News of the Week for January 5^th, 2014

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

Obama Scandals

President Obama’s Top 10 Constitutional Violations Of 2013
One of Barack Obama’s chief accomplishments has been to return the Constitution to a central place in our public discourse.

Gun Rights

‘Looks Like Weimar Germany’: The Viral Photo Out of Connecticut That’s Giving Some Gun Owners Chills
A now-viral photo showing a long line of Connecticut residents waiting to register their guns and ammo is circulating across the Internet — and it’s sending chills down the backs of some gun owners.

Study shows concealed-carry laws result in fewer murders
Yet another bit of data to mull over in the gun-control wars, courtesy of Quinnipiac University’s Mark Gius

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

Climate Clowns Trapped in Antarctic Ice: ‘Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up’
This is too funny for words.

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

President Obama’s Top 10 Constitutional Violations Of 2013
One of Barack Obama’s chief accomplishments has been to return the Constitution to a central place in our public discourse.

The Contraception Mandate and the Constitution
The administration and its allies have profoundly twisted the meaning of the Constitution

Adding a new baby to plan not easy
There’s another quirk in the Obama administration’s new health insurance system: It lacks a way for consumers to quickly and easily update their coverage for the birth of a baby and other common life changes.

War & Terror

Second suicide bomber in Russia’s Volgograd kills 14 on bus
A bomb ripped a bus apart in Volgograd on Monday, killing 14 people in the second deadly attack blamed on suicide bombers in the southern Russian city in 24 hours and raising fears of Islamist attacks on the Winter Olympics.

So Much for Moonbats Supporting the Troops
It used to be that liberals said they opposed our country but supported our troops. Now that they are running the country, there is less need to maintain a pretense.
A patriotic soldier personifies everything leftists oppose. Union leader Janet Vrotsos was quite upfront about it in a Facebook message to triple amputee Senior Airman Brian Kolfage

Female Marines Not Required To Do 1 Pull-Up
Females in the Marine Corps currently are not required to do even a single pull-up, and a deadline mandating that by Jan. 1, 2014, they be able to do at least 3 pull-ups as part of their training has been delayed for at least a year, the Corps quietly announced on social media. – See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-boland/female-marines-not-required-do-1-pull#sthash.R4rdfmF2.dpuf

Al-Qaeda-linked force captures Fallujah amid rise in violence in Iraq
A rejuvenated al-Qaeda-affiliated force asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Friday, raising its flag over government buildings and declaring an Islamic state in one of the most crucial areas that U.S. troops fought to pacify before withdrawing from Iraq two years ago.

National

Church Ordered To Remove “Support Our Troops” Sign
A church is in a clash with Nevada County after being told to take down a sign with an American flag and a message to support the troops.

The incredible, shrinking New York
Changes are coming to the Empire State, and not the kind that Governor Cuomo would like to see. The shift in question is the state’s population relative to the rest of the nation. From the early days of the Union, New York was the most populous state in the US, making it a political powerhouse as well as an economic one. That all began to change in the second half of the 20th century. New York was overtaken in population by California in the 1970 census. In 2000 we were shoved into third place by Texas. And now, if current projections hold, New York will be out of the top three entirely, pushed out by Florida.

Report: New York Investigators Obtain Fraudulent Ballots 97 Percent of Time
New York City’s Department of Investigation (DOI) has just shown how easy it is to commit voter fraud that is almost undetectable. Its undercover agents were able to obtain ballots for city elections a total of 61 times — 39 times using the names of dead people, 14 times using the names of incarcerated felons, and eight times using the names of non-residents. On only two occasions, or about 3 percent of the time, were the agents stopped by polling-place officials. In one of the two cases, an investigator was stopped only because the felon he was trying to vote in the name of was the son of the election official he was dealing with.

Another NY Democrat Is Banned From Having Interns While Being Investigated For Sexual Harassment
Let’s just call it the Bubba Rule

Legalizing Cannibalism?
The placenta is a human fetal organ that is expelled from the mother’s uterus after birth. Now, Oregon has legalized taking the placenta home for burial or consumption.

Common Core: The Latest Flaw in One-Size-Fits-All Public Schools
When the federal government imposes a single teaching plan on 15,000 school districts across the country, that’s central planning, which brings stagnation.

Drug Warriors Kidnap and Sexually Assault a Woman After Getting Permission From a Dog
In a case eerily similar to David Eckert’s humiliating ordeal at the hands of cops in Deming, New Mexico, a federal lawsuit charges U.S. Border Patrol agents with subjecting a U.S. citizen to six hours of degrading and fruitless body cavity searches based on an alleged alert by a drug-sniffing dog. The lawsuit, filed yesterday by the ACLU chapters in Texas and New Mexico, says the plaintiff, a 54-year-old New Mexico resident identified in the complaint as Jane Doe, was crossing the bridge between Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso after visiting a family friend last December when she was chosen at random for “additional screening.” This “secondary inspection” involved a pat-down during which an agent “inserted her finger in the crevice of Ms. Doe’s buttocks”—a rather startling incursion inasmuch as the agents at this point had no basis to suspect that the woman was carrying contraband. But they were just getting started.

Minnesota Town Bans Homeowners From Renting Their Homes
Minnesota residents are challenging a new ordinance which prohibits homeowners from renting their own homes. The first-of-its-kind law was enacted in the city of Winona to reportedly thwart “anti-social behavior,” crumbling housing conditions, and curb excessive parking, according to a report by Watchdog Minnesota.

Couple who are just friends allowed to adopt, judge says in landmark ruling
In a first of its kind ruling in New York, a Manhattan judge has given a couple who’re just friends the green light to become legal co-parents to an adopted girl.

