Leading Geneticist: Human Intelligence is Slowly Declining

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Photo Credit: Natural SocietyWould you be surprised to hear that the human race is slowly becoming dumber, and dumber? Despite our advancements over the last tens or even hundreds of years, some ‘experts’ believe that humans are losing cognitive capabilities and becoming more emotionally unstable. One Stanford University researcher and geneticist, Dr. Gerald Crabtree, believes that our intellectual decline as a race has much to do with adverse genetic mutations. But there is more to it than that.

According to Crabtree, our cognitive and emotional capabilities are fueled and determined by the combined effort of thousands of genes. If a mutation occurred in any of of these genes, which is quite likely, then intelligence or emotional stability can be negatively impacted.

“I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues. Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues,” the geneticist began his article in the scientific journal Trends in Genetics.

Further, the geneticist explains that people with specific adverse genetic mutations are more likely than ever to survive and live amongst the ‘strong.’ Darwin’s theory of ‘survival of the fittest’ is less applicable in today’s society, therefore those with better genes will not necessarily dominate in society as they would have in the past.

While this hypothesis does have some merit: are genes really the primary reason for the overall cognitive decline of the human race? If humans really are lacking in intelligence more than before, it’s important to recognize other possible causes. Let’s take a look at how our food system plays a role in all of this.

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Sessions: Jack Lew ‘Complicit’ In Violation Of Medicare Law

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Photo Credit: APThe office of Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), ranking member of the senate budget committee, sent out a statement claiming that Jack Lew, former White House Chief of Staff and current Treasury Secretary nominee, is “complicit in” violating the law that is “aimed at saving medicare.”

Alarmed by the unsustainable growth of Medicare’s unfunded obligations and the direct threat this posed to seniors, Congress in 2003 enacted a legal requirement that the President submit legislation if the Medicare Trustees issue a funding warning for the program as part of their annual report. This provision of federal law is commonly known as the Medicare Trigger, and it is intended to ensure that steps are taken to shore up the program’s finances before it is too late.

In 2008, then-President George W. Bush submitted Medicare legislation to Congress in response to such a warning being issued for the first time. Throughout the past four years of President Obama’s first term, no such legislation has been submitted, despite warnings from the Medicare Trustees every year.

Sessions’ office points out that the warnings were ignored “despite a clear and unambiguous legal obligation” to submit legislation in response. Jack Lew, as the head of the Office of Management and Budget in 2010 and 2011, was responsible for responding to the Medicare Trigger.

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Green Groups Brave the Cold to Protest ‘Global Warming,’ Seek to Kill Keystone XL Pipeline

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photo credit: tarsandsactionEnvironmental groups gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Sunday and marched on the White House for a climate change rally largely aimed at pressuring President Obama to reject the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.

activists attended the rally, where speakers portrayed the battle over the pipeline as a struggle between grassroots green groups and deep-pocketed special interests.

“They’ve got the lobbyists. They’ve got the super-PACs. They made the campaign contributions. They’ve got this town in their pockets — they have got the situation under control. And then you show up. And then we show up. And we change the game,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told the crowd not long before it marched on the White House.

Obama will decide whether the project goes forward because it crosses national boundaries. The pipeline would bring fossil fuels from Canadian tar sands fields to the Gulf Coast. Environmentalists are painting Obama’s upcoming decision as the litmus test for whether he plans to make good on recent comments about tackling climate change.

Activists at Sunday’s rally said approving the pipeline would taint Obama’s record on climate change. They said they hoped the demonstration would give the president the will to nix Keystone, even when a majority of both the House and the Senate want it built.

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Jeb Bush: I Would Govern Like Lyndon Johnson As President

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Photo Credit: BreitbartFormer Florida Governor Jeb Bush said he would strive to be like Lyndon Johnson, the Democrat famous for expanding the U.S. welfare state through the “Great Society,” if he were elected president.

According to the Miami Herald, Bush made those comments Wednesday night in San Antonio, Florida at Saint Leo University, while speaking about education, immigration, and energy policy.

Bush did not address Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty programs, about which Ronald Reagan once famously quipped, “We had a war on poverty, and poverty won.”

Instead, he was referencing Johnson’s mastery of the so-called sausage-making process in Congress.

He vowed to approach the presidency as “master of the Senate,” as biographer Robert Caro described Johnson.

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Woman Killed In Chicago Hours After Her Sister Sat Behind Obama On Stage

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesAn 18-year-old Chicago woman was shot and killed Friday night, just hours after her younger sister sat onstage behind President Barack Obama as he spoke about gun violence.

Janay Mcfarlane was visiting friends and family when she was shot once in the head around 11:30 p.m. Friday in North Chicago, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The bullet had been meant for a friend, said her mother, Angela Blakely. Mcfarlane had a 3-month-old son.

“I really feel like somebody cut a part of my heart out,” Blakely said. Hours before the slaying, Mcfarlane’s 14-year-old sister Destini was part of a group of teens who sat onstage behind the president when he delivered remarks at Hyde Park Career Academy.

“Barack Obama said teenagers are killing each other,” Destini Mcfarlane told the Sun-Times Saturday. “He was saying we need to cut down on street violence.”

Mcfarlane’s murder was apparently separate from the four shootings that took place in Chicago within a 90-minute period after Obama left. Those shootings occurred between about 5:55 p.m. and 7:20 p.m.; Mcfarlane was killed several hours later.

