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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

She also believes that the world is run by shape-shifting reptilian aliens who practice mind control from the Moon.

I’m not sure which opinion is more bizarre.

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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.

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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.

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Rioters have lit fires and stoned emergency services in the suburbs of Stockholm for the third night in a row after a man was shot dead by police.

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.

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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.

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A lesbian couple in Texas is claiming discrimination after a judge told the pair they legally could not live together. Carolyn Compton and Page Price have been sharing a household with Compton’s two daughters, ages 10 and 13. But the judge said Price would have to move out, because of a “morality clause” in the divorce papers Compton signed when she ended her 11-year heterosexual marriage, the Dallas Morning News reports. The fairly common clause forbids either parent from having romantic partners stay overnight while their kids are home.

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After a week of revelations about government spying on reporters and the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservatives, most voters feel “like the federal government has gotten out of control and is threatening the basic civil liberties of Americans.”

At the same time, a new Fox News poll finds disapproval of President Obama’s job performance is above 50 percent for the first time in a year, his honesty rating is at a new low and half of voters already think he’s a lame-duck.

More than two-thirds of voters — 68 percent — feel the government is out of control and threatening their civil liberties.   About one quarter disagree (26 percent).

Nearly half of Democrats (47 percent), as well as large numbers of independents (76 percent) and Republicans (87 percent) feel Uncle Sam is taking liberties with their liberties.

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The IRS scandal provides Republicans and conservatives with the opportunity to repeal and replace Obamacare now. The House Republican majority should refuse to fund the expansion of the IRS necessary to manage Obamacare. Without that funding, and hiring thousands of additional agents, the IRS cannot even begin to manage Obamacare.

President Obama may throw a fit. He may refuse to sign funding bills to keep the federal government open. No matter. Let him close his government down if he wants. Nobody wants the IRS playing political games with their health care and health records, like it did with the constitutional rights to freedom of speech and Equal Protection of Tea Party and conservative organizations. Contribute to the Republican Party? Attend a Tea Party protest? Good luck getting your Obamacare health insurance tax credit application approved. Good luck finding a doctor the government will pay to do that operation your kid needs.

Obama can flail away all he wants. The public will now back the Republicans in this fight, just as it did in the sequester battle. But won’t the public feel that the Republicans would be irresponsible to just refuse to fund Obamacare, leaving the health system in chaos?

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While national polls haven’t shown a shift in the public’s opinion of President Barack Obama’s performance, recent controversies have, in my view, significantly changed the political landscape.

And changes in the landscape have led the Rothenberg Political Report to change its Senate ratings.

For the past few years, the public’s focus has been on Republicans’ opposition to the president’s agenda, their desire to shrink (even cripple) government and their conservatism. But the IRS scandal, along with controversies involving the attack in Benghazi and the Justice Department’s collecting of journalists’ telephone records, has change the political narrative.

While the Oklahoma tornado tragedy will dominate media coverage for the next few days, the new political narrative that will re-emerge when journalists return to politics involves questions about what the administration knew, said and did.

The new focus on the Obama administration puts it on the defensive and should boost enthusiasm on the political right throughout this year.

While we don’t know how long the focus will stay on the administration — or whether Republicans will stumble over the investigations or matters of public policy — between now and the November midterms, it is undeniable that recent events have altered, at least for now, the trajectory of the 2014 elections.

Given the different natures of midterm electorates, the new political narrative increases the risk for Democratic candidates in red states, where Democrats must win independent and, in many cases, Republican voters to be successful.

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The Pew Research Center’s latest survey on Europeans’ attitudes toward EU politics and economics brings across one message loud and clear: Europeans are not happy. People from every major country report extreme dissatisfaction with the economy and their political leaders. Increasingly, they also share a sense that the European Union and economic integration were mistakes for their countries: only 45 percent now view the EU favorably, down from 60 percent in 2012.

The one notable exception is Germany, whose people remain the most optimistic about the European project. Despite Germans’ hand-wringing about their spendthrift neighbors, they gave the EU a 60 percent approval rating, with 54 percent believing that economic integration has strengthened their economy. This may have something to do with the fact that Germans think the EU offers the best chance for controlling reckless spending by their neighbors; Germany is the only country where support for giving Brussels more power is over 50 percent.

