News of the Week for Feb. 3^rd, 2013

• Gun Rights
• Hide the Decline
• Obamacare
• War & Terror
• National News
• Economy & Taxes
• International News
• Opinion

Gun Rights

NRA ally Debbie Halvorson could win Jesse Jackson Jr.’s Chicago seat
A white ex-congresswoman with an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association is the front-runner to replace former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in a majority-black Chicagoland district with inner-city neighborhoods wracked by gun violence.

San Diego Police Chief: We Can Disarm Americans Within a Generation
San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne is fully supportive of the Obama/Feinstein gun grab, and says if lawmakers play it right Americans can be completely disarmed within “a generation.”

Hawaii Lawmakers Consider Banning ALL Toy Guns
It’s not difficult to understand how the Salem Witch Trails got started. Just witness the current hysteria surrounding guns. Children have been suspended from school for making a gun with their fingers, and Nerf guns that bear absolutely no resemblance to actual firearms have caused full blown panic lockdowns. People are losing their reason.

Seattle Gun BuyBack Gets JACKED! Turns Into a Damn Gun Show! LOL
Police officers in Seattle, Washington held their first gun buyback program in 20 years this weekend, underneath interstate 5, and soon found that private gun collectors were working the large crowd as little makeshift gun shows began dotting the parking lot and sidewalks. Some even had “cash for guns” signs prominently displayed.

Convicted rapist organizes gun control demonstration at Dayton gun show; Media fails to note his sex offender status
This past weekend, a small group of perhaps a dozen protesters gathered outside Dayton’s Hara Arena to protest the sale of modern sporting rifles at Bill Goodman’s Gun and Knife Show.

BLACK HISTORY and the Second Amendment
February is Black History Month. In keeping with the spirit and intent of celebrating Black history, we will examine some Black history that the liberal media and others in the anti-civil rights establishment don’t want remembered.

A Modest Proposal
by Iowahawk
Last year I visited a gun shop in Waukegan and applied for an Illinois state firearm owner identification (or, as it’s known around these parts, a FOID card). Not that I’m planning a duck hunt or school massacre; I don’t even own a firearm. I find they clash with my wardrobe. I was just exercising a right, and curious about what was involved in doing so.

Mother Jones: Disarming Jews in Nazi Germany Was a Good Thing!
That headline sounds like it has to be an exaggeration, but read on. They did say it was a good thing, and they did mean it was a good thing for the Jews.

The Guns of Villaraigosa
LA’s mayor declares war against the manufacturers whose weapons protect his city’s police department.

Feinstein’s plan bans any gun with a ‘grip’?
Analyst says list ‘a smokescreen’ to conceal true intent of bill

Home invasion suspect arrested after woman opens fire
Suspect arrested at hospital

California unable to disarm 19,700 felons and mentally ill people
California authorities are empowered to seize weapons owned by convicted felons and people with mental illness, but staff shortages and funding cuts have left a backlog of more than 19,700 people to disarm, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.

Debunking the Debunkers
Dave Gilson of Mother Jones purports to debunk “pro-gun myths.” It’s too bad the piece is riddled with misleading statements

The Democrats’ Unconstitutional Gun Grab
It’s not just Washington: all across the country, the Democratic Party is trying to rob firearm owners of their constitutional rights. Here in Minnesota, the Democrats took control of both houses of the legislature in November, and they have wasted no time launching an attack on the 2nd Amendment. House Public Safety Committee Chairman Michael Paymar–”public safety” apparently doesn’t include self-defense–is

A Hill To Fight On — Not a Desk to Die Under
It really does appear that the Left wants to engage on the subject of “gun control” — or, to use their latest euphemism, “gun safety.” Led by two of the unloveliest of their specimens — Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Dick Durbin of Illinois — the emboldened progressives clearly feel the time to strike against Americans’ Second Amendment freedoms is now, while the shooting iron is still hot.

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

Who’s Funding Whom?
Michael Mann, perpetrator of the notorious hockey stick hoax, is one of the world’s execrable characters. On top of his more important bad qualities, he is a whiner. The self-pitying Mann complains that scientists and organizations that are skeptical of the alarmists’ claims–like the now-ridiculed hockey stick–get tiny amounts of funding from concerned citizens

Comparative Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Conventional and Electric Vehicles
An assumption of 100,000 km decreases the benefit of EVs to 9% to 14% with respect to gasoline vehicles and results in impacts indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle.

