Mike Huckabee Speaks On The Future Of Conservatism

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Photo Credit:Taylor Baucom Former Arkansas governor, 2008 Republican Presidential candidate and current talk show host Mike Huckabee spoke on campus about his views on conservatism in America.

Mike Huckabee knew plenty of people at Syracuse University would disagree with his views. Yet the well-known conservative figure said that’s the reason he enjoyed speaking not just here, but at all college campuses.

At a past visit to Cornell University, where his hosts said 100 students were against his visit, Huckabee recalled asking to be dropped off in front of the protestors. Much to their surprise, Huckabee thanked them for reminding him why he loves America, and felt the same way when visiting S.U.

“We don’t learn much when the only people we ever talk to are the people we agree with,” Huckabee said, “We learn something when we talk to the people with whom we think we have nothing in common.”

Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, 2008 candidate for the republican presidential nomination, and current host of the Sunday talk show “Huckabee” on Fox News, made this a major part of his message for the S.U. campus. Speaking and taking questions about “The Future of Conservatism” on Feb. 7 in an event organized by the SU College Republicans, he stressed while conservatives today should retain their core values, both sides must focus more on solving problems than disagreeing.

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FAA Releases New Drone Authorization List – See Who Applied To Have Them

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Photo Credit: Google MapsLast year, alarm was raised among some Americans regarding the Federal Aviation Administration’s expanding legislation for drone use over U.S. soil and the list of 63 authorized drone sites in the country. With more recent news that the Obama administration has approved drone strikes on some U.S. citizens, which some have said is “chilling” and the government saying “we can kill you,” the FAA has recently released an updated list of domestic drone authorization applicants.

The list was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The list shows 20 new applicants, mostly law enforcement and universities but also the first tribal entity, EFF noted.

Here are few of the new authorization applicants EFF called out:

The State Department
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Barona Band of Mission Indians Risk Management Office (near San Diego, California)
Canyon County Sheriff’s Office (Idaho)
Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office (Northwest Oregon)
Grand Forks Sheriff’s Department (North Dakota)
King County Sheriff’s Office (covering Seattle, Washington)
Medina County Sheriff’s Office (Ohio)
Ohio Department of Transportation (Ohio)
Sinclair Community College (Ohio)
Lorain County Community College (Ohio)
EFF’s Jennifer Lynch, a staff attorney for the privacy advocacy organization, wrote the hope of the nonprofit in releasing this information is that people will ask their own local law enforcement about their plans for drone use.

“We also encourage people to ask hard questions of government officials about who is funding drone development in their communities and what policies the government will demand agencies follow if they fly drones,” Lynch wrote on the website. “We need greater transparency and citizen push-back to protect Americans from privacy-invasive domestic drone use.”

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Northeast Begins Dig-Out After Major Snowstorm, Thousands Without Power (+video)

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New Englanders began the back-breaking job of digging out from as much as 3 feet of snow Saturday and emergency crews used snowmobiles to reach shivering motorists stranded overnight on New York’s Long Island after a howling storm swept through the Northeast.

About 475,000 homes and businesses remained without power late Saturday night, down from a peak of about 650,000, and some could be cold and dark for days. Roads across the New York-to-Boston corridor of roughly 25 million people were impassable. Cars were entombed by drifts. Some people found the wet, heavy snow packed so high against their homes they couldn’t get their doors open.

“It’s like lifting cement. They say it’s 2 feet, but I think it’s more like 3 feet,” said Michael Levesque, who was shoveling snow in Quincy, Mass., for a landscaping company.

In Providence, where the drifts were 5 feet high and telephone lines encrusted with ice and snow drooped under the weight, Jason Harrison labored for nearly three hours to clear his blocked driveway and front walk and still had more work to do. His snowblower, he said, “has already paid for itself.”

At least five deaths in the U.S. were blamed on the overnight snowstorm, including an 11-year-old boy in Boston who was overcome by carbon monoxide as he sat in a running car to keep warm while his father shoveled Saturday morning.

