A little girl, named Tatum Raetz, graduated from kindergarten in Phoenix, Arizona.
Her Daddy couldn’t be there with her. He was killed by an illegal hit and run driver, with a history of fleeing to Mexico. The Senate should be proud.
Since her Daddy couldn’t be there, some 100 Phoenix Police Officers showed up to give show their love and support to Tatum, along with 400 other parents and friends.
So while politicians, IRS administrators, and other assorted asshats do their best to cover their ass while they lie and deceive the American people, regular working people show up and do the right thing.
Scores of supporters of the English Defence League threw bottles at police and chanted anti-Muslim slogans in Woolwich hours after the murder of one man and the shooting of his two suspected assailants.
About 100 men, including some wearing balaclavas printed with “EDL”, engaged in running battles with police for less than an hour.
A police commander said officers cited section 60 of the Public Order Act, which allowed them to stop and search individuals within a specific area without evidence of a crime being committed.
EDL leader Tommy Robinson said: “They’re chopping our soldiers’ heads off. This is Islam. That’s what we’ve seen today. They’ve cut off one of our army’s heads off on the streets of London.
“Our next generation are being taught through schools that Islam is a religion of peace. It’s not. It never has been. What you saw today is Islam. Everyone’s had enough. There has to be a reaction, for the government to listen, for the police to listen, to understand how angry this British public are.”
The men congregated near Woolwich Arsenal station with flags bearing the cross of St George after plans for a protest were circulated on social media. Hundreds of police including riot police were stationed around Woolwich.
The first clashed began just after ten before the men were pursued and blocked in at a pub close to a local mosque.
The Senate immigration bill’s authors acknowledged Tuesday that their legislation does not require illegal immigrants to pay all back taxes, saying it would be too difficult to make them ante up everything they might owe.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is chief sponsor of the bill, said illegal immigrants by definition are living in the shadows, and requiring them to reconstruct their pay history could be tough — and potentially keep many of them from legalization.
“We all realize that the system is broken. We all realize that people did wrong things. And the goal is to set this right by letting those in the shadows come out,” Mr. Schumer said Tuesday as the Judiciary Committee plowed through more amendments to the 867-page immigration bill. “The worry I have here is that by being as rigid … as this amendment is, that it will delay and prevent many, many people from coming out of the shadows.”
The issue of back taxes is an emotionally charged part of the current immigration debate.
Mr. Schumer and the other members of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” who wrote the immigration bill have said the legislation requires illegal immigrants to pay “a fine and back taxes,” and that is true — up to a point.
The bill says that before illegal immigrants can apply for initial legal status, they must have “satisfied any applicable federal tax liability.” That is defined as “all federal income taxes assessed.”
A dramatic video tonight emerged of a man with bloodied hands, carrying knives and ranting ‘We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you’, after a serving soldier was hacked to death by two men just 200 yards from an Army barracks.
The man can be seen and heard talking to the camera. The video came as terrified eyewitnesses saw two men shot by police marksmen after the machete attack in Woolwich, south-east London.
The two men are thought to have waited around for 20 minutes until Metropolitan Police officers arrived and then tried to attack them – but were swiftly shot by armed policemen, including a woman.
They apparently shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’, which means ‘God is great’ in Arabic, and tried to film the attack, the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson said.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe tonight confirmed two men had been arrested and officers from the counter-terrorist unit were leading the investigation into the killing.
An FBI agent in Orlando shot dead a man questioned in the Boston bombing investigation whom the agency says turned violent during an interview early Wednesday.
The suspect was identified by the FBI as Ibragim Todashev, 27, of Orlando.
FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the agent involved in the shooting on Peregrine Avenue near Kirkman and Vineland roads, near Universal Orlando, acted on an imminent threat and shot Todashev during an interview. The FBI agent was “conducting official duties” when Todashev initiated a “violent confrontation” and was shot, agent Dave Couvertier said in a statement.
The agent was with two Massachusetts State Police troopers and other law enforcement personnel at the time, Couvertier said.
A source told FOX 25 News in Boston that Todashev was being questioned by an FBI agent from Boston about an unsolved triple murder in Waltham, Mass. The source said Todashev became violent during the interview and was shot by the agent.
