"... It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings."....I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Eight California Papa John’s restaurants in the Sacramento area suddenly closed on Friday, to the surprise of both customers and employees.
“We are sorry to advise you that due to circumstances beyond our control we have been forced to cease operations effective immediately,” read a sign posted on the door of the popular pizzerias Friday, later uploaded to the online-messaging board Reddit.
Afghan troops are in the midst of their deadliest fighting season since the war here began 12 years ago.
That is because, as U.S.-led forces withdraw, the Afghans are fighting a different war.
The Taliban are growing more aggressive. Coalition forces, taking with them their superior training and equipment, are leaving Afghan troops less able to fight and less able to save the lives of their critically wounded.
The Afghan forces—including the army, national police and village self-defense police—have been losing well over 100 men a week to insurgent attacks, with close to 300 injured, through much of the summer, according to numbers provided by coalition officials.
By contrast, coalition fatalities, which are reported precisely, have fluctuated between 13 and 27 troops a month since heavier fighting resumed in the spring.
To put it in perspective: The Afghan forces' death toll is as much as three times the combined coalition and Afghan fatalities in 2010 and 2011, when the U.S. took its heaviest casualties in the war.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/09/21/afghan-troop-deaths-hit-record-amid-us-exit/#ixzz2fXygparY
Today, the sheer sadism witnessed on American plantations in the middle of the 19th century seems almost unbelievable.
However, it was all too real, and all too common. The scene described above took place in Louisiana in about 1850, and was recounted by none other than Platt himself, whose real name was Solomon Northup (he’d been given the name Platt by his owner).
Northup wrote about his terrible experiences in a book published in 1853 called 12 Years A Slave, which shocked the American public, and, according to some historians, helped to bring about the American Civil War, in which President Abraham Lincoln led the Yankee North to victory against the South, partly because he was determined to end slavery.
Northup’s story was rediscovered in the late Sixties thanks to a white academic and journalist called Susan Eakin, who had long campaigned for black rights in her native Louisiana.
Many years earlier, a Cross had been burned on her front lawn and a fire started at her back door because she had invited black students to sing at a local auditorium.
However, she was undeterred from her civil rights work, which included republishing an annotated version of Northup’s book, having spent almost her entire life unearthing the original court documents and bills of transfer — essentially ‘receipts’ for a slave — that supported his tale.
‘I did what I thought was right,’ she said. ‘I was not trying to win some popularity contest.’
And now, 160 years after the book’s publication, Northup’s story has been filmed by the award-winning British director Steve McQueen.
BlackBerry said Friday that it will lay off 4,500 employees, or 40 per cent of its global workforce, as it reports a nearly $1 billion second-quarter loss a week earlier than expected.
The stock dropped 23 per cent to $8.11 after reopening for trading. Shares had been halted earlier pending the news announced the same day rival Apple's latest iPhone models went on sale.
BlackBerry had been scheduled to release earnings next week. But the Canadian company said late Friday afternoon that it expects to post a staggering loss of $950 million to $995 million for the quarter, including a massive write down of the value of its inventory due to increasing competition.
…..a united House Republican majority passed a continuing resolution Friday that would defund Obamacare and lock in sequester spending levels through Dec. 15, setting up a fight with Senate Democrats as a shutdown looms Oct. 1.
“We in Congress were sent to Washington by our constituents to fight for them,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said Friday on the floor. “We should pass this continuing resolution so the Senate can finally begin to do the same.”
The CR passed 230-189 with a nearly party-line vote. A single Republican, Scott Rigell of Virginia, voted no. Two Democrats, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina and Jim Matheson of Utah, voted in favor.
But that was the easy vote for House Republicans.
The real battle will be when the proposal bounces back from the Senate, with the Obamacare defunding language almost certainly stripped and the spending level potentially increased from the $986.3 billion the House passed.
http://blogs.rollcall.com/218/house-passes-obamacare-defunding-bill-as-shutdown-looms/
The communications chair of the Sacramento County Democratic Party apologized Friday after directing vitriol at a staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) over the defunding of ObamaCare.
