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Gun Rights

NRA Uses Justice Memo to Accuse Obama on Guns
The National Rifle Association is using a Justice Department memo it obtained to argue in ads that the Obama administration believes its gun control plans won’t work unless the government seizes firearms and requires national gun registration — ideas the White House has not proposed and does not support.

Obama Fails to Register ‘OrganizingForAction.net’; Site Points to NRA Home Page
At the beginning of the year, President Barack Obama’s new 501(c)4 political nonprofit, Organizing For Action, was launched with all the usual bells and whistles. But the tech wizards at OFA forgot one important rule in today’s Internet world: Register all the iterations of your website address before someone else does.

Obama using fake Twitter messages in fight over gun control
A Texas Republican on Monday said President Obama’s gun control campaign is a fraud based on fake messages over Twitter.

New York: Penalty for 11 rounds in a magazine more severe than being repeat child molester
Common sense gun legislation. Having magazines with more than a 10 round capacity in New York is defined as criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree; a “Class D Violent Felony.” Wondering what some class E felonies in New York are?

WV bill introduced allowing concealed carry on school property
A BILL to amend and reenact §61-7-11a of the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended, relating to dangerous weapons; prohibiting the possession of deadly weapons on premises of educational facilities; and providing exceptions to this prohibition by certain persons licensed to carry a concealed weapon.

A Legal Immigrant, And True American, Schools Gun Control Politicians On The 2nd Amendment

Popular Standard Shotgun Could Be Banned Under Proposed Bill
A popular hunting shotgun could be banned under one of the bills moving through the state Capitol.
A pump or semi-automatic shotgun is the gun most hunters in Colorado use. It’s a gun state Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, says could be banned under a bill that’s already passed the House and Gov. John Hickenlooper says he’ll sign.

Pop-Tart Pistol?: 7-Year-Old Gets Suspended for Gun-Shaped Pastry
A Maryland kid chewed his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun at school and wound up with two days supension. The pastry in question was not named, but it’s gotta be a Pop-Tart, right?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushes to exempt Hollywood from gun law
New York may have some of the toughest gun-control laws in the nation, but at least one government official is scurrying to carve out legislative exemptions for Hollywood to ensure the new crackdowns don’t tie the hands of moviemakers.

High School Student Disarms Gunman…Gets Suspended?
A Florida high school student wrestled a loaded gun away from another teen on the bus ride home this week and was slapped with a suspension in return.

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

Yogi Berra and Wind Energy
In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.

Antarctic Sea Ice Starts Growing Again – 5 Days Early
It appears that the Antarctic Sea Ice Extent has now hit its minimum for the year, and has begun growing again.

California in Crisis: Golden State’s green jobs bust
California built decades of broad-based prosperity from the Gold Rush, then Hollywood, then aerospace, and later Silicon Valley. At the turn of the century, “green jobs” were supposed to be the wave of the future.

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

Donna Brazile wonders why hear healthcare premiums are going up

Explaining Obamacare Nicely To Donna Brazile
Donna, If You Like Your Plan, You Are Welcome To Keep It And Pay.

War & Terror

Tunisian Islamist Prime Minister Caught in Gay Sex Video Scandal
After the Arab Spring revolution the Islamist Ennahdha Party took control of the once moderate Tunisia. But after recent clashes and unrest Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali resigned this past week. In response, Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki asked Interior Minister Ali Larayedh, a hardliner from the main Islamist Ennahda party, to form a government within two weeks. Ali Larayedh was picked as prime minister by his party.

Kerry’s First Gaffe: ‘Kyrzakhstan’?
On the eve of his first trip abroad, John Kerry invented the Central Asian country of “Kyrzakhstan.” He was attempting to praise U.S. diplomats’ work in emerging democracies in the region, and said “they support democratic institutions in Kyrzakhstan and Georgia.” Unfortunately, the secretary of state seems to have conflated Kyrgyzstan, one of the U.S.’s allies in the War on Terror, with Kazakhstan, its northern neighbor.