Khusen Taramov, a man at the scene of the Peregrine Avenue shooting who identified himself as a friend of Todashev’s, said Wednesday that Todashev knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother suspected in the April 15 bombings that killed three and injured more than 260.
A young British soldier is dead after reportedly being “hacked and chopped” to death by two black men Wednesday afternoon on a London street. Sky News reports the incident is being treated by government officials as a terrorist attack.
The victim was reportedly wearing a “Help for Heroes” t-shirt. The fatal attack took place in southeast London’s Woolrich area, only yards from the Royal Artillery Barracks. Following the brutal act, police arrived and ultimately shot and wounded the two suspects, described by eyewitnesses as two black men in their mid-20s.
Both suspects are currently hospitalized. A number of weapons were retrieved from the scene, including carving knives, a firearm, and a machete.
One eyewitness, identified only as James, told local media:
They were hacking at this poor guy, literally… They were hacking at him, chopping him, cutting him… They were hacking at him like a piece of meat. These two guys were crazy, they just were not there, they were just animals. They dragged the poor guy–he was obviously dead, there was no way a human could take what they did to him. They dragged him from the pavement and dumped his body in the middle of the road and left his body there.
A far-reaching bill to remake the nation’s immigration system is headed to the full Senate, where tough battles are brewing on gay marriage, border security and other contentious issues, with the outcome impossible to predict.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the measure 13-5 Tuesday night, setting up an epic showdown on the Senate floor after Congress’ Memorial Day recess. The legislation is one of President Barack Obama’s top domestic priorities – yet it also gives the Republican Party a chance to recast itself as more appealing to minorities.
Many involved still vividly recall the last time the Senate took up a major immigration bill, in 2007, beginning with high hopes only to see their efforts collapse on the Senate floor amid a public backlash and interest group defections.
Sheesh! It took me 5 minutes of scanning about a half dozen articles before finally – finally – finding a media account of the riots by “immigrants” that have shocked Sweden in the last 48 hours that mentions where the rioters are from.
I can say without a trace of irony, “Thank God for the BBC”:
Police in the deprived, largely immigrant suburb of Husby shot a man dead last week after he reportedly threatened to kill them with a machete.
The founder of a local youth group told Swedish media the riots were a reaction to “police brutality”.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told reporters on Tuesday that Sweden would not be intimidated by rioters. ‘Opportunistic’
On Tuesday night, cars were torched in western and southern Stockholm, and stones were thrown at police officers and firefighters. One area affected, Rinkeby, saw similar rioting in 2010.
Kjell Lindgren of the Stockholm police told Aftonbladet newspaper that the unrest had spread from the original rioting in Husby.
“It feels like people are taking the opportunity in other areas because of the attention given to Husby,” he said. Earlier on Tuesday, Prime Minister Reinfeldt said: “We’ve had two nights with great unrest, damage, and an intimidating atmosphere in Husby and there is a risk it will continue.
“We have groups of young men who think that that they can and should change society with violence. Let’s be clear: this is not okay. We cannot be ruled by violence.” More than 80% of Husby’s 12,000 or so inhabitants are from an immigrant background, and most are from Turkey, the Middle East and Somalia. (emphasis mine)
Hundreds of residents of Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, were astounded Monday morning to see an oversized Nazi flag flying next to a mosque in the Arab town of Beit Omar.
The residents notified the IDF.
A resident, Uri Arnon, told the Tazpit News Agency: “I felt we were going back 75 years, losing our hold on the land. The Arabs no longer feel the need to hide their murderous tendencies, announcing out loud that they wish to annihilate us.”
An IDF spokesman said that the flag was hung on an electrical line, and that they were waiting to professionals to come and remove it.
“The Jewish religion is under attack in Europe”, declared the Conference of European Rabbis president Pinchas Goldschmidt. Many polls (such as the study on behalf of the German Social Democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation) bring an iconic number measuring the disaster: 150,000,000 Europeans have a delegitimizing and demonizing view of the State of Israel and its citizens.
For a large sector of Europe, the cities, skyscrapers, hospitals, cinemas, and schools on that tiny sliver of land named “Israel” are merely real estate that will be restored to Islam once this malefic Jewish form is swept away.