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The chief judge of the District’s federal court issued an unusual order Wednesday, apologizing to the public and the media for not making certain court documents widely available online.

The gesture of transparency by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth comes at a time when the Obama administration is under scrutiny for an unprecedented number of leak investigations, including one showing that the Justice Department had secretly probed the news-gathering activities of Fox News reporter James Rosen.

The investigation of Rosen was first reported Monday, after The Washington Post obtained court documents containing details of the case. A federal judge had ordered the documents unsealed in November 2011, but they were kept sealed for 18 months and not posted on the court’s online docket until last week, after The Post inquired about them.

Lamberth blamed a series of administrative errors and said a review of the “performance of the personnel involved is underway.” He also said he was creating a new category on the court’s Web site where all search and arrest warrants will be made public unless they fall under a separate sealing order.

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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.

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J. Russell George paused for just a moment before he took his seat at the witness table. He wanted to take it all in. The Treasury inspector general whose audit of the IRS had set off a national firestorm had been in this very room before—three decades earlier.

That was back when George was a precocious teenager who had worked his way onto the staff of then-Sen. Bob Dole, the powerful Republican chairman of the vaunted Finance Committee. Then, he’d sorted mail and made carbon copies. Now, he was about to testify before the same panel, to present the findings of an explosive audit that found wayward tax agents who had targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

“I could never have dreamed [about this] as a 17, 18-year-old,” George said in a wide-ranging interview with National Journal, one of his first since the audit. “It’s kind of moving for me in that regard.”

Two heads have already rolled in the scandal. One of them, the outgoing acting commissioner of the IRS, Steven Miller, was seated next to George. Pictures of the two of them, their right hands raised, taking the oath, ran in papers across the nation after the scandal’s first congressional hearing last week.

All the attention was new, but George has operated in these halls of power his entire career. He worked for Dole, and then in President George H.W. Bush’s White House. In between, he attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1988 alongside a young Michelle Obama (then Michelle Robinson).

They weren’t in the same section—the academic groupings that Harvard uses to divide its students—but George said they traveled in some of the same social circles, including the Black Law Students Association.

“I think he actually dated Michelle at one point,” said former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, who worked with George when he was staff director for a House oversight subcommittee in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“That is overstating it,” George said. But the two students did socialize in group settings. “Michelle was a lovely person, and down to earth,” he said. “…The BLSA went out for pizza; we would go out together.”

He paused, for a beat. “Don’t get me in trouble,” George said.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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This administration’s management of the Obama Internal Revenue Service scandal so far consists of a slow-walking, rolling disclosure of facts; equal parts equivocation, amnesia and indignation from IRS witnesses; deer-in-the-headlights non-responses by the White House press secretary; parsed, lawyerly statements from the president himself; and now one of the central key players is taking the Fifth. And all this comes from what the president claimed would be the “most transparent administration ever…”

If we give the president the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows the truth is going to come out, the question remains: Does the administration appoint the special prosecutor sooner or later? The calculus inside the White House is how to best protect the president’s political interests. They have two options. They could delay the appointment and let more of the story develop, weather the ugly piecemeal disclosures, give the players time to get their stories straight and lawyer-up and hope Republicans continue their overreach, giving the whole affair a nutty partisan patina. Or, they could accelerate the appointment of a special prosecutor, thereby slowing the congressional inquiries and giving Jay Carney some relief from his daily embarrassing routine by supplying him with the escape hatch of not being allowed to comment on matters associated with the special prosecutor’s ongoing investigation. Not to mention, the White House all the while could blast the appointed counsel as a partisan ideologue à la the hatchet job that was done on Ken Starr.

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Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was applauded at a congressional hearing Wednesday, after he objected to Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner pleading the Fifth Amendment and refusing to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

After invoking her right to avoid self-incrimination, Lerner, the head of the tax-exempt division of the IRS, was dismissed from the hearing, which is examining the agency’s inappropriate targeting of conservative groups.

