Chris Christie Inducted into CAIR’s ‘Best List’ for Fighting ‘Islamophobia’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Council on the American Islamic Relations (CAIR) excoriated many of its critics in their “Islamophobia” report, but the group also had a “Best List Inductees” which included New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

CAIR says the list was compiled as a way to recognize those who “deserve recognition for their outstanding contributions to pushing back against Islamophobic trends in 2011 and 2012.” The report says Christie is receiving the accolade primarily for his nomination of a Muslim judge and statements in the ensuing controversy:

Following Islamophobic criticism of his nomination of Sohail Mohammed as a New Jersey Superior Court judge, Christie pushed back. Commenting on the baseless fear some were spreading about Islamic religious principles Christie bluntly stated, “This Sharia law business is just crap. It’s just crazy, and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.”…

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Prop. 8 Players Join Bid to Repeal Transgender Law

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

An effort to overturn a new law allowing transgender students to choose which school restrooms they use and whether to play boys or girls sports got a boost Friday when a major player in the passage of California’s now-defunct same-sex marriage ban threw its support behind the campaign.

The National Organization for Marriage announced it was working with another conservative group, the Capitol Resource Institute, to repeal the law at the ballot box. The marriage group provided early fundraising and organizing for the 2008 ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriages, known as Proposition 8.

Opponents of the transgender student law have until Nov. 8 to gather the signatures of 504,760 registered voters needed to place a referendum on the November 2014 ballot to nullify the statute.

The National Organization for Marriage is encouraging its members to help circulate petitions and to give money that could be used to hire professional signature-gatherers.

The political strategist who ran the successful Proposition 8 campaign, Frank Schubert, has signed on to manage the referendum campaign. Noting that no one has ever qualified a referendum in California using only volunteers, Schubert said “it’s a virtual certainty” the campaign will hire paid petition-circulators to supplement work already going on at churches statewide.

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University of Kansas Suspends Controversial Journalism Professor over Vile Tweets Calling for the Murder of NRA Members’ Children

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A journalism professor who boasts online about his love of free speech has been placed on administrative leave by the University of Kansas over controversial remarks he posted on Twitter calling for the murder of the children of members of the National Rifle Association.

The tweets were in response to Monday’s deadly Naval Yard shooting, in which 12 people were killed.

In the post, Associate Professor David Guth blames the fatal attack on the NRA, and goes on to say that next time there’s a mass-shooting that he hopes the victims are the children of NRA members.

He ends his 140-charecter rant with ‘shame on you. May God damn you.’

On Thursday, the university issued a statement condemning Guth’s offensive tweet.

Photo Credit: Twitter

Photo Credit: Twitter

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BlackBerry to Fire 4,500 Employees as Sales of New Device Plummet

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Photo Credit: Mast Irham/EPA

Photo Credit: Mast Irham/EPA

BlackBerry confirmed it was firing 4,500 of its staff on Friday as the struggling smartphone firm said it expects to lose nearly $1bn in the three months to August on disappointing sales of new phones.

Revenues for the three months were only $1.6bn, the company said, against analysts’ forecasts of $3bn – indicative of a collapse in its business after lacklustre sales of its new Z10 and Q10 phones. In all, it shipped 3.7m smartphones in the quarter, its lowest since summer 2007, when the first iPhone came out.

The company’s shares crashed from $10.20 to $8.03 before recovering to $8.73, a 17% drop on the day, valuing it at $4.5bn. The shares were briefly suspended as rumours of the loss circulated, and it was forced to indicate its quarterly earnings a week ahead of their scheduled date. It said it would announce a loss of between $930m and $955m next week.

That brings its total losses in the past seven quarters to $1.8bn, putting its viability as a going concern into question.

The company announced it was putting itself up for sale at the end of August – which market observers took to indicate it had failed to find a buyer privately. Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia this month effectively left the Ontario-based company in the cold.

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Ultra Liberal Professor Disrupts College Republican Meeting with Vulgar Rant

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

From that great bastion of academic freedom known as Temple University comes another example of a liberal professor bullying conservative students with a bevy of F-bombs.

The potty-mouth professor is Joseph Schwartz, a political science professor who told he’s won every teaching award at the university. He’s also a card-carrying Democratic Socialist (but he stresses he’s not an authoritarian communist).

The good professor, along with a handful of his followers, took over a “right to work” discussion hosted by Temple’s College Republicans and featuring a representative from Pennsylvania Right to Work Defense and Education Foundation.

Joseph Oleksak, the chairman of Temple’s Republican group, said the meeting was running smoothly until Professor Joseph Schwartz started raising questions.

“I understand that not everyone agrees with my point of view,” Oleksak told me. “But the fact that somebody can come into another person’s meeting and take it over and then accuse them of racism – it’s an insult.”