Amanda Carpenter, a speechwriter and senior communications adviser to Cruz, tweeted her optimism that the GOP could succeed in stripping funding for the healthcare law in the fight over a continuing resolution.
Allan Brauer, who works as the communications chair for the Democratic Party of Sacramento County, according to the group’s website, responded by saying he hopes her children “all die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases.”
Amanda Knox has vowed not to return to Italy for her re-trial for the murder of her British roommate, explaining: 'I just can't relive that.'
In her first live interview about the upcoming court battle, the 26-year-old student said that she believes missing the trial over the 2007 killing of Meredith Kercher is simply 'common sense'.
She was acquitted of the crime in 2010 after already serving nearly four years behind bars.
'I was already imprisoned as an innocent person in Italy, and I can't reconcile the choice to go back with that experience,' she told the Today show's Matt Lauer about the retrial, which starts in 10 days.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2426639/Amanda-Knox-vows-to-Italy-trial.html#ixzz2fUoVxAl5
Members of a Washington SWAT team who were told to stand down during the Navy Yard shooting have been stonewalled by authorities, while the leader of the elite unit has been replaced.
As we reported earlier this week, the highly trained Containment and Emergency Response Team (CERT) was just minutes away from Building 197 of the headquarters for Naval Sea Systems Command when Aaron Alexis began his rampage.
Being the only personnel on site armed with long guns, the CERT team was asked by an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD to aid in hunting down the active shooter.
However, when the CERT Team radioed their superiors to obtain permission to go ahead with the operation, they were told by a watch commander to leave the scene.
The CERT team members are expert marksmen and it’s almost inevitable that their involvement in neutralizing the gunman would have saved lives. By the time armed police arrived 30 minutes later, Alexis had already killed 12 victims.
Senators have identified a legislative strategy to fund the federal government without forcing Republicans to vote against language to defund ObamaCare.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has not confirmed what procedural path he will choose but colleagues say he is likely to use an “amendment to strike” to kill the House-originated language to defund the new healthcare law while keeping the government funded.
Senate sources say Reid is likely to bring the House continuing resolution, which includes language to defund ObamaCare and to prioritize debt payments if the nation hits its debt limit, to the Senate floor.
Reid’s first move would be to schedule a vote to end debate on proceeding to the House continuing resolution. This would require 60 votes. Republican senators would vote to proceed to the bill because it would including the language to defund ObamaCare.
Then he would fill the amendment tree, defining what amendments could be considered in relation to the House legislation.
Reid would be sure that one of the pending amendments is a so-called “amendment to strike,” which would allow him schedule a future vote on stripping the language defunding ObamaCare and prioritizing debt payments.
A Senate Democratic aide characterized the amendment to strike as a substitute amendment that would allow Reid to replace the House language with a “clean” proposal to fund the government beyond September.
Gennifer Flowers, the woman who claimed to have had a years-long sexual relationship Bill Clinton, has said in a new interview that he told her his wife Hillary was bisexual.
Flowers told the Daily Mail that she wasn’t surprised about the rumors of an affair between Hillary Clinton and longtime aide Huma Abedin, the wife of ex-congressman and failed New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner.
“I don’t know Huma or the Weiners. I just know what Bill told me and that was that he was aware that Hillary was bisexual and he didn’t care. He should know,” Flowers said, according to the Daily Mail.
It has been confirmed that Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis was on the anti-depressant drug Trazodone, providing yet another example of a connection between psychiatric drugs and mass shootings.
In verifying that Alexis was prescribed Trazodone by the Veterans Affairs Office, the Washington Post published a brief article downplaying the danger of the drug, quoting Miami physician Gabriela Cora who stated (almost too eagerly), “Honestly, it’s a very safe drug to use.”
However, the drug has been linked to a number of murders, including one mass shooting.
