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Politics

Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange

Clockwise from top left: President Obama with the Berghdal family; Bowe Berghdal in Taliban’s prisoner exchange video; the Taliban Five; and, National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

Multiple sources have confirmed that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who held in Afghanistan for five years, will be charged with desertion. Bergdahl was released last May in return for the infamous Taliban Five, a group of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

While the military investigation — which echoed the findings in the 2010 report — clearly concluded Bergdahl was captured by the Haqqani network after he walked away from his post, the charges will not allege he never intended to return. An official also said the military wanted to release the report and charge Bergdahl last month, but investigators deferred to top brass to pull the trigger.

Desertion is a serious offense in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but despite Bergdahl calling his unit just hours after his desertion to tell the command he was gone, the charges will be watered down to “leaving a post to avoid duty.” The charge still carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison if convicted.

However, under the terms of an alleged plea agreement, the Army will credit Bergdahl for the 5 years he spent in captivity and he will be given the chance to avoid prosecution by leaving the Army with a “less than honorable discharge.”

If he takes the deal, he will be allowed to keep $300,000 in back pay paid for the time in captivity. According to officials, Bergdahl’s civilian lawyer, who did not respond to PPD’s request for comment, has been given notice.

The Bergdahl swap was the beginning of the end to President Obama’s upright approval on foreign policy matters and turned a spiking of the football to a national embarrassment. National Security Advisor Susan Rice during a Sunday show appearance said Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl “served his country with honor and distinction.”

Since the revelations of Bergdahl’s desertion became public, the Obama administration has delayed the release of the report and some say pressured the Pentagon to bury the story.

“What we have here is very, very clear, it’s damnably clear that the White House which doesn’t understand why this is a big deal,” Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters said. “And they just want to protect the president. And they are pressuring the Army, pressuring the Army to whitewash this.”

Multiple sources have confirmed that Army Sgt.

Opinion

small-business-lending

Small business owners at the Small Business Administration conference discussing increased lending. (Photo: Reuters)

For most of history, people suffered in miserable poverty.

Then, in a few hundred years, some new ideas made life hugely better for billions of us — things like running water, the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, the Internet.

We want people to keep coming up with new and better ideas. But there’s a problem: Why would you bother to spend years inventing something if other people can just steal your idea? Who will devote years and millions of dollars to making a big movie? Or a dozen years and billions of dollars to bringing a new drug to market? Almost no one.

Filmmaker Kirby Ferguson sums up problem: “Let’s say a guy invents a better light bulb. His price needs to cover not just the manufacturing costs but also the costs of inventing the thing in the first place. Let’s say a competitor starts manufacturing a copy. The competitor doesn’t need to cover those development costs, so his version can be cheaper.”

Then he profits, but the original inventor goes out of business. That’s why America grants time-limited patents and copyrights to creators of songs, books, movies, paintings, drugs, etc. Fine.

But today Fox won’t let me sing the song “Happy Birthday” on my TV show. That’s because Warner Music bought the rights to it in 1998. People now have to pay Warner about $2 million a year to use the song in commercials and movies.

Sheesh. Why does Warner get such a long copyright? The song already existed. It’s not like the composer needs protection.

Bridgeport Music, a business that makes no music but obtains copyrights and then sues people, won a lawsuit over (SET ITAL) two seconds (END ITAL) of sound. When we questioned that, their lawyer wrote back: “I personally do not understand those who criticize people for protecting their intellectual property … (We) happen to own valuable music.”

Give me a break. He’s an opportunistic parasite.
I wonder about my former employer, Disney, too. It paid nothing for the Snow White story because it was in the public domain. But then Disney managed to get its version of Snow White copyrighted for 95 years. Will 95 years of protection make Disney’s animators more creative? I doubt it.
In the era of the Internet, when young people take mashups and do-it-yourself parodies for granted, maybe intellectual property in its current form has outlived its expiration date.
David Koepsell, of the Center for Inquiry, says today’s rules are hostile to free speech. “Intellectual property law actually prevents me from making certain expressions, things that are allegedly other people’s own.”
Lawyer Stephan Kinsella, author of “Against Intellectual Property ,” says copyright decreases intellectual output because it “prevents people from saying what they want to say, from copying, learning, sharing, remixing.” That stops some books from being reprinted and movies from being remade.