After giving a brief opening statement — in which she said she did nothing wrong — then refusing to answer any questions, Lerner was dismissed by Committee Chairman Darryl Issa (R-Calif.), who said he had “no choice” but to respect her constitutional right.

Gowdy objected.

“Mr. [Elijah] Cummings [D-Md.] said we should run this like a courtroom, and I agree with him. She just testified,” Gowdy said.  “She just waived her Fifth Amendment right to privilege, you don’t get to tell your side of the story then not be subjected to cross examination.

“That’s not the way it works.

“She waived her right to Fifth Amendment privilege by issuing an opening statement,” he said.  “She ought to stand here and answer our questions.”

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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)

The head of a local “youth group” is very upset:

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A recent military report on sexual assault in the military shocked many in Washington and around the nation, but a leading expert on military personnel revealed the prevalence of men assaulting other men is one of the major headlines in this study.

The extended analysis of the report first appeared in Monday’s edition of the the Washington Times.

The Defense Department survey of sexual assault in the military during fiscal 2012 estimated 26,000 assaults took place in the armed forces. Nearly 3,000 of them were formally reported. Just more than 6 percent of women reported being victims of assault and 1.2 percent of men said the same. Given the much larger number of men in the military, those numbers suggest 14,000 of the assaults in the Pentagon study happened to men.

Among the assaults formally reported, 88 percent of reports came from women and 12 percent from men. The numbers are getting dramatically worse.

“The number of reports of sexual assaults among military personnel have actually increased by 129 percent since 2004,” said Center for Military Readiness President Elaine Donnelly, who pointed out the number of formal reports of sexual assault jumped from 1,275 to 2,949 in just eight years.

She told WND when factoring in civilians working for or around the military, the increase in that time is 98 percent.

Women are identified as the attacker in just two percent of all assaults, meaning most men who suffer assault are targeted by other men.

“So we’ve got a male-on-male problem here. The Department of Defense doesn’t want to comment on this. They know that the numbers are there. They say that they care, but all the attention is usually given to the female members of the military who are subjected to sexual assault,” Donnelly said.

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The Democratic Party’s edge over the GOP on who the public trusts more on ethics and corruption issues has flipped in the wake of the IRS and Benghazi scandals, according to Rasmussen Reports.

Not only do voters trust Republicans more now, they have their highest level of confidence in the GOP and the lowest level in Democrats in seven months.

While the Democrats had an eight-point “trust advantage” over Republicans a month ago, Rasmussen’s latest poll said that edge has disappeared and now the GOP has a two-point advantage.

“With growing questions about Benghazi and actions taken by the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department, Democrats’ noticeable edge over Republicans in voter trust in the area of government ethics and corruption has disappeared,” said Rasmussen.

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The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday afternoon that Lois Lerner, who heads up the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt division, plans to invoke the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in a hearing Wednesday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs.

The Fifth Amendment provides that U.S. citizens may not be compelled to offer testimony if telling the truth would incriminate them.

Lerner’s defense lawyer, William W. Taylor III, wrote to the committee on Tuesday that his client would refuse to answer questions related to what she knew about the extra levels of scrutiny applied to conservative nonprofit organizations that applied for tax-exempt status beginning in 2010.

The thoughtful Carl Cannon has written a piece, “Richard Milhous Obama,” concluding that our current president has more in common with our 37th than President Obama’s partisans would like to acknowledge. The estimable Victor Davis Hanson has weighed in, defending against liberal dissents the proposition that “Nixon Is a Fair Comparison” with Obama.

I protest. Will no one stand up for Richard Nixon? Richard Nixon was a combat veteran, a staunch and brave anti-Communist, a man who took on the liberal establishment and at times his own party’s as well, a leader who often thought for himself and had the courage of his convictions, a president who assembled a first-rate Cabinet and one who—while flawed both in character and in policy judgment—usually tried to confront the real problems and deal with challenges of his times. Richard Nixon led neither the country nor his own administration from behind.

