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(Reuters) - Santiago Ortiz was deeply in love and, he believed, near death when he when asked Pablo Garcia to leave his native Venezuela and join him in New York. There was no time to bother with a visa. Ortiz was HIV positive and he wanted Garcia with him. That was 26 years ago. Ortiz, an American, is still alive. He and Garcia were married in Connecticut last year. And Garcia still does not have a visa. The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, blocks federal recognition of same-sex relationships. "I told him, 'I might die tomorrow, I might die...

Federal Court: Ohio Precious Metals Dealers Licensing Scheme Unconstitutional Act regulates business in response to constitutionally-protected advertising, and prohibits legitimate purchases of gold and silver 1851 Center for Constitutional Law December 6, 2012 YouTube:Nov 16, 2012 - Ohio Coin Dealer Suing State Over Scrap Metal License Requirementshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLRlb6AjjgM Liberty Coins - Delaware, Ohiohttp://liberty-coins.com/ Columbus, OH – A federal court late yesterday ruled that Ohio’s regulatory scheme governing those purchasing gold, silver, and other precious metals – the Precious Metals Dealers Act- violates the First Amendment. The ruling, made by Judge Watson of the Columbus division of the Southern District of...

ObamaCare is being implemented, having been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court in June in a series of cases now known as National Federation of Independent Business v. HHS. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the court took a law that was flawed but potentially workable and transformed it into one that is almost certainly unworkable. More important, the justices also may have created new and fatal constitutional problems. ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act, was conceived as a complex statutory scheme designed to provide Americans with near-universal health-care coverage and to effectively federalize the nation's health-care system....

The Eagle Ford Shale continues to hold enormous value, especially for companies that own premium acreage and are well-positioned in the play according to a recent analysis by Wood Mackenzie. The biggest three players – EOG Resources, BHP Billiton and ConocoPhillips – have a combined remaining value of US$30 billion. "With US$28 billion in capex being spent in 2013 and development now in full swing, the excitement in the Eagle Ford Shale and value being extracted from the play continues to exceed expectations." explains Callan McMahon, Upstream Research Analyst for Wood Mackenzie. "In terms of overall investment, from 2012 through...

Title says it all. Click for much cuteness.

This may be the last Christmas of online shopping without paying sales tax. A proposed online sales tax has been offered as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, much to the ire of opponents. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a group that opposes this move, says that an online sales tax will burden small businesses, “some of the most promising candidates for future economic growth.” “This proposal, and other online sales tax collection proposals like it, would allow states to penalize the innovative e-commerce business model by targeting small online businesses as convenient sources (and collectors) of...

Have you noticed how much of Hollywood is preoccupied with thoughts of God? "Life of Pi" is the latest example of a movie with essentially religious themes. Artists in a postmodern culture are thinking about the relationship between story and truth. Even the movie "Lincoln" is organized around the idea that false narratives can serve the greater good in politics. When the people are bad, the politician must lie or mislead to serve the good. It's rather discomfiting to see so many liberal elites embrace this movie, isn't it? Hollywood's recent search for God began with "The Master," a very...

  Dead silence is all that remains, over a week since the Texas Medical Board was forced to drop their case against Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski. Other than a couple random small-town newspapers, a questionable blog and Saturday's opinion piece in a tiny Canadian regular, no one in the media has been willing to touch the news that, yet again, all charges were dismissed against a certain doctor that has literally and successfully cured cancer on many occasions.The Texas Medical Board and the Western medical establishment had been targeting Dr. Burzynski for years and the media was fully willing to...

Who Are the Best Conservative Columnists?Posted By Dave Swindle On December 5, 2012 @ 11:00 am In Conservatism,Ideology,Writing | 92 Comments This week my friend John Hawkins released his annual ranking of the 50 best conservative columnists. A very generous guy, John included me on the list. And ahead of George Will too!I wonder, though: what does it mean to be a columnist today?I’m a traditionalist on the definition. Merriam-Webster claims that it’s “one who writes a newspaper or magazine column.”Well, what qualifies as a column? The defining characteristics, which I invite others to dispute or refine in the comments:...