When Hollywood complains about “piracy,” Kinsella asks, “Why call it piracy? Pirates stole. But if you copy ideas, you don’t take anything away from the originator.”

Thomas Jefferson once agreed, writing, “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper (candle) at mine, receives light without darkening me.”

Kinsella points out that movie industry income doubled even though films are now widely copied. “The danger to artists and to people who want to get their name out there is obscurity, not piracy.”
I’m not sure what to think. Some of you watch my shows on YouTube. I (SET ITAL) like (END ITAL) that because it means my show reaches more people. But those who post my videos do actually steal from Fox. If everyone can do that, why would Fox pay me or cover the cost of doing my show? When I see myself on YouTube, I both smile and cringe.

So how should ideas be protected? Magicians and comedians found ways to protect their inventions (SET ITAL) without (END ITAL) government — by keeping tricks a secret or shaming people for stealing jokes.

I’ll explore these ideas on my TV show in its new slot, Friday, 9 p.m. Eastern. And if some clips from it turn up on YouTube …

John Stossel is host of “Stossel” on Fox News and author of “No They Can’t! Why Government Fails, but Individuals Succeed.”

Why would you bother to spend years

Economy

durable-goods-reuters

American workers at a manufacturing plant for long-lasting durable goods. (PHOTO: REUTERS)

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that durable goods orders dropped 3.4 percent in December, far below economists’ estimates of a 0.5 percent gain. Durable goods orders decreased $8.1 billion, or 3.4 percent to $230.5 billion.

The latest decrease marks a decline in the sector for four of the last five months and follows a 2.1 percent decrease in November. Transportation equipment led the decrease with a $6.8 billion drop, or 9.2 percent to $66.7 billion.

Excluding transportation, which has also been down for the last four out of five months, orders fell 0.8 percent, compared to forecasts of a 0.6 percent increase. Shipments in transportation, which had increased in 3 out of the 4 prior months, increased $2.2 billion, or 3.1 percent to $74.5 billion.

Overall shipments in manufactured durable goods, which had declined for two straight months, increased $2.6 billion, or 1.1 percent to $246.8 billion.

New orders for non-defense capital goods decreased $7.9 billion in December, or 9.7 percent to $73.3 billion. New defense orders for capital goods decreased $0.5 billion, or 5.3 percent to $8.7 billion.

Inventories remain bloated, as they now sit at their highest level since the series was first published on a NAICS basis in 1992. Inventories of manufactured durable goods, which were up twenty of the last twenty-one months, increased $2.0 billion, or 0.5 percent to $410.8 billion. This follows a 0.5 percent increase in November.

New orders for durable goods in November were revised down to $489.3 billion from the initially reported $492.7 billion, while shipments were also revised down to $494.9 billion from $495.7 billion.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that durable

Opinion

obama-republicans-meeting

President Obama, center, meets with House Speaker Jon Boehner, left, and new Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, right, on January 13, 2014. (Photo: AP)

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

Who says President Obama doesn’t promote bipartisanship? His complicity in Iran’s moving toward nuclear bombs has alarmed some top Senate Democrats enough to get them to join Republicans in opposition to the Obama administration’s potentially suicidal foreign policy.

Before the current measles outbreak, measles was once almost wiped out in the United States. But an article in a medical journal more than a decade ago had many parents afraid to have their children vaccinated, for fear that the vaccine causes autism. After scientific studies refuted that claim, the medical journal repudiated the article, and the doctor who wrote it had his license revoked.

If not a single policeman killed a single black individual anywhere in the United States for this entire year, that would not reduce the number of black homicide victims by one percent. When the mobs of protesters declare “Black lives matter,” does that mean ALL black lives matter — or only the less than one percent of black lives lost in conflicts with police?