I worked for Richard Nixon (well, I worked for two months in the Nixon White House in 1970 as a summer intern). I voted for Richard Nixon (in 1972, my first vote, against George McGovern—and one about which I have no regrets). I knew Richard Nixon (very slightly—I met him on a few occasions in groups in the late 1970s and the 1980s, and then a couple of times when I worked for Vice President Quayle). And so I feel obliged to rise to Richard Nixon’s defense, and to say, with all due respect, to our current president: Barack Obama, you’re no Richard Nixon.

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Scientists now say the world stopped heating up in 1998. The BBC reported:

Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term.

Since 1998, there has been an unexplained “standstill” in the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades.

But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly.

The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years now. Earlier this year, the UK Met Office lowered their five-year temperature forecast.

But this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures in both the short-term and long-term.

An international team of researchers looked at how the last decade would impact long-term, equilibrium climate sensitivity and the shorter term climate response.

h/t Gateway Pundit

While many Americans were tuned into news coverage of the massive damage from  tornadoes ravaging the state of Oklahoma, Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon  Whitehouse took to the Senate floor to rail against his Republican colleagues  for denying the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Whitehouse spent 15 minutes chastising GOP senators and justified his remarks  by alluding to states that seek federal assistance in the wake of natural  disasters.

“So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why  do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run  off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace  ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this  together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and  wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of  dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing  doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with  floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with  dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.”

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The scandals of the Obama administration seem to be hurting not just the White House but MSNBC as well while Fox News Channel scored its second-best week of the year. After double-digit gains during last year’s presidential election, May 13-17 saw the progressive-aligned “Lean Forward” news network hit new lows as the IRS scandal erupted and revelations that the Justice Department secretly obtained AP records became public. With 350,000 viewers on average and 94,000 among the adults 25-54 demo, MSNBC had its least-watched and lowest-rated total-day results of the year last week. That was also the lowest total-day demo result the network has had since the week of June 26-July 2, 2006,

Last week’s total day results were down 17% in viewers and 22% among the demo from the comparable May 14 to May 18 week of last year. In primetime, the numbers were even worse for MSNBC as a steady decline from the beginning of the year continued. The network had 570,000 total viewers and 159,000 in the demo from 8 PM to 11 PM from May 13 to May 17, 2013. That’s the lowest rated week of the year so far for MSNBC in terms of viewers and the third lowest of 2013 in the demo. The week of May 6 to May 12 was worst in the demo with 148,000 viewers when the network had 604,000 viewers on average. These latest results come as the news network’s recently launched and struggling All In With Chris Hayes hit a new viewership of 396,000 and its second lowest demo audience of just 88,000 on May 14. It also comes on the heels of MSNBC falling in April ratings from its second place ranking of the year before.

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With new reports today that the Obama Department of Justice leaked documents intended to smear a whistleblower in the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal, it is now more obvious than ever that this administration has, in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) created a “culture of intimidation” that stretches from the White House down to myriad agencies of the executive branch.

President Obama: From his language suggesting targeting of enemies to his officials’ attempts to castigate Tea Partiers as economic terrorists, President Obama has presided over an administration that sees his political opponents as unworthy and nasty. Early in his administration, Obama threatened CEOs of banks, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” Whether he’s urging supporters to bring guns to a fight or suggesting that his enemies are in thrall to the gun lobby at the expense of children, President Obama’s tactics of intimidation have become commonplace. The Obama campaign singled out Mitt Romney donors for special censure, suggesting that they were lawbreakers. Not coincidentally, many of those donors ended up on the wrong end of Obama administration legal scrutiny, including megadonors like Frank Vandersloot.

Department of Justice: Today’s report from the Department of Justice Inspector General, showing that former US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked documents intended to smear a whistleblower in Fast and Furious, are only the latest revelation on misconduct from DOJ. The DOJ has also targeted Fox News reporter James Rosen over leaks from State Department employee Stephen Jin-Woo Kim; according to Megyn Kelly, two other Fox News staffers; the Associated Press, over a story regarding CIA investigations into al-Qaeda; Gallup, shortly after the polling firm showed Mitt Romney with a substantial lead over Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential race; and True the Vote, an organization dedicated to stopping voter fraud. The Eric Holder Department of Justice has been the lead enforcement arm of the Obama agenda, going after Arizona’s immigration law and refusing to go after New Black Panther voter intimidation. The DOJ reportedly uses the non-profit group Media Matters to disseminate its talking points.

