Time Magazine Promotes A Childless Lifestyle As The Path To The Good Life For U.S. Couples

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Photo Credit: End of the American DreamThere is a relentless assault on the family in America today unlike anything that we have ever seen before. For decades, the entertainment industry and the mainstream media have been portraying marriage as the time “when your fun is over” and they have been encouraging young adults to put off marriage for as long as possible. So now the marriage rate in the United States is at a record low and the average age for a first marriage is at a record high. Meanwhile, the entertainment industry and the mainstream media have been heavily promoting the philosophy that having fewer children is better, and they have been teaching our young people that abortion is a really good option if an unwanted pregnancy comes along. The whole idea is that children are going to keep you from enjoying the kind of life that you really deserve to have.

This philosophy is taken even further in a new Time Magazine article. The article is entitled “The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children“, and it openly promotes a “childless lifestyle” as the path to the good life for young U.S. couples. The following is how the article begins…

One evening when she was 14 years old, Laura Scott was washing dishes in the kitchen with her mother when she decided she didn’t want to have a child. At 26, Scott got married and waited for her mind to change. “It never happened,” she says. “And I realized I was going to be fine.” Now 50, Scott is more than fine: she’s fulfilled. And she’s not alone. The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest in recorded American history. From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which there’s data, the fertility rate declined 9%. A 2010 Pew Research report showed that childlessness has risen across all racial and ethnic groups, adding up to about 1 in 5 American women who end their childbearing years maternity-free, compared with 1 in 10 in the 1970s.

The article goes on to point out that the average cost of raising a child born in 2011 to adulthood will be approximately $234,900, and it suggests that women should think long and hard before making such a commitment.

Well, what is a woman to do if she gets pregnant and she decides that raising that child will ruin her life?

According to the entertainment industry and the mainstream media, abortion is a very simple answer to that problem.

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Southern Poverty Law Center: ‘Our Hate Map Doesn’t Cause Anybody to Attack’ (+audio)

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Photo Credit: APCo-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center Morris Dees said his group’s “Hate Map” “doesn’t cause anybody to attack,” despite Floyd Lee Corkins’ admission that he targeted the Family Research Council (FRC) after going to the center’s website.

As Corkins told the FBI after his arrest, he learned of the FRC online, “It was a, uh, Southern Poverty Law, lists, anti-gay groups. I found them online. I did a little bit of research, went to the website, stuff like that.”

Corkins attempted a mass shooting on Aug. 15, 2012, opening fire at the Family Research Council and wounding Security Guard Leo Johnson.

Armed with more than 95 rounds of ammunition and 15 Chick-fil-a sandwiches, Corkins told the FBI that he chose the FRC as his first target after looking at a list of “anti-gay” groups on the SPLC’s website.

The Family Research Council is still listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map” as “anti-gay.”

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Obamacare Months Behind in Testing IT Data Security

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Photo Credit: TownhallThe federal government is months behind in testing data security for the main pillar of Obamacare: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1.

The missed deadlines have pushed the government’s decision on whether information technology security is up to snuff to exactly one day before that crucial date, the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general said in a report.

As a result, experts say, the exchanges might open with security flaws or, possibly but less likely, be delayed.

“They’ve removed their margin for error,” said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. “There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint.”

The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft, in which a hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance.

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Marathon Bombing Suspects Met Conspiracy Theorist

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev befriended a brain-damaged anti-U.S. government conspiracy theorist through their mother’s health care aide job years before the deadly attack, a lawyer said Tuesday.

Attorney Jason Rosenberg, who represents the family of Donald Larking, said Larking shared publications with the brothers, especially Tamerlan, and discussed theories including that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and the Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting didn’t happen or the U.S. government was behind them.

The attorney said the Tsarnaev family had a relationship with the Larkings that started years ago when the brothers’ mother began working as a personal care assistant for Larking’s wife, a quadriplegic since birth.

Rosenberg said Larking, who lives in West Newton, just west of Boston, was shot in the head in 1974 in an attempted robbery while working in a convenience store. He said Larking suffered brain damage that led to problems with his decision-making and judgment.

Authorities say the Tsarnaev brothers orchestrated the April 15 marathon bombing, in which two pressure cookers loaded with shrapnel exploded near the race’s finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty last month to charges including using a weapon of mass destruction to kill. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a shootout with police a few days after the bombing.

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Senator Lee Says Young Americans Think They Are ‘More Likely to See Elvis Alive in This Lifetime Than Get a Dime From Social Security’

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(CNSNews.com) — While speaking about Social Security, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked the audience at the Young Americans for Liberty Conference on July 31, “Most of you probably believe you are more likely to see Elvis alive in this lifetime than to get a dime from Social Security, am I right?”

Judging from the applause and cheers, it seemed that a large majority of the audience agreed with the senator. At the event, Lee was asked, “You mentioned Social Security and I would say probably most of the room on the way to the airport had to go through TSA and probably opted-out of TSA. So we were all trying to opt-out of TSA security, but what about Social Security? Would you allow our generation to opt-out of Social Security and say, ‘Look, we won’t take a dime from Social Security, we’ll take care of ourselves, let us keep our money.’ Is that a viable option, is that something that can be proposed?”

