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The FBI has released their 2007-2011 “Murder Victims by Weapon” report. The results are contradictory to anti-gun industry claims that relaxing the ban on assault weapons will cause more crime. The report indicates you are more likely to be killed by hands or feet than by a rifle or shotgun. Since 2007 there has been a 16.2% decline in murders committed with personal weapons which are defined as “hands, fists, feet etc.” The number of murders of this type in 2011 totaled 728. While gun ownership has dramatically increased since 2007, murders for both the shotgun and rifle categories have...

NASHUA — Following a storm of controversy in light of her criminal background, the first openly transgendered person elected to the New Hampshire House will resign her post. “I didn't want to have to do this,” Rep.-elect Stacie Marie Laughton, D-Nashua, said. “There's been a lot of people that have said, 'Stay strong, keep your head up, stay in it.'” “I'm super disappointed because I was looking forward to this more than anything. It's my lifelong dream to serve my community, and what better place to do it than the city that I was born and raised in.”

Word on the political street from GOP consultants and the Left is that Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party cost Romney the election. We Conservatives are advised to “moderate our tone” and back away from our “extremist ideas”. So let me make sure I understand. Obama and company were allowed to go for the jugular, using false narratives (lies), to win votes. They said Romney hates dogs, blacks, women and the poor. Heck, they even threw in the absurd accusation that Romney was responsible for the death of a working man's wife. Check and mate. Game over. Obama won. Did...

UPDATE: Gold Just Tanked, Silver Tanked, And Oil Is Sliding Joe WeisenthalNovember 28, 2012 It's unclear what just happened, but as US trading cranks to life, commodities have dumped. Gold just dropped about $15/oz in a couple of seconds. Kitco And here's Silver: And oil is fading.

Forget the stock market's dismal decade of much-ado-about-nothing and ignore the USD Dollar's declination; when it comes to reflection on what this once great nation has 'created' since 2001, the following chart from Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare sums it up better than most.

A Dallas police lieutenant who goes by the name “Lucille Baller” when she promotes herself as a recording artist promises to shoot anyone who messes with her in a rap song that was posted on her website. “Don’t push Ms. Lucy, because you won’t like the consequences,” Lt. Regina Smith raps on the recording. “Mess with me or I will shoot a [expletive], cuz Lucille Baller, she been to hell and back.” Smith, who oversees burglary and theft detectives at the southwest and northwest patrol investigative units, will probably face an internal affairs investigation over the site promoting her independent...

Kabul Bank became Afghanistan’s largest financial institution by offering the promise of modern banking to people who had never had a saving or checking account. What it really dealt in was modern theft: “From its very beginning,” according to a confidential forensic audit of Kabul Bank, “the bank was a well-concealed Ponzi scheme.” Afghan and American officials had for years promoted Kabul Bank as a prime example of how Western-style banking was transforming a war-ravaged economy. But the audit, prepared this year for Afghanistan’s central bank by the Kroll investigative firm, gives new details of how the bank instead was...

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WHICH Bond villain had the most reasonable plan to get rich? Via Tyler Cowen, I see that New York Magazine asked Jean-Jacques Dethier, a senior economist at the World Bank, to evaluate some of the diabolical plots from the films. He covered the schemes of Auric Goldfinger, Dr Kananga, Max Zorin, Alec Trevelyan, Elliot Carver, Elektra King, Le Chiffre, and Dominic Greene. While an important contribution to the literature (the critique of Mr Trevelyan's plan is particularly astute), his analysis left out quite a few moneymaking ventures from the rest of the Bond canon. In an effort to fill that...

EXCERPT FROM THE EMAIL: I am writing to advise you that after a great deal of consideration I have decided to suspend my campaign for the Republican Party's nomination for Governor of Virginia. Needless to say, this was a very difficult decision for me, and I know it will come as a surprise and disappointment to you, but I am confident it is the right decision.