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New York Times Calls For Menendez To Relinquish Committee Chairmanship

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Photo Credit: Glyn Lowe PhotoworksThe New York Times editorial board called on Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) Saturday to step aside as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee until questions about his relationship with a friend and donor under FBI investigation are resolved. The editorial is the latest blow in the broadening flap over Menendez’s relationship with Salmon Melgen, a Florida eye surgeon accused of overbilling the government millions for medical treatments.

“It is unclear whether the Senate Ethics Committee has initiated a formal inquiry into Mr. Menendez’s conduct, but a prompt and thorough review is surely called for,” the editorial read. “In the meantime, Mr. Menendez needs to relinquish his leadership role, at least temporarily.”

Menendez, who assumed the chairmanship after Secretary of State John Kerry was confirmed late last month, first came under fire over a pair of flights on Melgen’s private jet he accepted in 2010 for vacations to the Dominican Republic. The New Jersey senator sent Melgen a personal check for $58,500 in January, acknowledging he had not properly reported the flights as gifts.

Since then, reports have questioned Menendez’s efforts to help Melgen revive a port security contract for a firm that he partially owned and phone calls the senator placed to federal health officials over the accusations of overbilling Medicare.

Earlier this month, federal agents raided Melgen’s Florida home and office, although the government has not indicated the focus of their investigation.

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Carhart Patient Dead From Horrific 33-Week Abortion Injuries

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Photo Credit: lifesitnews.comA 29-year old woman died yesterday as the result of fatal complications suffered during an abortion at 33 weeks performed by LeRoy Carhart at Germantown Reproductive Health Center (GRHC) in Germantown, Maryland. According to the pro-life organization Operation Rescue, the information about the incident comes from an extremely credible anonymous source.

The woman, who came for a third trimester abortion from out-of-state, arrived at GRHC on Sunday and was seen by pro-life activists every day through Wednesday. Eyewitnesses said she appeared “pale and weak.”

Early Thursday morning, the woman began suffering chest pains and other discomforting symptoms. Her attempts to reach Carhart were unsuccessful.

The woman was taken by her family from her hotel to a nearby hospital emergency room at approximately 5:00 a.m. Efforts by hospital staff to contact Carhart or get informational assistance from the abortion clinic were unsuccessful.

The patient suffered massive internal bleeding into her abdominal cavity. She slipped into a Code Blue condition approximately six times before finally succumbing to her injuries at around 9:30 a.m. The case has been placed with the Medical Examiner for further investigation.

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Woman With Pacemaker Refuses Smart Meter- Has Power Cut In The Dead Of Winter

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Photo Credit: YouTubeA handicapped woman in western Ohio has to battle the freezing winter weather this weekend because she refused to allow the local power company to install a “smart meter” on her property.

Brenda Hawk has a pacemaker for her heart and because her brain was injured in a car accident, she requires a breathing machine in order to sleep at night. She does not want the new radio-frequency emitting meter because of the health problems these devices have been said to cause. But American Electric Power AEP-Ohio, the local power company, has persisted in their push to swap out Hawk’s analog meter and replace it with the new one.

TheBlaze spoke with Hawk on Saturday. At the time, she was using a kerosene heater to stay warm in the freezing weather. Hawk gave us a basic timeline on the story.

In October of last year, a utility worker arrived on her property and announced that he had removed her old analog power meter and replaced it with a new one. Hawk told him that she had not approved the meter swap and requested that the old one be restored. A series of phone calls between Hawk, the power company and the sheriff’s office was enough to get the new meter pulled out and the old one re-installed.

Fast forward to Jan. 24, 2013. A certified letter from AEP executive Ralph Rocca, Jr. arrived at Hawk’s home announcing that she would be getting a new meter or her power would be cut off. Her efforts to contact Rocca were not successful. All that Hawk wanted was a guarantee from the company that the new meter’s electrical signals would not interfere with her pacemaker. The company could not give her that assurance and it was her position that unless and until they did, no “smart meter” would be installed.

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Rand Paul To Give Official Tea Party Response To SOTU

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreSen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., will deliver the Tea Party’s official response to President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, Tea Party Express announced on Friday.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., will deliver the Republican response.