Lee responded, “Let’s talk about Social Security opt-out. The reason that that is so appealing probably to every single person in this room — and tell me if I’m right — is because most of you probably believe you are more likely to see Elvis alive in this lifetime than to get a dime from Social Security, am I right?”

After the audience applause, Lee said, “That’s about what I thought. So, the reason for that it’s not arbitrary, it’s not irrational that you feel that way. You have good reason to feel that way. You’ve seen the government set up this program, set it up in the 1930s. It was set up as an investment program, an income security program.”

“It was kind of like insurance, it was kind of like a savings plan,” said Lee. “The government told the people — even though none of us were born when this happened — the government told the people this can never be taken away. You’ll pay into it, the government will safeguard it, we’ll put it into a really safe box, and then we will give it to you when you retire.”

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FBI Informants Given Green Light to Break the Law

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Photo Credit: GOP USAThe FBI gave informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in one year, according to newly disclosed documents that show how often the nation’s top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.

The Justice Department ordered the FBI to begin tracking crimes by its informants more than a decade ago, after the agency admitted that it had allowed Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger to operate a brutal crime ring in exchange for information about the Mafia. The FBI submits that tally to top Justice Department officials each year but has never before made it public.

Agents authorized 15 crimes a day on average — from drug sales to bribery and plotting robberies. FBI officials have said that permitting informants, who are often criminals, to break the law is an indispensable part of investigating criminal organizations.

“It sounds like a lot, but you have to keep it in context,” said Shawn Henry, who supervised criminal investigations for the FBI until he retired last year. “It’s not taken lightly.”

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RNC Threatens Boycott of CNN and NBC Over Hillary Clinton Shows

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe Republican National Committee has threatened a boycott of CNN and NBC in the runup to the next presidential election unless the networks cancel films they have planned on Hillary Clinton.

Reince Priebus, chair of the RNC, wrote to the heads of CNN and NBC on Monday. He warned both networks that he would seek a binding committee vote next week to “neither partner with you in 2016 primary debates nor sanction primary debates which you sponsor”, unless they cancel the Clinton shows.

Last week NBC announced plans for a four-hour mini-series on Clinton, with Diane Lane in the starring role. Two days later CNN revealed it had commissioned its films division to make a big-budget documentary on Clinton to air in 2014.

“I’m writing to express my deep disappointment in your company’s decision to air a miniseries promoting former Secretary Hillary Clinton ahead of her likely candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016,” Priebus wrote to NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt. The opening of his letter to CNN president Jeff Zucker substituted “miniseries” for “film” but was otherwise identical.

Priebus accused both networks of a “thinly-veiled attempt at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 presidential election”. The programming would be unfair to others who might compete for the Democratic nomination, he said, “and to the Republican nominee, should Clinton compete in the general election”.

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U.S. Directs Agents to Cover Up Program Used to Investigate Americans

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Photo Credit: ReutersA secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

“I have never heard of anything like this at all,” said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.

“It is one thing to create special rules for national security,” Gertner said. “Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations.”

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Circuit Court: ‘Unsettled’ if 2nd Amendment Applies Outside of Home

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Photo Credit: APIn a case over New Jersey’s requirement that a citizen demonstrate “justifiable need” for a carrying a firearm before receiving a concealed carry license, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that such a requirement “does not burden conduct within the scope of the Second Amendment’s guarantee.” The court also said “it remains unsettled” whether the Second Amendment is even applicable outside one’s home.

Filed on July 31, 2013, the ruling in Drake v. Filko upheld New Jersey’s practice of placing the burden of proof upon the citizen. In other words, the citizen who wants to carry a gun for self-defense must demonstrate why doing so is necessary for him or her. In simple terms, the citizen must justify being free.

That runs contrary to previous rulings in other circuits, such as on March 6, 2012 when U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg ruled against Maryland’s requirement that citizens who wanted a concealed carry permit had to demonstrate a “good and substantial reason” for getting one. Overturning this New Jersey-like requirement, Legg ruled: “A citizen may not be required to offer a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights. The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.”

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FBI Can Hack Your Android to Remotely Activate Cell Phone Microphones

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesLaw-enforcement officials in the U.S. are expanding the use of tools routinely used by computer hackers to gather information on suspects, bringing the criminal wiretap into the cyber age.

Federal agencies have largely kept quiet about these capabilities, but court documents and interviews with people involved in the programs provide new details about the hacking tools, including spyware delivered to computers and phones through email or Web links—techniques more commonly associated with attacks by criminals.

People familiar with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s programs say that the use of hacking tools under court orders has grown as agents seek to keep up with suspects who use new communications technology, including some types of online chat and encryption tools. The use of such communications, which can’t be wiretapped like a phone, is called “going dark” among law enforcement.

A spokeswoman for the FBI declined to comment.

The FBI develops some hacking tools internally and purchases others from the private sector. With such technology, the bureau can remotely activate the microphones in phones running Google Inc.’s GOOG -0.17% Android software to record conversations, one former U.S. official said. It can do the same to microphones in laptops without the user knowing, the person said. Google declined to comment.

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