This is a popular mobilization against Israel in the “Raus mit Uns” spirit. 150,000,000 Western citizens believe that Zionism is a misconceived project to be brought to an end as soon as possible. It is the consequence of the Palestinian-Islamic psychological war (note: the European Union has just contributed 20 million euros to the payment of salaries and pensions for April of nearly 76,000 Palestinian Arabs).
See what happened to Europe’s Jews in little more than a week.
In Hungary, where Adolf Eichmann obsessively hunted down all the Jews, a wave of fascist Judeophobia is poisoning the social cohesion and the head of the Raoul Wallenberg Association was injured in anti-Semitic attack.
A Labour party member in the UK, Nazir Ahmed, resigned after anti-Jewish remarks made on television.
A scientific genius, Stephen Hawking, embraced the racist boycott of the State of Israel.
The BBC planned a “documentary” claiming that the Jewish exodus from Jerusalem was a myth.
Dozens of French mayors rallied for the liberation of the Palestinian terrorists.
A Scottish Christian document erased the Jewish links with to the holy land.
In the French town of Villeurbanne, a rabbi and his son were stabbed.
It was an ordinary week of anti-Semitism in Europe.
RUSH: Did you hear how David Axelrod attempted to defend Obama on the IRS scandal? I think he was on MSNBC today. David Axelrod said (paraphrasing), “Well, you know, the government’s too big. The government’s simply too vast for Obama to control it.” Bingo! Exactly! That’s the whole reason the Tea Party exists. The government is too big. Not only is the government too big, it’s growing. It’s growing to the point that it is unmanageable, although that is a big, I think, diversion in and of itself.
They managed all of this. They were able to direct all of these scandals, folks. And yet the theme of the day in the Drive-By Media, guess what it is? Now all of a sudden Obama is just too disengaged. He’s too passive. He’s too disinterested. He couldn’t possibly have had a direct role in any of this ’cause he doesn’t care enough. He’s not engaged enough. Dana Milbank actually has a name for him in his Washington Post column. The headline of Milbank’s piece: “Obama, the Uninterested President.” And he refers to him as “President Passerby.”
Folks, I am telling you, the media is now being split up. That may not be the accurate way to say this, but some elements of the media are loaded for bear now, or appear to be at least on the IRS scandal. Some of them are still circling the wagons around Obama, and one of them is Dana Milbank. But there is in certain sectors of the State-Controlled Media, the theme today is that Obama couldn’t have been involved directly in any of this stuff. Obama couldn’t be. He’s too passive. He’s too disinterested. He’s focused on other things. His job has never really been all that challenging to Obama. I mean, it’s so beneath his skill set.
This guy is really capable and qualified of so much more and so much of this bores Obama, because he can’t get as much done as he wants to get done. There’s all this gridlock because of Limbaugh and the Republicans, and so he’s just frustrated. The poor guy, it’s almost to the point where he’s just thrown up his hands and said, “Well, to hell with it. Everything moves so slow I can’t get anything done,” and that’s why he goes out and plays golf ’cause he really doesn’t care that much. This is what they are constructing, folks, as a way of insulating Obama from any of these scandals, about which there are now four.
There is an EPA scandal that is developing and it involves treating conservative organizations much the same way the IRS did. But, boy, I tell you, Axelrod: the government is just too big, it’s just too vast for Obama to control. Exactly. Exactly. You know, folks, it’s kind of funny. It seems like only a few days ago Barack Obama was telling the graduates at the Ohio State University commencement exercise about the joys of big government. He was mocking right-wingers who distrust big government for their paranoid suspicions about tyranny. He was warning them about all the voices, and he meant one; I’m now convinced it was me, since I do live rent free in his head.
Iran will preside over the United Nations arms control forum this month, despite the fact that it is under U.N. sanctions for illicit nuclear activities and routinely supplies arms to the terrorist organization Hezbollah in violation of international law.
The U.N.’s annual Conference on Disarmament, which Iran is slated to lead from May 27 to June 23, is the organization’s primary multilateral forum for negotiating arms control agreements.
The forum has given way to major international treaties on nuclear non-proliferation, prohibitions on chemical weapons, and bans on nuclear tests.
UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group, blasted the decision to allow Iran to chair the conference.