North Carolina town councilman resigns in Klingon
A North Carolina town councilman’s resignation letter boldly went where no resignation letter has gone before. According to media reports, David Waddell tendered his resignation letter in the fictional language of Kingon from the popular TV and movie franchise “Star Trek”.

Economy
& Taxes

10 Tax Breaks We’ll Miss in 2014
More than 50 tax credits will expire on New Year’s Eve, depriving businesses and individuals the relief they once enjoyed for common expenditures such as buying racehorses and building NASCAR tracks.

Red vs. Blue Battle Continues, as Money Flows From California to Texas
The Washington Post continues the recently popular sport of contrasting Texas and California political styles and attitudes toward the size of the state, and then posing the federalism-defying question: Which is the better model for America’s future? (Cue ominous music in the background.) Strictly speaking, there should be room in the United States for a variety of policy experiments, so long as basic liberties are respected. People can then vote with their money and their feet. And, in fact, as the article and data from elsewhere indicate, Americans have favored Texas with their votes for many years.

Mexican sales tax hike seen as boon on US border
Mexican license plates are common in parking lots of shopping malls in U.S. border cities. They will be even more familiar after Mexico raises its federal sales tax in border regions to match the rest of the country, say merchants and shoppers.

A China debt crisis in 2014?
Here’s something to watch in 2014: China’s debt. Although the odds of a full-blown financial crisis are slim, they’re not non-existent. The flash point is the burgeoning debt of Chinese localities to finance major infrastructure — roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, subways, telecommunications networks — as well as housing and commercial real estate developments. The fear is that revenues from these projects won’t be adequate to repay the loans, resulting in defaults that undermine confidence and trigger bank runs. This would surely rattle the broader global economy.

International

The Cross-Dressing & Homosexual Book List From Ontario’s Elementary School Teachers
Taken from the ETFO’s list of books on gender and human rights and LGBT. Some books can be found in multiple categories – for example the cross-dressing book My Princess Boy is found on all three lists.

The Homosexual & Cross-Dressing Book List From Thames Valley School Board
Here’s the list. For elementary school students.

Chinese scientists cultivate high-yield salt-resistant rice
Chinese scientists have cultivated a high-yield salt-resistant rice variety that boasts an output of six tonnes per hectare.

Cambodian demonstrators seeking new elections joined by factory workers for more protests
Demonstrators in Cambodia have begun a third week of protests demanding new elections, their numbers buoyed by thousands of factory workers seeking higher wages.

Jang’s execution bodes ill for China
The purge of North Korea’s second in command sent shock waves around the world. One writer looks at the impact on bilateral ties while the other details how the noose had tightened on Jang Song Thaek.

Opinion

America’s Internal Checkpoints
Refuseniks fight back against feds demanding papers

‘Duck Dynasty’ Reversal Shows GLAAD Has an Expiration Date
A few years ago, I couldn’t imagine a network disregarding GLAAD’s recommendations

The real gender war is against boys
Lost in all the noise about helping girls achieve their potential is a growing body of evidence that boys are in trouble. It’s the real “gender gap.” Consider this: A recent study by two MIT economists found that men, not women, are less likely to graduate from high school and finish college. As a result, the study said, “over the last three decades, the labor market trajectory of males in the U.S. has turned downward along four dimensions: skills acquisition, employment rates, occupational stature and real wage levels.”

Pajama Boy Unchained
It’s official. It is now racist to criticize anything even tangentially related to Barack Obama. Some tool named Adam Serwer at MSNBC writes, For [conservatives], Pajama Boy is yet another emblem of an increasingly non-white electorate, a young population that believes in a stronger welfare state,gender equality andLGBT rights. [Emphasis added]

11 Girly Things Huffpo Wishes Men Would Do To Emasculate Themselves
The emasculation of American men is a real problem, but as much as the liberal left would like to subvert the less fair, and more cave-mannish angels of our nature, nature finds a way.

Would an appeals court really benefit Nevadans? Dec27 by Thomas Mitchell
Once again members of the Nevada Supreme Court are pressing for the creation of an appeals court to reduce their workload.

The ‘Racism’ Wrecking Ball
Indiscriminate charges of racism do more harm than good, as Martin Luther King well knew.

Why Obama frets about income inequality, not family breakdown
The Obama White House argues hard that rising US income inequality makes it tougher for Americans to climb the economic ladder. When President Obama gave a big speech on “social mobility” earlier this month – liberal pundits called it the “most important” of his presidency – he mentioned inequality more than two dozen times to pound the point home. And Team Obama has much publicized its chart illustrating the “Great Gatsby Curve” which suggests strong correlation globally between high income inequality and low earnings mobility.

Idiot leaves Ron Paul coalition; finds natural home in Democrat Party
A liberal friend who despairs of my decision to turn my back on the Democrat Party and declare myself a conservative, sent me an article from Salon. In it, the author smugly explains that he was a life-long libertarian, went to a Ron Paul convention, saw that a lot of the people there were conspiracy theorists, and then joined the Democrat Party.

Sinners in the Hands of an Indifferent God
New Year’s and the tyranny of time.

Practicing Law While Illegal
Following up on yesterday’s post on the admission of an illegal alien to the practice of law in California, today’s Times story had a few interesting aspects. The newly minted lawyer, Sergio Garcia (no, not the golfer from Spain) had this to say: “I can finally fulfill my dream and also leave behind a legacy so that an undocumented student 20 or 30 years from now will take it for granted that they can be an attorney.” This confirms the fear that this case is not about his individual situation nor merely a short-term expedient until Congress (advocates hope) passes an amnesty; it’s part of a strategy to permanently eliminate the distinction between legal and illegal immigration.