(ABC 6 News) -- The Voter ID Amendment has come and gone, but now that the election is over, we're checking to see if voter fraud was an issue this year. In many counties in our area it wasn't, but Mower County is investigating three cases. It was one of the biggest issues on the ballot, but Minnesota voters have spoken, saying no to Voter ID. "I did not support changing the constitution," said Democratic Representative Jeanne Poppe. She was one against it. "Changing the constitution is a high threshold to do something that I think, if it needs to...

Expect a pot boom — like the gold rushes of old — as not just dispensers, but pastry chefs, lawyers and even vending machine salesmen all lunge for their piece of the multimillion-dollar medical marijuana business that is about to explode on the scene in Massachusetts, experts said.

Students Told to Disavow ‘American-ness, maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality’ Posted By Ryan Lovelace - Butler University On November 27, 2012 @ 12:02 am In Fix Exclusives,Image Slider | 95 Comments A political science professor at Butler University asks students to disregard their “American-ness, maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality, middle-class status” when writing and speaking in the classroom – a practice the school’s arts and sciences dean defended as a way to negate students’ inherent prejudices. The syllabus of the course at Butler, a small Midwestern liberal arts institution in Indianapolis, spells out that students should use “inclusive language” because it’s “a fundamental issue...

This morning, a majority of the citizen-led Boulder County, Colorado Canvass Board, a legally mandated election oversight board, voted not to certify the Abstract of Votes prepared by Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Hillary Hall. The members who voted not to certify were denied an opportunity to publicly explain the reasons for their decision to the other members of the Board. The members of the Board who disagreed with the majority decision declined to review the majority's Secretary of State required report. Those same members had also declined invitations from the majority to join in discussions of potential problem resolution...

I lost my sidebars on FR, on both my computer and new fancy phone. They were there before, and as usual I hit everything, then they all disappeared! And I can't scroll down either. Once the scroll bar hits the end, that's it, I can't go down any further.

I'm only seeing twelve posts.

New sanctions aimed at reducing global trade with Iran in the energy, shipping and metals sectors may soon be considered by the US Senate as part of an annual defense policy bill, senators and aides said on Tuesday. The sanctions legislation, which has not yet been unveiled, comes during a crowded calendar as the Senate races to deal with deficit reduction, the defense bill and other pressing issues by the end of the year. The package would build on current US sanctions, passed almost a year ago, that have slashed Iran's oil revenues. The goal is to pressure Tehran to...

Welcome to the pretzel logic of liberal environmental protection: In order to "save" owls, the Obama administration is going to shoot them dead. This is not -- I repeat not -- an Onion parody. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the White House released a big fat policy turkey: its final critical habitat rule for the endangered northern spotted owl. The Obama plan will lock up 9.6 million acres of land (mostly, but not all, federal) in Oregon, Washington and northern California. This is nearly double the acreage set aside by the Bush administration. Thousands of timber workers (along with untold thousands...

SINGAPORE: Exports of wheat by India, the world's second-largest producer, could reach 3 million tonnes from government stocks in 2013, an official of a state-run trading firm said on Wednesday, adding that the country had sold 1 million tonnes since April. Traders expect wheat shipments from India to rise as a potent combination of dry weather in the United States and drought in the Black Sea region hurts global supplies."Initially the government has set a limit of 2 million tonnes for wheat exports, but I think the exports will continue to go much higher," the official told reporters at an...

(WOMENSENEWS)--Since two of her children were born with special needs that may be linked to environmental pollution, Melissa Wolfe has worried about flame retardants in her home. Today's release of two studies in the journal Environmental Science and Technology indicate that these chemicals are prevalent in couch upholstery and dust, and raise Wolfe's level of concern. "One of my sons is a thumb sucker, and this news makes me even more nervous about what he is putting in his mouth," says Wolfe, who lives in Brentwood, N.H., and is a board member of the New Hampshire Learning Disabilities Association. Flame...