U.S. to Bury its 70,000 Tonnes of Nuclear Waste
Oak Ridge National Laboratory has released a recent study which has determined that if and when the US ever decides to actually pursue the technology to recycle nuclear waste, it will take 20 years to develop. Based on this knowledge they have suggested that the current stockpile of spent nuclear fuel should be buried without any thought as to its retrieval in the future.

Lights out – France to force shops and offices to go dark overnight
French light pollution law is expected to save 250,000 tonnes of C02 a year

Steven Chu stepping down as Obama’s Energy secretary
Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who oversaw expanded federal support for low-carbon energy and defended it against GOP attacks, announced Friday that he is stepping down.

Japan’s ‘Cool Hand Luke’ moment for surface temperature

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

Help Wanted: Qualified Death Panelists
Are you a nationally recognized health finance and economics expert willing to work for beans on a political lightning rod of a project? Do you enjoy being the subject of Senate confirmation hearings? If so, apply to be a death panelist today…because it doesn’t look like anyone else is.

The Most Ominous Sign Yet Health Insurance Premiums Will Explode
Now comes the most ominous sign yet health insurance premiums are going way up: Most health insurers in the individual market have stopped guaranteeing a person’s premiums for a year. And as one commentator quipped: they aren’t doing it because they expect to be lowering people’s premiums.

IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family
In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.

Unions Have Buyer’s Remorse on Obamacare
When Obamacare passed in 2010, it did so with substantial union support. But now that unions are learning what’s actually in the law, voter’s remorse is setting in.

Why Do We Need Electronic Medical Records? So Your Personal Data is More Readily Available to the Government
Given recent legislative and judicial decisions, there are vanishingly few electronic records that the government cannot rape at will. Increasingly, government agencies can access electronic data without even bothering with silly stuff like warrants or judicial review.

War & Terror

Egypt army chief warns of ‘state collapse’ amid crisis
Egypt’s armed forces chief has warned the current political crisis “could lead to a collapse of the state”.

China’s New Militancy
Chinese leaders’ repeated calls for the PLA to be ready to plan, fight, and win wars is an ominous sign.

Suicide bombing at US Embassy, 2 dead
A suspected suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at the entrance of the U.S. Embassy in the Turkish capital on Friday, killing himself and one other person, officials said.

National

CBS’s Charles Osgood: ‘Is Constitution Truly Worthy of Reverence in Which Most Americans Hold It?’
Imagine you’re getting ready to head to church one fine Sunday morning and on your television you hear a man say, “Let’s give up on the Constitution.”
Such actually happened when CBS News Sunday Morning aired a rather inflammatory commentary by a Georgetown University law professor teased by host Charles Osgood asking, “Is the U.S. Constitution truly worthy of the reverence in which most Americans hold it?” (video follows with transcript and commentary)

Nearly half are overqualified for their jobs
Nearly half of working Americans with college degrees are in jobs for which they’re overqualified, a new study out Monday suggests.

Perry: Texas should be able to return unspent revenue to citizens
On the (all-too-rare, harumph) occasion that a particular state ends up with a budget surplus, that state might use the leftover money to pay down debt, add cushion to a rainy day fund, put down payments on infrastructure projects, and etcetera.

Sunstein: Obama Wants ‘Second Bill of Rights’
Mere hours after Breitbart News published an excerpt from an interview with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in which he speculated that President Barack Obama would “prefer a different kind of constitution,” one with a Bill of Rights based on the South African model, former Obama administration regulatory czar Cass Sunstein published an op-ed making a similar argument: that the president wants a “second Bill of Rights” alongside the existing one.

MSNBC Analyst: ‘Hateful Language’ Will ‘Kill’ the ‘Crazy Crackers on the Right’
Democratic strategist and MSNBC political analyst Karen Finney said Tuesday that the “hateful language” of the “crazy crackers on the right” will pose a huge thorn in the side of Republicans when it comes to courting Latino voters.