In politics, never assume that because something is insane, it will not be done. The Holocaust was as insane as it was a moral horror. But it was done. Even after the tide of war turned against Germany and it faced invasion and devastation, Hitler continued to pour scarce resources into the mass killing of people who were no threat.

When someone tries to lay a guilt trip on you for being successful, remember that your guilt is some politician’s license to take what you worked for and give it to someone else who is more likely to vote for the politician who plays Santa Claus with your money.

So long as public schools are treated as places that exist to provide guaranteed jobs to members of the teachers’ unions, do not be surprised to see American students continuing to score lower on international tests than students in countries that spend a lot less per pupil than we do.

Would you go to a funeral if you knew that your presence would be unwelcome and would just add to the pain of the mourners? Probably not. But New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio went to both funerals for the two New York City policemen recently murdered — and gave speeches. That epitomized what a truly despicable human being he is, even by the low standards of politicians.
Demographic “diversity” is a notion often defended with fervor but seldom with facts.

Few things are more irritating, or more phony, than statements from various organizations about their “privacy policy.” What that really means is their invasion of privacy policies — how much information about you that your bank, hospital or Internet service is going to pass on to other people without your permission.

Somewhere Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes says that the purpose of an education should be to produce a mind that cannot be humbugged. But today our educational system, from kindergarten to the universities, is engaged in the mass production of fashionable humbug — propaganda rather than education.

Some people see discrimination when schools punish black students more often than white students. But schools punish white students more often than Asian students. Lenders turn down black applicants for loans more often than white applicants — but they turn down whites more often than Asians. Most statistics on such things omit Asians, rather than spoil a politically correct story.

President Obama may have gained something politically or ideologically by recognizing Cuba, but just what did the United States gain? Like so much that has been done by this administration, the diplomatic recognition of Cuba demonstrates how safe it is to be our enemy, while our policies toward Ukraine and Israel demonstrate how risky it is to be our ally.

Despite radical feminist organizations’ frequent bursts of outrage, these same radical feminists’ response to the mass capture of school girls by Islamic terrorists in Nigeria, and turning those girls into sex slaves, has been strangely muted. Is this because there is no political mileage or lawsuit settlements to be achieved by expressing outrage at such unconscionable raw savagery in Nigeria?

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.

Who says President Obama doesn't promote bipartisanship?

Politics

Labor Unions Approval

A recent survey from Gallup finds a slight 53 percent majority of Americans still approve of labor unions, but the right to work movement is wildly popular.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Monday that union membership fell to a 100-year low in the year 2014, further weakening organized labor in America.

In 2014, the union membership rate was 11.1 percent, down 0.2 percent from 2013 and 9 percent from the 20.1 percent measured in 1983, when BLS first began tracking comparable data. At the time, the number of union workers reflecting the actual rate —- which consists of the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions — was 17.7 million.

Though not completely comparable, the latest BLS latest figure is down considerably from the record high of nearly 35 percent in 1954.

The data on union membership are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of about 60,000 households that obtains information on employment and unemployment among the nation’s civilian non-institutional population age 16 and over.

But in a somewhat delusional and evidently illogical response, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka managed to bash President Obama for touting the creation of “poverty-level jobs” in his State of the Union speech, while simultaneously blaming “right-wing billionaires’ extremist politics, a rapacious Wall Street and insufficient advocacy from political leaders” for low-wage job creation that represented a whopping 70 percent of all jobs created in the Obama Recovery.

“In the State of the Union this week, President Obama celebrated the fact that our economy has benefitted from 58 consecutive months of job growth and reiterated the need for laws that strengthen unions and give workers a voice,” Trumpka said in a statement. “But the most important question is not simply how many jobs we’re creating, but are we creating jobs that raise wages for all?”

The union-Democrat alliance has been tested in recent years under President Obama, most notably over the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline,

Still, Trumka and other union leaders, are firmly on the left and clearly signaling they are on board a long-backed progressive effort to raise the federal minimum wage.

