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Obama also golfed on Saturday for the first time since the sequester cuts went into effect at the beginning of March and then took some of his foursome–and his Secret Service detail–to watch Syracuse oust Marquette and secure a trip to the Final Four.
One would have expected a friendlier crowd for the President, but there are still several possible explanations for the boos.
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“Religion can be a source of comfort that improves well-being,” begins the article by author Francine Russo. “But some kinds of religiosity could be a sign of deeper mental health issues.”
In the article titled “Can Your Child Be Too Religious?” Russo continues, “If your child is immersed in scripture after school and prays regularly throughout the day, you may breathe a sigh of relief. She’s such a good girl. … Or maybe not. Your child’s devotion may be a great thing, but there are some kids whose religious observances require a deeper look. For these children, an overzealous practice of their family faith – or even another faith – may be a sign of an underlying mental health issue.”
The article explains therapists report seeing children and teens who dive into excessive religiosity as an unhealthy coping mechanism, a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, that’s “no more spiritual than fanatical hand washing.”
The article describes a type of OCD called scrupulosity, where children “obsessively worry that they have committed blasphemy, been impure or otherwise sinned” and warns against religious delusions or hallucinations that parents may be less attuned to “when it occurs under the guise of faith.”
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“This is absolutely insane,” Rep. Lori Saine, R-Dacono, said. “In theory if a Secret Service agent is in a county where the sheriff has refused to enforce some of the recent unenforceable gun laws, the agent could arrest an individual if he believes the law has been broken.”
The idea actually aligns with an Obama agenda to create vast new restrictions and regulations on guns. WND has reported that hundreds of sheriffs nationwide, including many in Colorado, have said they cannot enforce federal restrictions that would violate the Second Amendment.
In Colorado, Weld County Sheriff John Cooke said he and many other county sheriffs “won’t bother” with several laws poised to go into effect in Colorado because they would be impossible to enforce.
One of the laws would require private sellers to do a background check on purchasers in private gun transaction, but the sheriffs wonder how to keep track of whether gun owners are meeting the new requirements.
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The Executive Order states the Commission “shall identify best practices and otherwise make recommendations to promote the efficient administration of elections in order to ensure that all eligible voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots without undue delay.”
The Commission will focus on polling places, how better to train and recruit poll workers, managing voter rolls and poll books, voting machines, ballot simplicity, English proficiency, and absentee ballots. The states–not the federal government–traditionally have responsibility over such matters.
Obama will appoint no more than nine members to the Commission and appointees will be drawn from among individuals with “knowledge about or experience in the administration of State or local elections, as well as representatives of successful customer service-oriented businesses, and any other individuals with knowledge or experience determined by the President to be of value to the Commission.”
Election law expert and former Department of Justice official J. Christian Adams labeled such a Commission a “solution in search of a problem.”
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The agreement marks a major breakthrough and significantly improves the odds of passing a larger immigration bill because it brings two powerful Washington interests on board on an issue that contributed to the defeat of past reform efforts. The visa program, which allows businesses to bring in up to 200,000 low-skilled workers annually depending on economic conditions, would be among the most controversial elements of the overhaul package. But the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are expected to play a key role in helping blunt attacks by conservatives activists and liberals.
“This issue has always been the dealbreaker on immigration reform, but not this time,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a leader of the Senate’s Gang of Eight, said in a statement Saturday night.
The Gang of Eight remains in negotiations on the broader bill. The senators have reached tentative agreement on many of the major issues, including the path to citizenship and border security, but they have yet to review the legislative language and caution that they don’t have a deal until they agree on everything.
The reform bill is so complex that none of the senators is willing to say they have an agreement until they can look at it on paper. The group is preparing to spend the next week finalizing the legislation, with an announcement likely to come when they return from the Easter recess on April 8 — although it will mark the start of a long and difficult road to passage.
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Farmers have cash, and nowhere to invest it but farmland. Farmers largely ignore equities, as they tend to balance the inherent risk in farming by investing in what they perceive as less risky places. We aren’t dumb, however, and have figured out that it’s a losing game to invest in bonds or CDs at rates less than inflation while we’re in tax brackets we never even knew existed.
So, farmland prices are booming. Land prices in the heart of the Corn Belt have increased at a double-digit rate in six of the last seven years. According to Federal Reserve studies, farmland prices were up 15 percent last year in the most productive part of the Corn Belt, and 26 percent in the western Corn Belt and high plains. Closer to home, a neighbor planning his estate had an appraisal done in 2010 and again in late 2012. In that two-year period, the value of his farm had doubled. According to Iowa State economist Mike Duffy, Iowa land selling for $2,275 per acre a decade ago is now at $8,700 per acre. A farm recently sold in Iowa for $21,900 per acre.
