http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2013/02/04/oppose-brennan-for-cia-director/ To cut to the chase, a country that was serious about its national security would never put John Brennan in charge of its premier intelligence service. Of course, it is by no means clear that the United States is any longer a serious country in this regard. Serious countries do not fund, arm and […]
http://www.themetropolitain.ca/articles/view/1235 I am a Métis from Northern Alberta. My father, Mervin Bellerose, co-authored the Métis Settlements Act of 1989, which was passed by the Alberta legislature in 1990 and cemented our land rights. I founded Canadians For Accountability, a native rights advocacy group, and I am an organizer and participant in the Idle No More […]
http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6044 President Obama has probably put the Secret Service on this one, and the FBI, the CIA and the D.C. cops, too. Who came up with that really dumb idea of putting out an official White House photograph of the president stalking clay pigeons with his shotgun? Maybe it was the campaign consultant who gave […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323807004578284314085002042.html Once upon a time, a Republican senator from Nebraska spoke up for the right of mediocrities to occupy eminent positions of public trust. “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers,” said Sen. Roman Hruska in 1970 as a defense of G. Harrold Carswell, Richard Nixon’s […]
http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/02/03/did-the-wrong-mccain-school-hagel-on-the-middle-east-video/
The wrong McCain may have had the job of taking Senator Chuck Hagel to school on the Middle East. Senator John McCain earned plenty of headlines for his questioning of Hagel but did he teach Hagel anything about Israel and the Middle East?
Setting aside the question of whether Hagel has the ability to absorb the truths about the neighborhood that Israel lives in, this could have been a teachable moment for Hagel and many Americans who often do not grasp that Israel’s neighbors are not friendly Canadians.
That John McCain is a strong friend of Israel is not debatable, but the fact is that John’s younger brother Joe McCain may understand more about Israel’s precarious circumstances.
Joe McCain is a former newspaper reporter and U.S. Navy veteran. In the wake of the September 11 Islamic terrorist attacks on America Joe McCain’s views on Israel first came to public attention.
On April 19, 2002 at an Orthodox synagogue called Nusach Hari B’nai Zion in St. Louis Joe McCain gave a talk that was titled “Never Again.”
Joe McCain observed “The irony goes unnoticed — while we are hammering away to punish those who brought the horrors of last September here, we restrain the Israelis from the same retaliation. Not the same thing, of course — We are We, They are They. While we mourn and seethe at September 11th, we don’t notice that Israel has a September 11th sometimes every day.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4340529,00.html Immediately after the results of the recent Israeli elections were announced, many commentators were quick to point out that there was a near 60-60 tie between the two main blocs. Although it’s true that the additional seat given to Habayit Hayehudi after the final votes were counted changed the apparent deadlock, the perception of […]
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Under pressure from religious and conservative groups, the Obama administration has offered another compromise on the issue of birth control coverage within the Affordable Care Act. While exempting churches and some religiously affiliated institutions, such as hospitals and universities, from supplying the coverage, the new proposal calls for their employees to receive stand-alone private insurance policies providing birth control coverage at no cost. Insurance companies will foot the bill, but only the naive can possibly think the cost won’t find its way back to the institution in the form of higher health premiums.
Numerous lawsuits filed against this and other portions of “Obamacare” will proceed and for good reason: the federal government seems intent on setting rules on matters of conscience and worse, defining what constitutes a church, or religious institution.
One of the litigants is Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores, whose CEO, David Green, is an evangelical Christian. Green says, “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.” That mandate includes, in addition to contraceptive coverage in employees’ health care, “preventive services,” including “morning-after” pills and other drugs, which Green considers abortifacients. After Hobby Lobby’s appeal to Justice Sonia Sotomayor was rejected, the Christian Post reports the company then made plans to “…shift the beginning of its employee health plan to temporarily avoid $1.3 million a day in fines for each day since Jan. 1 that it did not comply with the Affordable Care Act.” (According to the new health care law, businesses with more than 50 employees that refuse to comply can be fined by the IRS $100 per day per employee.) Hobby Lobby’s appeals continue.
The core issue as I see it — and there are others — is whether the government has the right to define a church as a building in which people congregate on Sundays and whether a private company headed by a religious person qualifies for conscience exemptions. For government to decide such things violates the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment, which state “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” and appears to put the state in the position of supreme authority and arbiter of what constitutes “legitimate” religious faith and practice. The Supreme Court will likely have to resolve its constitutionality.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/world/europe/europe-await-report-on-bulgaria-bombing-for-hezbollah-link.html SOFIA, Bulgaria — A meeting of top government officials and security personnel of this small Balkan country on Tuesday could have wide-reaching repercussions for Europe’s uneasy détente with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Expectations are rising that Bulgarian officials will confirm a link between Hezbollah and the suicide bombing in July 2012 that killed […]
To Grill or Not To Grill an Infidel — on The Glazov Gang
by Frontpagemag.com
Egypt’s al-Azhar University issues a book teaching kids how to kill and eat the unbelievers.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/politichick-warrior-unmasks-suhail-khan-on-the-glazov-gang/
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3572/islam-apostasy-death The West refuses to be concerned; and when its citizens are concerned, they are suppressed. They are sued, assaulted, threatened with deportation and sometimes murdered. The most influential Sunni leader in the Middle East has just admitted what many of us who grew up as Muslims in the Middle East have always known: that […]
