearly outside the mainstream. Consider, for example, Pillard’s thoughts on abortion. This is from 2007: ”Casting reproductive rights in terms of equality holds promise to recenter the debate…away from the deceptive images of fetus-as-autonomous-being that the anti-choice movement has popularized…” (Bold mine.) (page 990)

This suggests a sort of anti-science view that is especially worrisome when found in someone who is supposed to put facts (and the law) ahead of political ideology. It’s a position that’s meant to serve her political theory, but flies in the face of science. Sonograms, of course, have changed the game. People put these pictures on their Facebook wall precisely because it’s very obviously their child. Nothing else quite captures her doctrinaire rigidity better than this statement.)

She went on to argue that limiting abortion “reinforces broader patterns of discrimination against women as a class of presumptive breeders…” (p.975) and that abortion rights “play a central role in freeing women from historically routine conscription into maternity.”…

The only good news for conservative? Vulnerable Democratic Senators like Mark Begich and Mary Landrieu are now on the record as supporting Pillard’s radical agenda. (And I guess the question over whether Bob Casey, Jr. was ever really pro-Life has been settled.)

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Bipartisan Budget Deal Puts Ryan Under Fire From Fellow Conservatives

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Representative Paul D. Ryan’s eight terms in Congress have produced much political celebrity and Republican respect but just two laws bearing the Ryan name — a renamed post office and a modified excise tax on arrows like the ones he uses for bow hunting.

Then on Tuesday he struck a budget deal with Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, that affixed a new label to the polished veneer of Mr. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican: deal maker and, to some, traitor.

With a modest, bipartisan blueprint on taxes and spending, Mr. Ryan is taking a risk he has previously shied away from, putting what party leaders see as a crucial need — ending the debilitating budget wars in Washington that have crippled the Republican brand — over his own self-interests with the conservative activists that dominate the early Republican presidential primaries.

For the first time, the conservative wunderkind and former vice-presidential nominee is taking withering fire from movement conservatives who see the deal as a betrayal by a former ally. Potential rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 immediately went on the attack, blasting the deal and challenging Mr. Ryan’s status as the thinking man’s conservative.

“It’s not just this budget; it’s this lack of long-term thinking around here,” Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican considered a 2016 contender, told Mike Huckabee on his conservative radio show on Wednesday. “There are no long-term solutions apparently possible in Washington, and we are running out of time.”

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Uh oh: Only 5-15% of enrollees have paid their first month of premiums in some ObamaCare plans

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

A good way to tell whether a media outlet is serious about ObamaCare reporting is to see if they cover this bombshell as a corollary to the new enrollment data. If 365,000 have “signed up” but only one-tenth of them, say, have paid their first month of premiums to activate their new coverage, how many people are really “enrolled” in ObamaCare plans right now?

Last week an insurer in Indiana told CNN that one of their plans had received payment from only 20 percent of people who signed up so far. According to Charles Ornstein’s sources, that insurer was doing relatively well.

“There is also a lot of worrying going on over people making payments,” industry consultant Robert Laszewski wrote in an email. “One client reports only 15% have paid so far. It is still too early to know for sure what this means but we should expect some enrollment slippage come the payment due date.”

Another consultant Kip Piper, agreed. “So far I’m hearing from health plans that around 5% and 10% of consumers who have made it through the data transfer gauntlet have paid first month’s premium and therefore truly enrolled,” he wrote me…

Blue Shield of California said it has sent out thousands of payment request letters…

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With Parachutes Tangled, Army’s Golden Knights Make Split-Second Decision to Save Life

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Photo Credit: U.S. ARMY FILE PHOTO

Photo Credit: U.S. ARMY FILE PHOTO

Everything was wrong.

Two members of the Golden Knights parachute team were tangled together, plummeting to Earth at 65 mph with little chance of survival.

One of them, Sgt. David Echeverry, was being strangled by a parachute cord. He knew that he and his teammate, Staff Sgt. Christopher Clark, couldn’t survive if they remained entwined. So in his last moments of consciousness, he pulled his release cord, hoping to give his partner a chance.

His last thoughts, he said, were of his wife, Rachel, and his two children – 3-year-old Jacob and 16-month-old Elijah.

A few seconds later, when Echeverry thought he should have been dead, he came to – and found himself dangling from Clark, who held onto Echeverry’s lines with all of his strength.

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Mike Lee Authors Bill to Protect Religious Liberties of Churches That Uphold Traditional Marriage

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) plans to introduce a bill Wednesday that would prevent the Obama administration from pressuring churches into recognizing gay marriage.

It is concerning that we have people in this administration who think that religious liberties are just not that big of a deal,” Lee said in an interview with the Washington Examiner Tuesday.

Despite President Obama’s recent promise to respect religious freedom, Lee worries the White House may try to work around that promise by revoking the tax-exempt status of churches that recognize traditional marriage.

“We need not just statements, but we need legislation to protect religious liberty from this kind of potential threat,” he said in the interview.

Lee’s “Marriage and Religious Freedom Act” is meant to prevent federal officials from revoking churches’ and other nonprofits groups’ of their tax-exempt statuses over their support for traditional marriage.