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Remember Obama and Eric Holder’s attack on Gibson Guitars? Back in 2009 the Obama regime raided Gibson Guitars and demanded that its woodwork labor be done overseas. The original excuse by the Obama regime for their raid on Gibson Guitars was ‘environmental concerns.’ Court documents however, revealed that the raid and legal hassles were from a non-environmental question — which country is working on the wood?

That’s right, the Obama regime wanted the ‘fingerboards’ produced outside the U.S. In something that was overlooked at the time but makes a lot more sense now, the Gibson Guitars CEO Henry E. Juszkiewicz is a Republican donor.

When the BS about the ‘wood’ came up as an excuse from the Obama regime to attack Gibson Guitars, the corrupt media never mentioned that Gibson’s competitors used the exact same wood and faced no problems from the government.

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A shocking story is coming out of Everson, Washington, where a pre-teen was raped,  impregnated and coerced into aborting her child.

The girl’s attacker brought her to Planned Parenthood, where she lied about how she was impregnated and subsequently had an abortion.

It was August 2012 when the preteen told clinic workers that her 14-year-old boyfriend was the baby’s father — a lie that was apparently told to protect the adult male who had perpetrated the crime.

It wasn’t until six weeks later that she told authorities what really happened. As a result, in April, Luis Gonztalez-Jose, 31, pleaded guilty to second-degree rape of a child.

The horrific incident apparently occurred at a home in Whatcom County, while her mother was in the shower, reports The Bellingham Herald. Gonzalez-Jose will serve nearly seven years in prison as a result of the crime and will be deported upon release.

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He’s compared himself to Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, evoked nostalgia for John F. Kennedy, sought to emulate Ronald Reagan, (belatedly) praised George W. Bush, and enlisted the assistance of Bill Clinton in his 2012 re-election effort, but as his second term stumbles along, the president with whom Barack Obama finds himself being compared is Richard M. Nixon.

My father, Lou Cannon, covered the White House with distinction for the Washington Post for many years, beginning in the Nixon administration. He employed an easy rule of thumb when fielding phone calls from anonymous tipsters:

If the caller said, “I have a story that will make Watergate look like a picnic,” Dad would hang up on him.

In the past week, Nixon’s name has been invoked often, and not in a way that pleases the current president or his loyalists. Unless it’s a reference to his dramatic 1972 visit to China, Nixon is not the president any of his successors enjoy being likened to — especially when the suffix “gate” is attached to it.

Barack Obama was only 13 years old when Nixon resigned from office one step ahead of the posse. This is old enough to know that correlations between himself and the 37th president should be contested, which Obama has done.

“I’ll let you guys engage in those comparisons,” he replied when asked at a rainy Rose Garden appearance Thursday how he felt about the Nixon parallel. “You can go ahead and read the history, I think, and draw your own conclusions.”

This response echoed language employed earlier in the week by Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney. “I can tell you,” the White House press secretary told reporters, “that the people who make those kinds of comparisons need to check their history.”

A new poll found that Americans by a large margin believe that Congress is not overreacting to the burgeoning scandals plaguing the Obama administration.

A CNN/ORC poll found that 54 percent of Americans don’t believe that Congress is overreacting to the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups, while 42 percent said that it is. By an even larger margin, 59 percent to 37 percent, respondents said Congress is making the right moves on the administration’s actions regarding the Benghazi terror attack.

The poll came as White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer made the round of Sunday talk shows, defending President Barack Obama against charges that he was unaware of the IRS scandal until hearing press reports.

“Here’s the cardinal rule … for all White Houses,” Pfeiffer said. “You do not interfere in an independent investigation, and you do not do anything to give off the appearance of interference in an independent investigation.”