Louis Farrakhan endorses Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense.

Students Told to Call 9-11 Hijackers “Freedom Fighters”
An Advanced Placement World Geography teacher at a Texas high school who encouraged students to dress in Islamic clothing also instructed them to refer to the 9-11 hijackers not as terrorists – but as “freedom fighters,” according to students who were in the class.

National

 

American Student Punished for Refusing to Recite Mexican Pledge
A Texas high school student has filed a federal lawsuit against her school and her teachers after she was punished for refusing to salute and recite the Mexican pledge of allegiance.

Woodward: White House Telling Reporters “You Will Regret Doing This” Makes Me “Very Uncomfortable”

MSNBC, With Ex-Obama Aides, Now Almost ‘A Bona Fide Organ of State Propaganda’
MSNBC has long been as bad as Fox News when it comes to ideological bias. But with the hiring of longtime Team Obama loyalists David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, it’s official: MSNBC is worse.

Media Matters identifies greatest threat to education — John Stossel
You know the greatest threat to American education as Media Matters wants it?
John Stossel. Libertarian.

The battery that might change everything

What happened to the Golden State?
We Americans love to tell stories about ourselves. Californians may be the best ones at it. During his State of the State Address in January, California Gov. Jerry Brown spun a tale that reached all the way back to the first Spanish Missions, through the gold-seeking ’49ers, and up to the founding of Apple.

Oakland Neighbors Policing Their Own Streets As They Lose Faith In Cops
Oakland’s crime problems have gotten so bad that some people aren’t even bothering to call the cops anymore; instead, they’re trying to solve and prevent crimes themselves.

Liberal Super PAC Goes After Mitch McConnell’s ‘Chinese’ Wife
A Democratic group is under sharp criticism for controversial online messages about Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife.

Graphene Breakthrough — One Photon Can Be Converted Into Multiple Electrons
A new discovery by researchers at the ICFO has revealed that graphene is even more efficient at converting light into electricity than previously known. Graphene is capable of converting a single photon of light into multiple electrons able to drive electric current. The discovery is an important one for next-generation solar cells, as well as other light-detecting and light-harvesting technologies.

An Historic African American District in Los Angeles Transforms
The Great 9th, as the former cotton-picker and City Hall janitor who became Los Angeles’s first African American City Council member called it, is losing its position as a hub of black political power.

Another Poll That States the Obvious
I wrote today’s piece on illegal immigration, before the release of the most recent Gallup poll, which largely supports the essay’s main thrust: that Hispanics for the foreseeable future are not going to be voting in great numbers for Republican candidates — no matter what.

Net providers begin warning of illegal downloads
Internet users who illegally share music, movies or television shows online could soon receive warning notices from the nation’s five major Internet service providers.

Senate GOP ponders ceding power to President Obama
Days before the March 1 deadline, Senate Republicans are circulating a draft bill that would cancel $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts and instead turn over authority to President Barack Obama to achieve the same level of savings under a plan to be filed by March 8.

Will Hispanics Ultimately Lean GOP?
There’s a lot of talk these days that the GOP has lost American Hispanics “forever.” A recent poll by Gallup suggests the picture may be a litte more complex. After the November Presidential election, some Dems hoped and Gopers fretted that the Republican Party face imminent death unless it attracted more Hispanic voters by changing it’s immigration position. But if Gallup is right, some other factors might be at work.

Senate’s Democratic Class of ’08 Faces New Challenges
First-term Democratic senators from competitive states are key to party keeping majority

White House was not involved in ICE’s decision to release detainees
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security were unaware of Immigration Customs and Enforcement’s decision to release detainees until the agency announced it, administration officials said Wednesday.

Zimmerman, Florida teen’s shooter, wears disguise: lawyer
George Zimmerman, the man whose fatal shooting of unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin a year ago captured the nation’s attention, wears a disguise or body armor in public as he feels threatened, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

One rat brain ‘talks’ to another using electronic link
Scientists have connected the brains of lab rats, allowing one to communicate directly to another via cables.