Trazodone is sold under the brand names Desyrel, Oleptro, Beneficat, Deprax, Desirel, Molipaxin, Thombran, Trazorel, Trialodine, Trittico, and Mesyrel. Although not strictly a member of the SSRI class of antidepressants, it shares many of the same properties and also serves to increase the amount of serotonin in the brain.
Despite the Washington Post’s attempts to portray the drug as being safe, it is linked with a whole host of side-effects including suicidal tendencies, panic attacks, depersonalization and anger. Symptoms of Trazodone withdrawal include aggression and violent behavior.
The drug also carries an, “FDA black box warning for suicide, and is documented to cause mania and violent behavior,” writes Kelly Patricia O’Meara.
Several murder cases over the past few years have been directly connected to Trazodone.
- Eight people were killed and one wounded during a mass shooting at a beauty parlor in Seal Beach, California in 2011. The killer, Scott Evan Dekraai, was on Desyrel, a commercial variant of Trazodone.
- In 2009, Perley Goodrich Jr. beat his mother and then shot his father dead shortly after being injected with Trazodone in a psychiatric hospital. Goodrich had complained that he didn’t want to take the medication because it made him feel violent.
- In 2009, Steven Foster shot a gas station attendant in the head before shooting him a second time. Bottles of Trazodone pills were later found in Foster’s room.
- Marine Lance Cpl. Delano Holmes fatally stabbed an Iraqi soldier to death in 2007 after military doctors prescribed him Trazodone.
- Indiana soldier Pfc. David Lawrence was taking Trazodone in combination with Zoloft when he killed a Taliban commander in a prison cell in 2010. Lawrence was charged with premeditated murder. According to the FDA, taking these drugs in combination can cause “altered consciousness, confusion, hallucinations and coma.”
http://www.infowars.com/confirmed-navy-yard-shooter-was-on-anti-depressant-trazodone/
The city of Chicago registered more homicides than any city in the nation in 2012, surpassing even New York — despite the fact that the Second City has only one third as many residents as the Big Apple.
In new crime statistics released Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported 500 murders in Chicago in 2012, up sharply from the 431 recorded in 2011. New York reported 419 murders last year, compared with 515 in 2011.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s decision to ask customers to no longer bring guns into his stores is causing a firestorm on social media, with many expressing their outrage and indicating they will no longer buy coffee at the popular chain.
A review of social media suggested Starbucks may lose customers as a result of its decision.
On the company’s Facebook page, hundreds of people said they would no longer frequent Starbucks.
Lynn Schneider wrote that she would now visit a local coffee house instead.
“Bye Bye Starbucks. I’ll support small business instead of your corporate dictatorship and take my money to the little locally owned coffee house where they know me by name,” she said in a Facebook post.
http://freebeacon.com/starbucks-irks-2nd-amendment-supporting-customers/
Three men in Grand Rapids, Mich., worked together to detain a female purse-snatching suspectuntil police could arrive to make an arrest. The men pinned the suspect on the ground following an intense struggle while Good Samaritans comforted the victim.
In an attempt to escape, the female suspect seems to bite one of the men detaining her, prompting him to strike her. “The suspect was initially stopped by a Jimmy John’s bicycle delivery worker, and the men in the video helped tackle the suspect, witnesses said,” according to MLive.com.
Meanwhile, a group of people gathered around the 75-year-old victim, Evelyn Searl, who had been eating lunch with her daughter when she was robbed. “They’re coming right now,” a woman says soothingly to the victim as another bystander places a sweater under her head. The victim was reportedly knocked over by the suspect, causing her to fall on her face.
The global economic crisis that has come to be known as the Great Recession appears to have fueled an increase in suicides, including an estimated 5,000 additional deaths in 2009, a new study says.
Although previous research has linked the recession to higher suicide rates in various countries, no studies have tried to measure these effects on a global scale.
So researchers at the University of Hong Kong and other institutions examined suicide trends in 54 countries around the world, using data on unemployment, gross domestic product and suicide deaths from the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Their analysis revealed an association between unemployment and suicide rates, which was especially strong for men in countries that used to have low unemployment.
