Boy Scouts Approve Plan to Accept Openly Gay Scouts

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Photo Credit: APThe Boy Scouts of America threw open its ranks Thursday to gay Scouts but not gay Scout leaders — a fiercely contested compromise that some warned could fracture the organization and lead to mass defections of members and donors.

Of the roughly 1,400 voting members of the BSA’s National Council who cast ballots, 61 percent supported the proposal drafted by the governing Executive Committee. The policy change takes effect Jan. 1.

“This has been a challenging chapter in our history,” the BSA chief executive, Wayne Brock, said after the vote. “While people have differing opinions on this policy, kids are better off when they’re in Scouting.”

However, the outcome will not end the bitter debate over the Scouts’ membership policy.

Liberal Scout leaders — while supporting the proposal to accept gay youth — have made clear they want the ban on gay adults lifted as well.

Read more from this story HERE.

House Committee Wants to Hear From Anyone Targeted by the IRS

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Photo Credit: kenteegardinClaims of political targeting by the Internal Revenue Service are flooding into the House Ways and Means Committee, bolstered by evidence that includes secretly recorded conversations with IRS officials.

Ways and Means has created a website inviting Americans who believe they were targeted to share their stories, and among the information being forwarded to committee investigators are surreptitious recordings of interviews with the IRS. The recordings and other evidence are coming from conservatives who believe they were subjected to tax audits because of their political activism, or from members of conservative groups who believe their organizations’ requests for tax-exempt status was subjected to extra scrutiny.

Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, a member of Ways and Means, confirmed to The Washington Examiner on Thursday that the evidence being sent to the committee includes secret recordings with IRS officials. This information comports with legal sources who have clients who believe they were targeted by the IRS because they are politically active conservatives who opposed President Obama’s re-election.

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Conservative’ Virginia Now Embracing Homosexual Marriage

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Photo Credit: Matt WuerkerWelcome to the gay rights battleground of Virginia.

Yes, you read that right. In the 2013 off-year elections, a state that once leaned solidly to the center-right has become the newest focal point in the national debate over same-sex relationships. A gubernatorial race already defined partly along culture-war lines has grown even more contentious since last weekend, when Virginia Republicans nominated as their lieutenant governor candidate a firebrand minister who has called gays “very sick people psychologically” and suggested a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.

Remarkably, in a New South battleground where Democrats have traditionally won by carving out independent, non-partisan reputations, it’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe who’s most eager to keep gay rights on the political front burner.

When McAuliffe first ran for governor in 2009, he ran a conventionally cautious Democratic campaign, endorsing civil unions for gay couples but warning that Virginia would be unlikely to accept gay marriage. After all, it was only a few years earlier – in 2000 – that Republican George Allen ridiculed then-Democratic Sen. Chuck Robb for representing “Vermont values,” after his vote against the Defense of Marriage Act.

This year, McAuliffe fully supports same-sex marriage.

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Obama’s DOJ’s Orwellian Workplace Guidance on LGBT: “Silence Will Be Interpreted as Disapproval”

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Photo Credit: National Assembly For Wales / Cynulliad CymruThe only thing this Obama White House seems to generate is scandal. Well, here’s yet another to add to the growing list. In addition to the Benghazi cover-up, IRS targeting of political dissenters and the illegal seizure of media phone records, whistleblowers within DOJ have contacted Liberty Counsel to express grave concerns over this administration’s latest attack on freedom.

Our sources have provided Liberty Counsel an internal DOJ document titled: “LGBT Inclusion at Work: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers.” It was emailed to DOJ managers in advance of the left’s so-called “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month.”

The document is chilling. It’s riddled with directives that grossly violate – prima facie -employees’ First Amendment liberties:

* “DON’T judge or remain silent. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval.”

* “DO assume that LGBT employees and their allies are listening to what you’re saying (whether in a meeting or around the proverbial water cooler) and will read what you’re writing (whether in a casual email or in a formal document), and make sure the language you use is inclusive and respectful.”

* DO “Attend LGBT events sponsored by DOJ Pride and/or the Department, and invite (but don’t require) others to join you.”

* DO “Display a symbol in your office (DOJ Pride sticker, copy of this brochure, etc.) indicating that it is a ‘safe space.'”

* “DO use inclusive words like ‘partner,’ ‘significant other’ or ‘spouse’ rather than gender-specific terms like ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ (for example, in invitations to office parties or when asking a new employee about his/her home life).”

* “DO use a transgender person’s chosen name and the pronoun that is consistent with the person’s self-identified gender.”

Read more from this store HERE.

Man Linked to Boston Bombing Shot Dead During Interview With Two FBI Agents

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Photo Credit: APBy Fox News. Ibragim Todashev, who was shot and killed early Wednesday during a shooting at an apartment complex near Universal Studios in Orlando, knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers behind the April 15 bombing attack. Todashev was shot while being questioned about an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Mass., in which one victim was a onetime associate of Tsarnaev, two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the investigation and the FBI told the Boston Globe.

“The agent, along with other law enforcement personnel, were interviewing an individual in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation when a violent confrontation was initiated by the subject,” FBI Agent Dave Couvertier said in a statement obtained by FoxNews.com. “During the confrontation, the individual was killed and the agent sustained non-life threatening injuries. As this incident is under review, we have no further details at this time.”

Three law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that Todashev lunged at the FBI agent with a knife before he was shot. However, two of those officials said later Wednesday it was no longer clear whether Todashev lunged at the agent with a knife. Read more from this story HERE.

