Chicago Public Schools to Start Sex Education in Kindergarten

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Photo Credit: The New American

A new policy approved by the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will require all public school students to participate in sex education instruction, beginning in kindergarten. According to the CPS website, the new mandate, passed on February 27, will require each student to receive “minimum instructional minutes” of sex-ed information that is “medically accurate” as well as (supposedly) age-appropriate.

“It is important that we provide students of all ages with accurate and appropriate information so they can make healthy choices in regards to their social interactions, behaviors, and relationships,” Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said in the CPS announcement about the policy. “By implementing a new sexual health education policy, we will be helping them to build a foundation of knowledge that can guide them not just in the pre-adolescent and adolescent years, but throughout their lives.”

In its announcement, the CPS explained that in the earliest grades students “will focus on the family, feelings, and appropriate and inappropriate touching, while students in fourth grade will learn about puberty, including the physical, social, and emotional changes that accompany it, and the causes and transmission of HIV infection.”

After that, instruction gets more intimate, said the announcement, with content in grades five through twelve including “information appropriate for each grade level on human reproduction, transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually-transmitted infections (STIs), healthy decision-making, sexual orientation and bullying, and contraception, including abstinence.”

The announcement emphasized that “as is the case under the current CPS policy, parents and guardians are able to opt out of having their children participate in the sexual health education instruction.”

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John Kerry’s First Foreign Policy Speech Spins Global Warming Hysteria

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Photo Credit: The New American

In his first major foreign policy speech on Wednesday, newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a rather unconventional introduction, arguing that Americans need to garner up the “courage” to tackle climate change. Emphasizing security measures that are necessary to maintain national security, Kerry added that new environmental policies and investments in “green” energy technologies should be a priority for his department.

“We as a nation must have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren,” he said, highlighting the “catastrophic” impact climate change will have on future generations: “An environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.”

The secretary of state called for collective action to curb the “detrimental” effects of climate change, as he propagated a doomsday scenario where sea levels rise and rising temperatures wreak havoc on the Earth:

And let’s face it — we are all in this one together. No nation can stand alone. We share nothing so completely as our planet. When we work with others — large and small — to develop and deploy the clean technologies that will power a new world, we’re also helping create new markets and new opportunities for America’s second-to-none innovators and entrepreneurs to succeed in the next great revolution.

So let’s commit ourselves to doing the smart thing and the right thing and truly commit to tackling this challenge. Because if we don’t rise to meet it, rising temperatures and rising sea levels will surely lead to rising costs down the road. If we waste this opportunity, it may be the only thing our generations are remembered for. We need to find the courage to leave a far different legacy.

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Bush AG Tells CPAC: ‘The Vast Majority’ of Muslims Want To Impose Sharia Law

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Photo Credit: Salon.com

“You may not be interested in Islamism, but Islamism is interested in you,” warned former Attorney General Michael Mukasey at a Saturday CPAC panel of activists so fringy that they were not technically invited to the conference.

“I want to thank CPAC for making this panel necessary,” said the Bush-era attorney general, taking a sarcastic swipe at the organization for frowning on the panelists. “And thank Breitbart.com for making this panel possible.”

The “Uninvited” panel, organized by Breitbart media, brought together anti-Muslim activists like Pam Geller and Robert Spencer, and Mukasey fit right in.

“The vast majority of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims adhere to a view of their religion that agrees on the need to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on the world,” he said.

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Brent Bozell Levels Broadside Against Entire Republican Establishment

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Photo Credit: Alex Wong

For America Executive Director Brent Bozell lashed out at Republican leaders Saturday, accusing Speaker John Boehner and his leadership team of failing to push a conservative agenda.

“John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Kevin McCarthy, you said all the right things to conservatives to propel the GOP back to the majority and you to the top three leadership positions in the House. You, like virtually every single other Republican elected to Congress solemnly vowed to rid us of Obamacare, which you can do simply by refusing to fund it. Why haven’t you done so?” Bozell asked, charging that the House GOP leadership has “done nothing for over two years but give us excuses and more commitments that tomorrow, yes tomorrow, you’ll honor your promises.”