“A strong recovery must be built on family-sustaining, not poverty-level jobs,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO said in a statement Monday. “Today’s news confirms what most of us already knew: workers are finding good union jobs despite political ideologues—and jobs are coming back as the economy slowly rebounds, but neither are nearly enough.”

The president raised the federal minimum wage for public employees via executive fiat, and when we take a look at the public- vs. private-sector union membership rates, it becomes pretty clear what it truly behind the effort.

According to the BLS report, the public-sector had a union membership rate  of 35.7 percent, which is more than five times higher than the abysmal 6.6 percent rate measured among private-sector workers. Yet, Trumpka predictably had a different take on Monday’s report.

“Today’s release of the annual union membership numbers by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in this economic recovery, people are either seeking out good union jobs or taking matters into their own hands by forming unions to raise wages and ensure that new jobs are good jobs,” he said.

However, the data-trends simply can’t support Mr. Trumpka’s claim.

Consistent with year-over-year declines measured in the past, just 10 percent of Americans identified as union members in a Gallup poll conducted from Aug. 7-10. At the heart of unions’ declining membership problems lays a long-observed ideological shift in America and distrust that is fueling increased disapproval in organized labor.

“At the same time Americans express greater approval than disapproval of unions, they widely support right-to-work laws,” said Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup.

A whopping 71 percent of Americans say they would vote for a right to work law, while 82 percent of Americans agree that “no American should be required to join any private organization, like a labor union, against his will,” a central tenet of right to work philosophy.

Even before the widespread Democratic defeats down ballot in 2010 and 2014, 24 states had already passed right to work laws. Republicans are now in charge of 68 of the 98 partisan legislative chambers and control 30 state legislatures, which is the most they’ve held in 150 years, as well as hold a 31-18 gubernatorial edge nationally.

With Democrats losing 11 more bodies in 2014 alone, including the Colorado Senate, the Maine Senate, the Minnesota House, the Nevada Assembly, the Nevada Senate, the New Hampshire House, the New York Senate, the New Mexico House, the Washington Senate, and both the West Virginia House and Senate, Republicans are hoping to expand right to work in several other states.

Even though Americans typically favor choice no matter the issue, philosophy may not be the only contributing factor to the success of the right to work movement. In Gallup’s annual Confidence in Institutions survey, only 10 percent said they have a great deal of confidence in organized labor, and only 12 percent say they have quite a lot of confidence in them.

The future of both public and private labor unions is very much in doubt. They are bleeding membership, and losing the battles for both public opinion and legal opinion. In June, the Supreme Court ruling in Harris v. Quinn dealt a significant blow to the effort to expand public employee unions, but it did not gut them.

Because of the ruling, unions lost a tool of coercion they’ve used to expand their membership, reach and political power for decades. Many legal experts believe the high court will overturn prior precedent and completely forbid requiring public employees to contribute to union bargaining, rather than membership dues.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Monday

Entertainment, News

american_sniper_still

In this image released by Warner Bros. Pictures, Bradley Cooper appears in a scene from “American Sniper.” (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures)

“American Sniper,” the Clint Eastwood movie starring Bradley Cooper, who plays Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle has topped $200 million at the Box Office. The milestone firmly ensures this movie’s spot as a Box Office record-breaker, and for good reason.

However, the controversy that follows this movie, most notably involving leftist filmmaker Michael Moore, is ironic. From the left, those like Moore say that the movie “glorifies” war, but did any of the individuals actually watch the movie and, then, deploy their vast knowledge of the realities of war to make such an assessment?

If one actually takes the time to watch “American Sniper,” they would know the movie demonstrates the hardships that come with war, and the aftermath of those who fight it. American snipers like Chris Kyle, who is credited as the deadliest in U.S. history, had (and have) to make decisions that both save lives, and take them; lives not only of their fellow-brothers and sisters in arms, but everyday Americans that like to stay snug and warm within their beds.

For all of the anti-American rhetoric out of Moore and Kyle’s other detractors, the success of American Sniper unequivocally underscores Americans’ hunger for patriotism. The numbers below, which are staggering in comparison to this year’s films, show exemplify this truth.

