HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?


 

Raising some 'Cane'

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, December 18, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Hypocrisy: With workers losing jobs by the millions and taxpayers forced to rescue banks and carmakers, how does Nancy Pelosi's Congress show it cares? By giving themselves a big pay raise.
What a great time for taxpayers to give senators and congressmen a $2.5 million jump in their already bloated salaries. It's tough to get by on $217,400 a year if you're House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — even if, as the Washington Times reported, you funneled nearly $100,000 from your political action committee to your husband's business over a decade.
Last year, Pelosi supported a bill banning payments from PACs to congressional spouses, but that didn't stop her from doing it. Most members of Congress have to subsist on only $169,300 annually, so the $4,700 raise they're giving themselves next year should help keep them off food stamps.
It's hard to know where to start in expressing outrage. The last thing this Congress deserves is a raise. A new report from Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., found over $1 billion in taxpayer funding wasted on nonsense ranging from searching in vain for Alaskan ice worms to an airplane-shaped, nonworking gas station in Tennessee to nearly $300,000 for specialty potatoes for high-end restaurants.
Then there's the tone-deaf lack of empathy for working Americans lucky even to have a job, let alone get a raise.
Finally, there's the hypocritical insistence that people outside government who actually do productive work, like those running businesses, don't make too much. "We sent a message to Wall Street: The party is over," Pelosi crowed as Congress insisted on restrictions on executive pay in October.

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U.S. farmers fear tax on flatulent cows

MONTGOMERY, Ala.–For farmers, this stinks: Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if the federal government decides to charge fees for air-polluting animals.

Farmers so far are turning their noses up at the notion, which they contend is a possible consequence of an Environmental Protection Agency report after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases emitted by belching and flatulence amounts to air pollution.

"This is one of the most ridiculous things the federal government has tried to do," said Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, an outspoken opponent of the fees.

EPA officials insisted Friday that the lengthy, highly technical report, which mostly focuses on other sources of air pollution, does not include a proposal to tax livestock.

But the American Farm Bureau Federation said, based on federal agriculture department figures, it would require farms or ranches with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs to pay an annual fee of about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 for each hog.

The executive vice president of the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, Ken Hamilton, estimated the fee would cost owners of a modest-sized cattle ranch $30,000 to $40,000 a year. He said he has talked to a number of livestock owners about the proposals, and ``all have said if the fees were carried out, it would bankrupt them."
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Florida Department of Children & Families supervisor gets 17-year sentence for stealing public funds

20-year employee took $1.54 million designated for families in need

By Jon Burstein | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
November 21, 2008

For two decades, she worked for the state helping Florida's neediest. Colleagues considered her a mother figure. Bosses respected her. She got promotions.

No one noticed when Department of Children & Families supervisor Violet Jones started pilfering small chunks of money—no more than $900 at a time—from funds set aside for struggling families. And for three years, she kept tapping into public assistance funds, until she had swiped $1.54 million—enough to help feed 8,810 households for a month.

All of that stealing culminated Thursday in her receiving a 17-year prison sentence for acts described by a judge as unconscionable.

"It's really hard to get beyond how many people she impacted," said Broward Circuit Judge Eileen O'Connor. Jones' attorney argued that the money she stole was to feed a gambling addiction — a shame she kept hidden from even her closest family members. She gambled away almost all the money she took, he said.
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Wall Street Journal: Franken Stealing Election

Wednesday, November 12, 2008
By: Jim Meyers

Democrats won the White House and increased their majorities in the Senate and House, but “some in their party wouldn’t mind adding to their jackpot by stealing a Senate seat for left-wing joker Al Franken.”

That’s the thrust of an editorial in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal about the still unresolved race between Franken and incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman in Minnesota.

On the morning after Election Day, Republican Coleman led Franken by 725 votes. By that evening, his lead had shrunk to 477, and as of Tuesday, the margin was just 206 votes.

“This lopsided bleeding of Republican votes is passing strange considering that the official recount hasn’t even begun,” the Journal observed.

It’s not unusual that state officials, in double-checking the initial election results, would find and fix errors. What is unusual is that nearly every “fix” has gone in favor of Franken.
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Report clears Palin in Alaska's Troopergate probe

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — This time, Gov. Sarah Palin can claim vindication against allegations that she abused her power in office by firing her public safety commissioner.