“This is like putting Jack the Ripper in charge of a women’s shelter,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer in a statement. “Iran is an international outlaw state that illegally supplies rockets to Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas, aiding and abetting mass murder and terrorism. To make this rogue regime head of world arms control is simply an outrage. Abusers of international norms should not be the public face of the U.N.”
The organization said it plans to hold protests with Iranian dissidents outside the U.N. hall.
They advance a system of k-12 education where every parent, regardless of race, origin or family income, was free to choose a learning environment that was best for their child.
News, analysis, commentaries and links to outside articles with a conservative perspective from David Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture.
Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.
The disclosure of the attorney general’s role came as President Barack Obama, in a major speech on his counterterrorism policy, said Holder had agreed to review Justice Department guidelines governing investigations that involve journalists.
“I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” Obama said. “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs.”
Rosen, who has not been charged in the case, was nonetheless the target of a search warrant that enabled Justice Department investigators to secretly seize his private emails after an FBI agent said he had “asked, solicited and encouraged … (a source) to disclose sensitive United States internal documents and intelligence information.”
Obama’s comments follow a firestorm of criticism that has erupted over disclosures that in separate investigations of leaks of classified information, the Justice Department had obtained private emails that Rosen exchanged with a source and the phone records of Associated Press reporters.
The Boy Scouts of America threw open its ranks Thursday to gay Scouts but not gay Scout leaders – a fiercely contested compromise that some warned could fracture the organization and lead to mass defections of members and donors.
Of the roughly 1,400 voting members of the BSA’s National Council who cast ballots, 61 percent supported the proposal drafted by the governing Executive Committee. The policy change takes effect Jan. 1.
“This has been a challenging chapter in our history,” the BSA chief executive, Wayne Brock, said after the vote. “While people have differing opinions on this policy, kids are better off when they’re in Scouting.”
However, the outcome will not end the bitter debate over the Scouts’ membership policy.
Liberal Scout leaders – while supporting the proposal to accept gay youth – have made clear they want the ban on gay adults lifted as well.
In contrast, conservatives with the Scouts – including some churches that sponsor Scout units – wanted to continue excluding gay youths, in some cases threatening to defect if the ban were lifted.
“We are deeply saddened,” said Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee after learning of the result. “Homosexual behavior is incompatible with the principles enshrined in the Scout oath and Scout law.”
The Assemblies of God, another conservative denomination, said the policy change “will lead to a mass exodus from the Boy Scout program.” It also warned that the change would make the BSA vulnerable to lawsuits seeking to end the ban on gay adults.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry also expressed dismay.
“While I will always cherish my time as a Scout and the life lessons I learned, I am greatly disappointed with this decision,” he said.
The result was welcomed by many liberal members of the Scouting community and by gay-rights activists, though most of the praise was coupled with calls for ending the ban on gay adults.
“I’m so proud of how far we’ve come, but until there’s a place for everyone in Scouting, my work will continue,” said Jennifer Tyrrell, whose ouster as a Cub Scout den leader in Ohio because she is lesbian launched a national protest movement.
Pascal Tessier, a 16-year-old Boy Scout from Maryland, was elated by the outcome.
Tessier, who is openly gay, is on track to earn his Eagle Scout award and was concerned that his goal would be thwarted if the proposed change had been rejected.
“I was thinking that today could be my last day as a Boy Scout,” Tessier said. “Obviously, for gay Scouts like me, this vote is life-changing.”
A little girl, named Tatum Raetz, graduated from kindergarten in Phoenix, Arizona.
Her Daddy couldn’t be there with her. He was killed by an illegal hit and run driver, with a history of fleeing to Mexico. The Senate should be proud.
Since her Daddy couldn’t be there, some 100 Phoenix Police Officers showed up to give show their love and support to Tatum, along with 400 other parents and friends.
So while politicians, IRS administrators, and other assorted asshats do their best to cover their ass while they lie and deceive the American people, regular working people show up and do the right thing.
Alice Walker, the author of “The Color Purple” who was also a “jurist” in the kangaroo court “Russell Tribunal on Palestine,” believes that Israel is an apartheid state.
Majorities of American voters say their family will be worse off under the Affordable Care Act, and think it would be better to go back to the pre-ObamaCare health care system.