Although much of the increase in land prices has been driven by well-financed farmers and outside investors (many paying a large portion of the purchase price in cash), there are disturbing trends occurring on farm balance sheets. The Kansas Farm Management Association reports that debt-to-equity ratios are highest in large farms, which have over a million dollars in sales. Although the debt-to-asset ratio is low even in the largest farms in Kansas, it’s higher than it was in 1979, shortly before the farmland crash of the eighties. As former home owners in Las Vegas and Southern California can attest, equity can melt away in a hurry. A debt-to-asset ratio of 30 percent can enter dangerous territory with a land price drop of 50 percent, which sounds like a lot, until you remember that is a price level last seen only 24 months ago in much of the Midwest.
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“I don’t want your answers, I want to take my own test,” Juwanna told her teacher, according to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.
On Friday, Juwanna — now 14 — watched as Fulton County prosecutors announced that a grand jury had indicted the Atlanta Public Schools’ ex-superintendent and nearly three dozen other former administrators, teachers, principals and other educators of charges arising from a standardized test cheating scandal that rocked the system.
Former Superintendent Beverly Hall faces charges including conspiracy, making false statements and theft because prosecutors said some of the bonuses she received were tied to falsified scores. Hall retired just days before the findings of a state probe were released in mid-2011. A nationally known educator who was named Superintendent of the Year in 2009, Hall has long denied knowing about the cheating or ordering it.
During a news conference Friday, Howard highlighted the case of Juwanna and another student, saying they demonstrated “the plight of many children” in the Atlanta school system. Their stories were among many that investigators heard in hundreds of interviews with school administrators, staff, parents and students during a 21-month-long investigation.
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Seizing on the plight of the state’s dairy industry, which is beset by high feed costs and low milk prices, nearly a dozen states are courting Golden State dairy farmers. The pitch: cheaper farm land, lower taxes, fewer environmental regulations and higher prices for their milk.
At the World Ag Expo, a behemoth trade show held in Tulare County last month, nine states had recruitment booths on the ground’s Dairy Center. South Dakota sent its governor, Dennis Daugaard, to make a personal appeal for his state. Ag officials there estimate that a single dairy cow creates $15,000 worth of economic activity annually through feed, vet bills and the like. That translates into jobs and revenue for hard-pressed rural areas.
“We’re trying to corral some California cows,” Daugaard said recently. “We’re looking for dairymen who are looking to move out of California.”
The state’s $8-billion dairy industry leads the country in milk production. California cows produced 41.5 billion pounds of milk, or about 4.8 billion gallons, in 2011. That’s 21% of the nation’s milk supply. The next top milk-producing states, Wisconsin and Idaho, produced a combined 39.4 billion pounds of milk in 2011. Although the migration is not yet a stampede, some California dairy farmers have left for what they see as better opportunities.
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The executive steps will give federal law enforcement officials access to more data about guns and their owners, help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, and lay the groundwork for future legislative efforts.
It is unclear whether the National Rifle Association (NRA) will challenge any of the executive actions in court. A spokesman for the NRA did not return a request for comment. The moves, which have not been widely touted by the administration, come as Obama ups his pressure on Congress to take action on gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. The Senate is expected to begin floor consideration of legislation when it returns in April.
Efforts to renew a ban in semi-automatic weapons with military-style features and high-capacity magazines have stalled in Congress. Democratic senators still hope to move gun control legislation that includes tougher background checks, but conservative Republican senators have threatened to filibuster it.
If approved by the Senate, any bill would then face tough sledding in the GOP-controlled House. Gun control groups say Obama’s piecemeal approach falls short of what could be accomplished by legislation overhauling the nation’s gun laws. Still, they argue the actions remain important and will reduce gun violence.
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Acting on a new request, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said it is starting a new analysis that could lift the spending ban for sex-change operations with a goal of making a decision two days after Christmas and on the eve of Obamacare kicking in Jan. 1.
A 30-day public comment period just opened on the proposed “National Coverage Determination.”
“Surgical Treatment for Gender Identity Disorder, formerly referred to as transsexual surgery in 140.3, is currently noncovered under the Medicare Part A and Part B programs. The existing policy, which became effective in 1981, states that transsexual surgery is considered experimental,” said the notice just posted on the CMS.gov site.
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