Teacher Who Was Removed from Class for Having Students Stomp US Flag Gets $85,000 Settlement

In a crazy twist made possible by our litigious society, a South Carolina teacher who was removed from his teaching position for making his students repeatedly stomp on a United States flag during a class – purportedly on freedom – has apparently gotten the last laugh.

After the teacher was removed from the classroom, his lawyers threatened to bring a federal lawsuit against the school district. The school district apparently then entered into a secret settlement where the teacher was required to resign but would continue to be paid through June 7 of this year. He also received and $85,000 settlement and $32,000 in attorneys fees. The total package, including salary and benefits, likely exceeded $150,000.

The revelation of the district’s settlement came as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request by a South Carolina newspaper.

Navy Seal Team VI Families to Reveal Obama Admin.’s Culpability in Death of Sons

Photo Credit: Marion DossThree families of Navy SEAL Team VI special forces servicemen, along with one family of an Army National Guardsman, will appear at a press conference on May 9, 2013, to disclose never before revealed information about how and why their sons along with 26 others died in a fatal helicopter crash in Afghanistan on August 6, 2011, just a few months after the successful raid on the compound of Osama Bin Laden that resulted in the master terrorist’s death.

Accompanying the families of these dead Navy SEAL Team VI special operations servicemen will be retired military experts verifying their accounts of how and why the government is as much responsible for the deaths of their sons as is the Taliban.

The areas of inquiry at the press conference will include but not be limited to:

1. How President Obama and Vice President Biden, having disclosed on May 4, 2011, that Navy Seal Team VI carried out the successful raid on Bin Laden’s compound resulting in the master terrorist’s death, put a retaliatory target on the backs of the fallen heroes.

2. How and why high-level military officials sent these Navy SEAL Team VI heroes into battle without special operations aviation and proper air support.

3. How and why middle level military brass carries out too many ill-prepared missions to boost their standing with top-level military brass and the Commander-in-Chief in order that they can be promoted.

4. How the military restricts special operations servicemen and others from engaging in timely return fire when fired upon by the Taliban and other terrorist groups and interests, thus jeopardizing the servicemen’s lives.

5. How and why the denial of requested pre-assault fire may have contributed to the shoot down of the Navy SEAL Team VI helicopter and the death of these special operations servicemen.

6. How Afghani forces accompanying the Navy SEAL Team VI servicemen on the helicopter were not properly vetted and how they possibly disclosed classified information to the Taliban about the mission, resulting in the shoot down of the helicopter.

7. How military brass, while prohibiting any mention of a Judeo-Christian God, invited a Muslim cleric to the funeral for the fallen Navy SEAL Team VI heroes who disparaged in Arabic the memory of these servicemen by damning them as infidels to Allah. A video of the Muslim cleric’s “prayer” will be shown with a certified translation.

“This press conference takes on special significance given that our government has over the last twelve years since September 11 committed brave American servicemen to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which, in large part as a result of politics, were poorly conceived of and implemented, resulting in the deaths of thousands and the maiming of tens of thousands of our brave heroes. To make matters even worse, America has effectively lost these wars,” stated Larry Klayman, legal counsel for the families.

For more information, contact Freedom Watch at [email protected] or Tel: 424 274 2579.

Source: Only President Could Have Made ‘Stand Down’ Call on Benghazi

Photo Credit: Breitbart A source with intimate information about the events that happened on the ground in Benghazi the night the U.S. Consulate and the CIA annex was attacked by terrorists told Breitbart News that, ultimately, only the President of the United States, or someone acting on his authority, could have prevented Special Forces either on the ground or nearby from helping those Americans who were under deadly assault.

According to the source, when the attack on the Consulate occurred, a specific chain of command to gain verbal permission to move special-forces in must have occurred. SOCAFRICA commander Lieutenant Col. Gibson would have contacted a desk officer at the time, asking for that permission.

That desk officer would have called Marine Corps Col. George Bristol, then in command of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara. From there, Bristol would have made contact with Rear Admiral Brian Losey, then Commander of Special Operations Command Africa. Losey would have contacted four-star General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. AFRICOM at the time.

“Ham answers directly to the President of the United States,” said the source. It wasn’t a low-level bureaucrat making the call, the source adamantly added.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senator: “The Dam is About to Break on Benghazi”

Photo Credit: APSen. Lindsey Graham on Tuesday predicted that “the dam is about to break on Benghazi,” and said that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would shoulder some blame.

“I think the dam is about to break on Benghazi,” Graham (R-S.C.) wrote on his Facebook page. “We’re going to find a system failure before, during, and after the attacks. We’re going to find political manipulation seven weeks before an election. We’re going to find people asleep at the switch when it comes to the State Department, including Hillary Clinton.”

Graham has been a vocal critic of the Obama administration for its handling of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Amb. Chris Stevens, among others.

Read more from this story HERE.

Media Bias at Work: US Gun Crime Plunges, but Most Americans Think It’s Increased

Photo Credit: AFP-GettyGun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show…

In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium.

The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released Tuesday. Gun crimes that weren’t fatal fell by 69%…

Despite the remarkable drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said gun crime had declined compared with two decades ago, according to Pew, which surveyed more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased.