Richest U.S. Senator, John Kerry, Rails Against ‘Corrupting’ Money in Politics in Farewell Address
John Kerry, the richest U.S. senator, railed against the “corrupting” power of money in politics in his farewell address today on the floor of the United States Senate

Medicaid plan called one of Nevada government’s biggest expansions
Nevadans could soon see one of the biggest expansions of state government in modern history as Medicaid, a program that provides health care coverage to low-income residents, moves to cover more than 170,000 new enrollees by 2015.

What Do They Teach In Class? The Face of Education In Nevada
Parents and students beware, do you know what they teach in the classroom? Generally, most parents in Nevada like the teachers they trust their children with each school day, and go a long way to support the school they are involved with. This is the face of education most Nevadans know.

Occupy was disproportionately rich and overwhelmingly white
According to a new study from sociologists at the City University of New York, more than a third of activists in the Occupy movement in New York City had household incomes above $100,000, placing them at the cusp of the top quintile of income distribution in America.

Ind. Officer, Wife Could Face Jail for Saving Deer
Should an Indiana couple go to jail for saving Bambi?
That’s the question surrounding the case of Jeff and Jennifer Counceller, who rescued an injured fawn and nursed it back to health at their Connersville, Ind., home. The couple now faces the possibility of jail time and fines after state officials charged them with a misdemeanor for harboring the animal.

Rep. Paul Broun Announces Candidacy for US Senate

MSNBC Contributor Decries Hateful “Crackers”
MSNBC Contributor Karen Finney used a racial slur recently while discussing immigration reform and the Latino response to the issue. Not surprisingly, no one on the panel she was featured in even seemed to notice her language.

Fort Collins students read Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic
A Fort Collins principal stands by his decision to allow students from a multicultural group to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic on the school’s intercom.

FBI raids West Palm Beach office of doctor tied to U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez
The FBI raided the office of a South Florida eye doctor who last year was accused of providing prostitutes to longtime ally Sen. Bob Menendez, a New?Jersey?Democrat.

Reagan’s home could become a parking lot for Obama’s library
A new Cold War is brewing here in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood and it has nothing to do with the frigid temperature.

The EEOC’s New Rule on Background Checks
Background checks have been much discussed in the last few weeks, primarily in the context of gun-control proposals. But it appears some background checks are favored by bien pensants whereas others are not — the latter being those conducted by employers on applicants for employment.

Raisin farmers in SCOTUS case face $650K charge if they don’t give half their crop to the feds

Geraldo contemplating run for Senate
Television personality and radio host Geraldo Rivera announced Thursday he’s “truly contemplating” a run for Senate in New Jersey.

Obama, Romney, and GOP Technology: A Chilling Analysis
You may think you know what happened with the technology of the Obama and Romney campaigns because of what you read about Orca. You don’t know. This article is incredibly long. It will be worth it, and you will never look at technology and politics in the same way. If someone knows where to post or put this so that the RNC sees it, please do so. I am designating this content under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. Distribute freely with attribution.

Nevada Supreme Court upholds margins tax initiative, sends to Legislature
The Nevada Supreme Court today upheld an initiative petition backed by the Nevada State Education Association that seeks to create a margins tax on business revenue, overturning a lower court decision invalidating the initiative.

Complaint: Sebelius’ illegal campaign trip for Obama worse than we thought
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius violated federal law by campaigning for President Obama on the taxpayers’ dime, but now that initial violation has the Democratic National Committee and an HHS aide in the spotlight for related alleged infractions.

Edward Koch, Former Mayor of New York, Dies
Edward I. Koch, the master showman of City Hall, who parlayed shrewd political instincts and plenty of chutzpah into three tumultuous terms as mayor of New York with all the tenacity, zest and combativeness that personified his city of golden dreams, died Friday morning at age 88.

Soda, candy out under USDA’s proposed school snack rules
The Obama administration proposed regulations Friday that would prohibit U.S. schools from selling unhealthy snacks.

Postal Service says it’s immune from local traffic laws
A government lawyer’s attempt to get dismissed nearly $700 in traffic tickets given to the U.S. Postal Service is being met with a hearty and humorous, Heck no.

