Gingrich: ‘Even More Power and More Control’ for Obama (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP/J. Scott ApplewhiteBecause the Senate wasn’t functioning the way President Obama thinks it should, he supported Democrats Thursday as they overturned 200 years of Senate tradition by essentially doing away with the filibuster.

Democrats invoked the so-called “nuclear option,” allowing presidential nominees be confirmed with 51 votes, instead of 60.

“[T]his was one more step to give President Obama even more power and even more control,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Thursday on CNN’s “Crossfire.”

The Senate changed its longstanding filibuster rules only for presidential nominees, not for legislation — but Gringrich said that will probably change, too.

“And I think what struck me, I think this is a very historic vote. I don’t think this is just a tactic. And if you watch the president’s press conference today, the entire opening of the press conference is a litany of legislative problems. He doesn’t get to the appointments until after he goes through layer after layer of legislative problems, which signals to me he intends to unwind the entire filibuster by the time this is done.”

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GOP Congressman Serves Up a Steaming Plate of ‘I-Told-You-So’ over Obamacare and the Shutdown (+video)

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreCongressman Raul Labrador isn’t unrepentant for the Republicans’ role in the fight over Obamacare that lead to the government shutdown — especially since the White House has unilaterally delayed multiple portions of the law since its implementation.

“There wasn’t a single Republican that wanted to shut down the government,”Labrador said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller. ”We all knew that on October first there was a new healthcare law that was going to impact every American and that was the only opportunity we had to do a fight on Obamacare.”

Labrador mocked Democrats for fighting so savagely against GOP proposals only to clamor for the very changes that the GOP was requesting as soon as President Obama’s signature piece of legislation went into a tailspin.

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Boy Buried In a Sinkhole for Four Hours Miraculously Comes Back to Life (+video)

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Photo Credit: CBNIn just a few seconds, a carefree hiking trip on the sand dunes of mount baldy, Indiana turned into a nightmare. Greg Woessner and his friend Keith walked along the top of the dune. Greg’s son Nathan and Keith’s son Collin were behind them.

“They were playing around, running around, up and down the hill,” remembers Greg. “We heard Collin screaming and hollering, that Nathan had fallen in a hole.”

“We quickly ran down there, and found the hole that he was in,” adds Keith. “And we were able to talk to him.” Greg and Keith told Collin to run down the hill and call 911. Keith’s wife Rachel made the call.

Operator: “9-1-1.”
Rachel: “Yes, I’m at the Mt. Baldy beach, and my friend’s son, he got stuck in
a sand dune and he’s like under the sand and we can’t get him out.”
Rachel: “My husband and his dad are trying to dig him out.”
Operator: “OK, we get it, we’ve got them on the way, OK?”
Rachel: “OK, thank you.”

“He sounded so close,” says Greg. “You couldn’t see him. It was so dark. Keeping him calm was my first thing. He was saying he was scared.”

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‘The Definition of Bullying’: Church vs. State Threat Leads School to Cut Ties with ‘Operation Christmas Child’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: ShutterStock.comJust days after a South Carolina charter school came under fire and subsequently dropped support for Operation Christmas Child, an annual outreach to poor children that is operated by Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical Christian organization, another public school in Colorado has done the same.

But while SkyView Academy, an elementary school in Highlands Ranch, Colo., officially cut ties with the group, parents are fighting back with an effort of their own to make sure that the outreach goes on as planned.

The school announced last week that it will be severing its relationship with Operation Christmas Child, ending two years of participation in the outreach, The Christian Post reported.

Students at the school had been raising funds and were preparing to put shoe boxes together for children in need. This was halted, however, when the American Humanist Association recently wrote a letter threatening a lawsuit if the charter school didn’t stop working with Operation Christmas Child.

The letter warned that the school is violating the separation of church and state by facilitating student participation in a Christian outreach — one that shares the Bible’s central message along with items for kids in need.

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Scientist Claims 3D Printed Human Hearts Could be a Reality Within 10 Years (+video)

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Photo Credit: Stuart K Williams / Cardiovascular Innovative Institute Scientists could be able to 3D print human hearts within the next ten years.

A team of experts has claimed they will be able to make whole hearts for use in transplant surgery using the recipients’ cells within a decade.

Dr Stuart Williams claims he and his colleagues have already created a coronary artery and that they have 3D printed some of the small blood vessels in the heart.

‘America put a man on the Moon in less than a decade. I said a full decade to provide some wiggle room,’ Dr Williams, from the University of Louisville, told Wired.co.uk

He told the website: ‘These studies have reached the advanced preclinical stage showing printed blood vessels will reconnect with the recipient tissue creating new blood flow in the printed tissue.’