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Florida man killed by FBI agent reportedly had link to Boston Marathon bomber, triple murder

By Susan Candiotti, Ashleigh Banfield, Deborah Feyerick, and Carol Cratty. [A friend named Taramov] said Todashev was not a radical. “He was just a Muslim. That was his mistake, I guess.”

Taramov said his friend had told him he had a bad feeling about the direction the investigation was heading.

“He felt like there’s going to be a setup … bad setup against him. Because he told me, ‘They are making up such crazy stuff, I don’t know … why they doing it. OK, I’m answering the questions, but they are still making up some, like, connections, some crazy stuff. I don’t know why they are doing it.’ ”

Before meeting with the FBI for a 7:30 p.m. interview Tuesday, Taramov said, his friend asked him to take his parents’ telephone numbers. “He just told me, ‘Take the numbers, in case something happens, if I get locked up, or whatever, call them.’ You know what I mean?

“We were expecting to get him locked up, but not getting him killed. I can’t believe it.” Read more from this story HERE.

‘We’re Not Going to Tolerate It’: Colo. Sheriffs Unite to Block ‘Unenforceable’ Gun Control Legislation

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Photo Credit: APIn the wake of the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado passed some of the strictest gun control measures in the country.

But in recent months, an overwhelming 55 of the state’s 62 county sheriffs have joined a lawsuit aiming to block the measures.

“These bills do absolutely nothing to make Colorado a safer place to live, to work, to play or to raise a family,” Weld County Sheriff John Cooke explained at a recent press conference. “Instead these misguided, unconstitutional bills will have the opposite effect because they greatly restrict the right of decent, law-abiding citizens to defend themselves, their families and their homes.”

Sheriff Terry Maketa of El Paso County is one of the opposing sheriffs, and he explained on TheBlaze TV Wednesday how the public was “duped” into supporting overly vague legislation banning high-capacity magazines and requiring background checks.

Maketa says they believe the laws are unenforceable, but also violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gov’t Out-of-Control: FBI Tracked, Followed Fox Reporter, Got Parent’s Phone Records, Too

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Newly uncovered court documents reveal the Justice Department seized records of several Fox News phone lines as part of a leak investigation — even listing a number that, according to one source, matches the home phone number of a reporter’s parents.

The seizure was ordered in addition to a court-approved search warrant for Fox News correspondent James Rosen’s personal emails. In the affidavit seeking that warrant, an FBI agent called Rosen a likely criminal “co-conspirator,” citing a wartime law called the Espionage Act.

Rosen was not charged, but his movements and conversations were tracked. A source close to the leak investigation confirmed to Fox News that the government obtained phone records for several numbers that match Fox News numbers out of the Washington bureau.

Further, the source confirmed to Fox News that one number listed matched the number for Rosen’s parents in Staten Island.

Rosen’s father, attorney Myron Rosen, told FoxNews.com he found the records seizure to be “downright ludicrous.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Laura Ingraham: ‘I’m Thinking of Moving to Arizona’ to ‘Primary Challenge Sen. Jeff Flake Myself’

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreOn her Wednesday radio show, conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham attacked a number of Republican senators that voted to support the immigration reform bill on Tuesday, saying that she was thinking about moving to Arizona to primary Sen. Jeff Flake, who is up for re-election in 2018.

“Let me tell you — I am thinking of moving to Arizona,” Ingraham said. “You know why? I will primary challenge Sen. Jeff Flake myself, if that’s why this requires. Jeff Flake, living up to his last name, backed down from a previous promise his spokeswoman made to Breitbart. This is just like Marco [Rubio] breaking his promise, basically, that he would consider voting in favor of amendments to the Senate’s immigration bill that would close a loophole of allowing illegal immigrants access to state and local welfare. Jeff Flake voted with the liberals against the Ted Cruz amendment.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin. Assassinated Four Americans in Drone Strikes

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Photo Credit: APFour American citizens have been killed in counter-terrorism drone strikes since 2009, the Obama administration acknowledged for the first time Wednesday.

Attorney General Eric Holder disclosed the previously classified information in a letter to a top senator that also included the names of those killed and the revelation that only one was directly targeted in the strikes that began in 2009. He did not specifically call them drone strikes – rather, he referred to “counterterrorism operations” – but most of the individuals he mentioned are known to have died in drone strikes.

The targeted individual, Anwar al-Awlaki, was a radical Muslim cleric whom U.S. officials said was involved in planning Al Qaeda operations and terror attacks. He was killed in September 2011 in Yemen.

The acknowledgement came ahead of a major counterterrorism policy speech by President Obama scheduled for Thursday.

Holder said in the letter that the Obama administration is “aware” of three other U.S. citizens killed in such counter-terrorism operations besides al-Awlaki: Samir Khan, Jude Kennan Mohammed and Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, Holder said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Congressman: IRS Used ‘Soviet-Style Intimidation’

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Photo Credit: WNDRep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, says he needs to know who has been ordering the Internal Revenue Service attacks on conservative organizations.

“The main point here is this: Someone is giving out marching orders for these agencies and these employees to do these things. The question is, who is giving out the marching orders?’ Poe said in an interview with WND.

The head of the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt organizations office, Lois Lerner, appeared before a U.S. House committee Wednesday but refused to answer questions, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Poe is particularly concerned about IRS targeting of the King Street Patriots, a tea party group founded in Houston by Catherine Engelbrecht.

The congressman compared the IRS scandal to the Fast and Furious gun-tracing scandal: “Who is the person who decided to smuggle guns to Mexico? We still don’t know.”

Read more from this story HERE.