It’s unclear whether media coverage is driving the misconception that such violence is up. The mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., were among the news stories most closely watched by Americans last year, Pew found. Crime has also been a growing focus for national newscasts and morning network shows in the past five years but has become less common on local television news.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin. Poised to Back FBI’s Demand For Wiretap Access to Online Communications

Photo Credit: Christopher GregoryThe Obama administration, resolving years of internal debate, is on the verge of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, has argued that the bureau’s ability to carry out court-approved eavesdropping on suspects is “going dark” as communications technology evolves, and since 2010 has pushed for a legal mandate requiring companies like Facebook and Google to build into their instant-messaging and other such systems a capacity to comply with wiretap orders. That proposal, however, bogged down amid concerns by other agencies, like the Commerce Department, about quashing Silicon Valley innovation.

While the F.B.I.’s original proposal would have required Internet communications services to each build in a wiretapping capacity, the revised one, which must now be reviewed by the White House, focuses on fining companies that do not comply with wiretap orders. The difference, officials say, means that start-ups with a small number of users would have fewer worries about wiretapping issues unless the companies became popular enough to come to the Justice Department’s attention.

Still, the plan is likely to set off a debate over the future of the Internet if the White House submits it to Congress, according to lawyers for technology companies and advocates of Internet privacy and freedom.

“I think the F.B.I.’s proposal would render Internet communications less secure and more vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves,” said Gregory T. Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It would also mean that innovators who want to avoid new and expensive mandates will take their innovations abroad and develop them there, where there aren’t the same mandates.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Despite Scandal, Ex-SC Gov. Sanford Back in Office

Photo Credit: Rainier EhrhardtFour years after scandal derailed his political career, ex-Republican Gov. Mark Sanford once again holds a South Carolina political office, winning back his old congressional seat Tuesday after a race in which he battled his past and an opponent who outdid him in fundraising.

Sanford’s resurrection was completed when he defeated Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert, in a district that hasn’t elected a Democratic congressman in more than three decades.

“Some guy came up to me the other day and said you look a lot like Lazarus,” Sanford told a crowd of more than 100 cheering supporters at his victory celebration, referring to the man who, according to the Bible, Christ raised from the dead.

With all precincts reporting, Sanford had about 54 percent of the vote.

“I’ve talked a lot about grace during the course of this campaign,” he said. “Until you experience human grace as a reflection of God’s grace, I don’t think you really get it. And I didn’t get it before.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Trustworthy? Fox News’ Shepard Smith Ranks Dead Last

Photo Credit: Fox NewsAlthough he anchors the top-rated cable newscast in the nation, Shepard Smith of the Fox News Channel ranks last in a brand-new Reader’s Digest Poll listing the top 100 most trusted Americans.

“The results are revealing, hopeful, and sometimes shocking,” says the Reader’s Digest, which teamed up with the research firm Wagner Group to survey more than 1,000 Americans and discover which individuals and the ideals they represent have earned public confidence.

Smith, anchor of “The Fox Report,” was ranked at No. 100, just below New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman, who are at Nos. 98 and 99 respectively. But since no other Fox journalist even made the top 100, Smith’s ranking could be viewed as good news for him.

The magazine provides a slideshow of photos and quotes for each person in its ranking.

The quote attributed to Smith is, “I’m a journalist; I run to the fire, that’s what we do.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Red Tape Burden Surges to 189 Million Hours a Year — and it Hasn’t Even Started

Photo Credit: Washington Examiner The growing tower of Obamacare red tape flooding out of federal agencies will sock American businesses and families with nearly 200 million hours of paperwork compliance a year, a 50 percent jump in just the past three months as the administration pushes out more rules.

The number of compliance hours is so staggering that three House committees, in updating their Obamacare Burden Tracker, put it in perspective by claiming that the Empire State Building could be built 27 times in the 189,822,836 hours estimated so far by the Office of Management and Budget and IRS.

Just three months ago, the House Ways and Means, Education and the Workforce, and Energy and Commerce committees first estimated the paperwork burden at 127 million hours per year. Since then, the administration has scrambled to issue more regulations in time for the Jan. 1 kickoff of the Obamacare program.

The biggest addition is a new rule that will add 46 million hours of paperwork to the makers of drugs, medical devices and medical supplies, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. They will be required to report payments to doctors and teaching hospitals and reveal investments doctors have in their companies.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senators Block Gosnell Resolution

Photo Credit: Daily Caller A Senate resolution aimed at investigating and correcting the policies which led to the illegal abortion practices of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell was blocked Monday evening.

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee attempted to hotline the resolution to express “the sense of the Senate that Congress and the States should investigate and correct abusive, unsanitary, and illegal abortion practices” Monday evening, but an unknown senator objected to its unanimous passage, according to Lee’s office.

“It is difficult to imagine why anyone would object to a non-binding resolution calling on Congress to investigate these alleged disturbing, horrific, and illegal abortion practices committed by Kermit Gosnell and others,” Lee said in a statement.

“With numerous reports of similar instances surfacing around the country, the need for greater regulatory oversight of these so-called clinics is so plainly obvious it strains the limits of disbelief to think all members of the Senate would not agree,” he added. “The resolution is simply an affirmation that we as a country — a moral and compassionate society — have an interest in acting to save the lives of innocent women and children, and to prevent these kinds of heinous acts from happening to anyone again.”

Lee’s resolution, which has 11 co-sponsors, highlighted the crimes alleged against Gosnell, who faces more than 250 criminal charges, including first-degree murder charges for the deaths of four babies born alive in attempted abortions and a third-degree murder charge for a woman who died in 2009 during an abortion from a drug overdose.

Read more from this story HERE.