American Sniper Lifetime Grosses At Box Office (As Of 1/25/15)

[twocol_one]Domestic[/twocol_one] [twocol_one_last]$200,137,000[/twocol_one_last]

[twocol_one]International[/twocol_one] [twocol_one_last]$47,500,000[/twocol_one_last]

[twocol_one]Worldwide[/twocol_one] [twocol_one_last]$247,637,000[/twocol_one_last]

Yet, the number of critics in Hollywood and on the political left misconstruing Kyle’s and other snipers’ role, is staggering. The narrative is that a sniper does not fight “fair,” as if the enemy doesn’t match these tactics, or that they are “trigger happy.” This is utter ignorance, dilution and delusion.

“His job is to strike a paralytic fear into the enemy.” Andrew Pedry, a sniper himself stated. “It takes a lot of introspection, faith, and care to wield that level of power.”

Despite Michael Moore’s comments, which garnered the most media attention, the supposition that snipers are “cowards” is contradicted by the very tasks they are asked to complete. Snipers are often the first operators in enemy-controlled territory, and are invaluable to the men who bravely enter behind them without the knowledge of what lays ahead.

“Snipers are the deadliest assets on the battlefield, it’s an asset to everybody.” said Dakota Meyer, a Marine sniper and recipient of the Medal of Honor. Meyer, who actually watched the film, said it was an accurate depiction of the role the American sniper plays in U.S. combat operations. He slammed Moore for his comments last week in a post, and has been vocal ever since.

“A sniper’s primary goal is to eliminate ground threats for U.S. guys on the ground,” Meyer said. “Is that what a coward is? A person whose goal is to save the lives of his warrior brothers?”

Meyer added that “cowards are people who didn’t have the guts to serve, and are happy to sit back in a free and protected country and call our service members cowards.” He also said Moore was a coward for not having the courage to stand by his comments, though the detraction was half-hearted, and has since been followed with more comments meant to shine light on an increasingly irrelevant filmmaker.

In a recent interview, fellow Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill, the man who killed Usama bin Laden, expressed great admiration for those who serve as snipers.

“I have been on over 400 missions and in every single one snipers did more than protect us,” O’Neill said. “They found the routes, they let us in, they found IEDs (improvised explosive devices) on the way in.”

O’Neill went on to explain that he, his teammates, and anyone conducting combat operations understand the advantage of having a sniper within their ranks.

“Once we started hitting our targets they would climb up high to cover our movement, look in doors and windows before we got there. It was not uncommon for us to be silent and hear shots go off. They have spotted insurgents that were trying to ambush us, they saved our lives.”

He shared a story of one instance when his team sniper shot and killed an insurgent who was unknowingly hiding no more than 3 feet away in an alleyway. If it was not for the team sniper, “I would’ve been dead,” O’Neill said.

Had Robert O’Neill died in that alleyway that day, he would never have shot and killed Usama Bin Laden.

“Using snipers shows the greatest amount of restraint,” stated Jim Lechner, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who served alongside Kyle in Ramadi, Iraq. “Innocent people are not getting killed.”

However, because the movie seeks and succeeds in humanizing the late Chris Kyle, rather than demonize the U.S. troops or portray them as “occupiers,” Hollywood and the left are incapable of seeing what the rest of American has seen.

Though “American Sniper” was nominated for six Oscars and has grossed more than any other R-rated film in history — including the most of any R-rated film in the first week — the movie, the cast and the crew were all snubbed by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards. The film, including lead actor Bradley Cooper, garnered no nominations.

“SAG likes to pride themselves on having their finger on the pulse of the Oscar voter, and in the past has been very good at predicting who will take home the Oscar,” said Hollywood film critic Michael Tammero. “But I feel like this year they just got it completely off.”

Following the SAG snub, Moore again took to Twitter in a successful attempt to garner somewhat significant if only temporary attention.