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Zuckerberg: Immigration ‘One of Biggest Civil Rights’ Issues of Our Time (+video)

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Photo Credit: Guillaume PaumierWith the movement on immigration reform at a standstill in Congress, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other top Silicon Valley executives joined together on Wednesday to urge lawmakers to press ahead with their work on fixing the country’s immigration system.

Zuckerberg, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Dropbox CEO Andrew Houston were on hand to help kick off a “hackathon” event at LinkedIn’s headquarters, where a group of 20 young immigrants who came to the country illegally as children, often called “Dreamers,” will spend the next 25 hours coding Web tools aimed at advocating for immigration reform.

“I think this is one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time,” Zuckerberg told reporters and the room of young coders from across the U.S. “We’re at a pretty critical moment in the movement right now where it’s really important to keep pushing ahead.”

The three tech executives, along with Groupon co-founder Andrew Mason and immigration rights advocate Jose Antonio Vargas, will judge the young immigrants’ final work on Thursday afternoon and determine which project wins for “best design,” “best advocacy app” and “best storytelling app.”

FWD.us, the political advocacy group co-founded by Zuckerberg that’s funded by many of the tech industry’s most powerful executives, is hosting the event to show Congress that it’s not backing down from its push for passing immigration legislation that includes a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

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Rush Limbaugh Outlines Nightmare Scenario that Would Give Dems ‘Authoritarian, Non-Challengeable Control’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreDuring his radio show on Thursday, Rush Limbaugh reacted to the Democrat-led U.S. Senate passing the “nuclear option” that essentially stops the GOP from filibustering presidential nominees.

Limbaugh argued that by reducing the number of votes needed to end filibusters against President Barack Obama’s nominees from 60 to 51, Democrats have fundamentally altered the Senate’s balance of power.

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Reports of Violent “Knockout” Attacks Spreading (+video)

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Three “Knockout” Attacks Reported In Philadelphia Area

By CBS.

“Knockout” attacks have been reported in several states around the country and now investigators believe three people have been attacked in our area.

Police in Lower Merion are investigating two attacks in the area, and Philadelphia detectives are investigating an attack in Northeast Philadelphia.

It’s a violent crime that in other parts of the country has proven fatal.

Videos from cities around the country show people being punched and beaten at random.

The attackers are calling their crimes a game, the goal being to knock out the victim with one punch.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Fox 5Could “Knockout Game” be spreading to DC?

Police say they are investigating the two women punched in the head in Columbia Heights on Thursday and Friday as simple assaults. But the victims wonder if they were targets of the Knockout game.

It’s a game being played by teens in some cities where groups of people attack innocent victims, with the intention of knocking them out with one sucker punch.

The most recent assault in the District occurred Thursday night. Phoebe Connolly, in town from Vermont, was riding her bike up 11th Street NW near Cardozo High School. She encountered a group of several teens standing on their bikes in the street.

DC News FOX 5 DC WTTG

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Shocking Dashcam Video Released of Vet’s Viral Arrest for ‘Rudely Displaying’ Rifle on Hike with Son, Officer States that Police are ‘Exempt from the Law’

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Photo Credit: YouTube Officials in Bell County, Texas, have released the dashcam footage of a police officer in Temple, Texas, disarming and arresting decorated veteran C.J. Grisham while he was on a hike with his son in March. The officer is seen grabbing the dad’s gun and then seemingly attempting to unlatch it from the man’s sling without telling him why or asking for permission.

Video recorded by Grisham and his son went viral earlier this year, but it did not show the moment the dad was approached and disarmed by the officer. He was later charged with “interference with duties of a public servant,” though the officer is heard in the video from March telling Grisham he was stopped for “rudely displaying” his rifle.

On Nov. 19, Grisham was found guilty by a jury of three men and three women of “interference with duties of a public servant” and ordered to pay a $2,000 fine. In an email to TheBlaze, the veteran said he plans to appeal the decision.

In the newly released dashcam video, officer Steven Ernis can be seen flagging down Grisham and asking him, “What are we doing?”

“We’re hiking,” Grisham replies.

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Obama: ‘We’re Not Lavishly Spending on a Whole Bunch of Social Programs’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP/ Evan Vucci)President Obama told a gathering of business executives on Tuesday that the federal government was not “lavishly spending” on social programs.

“What we know is, is that our — our fiscal problems are not short-term deficits. Our discretionary budget, that portion of the federal budget that isn’t defense or Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid, the entitlement programs, is at its smallest level in my lifetime, probably since Dwight Eisenhower.

“We are not lavishly spending on a whole bunch of social programs out there,” Obama continued. “And in many ways, a lot of these programs have become more efficient and pretty effective,” he added.

The U.S. Treasury Department records the following expenditures on a few of the many social safety-net programs for Fiscal 2013 and Fiscal 2012. In most cases, the amounts increased year-to-year:

–Medicaid: $265.392 billion ($250.534B in FY 2012)

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