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Lobbyists Use Campaign-Style Opposition Research to Turn Tables on Rivals

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photo credit: glyn lowe photoworksIf a lobbying campaign is war, then opposition research is the equivalent of elite special forces.

K Street deploys all sorts of quiet, behind-the-scenes tactics and troops to influence legislation and policy. The most clandestine and high-risk is the use of political-style operatives to dig up dirt on foes.

“Oppo” can discredit, distract and neutralize an opponent. That can be particularly dangerous when the target is a sitting member of Congress. Leave too many footprints, and the effort can boomerang.

Perhaps that’s why former Missouri state lawmaker John Hancock, president and CEO of the Strategy Group for Research, won’t discuss any of his K Street clients. He doesn’t have to because his type of work isn’t covered by lobbying disclosure laws. But the former lobbyist says it’s a growing part of his business.

“Digging in trash cans, we don’t do that,” Hancock said. “We’ve taken some of the principles on the research side that we have traditionally applied to political campaigns and made them available to the government relations industry.”

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Levin: US Gov’t Buying Up Billions Of Rounds Of Ammo, Preparing For Societal Collapse (+audio)

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerOn Friday’s night broadcast of his radio show, Mark Levin speculated that the federal government is stockpiling ammunition to ensure the rule of law in the event of a total societal and economic collapse.

On Feb. 8, Investor’s Business Daily editorial writer Andrew Malcolm penned a piece about the Department of Homeland Security amassing what he called “sufficient firepower to shoot every American about five times –including illegal immigrants,” or more than 1.6 billion bullets.

“I’m going to tell you what I think is going on,” Levin said. “I don’t think insurrection. Law enforcement and national security agencies — they play out multiple scenarios. They simulate multiple scenarios. I’ll tell you what I think they’re simulating: the collapse of our financial system, the collapse of our society and the potential for widespread violence, looting, killing in the streets, because that’s what happens when an economy collapses.”

“I’m not talking about a recession,” Levin continued. “I’m talking about a collapse when people are desperate, when they can’t food and clothing, when they have no way of going from place to place, when they can’t protective themselves. There aren’t enough police officers on the face of the Earth to adequately handle a situation like that.”

The conservative talker and author of “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America” based his hypothesis on his time in the Reagan Justice Department.

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Brennan Sidesteps Query on Drone Kills in U.S.

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Photo Credit: meeshypants In written answers to Senate Intelligence Committee questions released Friday, CIA director nominee John Brennan would not say whether the U.S. could conduct drone strikes inside the United States — only that it did not intend to do so.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has placed a hold on Brennan’s nomination pending an answer to the question of when the government can use lethal force to target a U.S. citizen within the United States. Brennan, as the top White House counterterrorism and homeland security adviser to President Barack Obama, has guided administration policy on the use of drones on foreign battlefields.

Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked Brennan in written follow-up questions to his Feb. 7 confirmation hearing, “Could the administration carry out drone strikes inside the United States?”

Brennan answered, “This administration has not carried out drone strikes inside the United States and has no intention of doing so.”

Nor did Brennan answer who precisely makes final determination within the administration about whether a U.S. citizen who is targeted for death as a suspected terrorist is actually a senior operational leader of al-Qaida, or if that person poses an imminent threat. Those are two of the standards outlined in a Justice Department legal opinion for proceeding with a targeted killing against a U.S. citizen.

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Video: Surveillance Camera Captures The Dramatic Moment When A Security Guard Used An AR-15 To Fend Off Armed Hold Up

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Photo Credit: WJBK-TVDramatic surveillance footage out of the Detroit area shows the heart-stopping moment when a gun-wielding couple stormed into a tax business and started shooting — and a security guard pulled out an AR-15 and drove them away.

The security guard suffered a non-life-threatening wound to the leg and the suspects got away, but otherwise no one was seriously injured in the shootout.

It happened Thursday at a converted home business in Inkster, Mich. A man and woman armed with handguns showed up at the door and announced a holdup, despite the security vehicle parked outside, WJBK-TV reported. The receptionist had gone up to greet them, with the business owner sitting in a chair in the corner. Surveillance footage shows the male suspect pointing a gun at the receptionist’s head, and the security guard scrambling in the back office for the rifle.

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Feds OK First Burial Of A Veteran’s Same-Sex Spouse In A National Cemetery

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Photo Credit: The U.S. Army The government has cleared the first burial of a same-sex spouse of a veteran in a national cemetery, but it’s far from certain how easy it will be for other gay military couples to win the same benefit.

Who gets buried where is one of the practical decisions that the federal government is grappling with following repeal of the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy.

At first glance, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki’s decision to grant burial to a same-sex spouse in Oregon represents a big departure from past federal policy. In 2004, the VA warned the state of Massachusetts that burying the same-sex spouse of a veteran in a state veterans’ cemetery could lead to the federal government taking back nearly $12 million in grant money.

Then in 2008, the National Cemetery Association published a directive stating that individuals in same-sex civil unions or marriage are not eligible for burial in a national cemetery or state veterans cemetery that received federal money. Those directives were based on the language of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines a spouse as a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife. The law is being challenged before the Supreme Court.

Then along came retired Lt. Col. Linda Campbell and her spouse, Nancy Lynchild. Campbell, with help from Oregon officials, pressed the VA to allow Lynchild to be buried at the VA’s Willamette National Cemetery.

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