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Supreme Court to Consider New Obamacare Case

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picture - supreme-courtObamacare is before the U.S. Supreme Court again. On Thursday, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) lawyers filed the first viable petition for Supreme Court review involving Kathleen Sebelius’ HHS Mandate, which requires employers to provide abortion-related insurance coverage, even if those employers have a religious objection to abortion.

Section 1001 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) requires all large employers to offer “preventive services” to their employees or face enormous financial penalties. With President Obama’s approval, Sebelius issued a regulation that defined preventive services to include access to birth control, including those that cause abortions after conception.

The regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) only allows narrow exceptions, such as for churches, but leaves other religion-oriented or religiously-owned employers subject to the regulation.

Over 60 lawsuits have been filed nationwide against this unprecedented government command. Many involve nonprofit entities, such as the University of Notre Dame. But roughly 35 of these lawsuits involve for-profit businesses which are wholly owned by a person or family with a religious belief against abortion, such as devout Christians.

These lawsuits argue both that the HHS Mandate violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment as well as a federal law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The federal appeals courts have split on whether a religiously-owned business can claim religious-liberty protections and whether requiring people to provide abortion-related services is a substantial burden on religious faith…The [Supreme] Court will likely vote in November whether to hear arguments in the case, which, if granted, would occur next spring.

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Spitting on Their Graves: Democrats Leave Benghazi Hearing Before Testimony From Families of Victims

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Photo Credit: Townhall

Photo Credit: Townhall

During the second portion of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing about Benghazi Thursday on Capitol Hill, the majority of Democrats on the Committee left the room and refused to listen to the testimony of Patricia Smith and Charles Woods.

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Feinstein: Restrict 2nd Amendment Rights after Navy Yard Shooting

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein is renewing her call for new gun-control laws because of Monday’s deadly Navy Yard shooting.

“When will enough be enough?” Feinstein said in a statement Monday evening.

“Congress must stop shirking its responsibility and resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence in this country,” she said. “We must do more to stop this endless loss of life.”

The FBI confirmed Monday afternoon that 34-year-old Aaron Alexis is the suspect in Monday’s massacre at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. Alexis died at the scene…

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Obama Takes on Coal with First-Ever Carbon Limits

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Obama administration will press ahead Friday with tough requirements for new coal-fired power plants, moving to impose for the first time strict limits on the pollution blamed for global warming.

The proposal would help reshape where Americans get electricity, away from a coal-dependent past into a future fired by cleaner sources of energy. It’s also a key step in President Barack Obama’s global warming plans, because it would help end what he called “the limitless dumping of carbon pollution” from power plants.

Although the proposed rule won’t immediatedly affect plants already operating, it eventually would force the government to limit emissions from the existing power plant fleet, which accounts for a third of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Obama has given the Environmental Protection Agency until next summer to propose those regulations.

The EPA provided The Associated Press with details of the proposal prior to the official announcement, which was expected Friday morning. The public will have a chance to comment on the rule before it becomes final.

Despite some tweaks, the rule packs the same punch as one announced last year, which was widely criticized by industry and Republicans as effectively banning any new coal projects in the U.S.

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Predator Drones ‘Useless’ in Most Wars, Top Air Force General Says

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Photo Credit: FP

Photo Credit: FP

The drones that have proved so useful at hunting al Qaeda are “useless” in nearly every other battlefield scenario, says a top Air Force general. So, for the first time, the Air Force is proposing culling the fleet of little, propeller-driven MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones in favor of stealthier, faster aircraft.

This is because the slow, low-flying drones that killed terrorists in the last decade’s wars have little chance of surviving against an enemy armed with even basic air defenses. Faced with declining defense budgets, Air Force officials want to retire many of the low-tech drones.

“Predators and Reapers are useless in a contested environment,” said Gen. Mike Hostage, chief of the air service’s Air Combat Command, during the Air Force Association’s annual conference outside of Washington.

“Today … I couldn’t put [a Predator or Reaper] into the Strait of Hormuz without having to put airplanes there to protect it,” said the four-star general. This week, the Air Force’s chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh, revealed that an F-22 — the planet’s most sophisticated stealth fighter — intercepted Iranian F-4 Phantom jets that were closing in on a U.S. Predator drone over the strait last March. In November 2012, Iranian Su-25 ground attack jets fired on, and missed, an American Predator over the strait.

In 2011, the Pentagon ordered the Air Force to have enough MQ-1s and MQ-9s to fly up to 65 combat air patrols (CAPs) around the world by this year. Each CAP consists of up to four drones. Even as the service worked to make this happen, it questioned the order, saying there was no official requirement stating the military’s need for what many in the air service believe are little more than flying lawn mowers.

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