Palin — running mate of Republican presidential candidate John McCain — violated no ethics laws, according to a report released by the state personnel board on the eve of Election Day. An earlier, separate investigation by the Legislature found that Palin had abused her office.

"There is no probable cause to believe that the governor, or any other state official, violated the Alaska Executive Ethics Act in connection with these matters," the personnel board's report said.

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Palin's work has gotten state closer to oil pipeline


By Kay Cashman
Anchorage, Alaska

Since Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was selected as Sen. John McCain's running mate for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, she has taken some major media hits from critics who say she had not gotten a gas pipeline for Alaska.

I say she has come closer than any other governor to making a pipeline from Alaska's North Slope to market a reality.

In her first two years in office two major North Slope oil producers, BP and ConocoPhillips, decided to build their own gas pipeline without any upfront guarantee of fiscal concessions from the state of Alaska.

TransCanada, a major North American pipeline company, was right behind them with $500 million in state matching funds that would either result in a completed pipeline or a valuable certificate of convenience and necessity from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that would belong to the state if TransCanada pulled out.

This summer both potential pipeline owners started field work necessary for permitting and designing a line. Both the TC Alaska and Denali projects will soon have hundreds of millions of dollars into them, making curtailment less likely, and merging more likely.

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Preserving the Brilliant Dance Called Freedom

By Janet Lynn
 

Olympic ice skater and former Eagle Forum Homemaker of the Year


"You don't know what freedom is," I was told by a former Soviet Olympic champion after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He proclaimed that "freedom is having everything given to you," adding, "so you can become great like me."

Barack Obama's mantra of "change" eerily echoes the statement, "Freedom is having everything given to you."

And that eerie echo has prompted related memories to emerge in me.

During the Cold War, I represented United States Figure Skating in two Olympic games and six World Championships. Performing numerous times behind the Iron Curtain showed me that a people whose government "gives" them everything are not free.

Long before the Berlin Wall fell, I was among United States athletes aboard an airplane traveling home from the former Soviet Union. In transit, we were bombarded with Soviet propaganda by a mysterious man. He tried to persuade us to accept socialist ideas he attributed to Karl Marx-- who taught, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Centralized government has power to meet all needs through high taxes, he said. Free health care, free education at government schools, equal paying jobs and housing for everyone are promises of equality.

Idealism tempted me. However, my glimpses of oppression and fear behind the Iron Curtain prevented me from ever embracing Marxism. Tens of millions of people who disagreed with these "utopian visions" were killed or sentenced to labor camps. Humanity has paid a hideous price for the ideas of Marx as they have marched through history.

Behind the Iron Curtain we were constantly monitored. While on a tour, I saw people standing in the bitter cold in a long line hoping to get bread for dinner. A state-run grocery store proudly shown to our group was almost empty of food. Roads had little traffic because only certain people were allowed to drive cars. I witnessed a young couple hiding in an armoire white with fear that government officials would find them talking to Westerners.

Information was controlled. Religion was banished. Private property was eliminated. We were shown imposing walls with towers and searchlights. Dogs and armed guards were poised to catch people who might try to flee for freedom and hope for a better life. I wondered why a government would have to threaten its people who were "given everything."

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Success of 'Fireproof' shows appetite for Christian films

Fireproof, a Christian film released by Franklin-based Provident Films and Sony Pictures, proved itself a force to be reckoned with last weekend.

It was the weekend's fourth-best-selling movie in the nation, earning $6.5 million and outpacing the star-studded casts of movies such as Burn After Reading, according to Encino, Calif.-based box office tracking firm Media By Numbers.

Analysts said it's a sign there's a strong appetite for more faith-based films.

"Nobody saw it coming," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media by Numbers, adding it proves faith-based audiences "really vote with their dollars to support films that reflect their beliefs."

Fireproof stars Kirk Cameron of TV show Growing Pains as a firefighter who rescues people daily but who has trouble saving his own marriage. After some advice from his father, the firefighter turns to God for guidance.

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ACORN, Obama, and the Mortgage Mess

By Mona Charen 

The financial markets were teetering on the edge of an abyss last week. The secretary of the Treasury was literally on his knees begging the speaker of the House not to sabotage the bailout bill. The crash of falling banks made the earth tremble. The Republican presidential candidate suspended his campaign to deal with the crisis. And amid all this, the Democrats in Congress managed to find time to slip language into the bailout legislation that would provide a dandy little slush fund for ACORN.

ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a busy hive of left-wing agitation and "direct action" that claims chapters in 50 cities and 100,000 dues-paying members. ACORN is where Sixties leftovers who couldn't get tenure at universities wound up. That the bill-writing Democrats remembered their pet clients during such an emergency speaks volumes. This attempted gift to ACORN (stripped out of the bill after outraged howls from Republicans) demonstrates how little Democrats understand about what caused the mess we're in.

ACORN does many things under the umbrella of "community organizing." They agitate for higher minimum wages, attempt to thwart school reform, try to unionize welfare workers (that is, those welfare recipients who are obliged to work in exchange for benefits) and organize voter registration efforts (always for Democrats, of course). Because they are on the side of righteousness and justice, they aren't especially fastidious about their methods. In 2006, for example, ACORN registered 1,800 new voters in Washington. The only trouble was, with the exception of six, all of the names submitted were fake. The secretary of state called it the "worst case of election fraud in our state's history." As Fox News reported:

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Barack Obama's "Freedom of Choice Act" Would Mean 125K More Abortions

With so much attention on the economy, one area of federal legislation that can be overlooked is abortion. An old and dangerous bill that will increase abortions by an enormous amount is being resurrected by abortion advocates: the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). H.R. 1964 and S.1173.

FOCA is usually reported as “codifying Roe v. Wade,” but it is much more. Since the Webster and Casey decisions in 1989 and 1992, the Supreme Court has allowed states to limit abortion somewhat by such things as requiring parental involvement and informed consent, prohibiting government funding of most abortion, and more recently outlawing most partial birth abortions.

But FOCA tolerates none of this. Advocates and opponents of FOCA all agree that the bill would nullify every legal limit on abortion, state, federal or otherwise. Americans United for Life, as well as the Family Research Council, explain this fact in great detail. Abortion advocates who want FOCA concur: NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and FOCA sponsor Senator Barbara Boxer all contend that FOCA will strike down all state pro-life laws.

The shockwaves that FOCA would cause are immense and wide-ranging, but recent research shows one effect in particular. Certain state laws that are doomed under FOCA actually prevent a statistically significant number of abortions. These laws include parental involvement requirements, informed consent laws, and restrictions on government funding of abortions.

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Accusations That Gov. Sarah Palin Charged Victims for Rape Kits Proven False

At least since September 8 the extreme left has been pushing a lie that Governor, then Mayor, Sarah Palin "charged rape victims for rape kits" performed upon them in the Alaskan town of Wasilla.

The charge stems from a May 22, 2000 article in the local Wasilla paper The Frontiersman and has been spun from a comment made by the Wasilla Police Chief. This comment was somehow made into a Sarah Palin policy.

Evidence of the incident, though, shows no involvement by Palin at all. Still, many Old Media outlets continue to keep illegitimately linking this rape kit billing claim to Sarah Palin, even though the truth is easily discovered.

As mentioned, first up was The Frontiersman story from 2000.

In that story Police Chief Fannon was quoted as standing against legislation that would force local municipalities to pick up the costs of rape kits being performed. In the interview Fannon said that, upon conviction, he favored the criminals being charged for the costs.

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Boys Punished with detention for refusing to pray to Allah

Boys punished with detention for refusing to pray to Allah
Two seventh-grade boys were given detention and their classmates forced to miss their scheduled refreshment break when the pair refused to kneel and pray to Allah during a religious studies class.
Outraged parents called the punishment of the boys for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration at Alsager High School near Stoke-on-Trent, UK, of how Muslims' worship Allah a breach of their human rights.
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Fatherlessness and same-sex parenting

For the last 35 years there have been hundreds and hundreds of studies examining the long-term impact on children of being raised without fathers.  That's because fatherlessness has become a phenomenon not primarily due to the gay movement, but due to the impact of heterosexual divorce and other forms of heterosexual misbehavior." 
The research points to long-term ill effects in almost every aspect of children's lives.  "There's lower educational attainment, poor physical health, earlier sexual activity, increased cigarette smoking, increased criminality, lower financial attainment later in life.  There are even studies which show that the absence of fathers has an effect into the next generation."
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Abortion Drug Deaths RU 486

Another study suggests Planned Parenthood is at fault in the deaths of women in the United States from the abortion drug RU 486. The abortion business had been telling women to use the drug in a different way than the FDA guidelines suggested and the study shows it contributed to the deaths.
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