Progressive columnist rips Elizabeth Warren hyprocrisy on Jack Lew
You don’t get more “progressive” than the Political Animal column at Washington Monthly, which has seen such luminaries as Steve Benen (now Rachel Maddow’s blogger) grace its pages.

The Gingrich Briefing

Robert Reich accuses Tea Party of plotting treason

For Some, Lessons of Boyhood Include Learning to Shoot and Hunt

Obama mixes up Star Wars and Star Trek references, causing nerd rage
Enjoy this clip, folks, because this moment of cultural illiteracy from the coolest guy in the country is the only failure of his most low-information voters will ever hear about.

Lawmaker Makes Lewd Remark to Teenage Girl
Connecticut state Rep. Ernest Hewett (D) made an inappropriate remark to a 17 year old girl testifying about a program that helped her overcome her shyness and get over her fear of snakes, the New London Day reports.
Said the girl: “I am usually a very shy person, and now I am more outgoing. I was able to teach those children about certain things like snakes that we have and the turtles that we have… I want to do something toward that, working with children when I get older.”
According to an audiotape of the hearing, Hewett replied: “If you’re bashful I got a snake sitting under my desk here.”

DePaul Punishes Student for Exposing Vandals of Pro-Life Display
DePaul University has punished a student for publicizing the names of fellow students who admitted to vandalizing his organization’s pro-life display. The student, Kristopher Del Campo, has been placed on probation after being found responsible for multiple conduct violations, including one that absurdly brands the publication of the names as “disorderly, violent, intimidating or dangerous.”

NJ Bar Assn excludes young heterosexual white males from At-Large Trustee slots
The seat is in fact reserved exclusively for a woman. This is one of 8 “At-Large” seats on the 49 seat Board of Trustees of the NJSBA. The other 41 seats are open to anyone, and appointed through committee and county bar associations and from the Executive Committee members.

Michigan Gov. Snyder Readies for State Takeover of Detroit
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder (R) declared a financial state of emergency for the city of Detroit on Friday, clearing the way for Michigan to take over the city that is $14 billion in debt and faces a current fiscal year budget deficit of $100 million.

Woodward at war
Bob Woodward called a senior White House official last week to tell him that in a piece in that weekend’s Washington Post, he was going to question President Barack Obama’s account of how sequestration came about — and got a major-league brushback. The Obama aide “yelled at me for about a half-hour,” Woodward told us in an hourlong interview yesterday around the Georgetown dining room table where so many generations of Washington’s powerful have spilled their secrets.

Government Forces Private Citizens to Pour Bleach on Home-Grown Organic Food
When a farmer cannot prepare a farm-to-plate home cooked meal for friends and guests without intervention by a government agency we have a problem – one that goes against every founding principle of this nation.

American Votes Confesses to Drafting Evisceration Memo Linked To Blueprint NC
As North Carolina Republicans called for an investigation of Blueprint NC for violating its 501 (c)(3) status with a memo calling to cripple the conservative leadership in the state, the progressive America Votes organization has confessed to drafting it.

White House Threatens Bob Woodward, JournoList Juicebox Mafia Forms Human Shield Around God King Obama
Bob Woodward helped take down Richard Nixon, but that was so like 40 years ago. Most of the current lapdog media was in diapers back then or their parents hadn’t even met yet. These buffoons worship at the altar of Barack Obama and there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that will shake their loyalty to him. You could have video evidence of Obama raping a 10-year-old on the White House lawn and their first reaction would be that the tape must be edited.

Lanny Davis: The White House Threatened To Deny My Paper Credentials If We Kept Writing About Them
Ron Fournier: I Got the Same “You Will Regret This” Threat

A sordid business indeed
Earlier today, we took a look at some of the fallout from the current Supreme Court case examining certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act. At that time, I mentioned that there was more than a little hypocrisy on display this month from those insisting that it is somehow part of an evil plot to destroy the world for the court to even examine the question.