Poll: 53% Say Govt Threatens Freedoms
According to a new Pew Research poll, Americans are increasingly worried about the federal government violating their rights. The survey, conducted January 9-13, showed that 53 percent of Americans believe that the federal government “threatens their own personal rights and freedoms,” with 43 percent disagreeing. That is a significant uptick from March 2010, when just 47 percent said that the government threatened their freedom, with 50 percent disagreeing.

Nevada: Panel probing Assemblyman Brooks to work quickly
Assembly Majority Leader William Horne said Friday he expects a select committee that will consider if embattled Assemblyman Steven Brooks is fit to serve to do its work as quickly as possible.

Who’s running Y-12?
The National Nuclear Security Administration and its primary contractor at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant are refusing to release information on who’s managing the government installation with a billion-dollar annual budget. This appears to contradict President Obama’s memo on openness and transparency, which was delivered to federal agencies soon after he took office four years ago.

It’s (Almost) Alive! Scientists Create a Near-Living Crystal
Three billion years after inanimate chemistry first became animate life, a newly synthesized laboratory compound is behaving in uncannily lifelike ways.

Economy
& Taxes

It’s Official: Worst. Recovery. EVER
If there was any debate whether the Fed’s policies have helped the economy or just the market (and specifically the Bernanke-targeted Russell 2000), the following two charts will end any and all debate. As the following chart from the St Louis Fed shows, as of the just completed quarter, US GDP “growth” since the “recovery” is now the worst in US history, having just dipped below the heretofore lowest on record.

Pension time bomb beginning to explode
Are you ready to pay an additional $1,000 in state and local taxes alone? Prepared to see your child’s teacher laid off? Thanks to bad promises politicians made to good people, a pension crisis facing Pennsylvania threatens our American way of life, homes, cities and schools.

Anticipating the upcoming Great California High-Speed Rail Disaster of 2013+

What Difference, at This Point, Does It Make?
The media are enamored of what they perceive as Hillary Clinton’s witty riposte to Senator Johnson during the Benghazi hearings. Conservatives should employ the same question as often as possible. It’s more appropriately directed at the following

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder puts right-to-work law before high court, making other challenges moot
Opponents of the state’s new right-to-work law promised a challenge of the controversial bill that passed the lame-duck Legislature in December.

France ‘totally bankrupt’, says labour minister Michel Sapin
France’s labour minister sent the country into a state of shock on Monday after he described the nation as “totally bankrupt”.

Car firms axe jobs as European demand slumps
European carmakers are expected to continue to cut jobs in response to terrible market conditions in Europe, where sales have been falling fast to levels not seen in two decades.

Zimbabwe says public account stood at $217 last week
Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Tendai Biti has said that the country only had $217 (£138) left in its public account last week after paying civil servants.

GDP Shows Surprise Drop for US in Fourth Quarter
The U.S. economy posted a stunning drop of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, defying expectations for slow growth and possibly providing incentive for more Federal Reserve stimulus.

Obama’s Jobs Council Shutting Down Thursday
President Barack Obama will let his jobs council expire this week without renewing its charter, winding down one source of input from the business community even as unemployment remains stubbornly high.

8.5 Million Americans Left Labor Force In Obama’s First Term
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released jobs numbers for January Friday showing that nonfarm payroll employment increased by 157,000 and the unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent.

169,000 Americans Drop Out of Labor Force in January As Unemployment Ticks Up
The number of Americans not in the labor force grew by 169,000 in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest jobs report.

How to Balance the Budget in 10 Years
Both houses of Congress have now voted to suspend the debt ceiling until May 19, buying lawmakers more time to develop a budget. The Senate would put together a budget for the first time in three years—and the details of that budget are crucial.

100 Years Of U.S. Federal Income Tax
On February 3rd, 1913, one of the two most historic events in US history took place: the ratification of the 16th amendment, which established Congress’ right to impose a Federal income tax on Americans, and overturned Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution which explicitly prohibited a general income tax.

International

We get £17,680 a year in benefits, buy 40 cigs a day, have a laptop and a home with 47-inch TV.. why work?
A SKIVING couple told last night how they claim £17,680 a year in benefits — and don’t even bother looking for work because it would leave them worse off.