In 2009 alone, 37% higher unemployment seems to have fueled a 3.3% increase in the global suicide rate for men, according to the study, published online Tuesday by the journal BMJ. That 3.3% uptick translates into an additional 5,000 deaths.
Leadership sources tell me the House will soon vote on a continuing resolution that simultaneously funds the federal government and defunds Obamacare. Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are expected to announce the decision at Wednesday’s Republican conference meeting.
This means the conservatives who have been urging Boehner to back a defunding effort as part of the CR have won a victory, at least in terms of getting the leadership to go along with their strategy. But getting such a CR through the Democratic Senate and signed into law will be very difficult — and many House insiders predict a “Plan B” will emerge in the coming days.
Here’s how my sources expect the gambit to unfold: The House passes a “defund CR,” throws it to the Senate, and waits to see what Senator Ted Cruz and his allies can do. Maybe they can get it through, maybe they can’t. Boehner and Cantor will be supportive, and conservative activists will rally.
But if Cruz and company can’t round up the votes, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejects the legislation, the House leadership will likely ask Republicans to turn their focus to the debt limit, avert a shutdown, and pass a revised CR — a stopgap spending bill that doesn’t defund Obamacare.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/358757/house-vote-defunding-obamacare-robert-costa
Fiscal year federal revenues through August:
Current year dollars.......................................Constant 2013 dollars
1998: 1,540,474 2,207,659.90
1999: 1,626,454 2,280,511.10
2000: 1,805,566 2,449,320.53
2001: 1,831,708 2,416,034.23
2002: 1,660,527 2,156,156.00
2003: 1,590,675 2,019,431.07
2004: 1,672,432 2,068,149.42
2005: 1,901,703 2,274,604.27
2006: 2,123,378 2,460,378.00
2007: 2,282,318 2,571,309.02
2008: 2,251,414 2,442,703.10
2009: 1,885,712 2,053,234.55
2010: 1,916,539 2,053,123.25
2011: 2,062,347 2,141,347.47
2012: 2,187,527 2,225,657.28
2013: 2,472,542
- See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/2472542000000-record-taxation-through-august-deficit-still-755b#sthash.HwqNxh6d.dpuf
Millionaire mogul George Bardwil faces years in prison for using a firearm to scare away a home intruder in January. In dramatic surveillance footage played in Manhattan Supreme Court on Thursday, Bardwil is seen pointing the loaded gun — registered to his bodyguard — at an intruder in his Upper East Side home.
“With pistol in hand, Bardwil can be seen frantically rushing from his messy bedroom to the top of a staircase in his East 51st Street town house as his startled Yorkie barks in the background,” the New York Post reports.
The video has apparently not been released to the public.
When police arrived to investigate the break-in, Bardwil told them exactly what happened and voluntarily showed them the surveillance tape. So police arrested him for possessing an illegal gun. He is currently free on $250,000 bail.
In New York City, residents need to apply for permits just to keep a firearm in their homes. The gun, a loaded .40-cal Sig Sauer, was legally registered to Bardwil’s bodyguard and kept in a secure box at the millionaire’s apartment, according to the New York Post.
Newly released emails reveal that Lois Lerner specifically targeted Tea Party applications and ordered them to be put on hold until 2011.
Lerner called the conservative groups’ applications for tax-exempt status problematic in one 2011 email. According to the Washington Times:
“Tea Party Matter very dangerous,” Ms. Lerner wrote in the 2011 email, saying that those applications could end up being the “vehicle to go to court” to get more clarity on a 2010 Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance rules.
In another email, from 2012, Ms. Lerner acknowledges that the agency’s handling of the tax-exempt applications had been bungled at the beginning, though she said steps had been taken to correct problems.
Lerner told Congress in a testimony earlier this year that Tea Party groups were not specifically targeted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Numerous Tea Party and conservative groups claim that the IRS resorted to invasive measures to determine if the groups were qualified for tax-exempt status.
http://freebeacon.com/emails-reveal-lerners-anti-tea-party-bias/