“Gentlemen, where promises are concerned, you are not what you promised to be,” he added. Indeed, virtually every major Republican on the national stage came under attack by Bozell, who is a favorite of conservative activists.

On Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, Bozell said, “You ran, and won as a fiscal conservative. You leave punishing Virginia with the largest tax increase in history. I wish we’d never elected you. Do you have national aspirations? Sorry my friend, forget them.”

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Obama Will Use Nixon-Era Law to Fight Climate Change

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Photo Credit: Daniel Acker

President Barack Obama is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways.

The result could be significant delays for natural gas- export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists warn.

“It’s got us very freaked out,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a Washington-based group that represents 11,000 companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Southern Co. (SO) The standards, which constitute guidance for agencies and not new regulations, are set to be issued in the coming weeks, according to lawyers briefed by administration officials.

In taking the step, Obama would be fulfilling a vow to act alone in the face of a Republican-run House of Representatives unwilling to pass measures limiting greenhouse gases. He’d expand the scope of a Nixon-era law that was first intended to force agencies to assess the effect of projects on air, water and soil pollution.

“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” Obama said last month during his State of the Union address. He pledged executive actions “to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

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House Packed For Breitbart’s Controversial ‘CPAC Uninvited’ Panel

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Andrew Breitbart frequently spoke and wrote of the need for an American dialog including voices beyond those approved by the mainstream media and the political establishment. Therefore, in his honor, the Breitbart News Network put on a panel called “The Uninvited” to feature topics and speakers otherwise absent from the CPAC agenda.

Breitbart News CEO Larry Solov and Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon compiled an ambitious slate of foreign policy experts and activists, as well as a discussion of the cronyism that has turned our nation’s capital into a boomtown.

Despite the fact that the event was pieced together just days before CPAC commenced, the ballroom was packed and the audience was enthusiastic. Panelist Pamela Geller was greeted with standing ovations just for entering the room.

Iowa Congressman Steve King kicked the session off with a few remarks before Breitbart Editor-at-Large Larry O’Connor introduced former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. The former DOJ head charged that the FBI actively removed references to Islam in documents relating to the Nidal Hasan shooting at Fort Hood in November of 2009. The Obama DOD labeled the murder spree “workplace violence” instead of terrorism, despite that fact that Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” before he opened fire. Mukasey said that this is an example of the U.S. government redefining Islam in a politically palatable way at the expense of the truth.

Mukasey went on to make the case that, if left unchecked, the rise of global Islam would become the 21st century equivalent to fascism or communism. The former Bush AG warned of a “civilizational jihad” in which the Islamists attempt to destroy the entire Western world as we know it and enforce Sharia law. “They want a world without infidels,” Mukasey told the crowd. “The want a world without us.”

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Companies Are Putting Sensors On Employees To Track Their Every Move

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The idea of having employees walk around with electronic sensors to track their every move is unsettling. There are privacy and legal issues, and who wants to feel like they are just a cog in a system?

But data companies say that the resulting reams of information will improve life for companies and employees.

Sociometric Solutions has created tracking devices for Bank of America, Steelcase, and Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc., and is in talks with General Motors. It was started by a team of Ph.D students from MIT who decided to study the chemistry behind what makes certain workspaces like Google great at building teams. They came up with sensors placed in employee identification badges that gather real-time information to help companies measure productivity. The sensors identify a person’s tone of voice, movement and even their posture when communicating with others.

“Google really cares about creating a community because the social conversations — the ones at the water cooler, coffee maker — those are the ones that have the biggest impact,” says Ben Waber, president of Sociometrics and one of the company’s founders. “In the U.S., there’s this notion that your most productive time is when you’re sitting at your desk staring at the computer,” and that’s not necessarily true.