Pfeiffer said Obama learned about the IRS scandal on May 10, the same day as the public, even though Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, were aware of the probe earlier and alert the White House about it while the investigation was ongoing.

The White House might not have ordered Internal Revenue agents to target conservative groups, but a “culture of intimidation throughout the administration” made them think it was acceptable, says Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Under President Obama, “justice” is anything but blind. Neither is it deaf. In fact, based on recent revelations, it appears to be watching your every move and listening to your every word. Still, if you happen to be a federal employee, now it’s even listening for your silence.

The only thing this Obama White House seems to generate is scandal. Well, here’s yet another to add to the growing list. In addition to the Benghazi cover-up, IRS targeting of political dissenters and the illegal seizure of media phone records, whistleblowers within DOJ have contacted Liberty Counsel to express grave concerns over this administration’s latest attack on freedom.

Our sources have provided Liberty Counsel an internal DOJ document titled: “LGBT Inclusion at Work: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers.” It was emailed to DOJ managers in advance of the left’s so-called “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month.”

The document is chilling. It’s riddled with directives that grossly violate – prima facie –employees’ First Amendment liberties.

Following are excerpts from the “DOJ Pride” decree. When it comes to “LGBT” employees, managers are instructed:

“DON’T judge or remain silent. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval.” (Italics mine)

That’s a threat.

And not even a subtle one.

Got it? For Christians and other morals-minded federal employees, it’s no longer enough to just shut up and “stay in the closet” – to live your life in silent recognition of biblical principles (which, by itself, is unlawful constraint). When it comes to mandatory celebration of homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors, “silence will be interpreted as disapproval.”

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By A Marine Infantry Officer

Note: The opinions stated are my own and in no way represent the policy or opinion of the United States Marine Corps or the Armed Forces of the United States.

As our military moves into its second decade of fighting overseas, some in the media and on Capitol Hill have shamefully managed to both cover up an actual scandal over the death of four Americans in Benghazi and at the same time manufacture a scandal through their outrage over reports of sexual assault in the military.  With barely contained vitriol, editorials, news articles, and political speeches have recently described these reports as an “epidemic.”  Top military leaders have been berated and slandered for “failing to understand the problem” and for creating a culture of rape by getting “their buddies” off the hook as a matter of policy.  American servicemen have even been outrageously and insultingly labeled more dangerous to their fellow women-in-arms than the enemy in combat.

Do sexual assaults occur in the uniformed services?  Absolutely.  Just like they do in every other sphere of the civilian world.  Do they happen in higher proportion?  Absolutely not.  In fact, the numbers prove the opposite.  Yet with no understanding of military life and culture, Washington politicians and journalists have condemned American servicemen as savages and sexual predators without digging into the facts.

The current controversy over sexual assaults began on May 5, 2013, after an Air Force lieutenant colonel, who happened to be in charge of the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) program, was charged with groping a woman in a parking lot while drunk.  Two days later, the Pentagon released the results of a survey, which estimated that 26,000 service members had experienced “unwanted sexual contact,” a 30-percent increase over the 2010 estimate of 19,600.

Let’s start with the Air Force lt. colonel.  First, his behavior, if proven true, was reprehensible and unbecoming of an officer in the U.S. Armed Forces.  He should be court-martialed and discharged from the military immediately.  However, his conduct did not occur in uniform or in the line of duty.  He was drunk in a parking lot in Arlington, not on a base or deployed in a combat zone.  So while horrible, it is no different from any other civilian sexual assault and unrelated to the statistics of sexual assault in the military.  Yes, he was the leader of the Air Force’s SAPR office.  Bill Clinton was the head of the Democratic Party, yet the sexual assault accusations against him were not reflective of the Democratic Party as a whole.  Neither were Anthony Weiner’s or Eliot Spitzer’s sexually deviant behaviors.