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Obama’s Popularity Slide has Made his Coalition Dangerously Shallower

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Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

“[T]he entire concept of realignments/permanent alignments, which underlay much of the misbegotten analysis of the 2008 elections, is bankrupt and should be abandoned.”

So wrote RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende in his 2012 book, The Lost Majority. One of the book’s main theses was that “the permanent majority” — that great white whale hunted and claimed by both parties over the last decade (and long before that) — is an unsustainable illusion in the long run.

Few pundits heeded Trende’s warning after the 2012 election. The editors of The Week made an argument typical of the moment when they wrote that Obama’s coalition of “white liberals, blacks, Latinos, younger voters, blue-collar workers, and moderate women … has lots of room to grow, whereas Mitt Romney’s core base — much older and whiter — is doomed to shrink.”

The flaw in this thinking lies in the nature of Obama’s coalition. As Trende notes (writing of the 2008 election), Obama’s coalition is actually a narrower one than Bill Clinton had, but its much deeper margins of victory among its constituent groups amply made up for that, delivering Obama two majority victories.

Obama obtained his decisive yet modest four-point victory margin in 2012 by running up unusually large (and in some cases historic) margins among Hispanics (44 points), blacks (87 points), moderates (15 points), the young (23 points), the poor (28 points), women (11 points) and those who never attend church (28 points). Not all Democratic candidates — even strong ones — can replicate many of these results.

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John Boehner Fed Up With ‘Ridiculous’ Tea Party Intransigence on Budget

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Photo Credit: ABC News

Photo Credit: ABC News

House Speaker John Boehner blasted outside groups for their criticism of the bipartisan budget deal, delivering an unusually sharp rebuke today to tea party and conservative activists while signaling he has had just about enough of their intransigence.

“They’re using our members and they’re using the American people for their own goals,” Boehner said, his voice rising with anger during a news conference at the Capitol today. “This is ridiculous. Listen, if you are for more deficit reduction, you are for this agreement.”

From Boehner, it was a rare and pointed public dressing-down of Club for Growth, Heritage Action, the Koch Brothers and other conservative groups that have urged Republicans to oppose the budget deal. Boehner openly questioned the motives of such groups, demonstrating a far more aggressive posture than he usually takes.

In response to Boehner’s comments, Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said his group will still stand with lawmakers who oppose the deal.

“We stand with Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tom Coburn, Rand Paul, members of the Republican Study Committee and every other fiscal conservative who opposes the Ryan-Murray deal,” Chocola said in a statement.

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Congressional Staffers Told Not to Trust ObamaCare Site Info

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Congressional staffers were warned Wednesday not to rely on information provided by the ObamaCare exchange website, in an email alert informing them they might not be enrolled for coverage even if they technically signed up.

The “very important” message, sent to Capitol Hill officials Wednesday afternoon, is the latest sign that the government has concerns about the reliability of the system. Despite improvements in the basic operation of the exchange websites, and increased enrollment, there are lingering concerns about whether those signing up will actually be covered on Jan. 1.

“Please DO NOT ASSUME you are covered unless you have seen the Confirmation Letter from the Disbursing Office!” the email to staffers said.

The email urged staffers who have signed up via the DC Health Link — the health care exchange for the District of Columbia — to double check with the office that they’re enrolled.

“Do NOT rely on your ‘My Account’ page or other correspondence from DCHL,” the message said.

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Yale University “Beyond Human Personhood” Symposium: Christian Worldview is “Abominable”

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Photo Credit: LifeSite News

Photo Credit: LifeSite News

I am here at Yale University for the last day of the “Beyond Human Personhood” Symposium. As National Field Director for Personhood USA, I was asked by my superiors to attend to see if I could garner any insight in how a leftist worldview approaches the effort of convincing our culture to accept personhood for non-human actors such as: elephants, dolphins, great apes, artificial intelligences and extra-terrestrials.

I was a little surprised to find a modicum of common ground as I observed their intense passion to promote their worldview. I can admire their sacrifice and commitment to what they hold as the true nature of things. But I was wholly unprepared for the moral revulsion I felt as they described their overall agenda. They openly admitted that their goal is to “animalize” mankind as just another animal in the zoo we call earth. Their godless evolutionary pre-suppositions demand this. “Speciesism” was mentioned quite often—rightly accusing the Christian worldview of elevating all mankind as being “created in the image of God” and setting man apart from the other creatures of earth by placing all of God’s creation under mankind to act as steward “over the garden”.

Countless speakers decried human exceptionalism and Christianity’s role in promoting a worldview that demoted animals to a status under man’s “dominion.” As I mentioned earlier, I was struck by the sheer number of references to the early church fathers and various quotes from Christian theologians. This was a crowd who knew their church history and had made a conscious decision to reject the good news of Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection for our soul’s sakes. And yes … there was a discussion on ensoulment and the fact that Christians denied ensoulment to non-humans. Again, I want to emphasize how unprepared I was to encounter such a high level of theological content, not to mention that it was all directed at me.

At first I thought that surely there were those in the audience that might question some of the presuppositions that were being openly proclaimed, perhaps a philosophy student with an inquiring mind who could connect the dots—particularly in the area of relegating man to the same level as other animals, thereby denigrating human life and dignity. Sadly, I didn’t find a single individual in a crowd of a 100 who spoke out against the obvious policy implications that these ideas have.

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