Economy
& Taxes

The Ph.D Bust: America’s Awful Market for Young Scientists—in 7 Charts
Politicians and businessmen are fond of talking about America’s scientist shortage — the dearth of engineering and lab talent that will inevitably leave us sputtering in the global economy.

White House Report Claims Sequestration Will Affect Federal Department That No Longer Exists
If you want a thorough agency-by-agency rundown of the budget cuts sequestration would deliver, the Office of Management and Budget has you covered. In compliance with The Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012, the OMB sent a detailed report to Congress in September 2012. But there’s a small problem with the report: One of the cuts it warns against would affect an agency that no longer exists–and didn’t exist when the OMB sent its report to congress.

Is Employment a “Human Right”?
Efforts to stamp out so-called discrimination in the labor market will kill jobs and stifle economic growth.

Another Big Win for Texas: $8 Billion Surplus
Add another notch to Texas’s growing list of achievements: The Lone Star State is projected to run an $8.8 billion dollar surplus at a time when other states are struggling to pay the bills.

Subway Founder: “If I Started Subway Today, Subway Would Not Exist”
“It’s continuously gotten worse because there’s more and more regulations and it’s tougher for people to get into business, especially a small business. I tell you, if I started Subway today, Subway would not exist, because I had an easy time of it in the ’60s when I started and I just see a continuous increase in regulation.”

Obama Campaign Predicts Everything but a Plague of Locusts if the Horrible, Awful, No Good Sequester (that Obama Proposed) Kicks In
So the Obama campaign sent out this fearmongering email today. It’s difficult to exaggerate just how ridiculous it is

Boehner: Tax reform to be H.R. 1
Speaker John Boehner signaled Tuesday that he will push major reform of the tax code by reserving pole position — H.R. 1 — for that massive legislative undertaking.

Americans see biggest monthly income drop in 20 years
Feeling poorer?
Americans saw their income drop so dramatically in January that it marked the deepest one-month decline in 20 years.

Consumer Spending Drought: 16 Signs That The Middle Class Is Running Out Of Money
Is “discretionary income” rapidly becoming a thing of the past for most American families? Right now, there are a lot of signs that we are on the verge of a nightmarish consumer spending drought.

Hey Liberals–How Come No Wealth Tax?
For all of the liberal caterwauling about disparities in wealth, one thing I don’t understand is why no one, not even the socialist senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders in full bulging-neck-vein mode, has started channeling Huey Long and calling for a serious wealth tax.

Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee: “Math iz hard”
Maxine Waters really amped up the sequester scare tactics today:
“… We don’t need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these jobs losses, over 170 million jobs that could be lost …”
Per the BLS, as of January 2013 there were 143.3 million people employed in the US. The total civilian workforce is 155.7 million people.

International

Former Ambassador of Panama to the OAS: “Hugo Chavez is dead”
Contact with CNN Chile, Panama’s former ambassador to the OAS, Guillermo Cochez, said that since last December 30 President Chavez was declared brain dead in Cuba, with which he returned to Venezuela in that state. For this reason,assures that was not visited by the various leaders and questioned the last picture that was published between Chavez and his daughters.

Cornwall councillor refuses to resign after saying all disabled children “should be put down”
A CORNWALL councillor has apologised but refused to resign after telling a disability charity that all disabled children “should be put down”.

Humiliated yet defiant: Conservatives say they won’t change direction despite coming third behind Ukip and Lib Dems in Eastleigh by-election
Lib Dem candidate Mike Thornton wins seat but with greatly reduced majority of 1,771

How Euro-socialism Set off a Fascist Bomb
In the terrible economic crisis of 1922 Benito Mussolini got 25% of the vote in Italy. Two years later he had more than a majority.
In the economic crisis of 2013, Beppe Grillo received 24% of the vote (see last week’s analysis of Grillo’s political beliefs). This week he blocked a government from forming. Grillo now controls the Senate, but he is going for a majority in both houses in the upcoming vote in June.