A Fox News poll released Wednesday finds that while 26 percent of voters say their health care situation will be better under the new law, twice as many — 53 percent — say it will be worse. Another 13 percent say it won’t make a difference.
Almost all Republicans (85 percent) and just over half of independents (51 percent) say they will be worse off under ObamaCare. Nearly half of Democrats expect to be better off (48 percent), while about one-quarter believe they will be worse off (24 percent).
Young voters and seniors are pessimistic about ObamaCare. Majorities of those under age 35 and those 65+ think things will be worse under the 2010 health care law.
That helps explains why a 56-percent majority wants to go back to the health care system that was in place in 2009. Some 34 percent would stick with the new law.
Scores of supporters of the English Defence League threw bottles at police and chanted anti-Muslim slogans in Woolwich hours after the murder of one man and the shooting of his two suspected assailants.
About 100 men, including some wearing balaclavas printed with “EDL”, engaged in running battles with police for less than an hour.
A police commander said officers cited section 60 of the Public Order Act, which allowed them to stop and search individuals within a specific area without evidence of a crime being committed.
EDL leader Tommy Robinson said: “They’re chopping our soldiers’ heads off. This is Islam. That’s what we’ve seen today. They’ve cut off one of our army’s heads off on the streets of London.
“Our next generation are being taught through schools that Islam is a religion of peace. It’s not. It never has been. What you saw today is Islam. Everyone’s had enough. There has to be a reaction, for the government to listen, for the police to listen, to understand how angry this British public are.”
The men congregated near Woolwich Arsenal station with flags bearing the cross of St George after plans for a protest were circulated on social media. Hundreds of police including riot police were stationed around Woolwich.
The first clashed began just after ten before the men were pursued and blocked in at a pub close to a local mosque.
Make no mistake: by criminalizing James Rosen of Fox News for asking government employees to give him information, the Obama administration is suppressing the ability of the press to do its job. It is so egregious that even the New York Times, normally sycophants for Obama, is alarmed. The editorial board today writes:
With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible “co-conspirator” in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.
And the Times, a member/owner of Associated Press, detects a pattern:
The Rosen case follows other signs that the administration has gone overboard in its zeal to find and muzzle insiders. The Associated Press revealed last week that the government had secretly seized two months’ worth of records for telephones used by the agency’s staff, partly to determine the source of a leak about a report involving a foiled terrorist plot in Yemen. At least two other major leak investigations are continuing. Six current and former administration officials have been indicted under the old Espionage Act for leaking classified information to the press and public. In 2010, a federal judge in Maryland sentenced a leaker to 20 months in jail while admitting that he was “in the dark as to the kind of documents” involved in the leak or what impact they had on national security.
Many conservatives have moved beyond caring what the Times thinks or writes. But the newspaper acts as a pilot fish for the rests of the media, so its position on this move toward authoritarianism is highly significant.
As the old saying goes, beware of Greeks bearing gifts; but as the new saying goes, beware even more of Republicans bearing bribes. In either case, one could get destroyed (or at least corrupted) from the inside by trusting the wrong people.
Since 2006, with the beginnings of the breakaway of populist conservatives from the national Republican Party via the Tea Party movement, the GOP has been trying to figure out how to co-opt and capture it once again, just as George W. Bush did with many elements of the conservative movement in the early years of the 21st century.
But with the unofficial (and official) rise of the Tea Party movement, this development has struck fear in the Washington establishment because it represents an intellectual challenge to the anti-intellectual status quo of the Democrats and the Big Government Republicans.
Dorothy Parker observed her own destructiveness and the “curling smoke” of the “burning bridges” of her escapades. The IRS and the Washington Establishment may have irreparably burned down the bridge of legitimacy granted it by the American people, and the national Republicans smell an opportunity in the curling smoke.
Men and women of the Establishment Republican Party like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who previously regarded the Tea Party Movement as something unpleasant and unsophisticated, are now trying to be their friends. That sound you just heard was thousands of Tea Party individuals choking with laughter at the thought of Susan Collins defending them. Same goes for Mitch McConnell and other majoritarian Republicans. Already well known is the GOP establishment had and has nothing but contempt for the Tea Party. As my grandfather used to say, “Cover your wallet,” as the GOP desperately tried to inject itself into the debate.