Except, the $222,446,882 brought in by Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 9/11” was the total as of 1/25/2015 over the course of its lifetime (from date of release), which began on June 23, 2004. Further, nearly half of that number — $103,252,111, or 46.4 percent — came from foreign gross sales. In comparison, just 19.2 percent of the Box Office hit “American Sniper” came from foreign sales.

In the end, in spite of the detractors, most Americans obviously view Chris Kyle as a hero, one who dedicated his life to protect not only his fellow-brothers and sisters in arms but his family, friends, and his country.

Kyle, who post-service decided to work side-by-side with veterans, was sadly killed by a fellow veteran Eddie Routh. After all those missions, it was Routh, suffering from severe PTSD shot and killed Kyle, leaving behind a family and a story worthy of being told on and off the big screen. “American Sniper” is firmly in the record books whether the Hollywood critics like it or not, or choose to give their seal of approval at the Oscars. They could simply snub the film as their young counterparts at SAG chose to do, but the credibility of the older institution is on the line.

“The fact that Hollywood is out of step with Main Street America is not big news, but Oscar voters cannot ignore the numbers,” Tammero added. “This movie is raking it in.”

'American Sniper,' the Clint Eastwood movie starring

Opinion

obama-cameron-press-conference-1-16-15

President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron hold a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, Jan. 16, 2015. Growing fears about the specter of terrorism in Europe and the West are lending themselves to a sense of trans-Atlantic solidarity as President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron met at the White House. (Photo: AP/Carolyn Kaster)

If rebelling against tyranny is obeying God’s will – as both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson stated – what exactly is President Obama doing when he reaches out to Iran with the equivalent of a White House hug? Answer: Leading America farther away from the safety and security of God’s grace.

Think about it.

In a speech before the Heritage Foundation, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said the United States ought to enact “immediate and crippling sanctions” on Iran and quit the “sham nuclear negotiations,” the National Council of Resistance of Iran reported.

Why?

“Iran is a radical, Islamist tyrannical regime … that has been killing Americans for 35 years,” the NCRI continued.

Cotton cited Iran’s many offenses, including its repressive totalitarian government, its sponsorship of terrorism and terror groups the world over and its continued quest for nuclear weaponry. But Team Obama’s response to all these travesties has been conciliatory at best and, an outright affiliation with evil, at worst.

“U.S. negotiators have surrendered repeatedly to Iran’s demands, conceding a right to enrich uranium, allowing Iran to keep its plutonium-producing reactor, asking only that its centrifuges be disconnected instead of dismantled,” Cotton said. “In return for these concessions to Iran, the U.S. has given and will give Iran billions of dollars more in sanctions relief.”

Obama’s cave to Iran is so great that even his own political party is outraged.

Look at the exchange between Tony Blinken, deputy secretary of state, and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) during a recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Blinken admitted that the Obama administration wasn’t so concerned about shuttering Iran’s nuclear program as with striking an agreement that delays its development of nuclear weaponry – a stance that defies both logic and sanity. Or, as Menendez said: The Obama administration has “talking points that come straight out of Tehran.”

And after learning that it’s true, that Obama’s deal lets Iran enrich uranium and build as many plutonium light water reactors as desired, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) weighed in with concern, saying such activities are “not consistent with a purely civilian program.”

No kidding.

There is not an eye in the international community that doesn’t blink in incredulity over the claim that Iran’s nuclear program is solely for peaceful, civilian purposes – except, it would seem, Obama’s. But his blinders are stubborn accouterments of his own doing. To the president, talk and diplomacy is the be-all of all foreign affairs – and the notion of labeling evil as evil, a queasy verbalization to be avoided at all costs.

But this is not the way to protect America from its enemies. You can’t cut a deal with the devil and expect good to come.

The matter of Iran strikes at the very core of nation’s founding: Either we are a country built on Judeo-Christian principles, emboldened by the very God who drove and inspired our founders to successfully fight for freedom against all odds – or we’re not. Either we’re a country that stands for righteousness, seizing the high moral ground that comes from knowledge and obedience to the very biblical principles that God bestowed on the leaders of His established nations – or we’re defeated, in all but admission.