PUTNAM COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- A deadly crash has been reported along Interstate 64 at the Hurricane rest stop. The wreck was reported just after 11 a.m. Thursday. Hurricane Mayor Scott Edwards tells WSAZ.com Hurricane Police got into a pursuit with a driver that was allegedly wanted for taking items from a local store. The chase reached 100 MPH in the eastbound lanes before the driver tried to exit the interstate and crashed into a semi parked at the Hurricane rest stop, according to Mayor Edwards. Mayor Edwards says the man was killed in the crash. Emergency crews are on...

The commercial itself is hardly controversial. Comedian and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres, wearing holiday-themed gloves and hat, sits at a diner table with three of Santa's elves. She asks them to make more toys for a JC Penney contest, and ends up accidentally insulting the tiny little helpers with a bunch of clumsy short jokes.

Tim Scott, a U.S. Representative from South Carolina, is quickly becoming the favorite to replace South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, who announced his resignation from Congress Thursday morning. CNN's Peter Hamby first reported that DeMint — who leaves to head up the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank — wants Scott to be his replacement. It's a choice that makes sense to conservatives as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley prepares to make an appointment. Whomever Haley appoints will hold the seat until a special election is held in 2014 to pick a permanent replacement to fill DeMint's seat. There...

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) - Now that the city of Topeka has approved the 2012 Uniform Public Offense Code, openly transporting a loaded firearm in your car will be legal. The new ordinance takes effect next Monday, December 10, according to City spokeswoman Suzie Gilbert. "Shawnee County allows the open transportation of loaded weapons, but the city of Topeka had up to now, prohibited that," Topeka Police Chief Ron Miller said. In most of the State of KS, that's the same way. You can transport a firearm, in cars loaded." Others say it could only lead to trouble. "My main concern...

MEDELLIN, Colombia, A Colombian couple who moved into a sewer with their dog said they are living life "better than the president" Miguel Restrepo, 62, told Colombian radio station La FM that he and his wife, Maria Garcia, have been living comfortably in a Medellin sewer for the past 22 years, Colombia Reports reported Thursday. Restrepo said they are living "better than the president" in the "calm" and "carefree" setting. He said the sewer is outfitted with a kitchen, TV, bed, chair and fan.

BATTLE CREEK (WKZO) -- A clerk at a Battle Creek convenience store wasn't about to be robbed. The 28-year-old man running the register at Liberty Mart Convenience store shot the attempted thief in the head when the suspect pulled a knife and demanded money. The suspect was rushed to Bronson Hospital in Kalamazoo where he underwent surgery Monday night. Store owners say they've never had an attempted robbery in the 14 years they've had the store.

So, Obama is fixated - to the point of a "religious" Crusading zealotry - with raising taxes on the rich? (Even if it means reducing total tax revenues by stifling the economy, sending us back into an ever-steady recession.) OK. So, even if it won't clear the deficit, why don't we " raise taxes on the rich" ... by passing an immediate, across the board "progressive" tax on all non-defense federal employees and retirees? Anyone making a total of over $150,000.00 per year (bonus and salary and retirements) gets a 15% tax. Anyone making a total of over $100,000.00 per...

Within eight hours of the initial attack on the United States' diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, the CIA decided to scrub and abandon rather than protect its annex, a military intelligence source told Fox News. “The defensive posture was no longer sustainable," the source told Fox News, revealing for the first time how quickly the CIA chose to secure classified material and close down the facility after it took indirect fire from two mortars at about 5:15 a.m. local time Sept. 12. The adjoining U.S. consulate, by contrast, has never been secured, even three months after the attack. The process...

Oopsie! In what has to be one of the least-shocking outcomes of Barack Obama's Libyan adventure, the New York Times reports that his administration secretly gave approval of weapons shipments to Libyan resistance fighters, only to learn that the weapons ended up arming Islamist terror networks. Who could have seen that coming, right? The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.No evidence...

Whether it's because we end up going over the fiscal cliff or because Republicans agree to President Obama's plan of not extending the Bush tax cuts on America's wealthiest earners, the possibility of an effective tax hike means that higher-income Californians may be in for a whopping aggregate marginal tax rate. The super-liberal state already succeeded in approving their own rate hike with Proposition 30 in the November election, and combined with the potential federal raises, they could be looking at a top bracket with a marginal income tax rate of just under 52 percent: Gerald Prante, an economics professor...