With regard to the Pentagon’s recent sexual assault survey, there is and should be zero tolerance for sexual assaults in the military, and we must strive to eliminate the crime from the ranks.  But before we condemn the military as a whole, let’s put the numbers in perspective.  The survey estimates that 26,000 service members experienced “unwanted sexual contact.”  Currently, there are 1.4 million active-duty service members in the United States Military, which means that the survey’s estimate of 26,000 equals roughly 2 percent of the United States Military.  The survey further clarifies that of the 26,000 service members, 12,100 were women and 13,900 were men, which means that 6.1 percent of women (out of 200,000 female service members) and 1.2 percent of men (out of 1.2 million) on active duty experienced “unwanted sexual contact.”  Compare this number to an estimate by the New York State Coalition against Sexual Assault that 1 out of every 4 women in college has been sexually assaulted.  Where is the outrage and similar condemnation of universities?

Again, this is not meant to minimize the seriousness of the sexual assaults that do occur in the military or the justice that must be brought against perpetrators.  The question is, why has the Washington establishment been so quick to condemn our servicemen despite its complete lack of understanding of life in the military or in a combat zone?  More importantly, why has every senator, congressman and journalist who has commented on this topic ignored the evidence in the Pentagon’s study — which is clear as day — that shows that the rate of military sexual assaults is lower than in society generally?  Is it through willful omission, or is it simply overlooked through selection bias?

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A second ‘house of horrors’ abortion clinic is being investigated in Texas, just days after Dr Kermit Gosnell was found guilty of murdering newborns at his Philadelphia termination center.

Houston doctor Douglas Karpen is accused by four former employees of delivering live fetuses during third-trimester abortions and killing them by either snipping their spinal cord, stabbing a surgical instrument into their heads or ‘twisting their heads off their necks with his own bare hands’.

Other times the fetus was so big he would have to pull it out of the womb in pieces, Karpen’s ex-assistant, Deborah Edge, said in an Operation Rescue video, which has prompted a criminal investigation into the doctor.

‘Sometimes he couldn’t get the fetus out… he would yank pieces – piece by piece – when they were oversize,’ Edge explained.

‘And I’m talking about the whole floor dirty. I’m talking about me drenched in blood.’

Two of Edge’s colleagues, Gigi Aguliar, and Krystal Rodriguez, also described the hellish scenes which took place at the Aaron Women’s Clinic in Houston in 2011, and possibly two other abortion clinics run by Karpen in Texas.

Another staffer, who remains anonymous, filed an affidavit with her account of events, which the Texas Department of State Health Services is using in its investigation.

‘We have several people looking into the allegations,’ Harris County District Attorney spokesman Sara Marie Kinney told Chron.com.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said he had read the allegations ‘with disgust’ before calling for a full investigation into Karpen and his clinics.

“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.

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At around 4 on a Saturday morning, a time when most of the gay bars in New York have closed and locked their doors, a steady stream of young and middle-aged men, almost all shirtless and some stripped down to their boxer briefs, have found their way down a dark stairwell and into a maze of basement rooms, where the décor can best be described as fallout-shelter chic.

They have come to Paddles, an after-hours sex club in Chelsea, not yet ready to end their evening. They prowl the long cinder-block hallway, exchanging knowing glances. A husky, bearded man in his 40s lounges on a corrugated black rubber bench, admiring a chorus line of smooth-chested 20-somethings, their flesh glowing under a pink neon sign and black lights. A man in a metal-studded black leather chest harness strides toward a back room, the hookup room, where a circle of men, skin glistening with sweat, hover around a swing, watching.

Then, in walks a skinny man in a black baseball cap, with soulful eyes and a nose that juts forward like the prow of a ship. He stops at a folding table set up between two video screens showing continuous reels of gay pornography. He strips off his black leather jacket, flexing toned biceps in a black muscle shirt. He sets up a red hazardous-waste bin as nonchalantly as if it were a plastic juice jug from Costco, arranges some Band-Aids and a bowl of lollipops next to it, and pulls out a syringe.

This is Demetre Daskalakis, a doctor and gay activist who has come to spread the message that a new health threat has emerged among the city’s gay population and that he is there to stop it.

“Have you been vaccinated?” he asks, smiling, his voice warm, as the half-naked men walk by.