The sensors are intended to measure when and how employees are truly productive. While individual information is collected, it’s anonymized to provide metadata and hedge against privacy concerns. The information is then used to suggest how employees, and the company as a whole, can work more efficiently.

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Inflation Highest In More Than Three Years

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U.S. consumer prices rose 0.7% in February for the largest gain since June 2009. Gasoline prices rose 9.1%, also making the largest jump since June 2009, and accounted for almost three-fourths of February’s gain in the consumer price index. The broader price category for energy increased 5.4%.

Despite the CPI’s large jump in February, longer-term trends remain within the Federal Reserve’s target. The overall CPI and the core reading, which excludes volatile energy and food categories, increased 2% over the 12 months that ended in February. Economists expect that today’s data should continue to support the Fed’s accommodative policy stance.

Looking forward, analysts expect monthly inflation to moderate as some of February’s surge in gasoline prices is reversed this month. In the most recent weekly data, average per-gallon gas prices across the U.S. fell five cents to $3.71.

“Overall, despite the sharp rise in headline prices and some modest firming in core consumer inflation pressures, the overall backdrop for consumer prices remains favorable, providing further breathing room for the Fed,” wrote Millan Mulraine, a macro strategist at TD Securities, in a research note.

Prices for food rose 0.1% in February. The core CPI rose 0.2%. Read RetireMentors: From ammunition to zucchini, prices are up.

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Texas Fed Chief Says Too-Big-to-Fail Banks Should Be Shrunk

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Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher said the government should break up the biggest U.S. banks rather than allow them to hold a “too-big- to-fail” advantage over smaller firms.

The 12 largest financial institutions hold almost 70 percent of the assets in the nation’s banking system and profit from an unfair implicit guarantee that the government would bail them out, Fisher said today in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. The biggest banks enjoy a “significant” subsidy, enabling them “to grow larger and riskier,” he said.

“These institutions operate under a privileged status,” Fisher said. “They represent not only a threat to financial stability, but to fair and open competition.”

The biggest banks came under scrutiny yesterday at a Senate hearing on JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), which hid trading losses, according to a report by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The New York-based firm under Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon lost more than $6.2 billion last year in a credit derivatives bet by Bruno Iksil, known as the London Whale.

Fisher said in a phone interview with Bloomberg News that his proposal “will not lead to the denial of credit for U.S. corporations.” The cost from big banks “far exceeds the benefits,” and the U.S. doesn’t need “to have the largest banks in the world to compete,” Fisher said after his speech.

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Rand Paul Wins The Washington Times-CPAC 2013 Straw Poll

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Photo Credit: ANDREW HARNIK

Sen. Rand Paul won the 2013 Washington Times-CPAC presidential preference straw poll Saturday, and Sen. Marco Rubio was a close second, easily outdistancing the rest of the field and signaling the rise of a new generation of conservative leaders who will take the Republican Party into the 2016 election.

Mr. Paul won 25 percent of the vote, and Mr. Rubio collected 23 percent. Former Sen. Rick Santorum was third with just 8 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — who was not invited to speak at the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference — was next with 7 percent, and Rep. Paul D. Ryan, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee last year, was fifth with 6 percent.

Mr. Paul’s victory puts him in the footsteps of his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, who won in 2010 and 2011.

“I’ve been standing with Rand since I came out of the womb,” said Austin Alexander, a 26-year-old consultant from New York who voted for the senator in the straw poll and who volunteered for the elder Mr. Paul’s campaign in 2012. Mr. Alexander said he believes the GOP is moving in the direction the Pauls espouse.

Mr. Rubio, meanwhile, won the hearts of more traditional conservatives. “I’ve been a supporter for Marco, like a lot of people, since the first time I heard the guy speak,” said Gary Kim, 62, from Colorado, who described himself as a social conservative and said Mr. Rubio can deliver that message in a way previous candidates such as Mr. Santorum could not.

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