Australia’s atheist prime minister schedules election for Yom Kippur, potentially disenfranchising Jewish voters
Australia’s left-wing, atheist Prime Minister Julia Gillard embarrassed herself today by scheduling this year’s parliamentary election for September 14. For those keeping score, that’s Yom Kippur. A strict observance of Yom Kippur bans all normal worldly activities, so Orthodox Jews will be forced to choose between voting and properly observing the holiest day of their year.

China Is So Polluted a Prominent Millionaire Is Reportedly Selling Fresh Air in a Can
With record levels of pollution in China, the smog so thick in some areas you can only see for 100 yards according to local media, one entrepreneurial millionaire reportedly has a solution: fresh air in a can.

Stalingrad gets name back on days marking battle
The southern Russian city where the Red Army decisively turned back Nazi forces in a key World War II battle will once again be known as Stalingrad, at least on the days commemorating the victory, the regional legislature declared Thursday.

UN: Israel Must Withdraw From Judea, Samaria
The United Nations says Israel must withdraw all of its citizens from the regions of Judea and Samaria.

Japan’s Demographic Disaster
Japan is faced with an unprecedented population challenge that will have social, economic, and political consequences for years to come.

Fireworks cause deadly highway collapse in China
An elevated portion of highway in central China collapsed on Friday after a truck loaded with fireworks for Lunar New Year celebrations exploded, killing at least nine people and sending vehicles plummeting about 100 feet to the ground.

Northern lights
The Nordic countries are reinventing their model of capitalism
THIRTY YEARS AGO Margaret Thatcher turned Britain into the world’s leading centre of “thinking the unthinkable”. Today that distinction has passed to Sweden. The streets of Stockholm are awash with the blood of sacred cows. The think-tanks are brimful of new ideas. The erstwhile champion of the “third way” is now pursuing a far more interesting brand of politics.
Sweden has reduced public spending as a proportion of GDP from 67% in 1993 to 49% today. It could soon have a smaller state than Britain. It has also cut the top marginal tax rate by 27 percentage points since 1983, to 57%, and scrapped a mare’s nest of taxes on property, gifts, wealth and inheritance. This year it is cutting the corporate-tax rate from 26.3% to 22%.

The European Parliament: unusual, uncomfortable and distant
Daniel Hannan, MEP cited the U.S. Declaration of Independence

The European Union & Soviet Union similarities

Opinion

Yes, Mr. President, We Are a Nation of Takers
Since 1960, entitlement transfers have grown twice as fast as personal income—to $2.3 trillion annually.

The Demon Behind the Benevolent Mask of the Welfare State
Governed By Those Who Wish We’d Hurry Up and Die

Rusty Calls for “Common Sense Limits on Freedom of Assembly, Nightclub Control”
233 people killed. 233! The culprit? A semi-automatic carrying crazy thug? Nope, a fire in a nightclub.

Obama’s South African Inspiration: Why It Matters
In an interview with Breitbart News Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) made the astute observation that Barack Obama is not just skeptical of our Constitution, but also has an alternative model in mind: the South African constitution. That document has been the object of fascination and envy for the American legal left ever since it was negotiated and passed in the mid-1990s, during South Africa’s transition to democracy.

California at Twilight
We keep trying to understand the enigma of California, mostly why it still breathes for a while longer, given the efforts to destroy the sources of its success. Let’s try to navigate through its sociology and politics to grasp why something that should not survive is surviving quite well — at least in some places.

South Africa: The Model for Our Fundamental Transformation
Despite its flaws, South Africa was a prosperous country and an outpost of Western Civilization in a savage region. Having been destroyed in the name of political correctness, it is now reverting to savagery. The openly anti-Caucasian socialist government is in the process of reducing it to another Zimbabwe, the erstwhile Breadbasket of Africa that is now an infernal basket case. This makes South Africa a model for the ongoing “fundamental transformation” of America

Starting a Business Is a Huge Pain
I’ve been to three offices, filed five forms, spent $200, lost a day of work—and I’m not even close to getting the simple license I need.