A new, casually transmittable infection — a unique strain of bacterial meningitis — has cast a pall over the gay night life and dating scene, with men wondering whether this is AIDS, circa 1981, all over again. Seven men have died in New York City, about a third of diagnosed cases, since 2010. And in the last few months, the contagion seemed to be accelerating. It has targeted gay and bisexual men, and nobody knows exactly why.

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Nobody knows exactly why? Here’s a spoiler: when your sex life revolves around fecal material passing through your mucous membranes you are living on borrowed time, pal.

It began in earnest last Friday. A flash mob of latte drinking, tofu eating media that has done its best to quell, rather than fan the flames of truth, turned on one of their own. Jay Carney lay bludgeoned at the base of the podium, a victim of friendly fire.

Ironically, the attack was reminiscent of the one in Benghazi he has repeatedly denied the Administration he represents bears any responsibility for. “Changed twelve times?!” came the cries. And with good reason. We were misled; no, lied to.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away at an American Bar Association conference, IRS big wig Lois Lerner dropped perhaps the biggest bombshell in recent political history, that the IRS had been targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, while responding to a question secretly planted in the audience in advance. My guess is the crowd initially gave a standing ovation, given their blatant left wing agenda, but we’ll never know, as it was a “closed door” session.

Then came the apology from Ms. Lerner: “Sorry ‘bout that folks. Thanks for the questions. There’s coffee and Good Humor Ice Cream in the lobby.” But it didn’t take long for the elated crowd to understand that this might not be good for their guy.

Then the Office of the Inspector General report hit the wires.

Uh oh.

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Ted Cruz has long been a proponent of sweeping tax reform. In fact, in 2011 he published a 12-point economic plan that originally appeared in The National Review. Among the highlights of the plan were repealing Obamacare, revoking the offshore drilling moratorium, repealing Dodd-Frank and passage of a strong balanced-budget amendment. Imagine that. A balanced budget? Those words are near blasphemy to the ears of liberals. Then again, calling it blasphemy would imply that they had some sort of God other than Obama. Sorry Mr. Obama, you are not a god.

Ted Cruz most recently has been taking to twitter to push the other part of his plan which deals with taxes. He is for abolishing the IRS and moving to a fairer and flatter tax.

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KMOV anchorman Larry Conners has been “advised” by KMOV’s parent company Belo Corp. to not make statements, post on Facebook, or participate in interviews concerning a recent controversy over Facebook comments he made about the Internal Revenue Service.

Conners has hired St. Louis attorney Merle Silverstein. Silverstein issued a letter to media outlets claiming that the corporate order “is the only reason for his silence.”

Conners wrote Monday night that shortly after he interviewed President Obama and his wife in April of 2012, the IRS “started hammering” him.

“At the time, I dismissed the ‘co-incidence’, but now, I have concerns … after revelations about the IRS targeting various groups and their members,” Conners wrote.

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The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is often called the “Bible” of psychiatric diagnosis, and the term is apt. The DSM consists of instructions from on high; readers usually disagree in their interpretations of the text; and believing it is an act of faith.

At least the Bible lists only 10 Commandments; the DSM grows by leaps and bounds with every revision. The first edition, published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1952, was a spiral-bound pamphlet that described 11 categories of mental disorder, including brain syndromes, personality problems and psychotic disorders. (The final category, “Nondiagnostic Terms for the Hospital Record,” contained Dead on Admission, the one diagnosis that psychiatrists have ever agreed on.) The DSM-II (1968) made homosexuality a mental disorder, a decision revoked by vote in 1973. In the general excitement about that progressive decision, few noted that voting didn’t seem to be the most scientific way of determining mental illness. Narcissistic Personality Disorder was voted out in 1968 and voted back in 1980; where did it go for 12 years? Doctors don’t vote on whether pneumonia is a disease.

If people treated the DSM the way most treat the other Bible—nod their heads to it, say they believe in it and continue sinning—we might be all right. Many psychotherapists who still practice therapy, rather than prescribe a cocktail of Zoloft and Risperdal with a tincture of Ritalin, do just that. They find a label that suits, for insurance purposes, and then get on with helping the client.

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