Earlier today, Kathleen and I participated in the 40th March for Life in Washington, D.C. Although it was overcast and sometimes snowing, and the temperatures were well below freezing, there was a huge turnout. The numbers appeared to be in the hundreds of thousands.
Participants were optimistic, cheerful, and incredibly friendly.
Here are a few photos we took of the event:
The buzzing insect stole the show as the President announced two new members of his second administration, cutting wild loops around the leader of the free world before landing squarely on his forehead.
The official White House transcript simply reads: “This guy is bothering me here – (swatting at a fly.)”
Meanwhile, the pool report which describes the President’s movements throughout the day noted that “the president spoke for about five minutes while being menaced by a house fly”.
Read more from this story HERE.
Former Notre Dame coach and ESPN commentator Lou Holtz has spent decades giving individuals pep talks, both on and off the football field. But the re-election of President Barack Obama caused the legendary coach to seek out someone else for inspiration: Speaker of the House John Boehner.
During an address to the Ripon Society on Tuesday, Boehner revealed that Holtz consulted him via text messages on Monday night following Obama’s inauguration.
“Last night, I got a three-page text from my good friend Lou Holtz, who must have watched the inaugural and then all that blabber on TV…: ‘I’m done, finished, the country’s over with — we’re not doing this again!,’” Boehner recounted.
The text was not the first time Holtz voiced pessimism about the president.
“Now, I had already had this conversation with Lou about nine or ten days after the election. He came in to speak to our 34 new members. And before he went over to talk to them, he came over to my office, and he was moaning and groaning,” Boehner said. “I said, ‘Lou, would you stop it? We’re Americans, we’ll figure this out!’ And I had to spend 15 minutes giving Lou Holtz a pep talk! I had to do it again last night!”
Read more from this story HERE.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has denounced Republicans for “birther nonsense” and described such concerns as “idiot presentations,” but now a law enforcement official who has reviewed the evidence regarding Barack Obama’s eligibility has invited Powell to see it for himself.
“I don’t know what Mr. Powell’s problem is,” said Michael Zullo, the lead investigator of the Cold Case Posse for Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz.
“I would open an invitation to him at my expense to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, and I will sit down with him and show him the evidence that we have accumulated that brings us to the only logical conclusion – that this document (Obama’s birth certificate) is manufactured.”
Zullo argued that “if it’s manufactured, the president of the United States at that point in time owes the American people at explanation.
“Tell us why. … It’s as simple as that.”
Read more from this story HERE.
photo credit: StuSeeger
Republican state Reps. Gary Chism and Jeff Smith, both of Columbus, filed a bill this month to form the Joint Legislative Committee on the Neutralization of Federal Laws.
Chism said Thursday that the tea party-backed measure is a response to President Barack Obama’s federal health care overhaul and proposals to curb gun violence.
“Certainly, the Obamacare started this,” Chism told The Associated Press, referring to the health care plan, “but then gun show loopholes that the president wanted after Newtown really put an exclamation on that — that we need to do something to stand up for the Tenth Amendment.”
The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says powers not specifically reserved for the federal government are reserved for the states.
Read more from this story HERE.
WASHINGTON — California Democrat Dianne Feinstein begins her fourth full term as a U.S. senator much as she started her Senate career: fighting for a ban on assault weapons.
Feinstein’s new bill introduced Thursday proposes to:
•Ban the sale, transfer, importation or manufacturing of about 150 named firearms, plus certain rifles, handguns and shotguns fitted for detachable magazines and having at least one military characteristic.
•Strengthen the 1994 ban by moving from a two- to a one-characteristic test to determine what constitutes an assault weapon.
•Ban firearms with “thumbhole stocks” and “bullet buttons.”
•Ban the importation of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.
•Ban high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
The bill would grandfather in weapons legally owned on the day of enactment and exempts over 900 specific weapons “used for hunting or sporting purposes.”
Read more from this story HERE.
After President Obama’s second inaugural address, Van Jones, former Obama White House “green jobs” czar, praised the speech, calling it “Djobama Unchained” (after the controversial movie Django Unchained, about a freed slave taking revenge). On Wednesday night, during a lecture at Loyola University Chicago, I asked Jones what he meant. He explained that while President Obama is not a socialist, he is, in fact, a “communitarian.”
After a long recapping of the first four years of the Obama’s presidency, Jones elaborated: “It’s very interesting to see him now, actually, free.
Watching this man for four years, for everything he’s done to try to reach out to the other side, and frankly neglect his base, has just been called socialism, and just been called divisive, no matter what he does.
I was happy to see him unleashed and unchained and just be able to speak from his heart.
And what he said was, similar to what I’ve been saying, there is a “New Patriotism.”
Read more from this story HERE.
WASHINGTON – The tradition-laden Senate voted Thursday to modestly curb filibusters, using a bipartisan consensus rare in today’s hyper-partisan climate to make it a bit harder but not impossible for outnumbered senators to sink bills and nominations.
The rules changes would reduce yet not eliminate the number of times opponents — usually minority-party Republicans these days — can use filibusters, procedural tactics which can derail legislation and which can be stopped only by the votes of 60 of the 100 senators.
In return, the majority party — Democrats today — would have to allow two minority amendments on bills, a response to Republican complaints that Democrats often prevent them from offering any amendments at all. The new procedures also would limit the time spent debating some bills and nominations, allowing some to be completed in hours that could otherwise take a day or more.
The changes were broken into two pieces and approved by votes of 78-16 and 86-9. In both roll calls, Republican opponents were joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who usually sides with Democrats. Many of the GOP “no” votes came from tea party-backed senators like Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah; Rand Paul, R-Ky.; and Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
The two votes and a brief debate took less than an hour, impressively quick for the Senate. They came after a more typical day that featured a sprinkling of senators’ speeches and long periods when the Senate chamber idled with no one talking, while private negotiations off the floor nailed down final details.
Read more from this story HERE.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned on Thursday that a major cyber attack is a looming threat and could have the same sort of impact as last year’s Superstorm Sandy, which knocked out electricity in a large swathe of the Northeast.
Napolitano said a “cyber 9/11” could happen “imminently” and that critical infrastructure – including water, electricity and gas – was very vulnerable to such a strike.
“We shouldn’t wait until there is a 9/11 in the cyber world. There are things we can and should be doing right now that, if not prevent, would mitigate the extent of damage,” said Napolitano, speaking at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington and referring to the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Napolitano runs the sprawling Homeland Security Department that was created 10 years ago in the aftermath of September 11 and charged with preventing another such event.
She urged Congress to pass legislation governing cyber security so the government could share information with the private sector to prevent an attack on infrastructure, much of which is privately owned.
Read more from this story HERE.
JERUSALEM – A Muslim Brotherhood-linked organization has partnered with the U.S. Department of Education and the State Department to facilitate an online program aiming to connect all U.S. schools with classrooms abroad by 2016.
Vartan Gregorian, a board member of the organization, the Qatar Foundation International, was appointed in 2009 to President Obama’s White House Fellowships Commission.
WND previously exposed that Gregorian served as a point man in granting $49.2 million in startup capital to an education-reform project founded by former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and chaired by Obama.
Documentation shows Gregorian was central in Ayers’ recruitment of Obama to serve as the first chairman of the project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge – a job in which Obama worked closely on a regular basis with Ayers.
Obama also later said his job at the project qualified him to run for public office, as WND previously reported.
Read more from this story HERE.