100 Egyptian Christians Arrested in Benghazi, Some Tortured & Killed
A video report from an Egyptian website claims that 100 Coptic Christians from Egypt have been arrested for the “crime” of fulfilling their Christian duty and spreading the gospel. Some reports claim that the video shows “Islamist elements” holding the Christian prisoners, but the news report itself claims that it was officials of the Libyan government. Or as the Google translation puts it, “Libyan government accusing them of proselytizing”.

Opinion

A STUDY IN LINES
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. (1 Corinthians 13:11)

Title IX for our boys
Stereotyped as “naughty,” boys quickly learn that they are thought of as dumber and more trouble than girls. And that has consequences.

The Comeback of Silent Cal
For years, most Americans’ vision of history has been shaped by the New Deal historians. Writing soon after Franklin Roosevelt’s death, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and others celebrated his accomplishments and denigrated his opponents.

The ‘Footloose’ Fix
How Republicans can get cool
Republicans do badly with young voters, and one of the main reasons is that they’re seen as uncool. This is probably unfair — it’s not Republicans who are imposing college speech codes on students — but it’s the perception.

Is America Becoming Europe?
Across the Atlantic, Americans see European economies faltering under enormous debt, overburdened welfare states, governments controlling close to fifty percent of the economy, high taxation, heavily regulated labor markets, aging populations, and large numbers of public sector workers. They also see a European political class that is unable — and, in many cases, unwilling — to implement economic reform.

Searching for a Father
This essay by a British young woman who was conceived by a single mother through donor insemination raises many of the themes we are seeing emerge in both single mothers and couples who use IVF: The longing for a father. this longing creates loyalty conflicts within the family of choice because it feels (sometimes to the child and often to the mother) like a betrayal of the mother.

What Would We Do Without Social Science?
Quantitative social science is best when it provides rigorous evidence of counter-intuitive propositions, that is, when it can debunk commonly held perceptions about phenomena.

10 Sci Fi and Fantasy Works Every Conservative Should Read
The left-wing science fiction writer China Miéville has compiled a list of “50 Sci Fi and Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read.” As a longtime reader of speculative and ”weird” fiction and qualified admirer of Miéville’s work, I thought it would be fun to offer a companion list for conservatives.

President Barack Obama, electoral munchkin.
It’s a technical term: see below.
Let me give all of you the basic background, first: Obama has yet to make a decision on the Keystone Pipeline, and he’s more or less going to seriously anger a key block of supporters either way. If he approves the pipeline, he annoys Hollywood celebrities, radical environmentalists, and other scientific illiterates; and if Obama rejects it, he infuriates Big Labor, or at least those parts of it that still do actual work. The result? Barack Obama is… dithering; which pleases nobody. The union workers aren’t working, and the scientific illiterates are justifiably paranoid that the current no-by-default is unsustainable in the long run. So, of course, both sides are now trying to pressure the White House into resolving the situation.

Why Are Asians So Democratic? The Respect Motive in Action
Republican critics of immigration often decry Hispanics’ lop-sided identification with the Democratic Party. Due to their low income, the story goes, Hispanics naturally prefer the party of Big Government. Since Hispanics will never vote Republican, Republicans’ only prudent response is to strive to keep them out of the country in the first place.

The Voting Rights Act, stuck in the past
Progressives are remarkably uninterested in progress. Social Security is 78 years old, and myriad social improvements have added 17?years to life expectancy since 1935, yet progressives insist the program remain frozen, like a fly in amber. Medicare is 48 years old, and the competence and role of medicine have been transformed since 1965, yet progressives cling to Medicare “as we know it.” And they say that the Voting Rights Act, another 48-year-old, must remain unchanged, despite dramatic improvements in race relations.