“Since the President has been re-elected, the debt has continued to skyrocket and unemployment has ticked up, but he has offered no solutions and has shown no leadership,” said Tea Party Express Chairman Amy Kremer. “In contrast, Senator Rand Paul has put forth solutions that would spur economic growth and rein in Washington’s out-of-control spending. We are excited that Senator Paul, a conservative leader and strong voice for the Tea Party movement, will be offering our perspective on the state of the union.”

The first Tea Party response was given by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., in 2011, and former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain delivered last year’s response.

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Tea Party Groups Attack Rove Machine

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Photo Credit: Breitbart.comWith Karl Rove under heavy fire after his group, the Conservative Victory Project, took to the pages of the New York Timesto attack the Tea Party, donors are beginning to turn on the Project. Politico reports Friday morning that the Project will “essentially preform oppo research and grade potential candidates on a variety of factors that might affect their ability to win a general election contest.” Some donors are overjoyed at the opportunity, including media honcho Stan Hubbard and Fred Malek of the American Action Network.

But others don’t trust Rove and the American Crossroads team to judge talent for office, says Politico: “the plan has sparked nearly unanimous opposition from anti-establishment deep-pocketed conservatives who have begun formulating their own big-money counter plans.” Those opponents could include other major super PACs who have long believed that Rove’s establishment bona fides prevent him from making truly conservative decisions about candidates.

And even some of Rove’s heretofore allies may be wary of his crystal ball strategy after the disastrous 2012 election cycle, which heralded not just the loss of Senate seats in Tea Party-influenced races like Indiana, but establishment strongholds like Wisconsin. American Crossroads had a mere 5.7% rate of return – just 5.7% of the money they spent on the 2012 election was actually spent on winning candidates.

Steven Law, president of American Crossroads, understands that he is now facing an uphill battle with conservative, especially given his group’s less-than-stellar 2012 performance. Law promises an investigation into “all of our activities last year, as well as external factors that contributed to last year’s deeply disappointing results.”

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More Holes in White House Denial Of Arms To Jihadists

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Photo Credit: WNDThe White House denial of supplying arms to the al-Qaida-saturated Syrian rebels may be somewhat more difficult for some to swallow now that it has been revealed the arms-to-rebels plan had been endorsed by the leaders of the CIA, Pentagon and State Department.

If, indeed, President Obama rejected the arms plan, as reported earlier by the New York Times, it would mean the White House went against the recommendations of outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director David Petraeus.

The plan was said to have been generated by Petraeus and Clinton.

During Senate hearings on Benghazi yesterday, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asked Panetta and Dempsey whether they had supported a plan “that we provide weapons to the resistance in Syria.”

“We do,” Panetta replied.

“You did support that?” McCain asked again.

“We did,” added Dempsey, who was sitting next to Panetta.

Neither Dempsey nor Panetta elaborated on their positions.

This past weekend, the New York Times reported the White House rebuffed the Clinton-Petraeus plan developed last summer to arm and train Syrian rebels.

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Conservative Doc Reveals Why He Spoke Out Against Obama’s Policies At Prayer Breakfast- Plus, Would He Ever Run For President?

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesWith President Barack Obama sitting just feet away, Dr. Benjamin Carson stood up for conservative principles in his speech at Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, discussing the national debt, political correctness and even healthcare. Readers loved his speech so much that TheBlaze’s story on it went viral.

On Friday, Carson appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” to explain why he felt compelled to speak out against the big government policies endorsed by Obama, in front of Obama.

Carson, a renown neurosurgeon, said the response to his speech has been “overwhelmingly” positive. However, he argued he didn’t make a conservative argument, but rather a “logical” and “common-sense” one.

“I don’t know where we left our brains,” he told host Sean Hannity.

Carson went on to talk about his life story, saying he grew up in a single parent home in a poverty-stricken area. He said his mother “refused to be a victim” and “never felt sorry for herself,” despite only having a third grade education.

Regarding his comments on political correctness, the neurosurgeon emphasized the importance of “freedom of speech and freedom of expression” in the United States.

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