Our leaders need to confront Iran with truth, first and foremost. The nation is evil, run by evil-doers, who seek to spread their evil into the West. The price for political correctness and falsehood is too great.

As William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, said: “Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.”

If rebelling against tyranny is obeying God’s

News, US, Video

[youtube JcVjTUrGFJI ]

President Obama and officials tried to explain Sunday how Yemen, the nation cited as the Obama doctrine’s model for fighting terrorism, collapsed last week. White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said the U.S. was “very focused” on counterterrorism efforts in the Arabian Peninsula, and if Obama “has to act, he will. He has demonstrated that.”

“But the government fell! The strategy obviously didn’t work,” said Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer. “Was this a surprise to U.S. officials? I don’t remember any talk about this in the state of the union message.”

“We were very focused on counter-terrorism there because of the brutality and the nefariousness of al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula — an offshoot of the al-Qaeda central — now we’ve been very clear that we have a counter-terrorism strategy, Bob, that’s what we’re trying to do: to make sure we keep them off kilter,” McDonough half-heartedly answered. “That’s why we did things like we did about Anwar al-Awlaki,for example. That’s point one. Point two, you keep bringing it back to the government. It is very important to recognize that governance in Yemen has always been difficult.”

The president gave a similar answer when asked by Julie Pace of The Associated Press at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Modi.

“But I guess the point, Julie, is Yemen has never been a perfect democracy or an island of stability,” Obama said.

The developments out of Yemen come as state-run television announced Saudi King Abdullah, a powerful U.S. ally in the region and on radical Islamic terrorism dies, leaving the Iran-backed Shiite rebels dominant in their neighboring country. Yemen, which is the poorest Arab nation, is also home to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the group responsible for the attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

President Obama and officials tried to explain

Politics

ny-assembly speaker-sheldon-silver

Jan. 22, 2015: New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is transported by federal agents to federal court in New York. Even after his arrest on federal corruption charges, Silver remains one of the most powerful politicians in New York.(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

Manhattan Democrat and speaker of the New York Assembly Sheldon Silver will step down following his arrest last week on federal corruption charges, PPD confirmed.

The New York Times reported late Sunday that Silver agreed to step aside temporarily amid pressure from fellow Democratic members. The paper reported that Silver would delegate his duties to a group of senior Assembly members, and Albany Democrats were scheduled to consider the proposed agreement in a closed-door meeting Monday.

Silver, 70, was arrested Thursday on charges of public corruption, alleging that he used his position to collect millions of dollars in bribes disguised as legitimate income.

“There is probable cause to believe Silver obtained about $4 million in payments characterized as attorney referral fees solely through the corrupt use of his official position,” the criminal complaint said. “Silver took legal action and other steps to prevent the disclosure of such information,” when the now-boarded anti-corruption commission began to investigate public corruption in 2013, the complaint said.

The charges, which came just a day after Silver shared the stage with Gov. Andrew Cuomo during his State of the State address, were brought only after U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara took over the case files of New York’s Moreland anti-corruption commission, which Cuomo suspiciously closed in April. Bharara vowed further investigations into Albany’s “pay-to-play politics,” and Silver’s outside income has long been a subject of controversy. Last year, the New York City lawyer reported making up to $750,000 for legal work, mostly with the trial firm of Weitz & Luxenberg.

If convicted, Silver could face up to 100 years in prison. He was released on a $200,000 bail soon after his arrest and said he was “confident that after a full hearing and due process, I’ll be vindicated on the charges.”

“Mr. Silver looks forward to responding to them — in court — and ultimately his full exoneration,” Joel Cohen, Speaker Silver’s attorney said in a statement.

New York State law does not require state officials to resign from office after being arrested until they are actually convicted of a felony.

Silver was first elected to the Assembly in 1976, representing a district on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he was born and still lives with his wife, Rosa. He served as the speaker of the assembly since 1994, after first being elected in 1976.

Manhattan Democrat and speaker of the New

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