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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who returned to work Monday after a month-long illness, is expected to testify before the House and Senate committees regarding the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya when both chambers are back in session the week of Jan. 21, sources said Tuesday. “My sense is, her hearing probably will take place the morning of the 22nd,” the incoming ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday. Corker said he had had “some very good conversations with her chief of staff” and that Clinton appeared “anxious to...

h/t to John Hawkins of Right Wing News for the tip on the #ProgressiveCrayonColors game at Twitter. Some are mine, but many of these were derived from what I found there.

Public Schools - Crooked Teachers And Lying Principals Politics / Educating ChildrenJan 08, 2013 - 05:56 AM Walter E. Williams writes: Nearly two years ago, U.S. News & World Report came out with a story titled "Educators Implicated in Atlanta Cheating Scandal." It reported that "for 10 years, hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals changed answers on state tests in one of the largest cheating scandals in U.S. history." More than three-quarters of the 56 Atlanta schools investigated had cheated on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, sometimes called the national report card. Cheating orders came from...

I humbly proffer the ultimate companion piece to this morning's item, which quoted the President Obama expressing his irritation over John Boehner's incessant carping about some "government spending problem" the president is convinced doesn't really exist.  Ladies and gentlemen, it has indeed come to this:   Lawmakers are still positioning themselves for a debt ceiling fight in a few months, but one Republican congressman wants to snuff out a particular idea immediately: the U.S. Treasury minting $1 trillion platinum coins to avert a debt ceiling showdown. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) has introduced a bill to specifically ban President Barack Obama...

Energy: The further review the administration said was needed is done, with a Nebraska environmental agency saying it's safe to build the pipeline that will bring oil, jobs and revenue from our friendly northern neighbor. After kicking the Canadian oil barrel down the road, the Obama administration may soon be forced to approve the Keystone XL pipeline or come up with another excuse to block it after a report from the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality declared it would have "minimal environmental impacts" on the state and its sensitive aquifers. Friday's report triggered a 30-day deadline for Nebraska Gov. Dave...

Gangs provide a support system, a feeling of “community”, and a sense of purpose for many young people. Unfortunately, most of these gangs use violence and crime to achieve their goals, and they are taking over communities all over America. If your community is not a gang-infested war zone yet, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. If nothing is done about this, the violence and the crime that is fueled by these gangs will continue to spread, and eventually nearly every single community in the United States will be affected by it. Let’s take a closer look at...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Off With a Bang: Assault on Second Amendment BeginsPosted By Matthew Vadum On January 8, 2013 @ 12:40 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 40 Comments President Obama is planning an aggressive, in-your-face, blitzkrieg-style campaign against Americans’ fundamental Second Amendment right to self-defense.After a madman murdered 26 people including 20 young schoolchildren last month at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Obama initially urged a reinstatement of the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban. The demonstrably useless law lapsed in 2004 and had no detectable impact on crime. It was designed to cater to big-city...

Just because Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe is pushing for an assault weapons ban and one-gun-a-month restriction in the Old Dominion doesn’t mean he’s opposed to slinging lead. In fact, the former Democratic Party chairman is one of Virginia’s newest gun owners, the proud papa of a sleek Beretta over and under shotgun, the standard of excellence at the area’s skeet ranges. Secrets first heard of his purchase over the weekend from shoppers at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Bailey’s Crossroads who saw the likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee shouldering one of the pricy long guns.

**SNIP** Others stood against any pension changes. Some who were willing to entertain a new approach criticized the proposal as too harsh on public employees and retirees. Still others contended the proposal violates a state constitutional prohibition on diminishing or impairing public employee pensions, as union officials have maintained. Rep. Jim Durkin scoffed at the excuses for a lack of action, criticizing lawmakers who raised concerns that the pension bill might not be constitutional. "I'm perplexed that members of the Legislature now have grave concerns regarding the constitutionality of the pension legislation when they've disregarded the constitutionality of every other...

“When it was my turn, they took me blindfolded,” the thief said. “Suddenly I felt a pain in my right hand that was out of this world. My hand had just been chopped off.” This is Gao, once the seat of an empire, and then a glorified village, and now a city the size of Scranton under the boot of its Islamist conquerors. Gao has become a place where thieves have their hands cut off, where women are forced to wear the stifling Hijab in 113 degree heat or be lashed and where unmarried couples are stoned to death. Borders...

A new study indicates that global warming may actually benefit Arctic animals and ecosystem, by expanding their ranges and increasing biodiversity in the area as warmer-climate species move north. The research was published yesterday, Dec. 20, in the Journal PLoS ONE. Smithsonian.com reported:"Scientists found that, in most cases, global warming will actually give a boost to Arctic and subarctic life. Looking at 61 mammal species that currently inhabit high-latitude Europe the scientists found that, under climate conditions forecast for the year 2080, the majority of the species will see their ranges expand. They found that warming will actually bring in...

Shortly after the Center for Immigration Studies put out a report warning that the Student and Exchange Visitor Program was widely unregulated and abused, the Obama Administration has decided to dispose of the last restrictions instituted after 9/11 to prevent a repeat of the revolving door Saudi visa system. The United States, a decade after Al Qaida strikes in New York and Washington, has opened its doors to Saudi nationals. Diplomats said the administration of President Barack Obama has removed most restrictions on the entry of Saudis to the United States. They said the percentage of visa approvals for Saudis...

The easiest way to take in this study is to take every one of those global warming propaganda posters of sad polar bears and draw a smile on that bear. "A new study indicates that global warming may actually benefit Arctic animals and ecosystem, by expanding their ranges and increasing biodiversity in the area as warmer-climate species move north." "They found that warming will actually bring in more species from further south, increasing biodiversity in the region. And, even in their worst-case scenario, they expect at most one species to go extinct: the Arctic fox. But, they suspect that this...

I received this in the mail the other day. The front of the envelope reads: "U.S. Census Bureau Form Enclosed. YOUR RESPONSE IS REQUIRED BY LAW. Please complete and return by February 12, 2013. I knew the Census is part of the Constitution but a business census? They have pages and pages of forms they want filled out. They want to know how many employees, all my financial numbers, (sales and types services and products offered). First, is this Constitutional? Second, doesn't the IRS have most of this information already?

Australia’s Weather Is So Hot, New Colors Added To Weather Map Claudine Zap The LookoutJanuary 8, 2013 Australia weather map adds new colors for record breaking heat (Image via Bureau of Meteorology) The forecast in Australia: Hot, hot, hot—and getting hotter. As a record-breaking heatwave hovers over many regions and territories (which are in their summer months now), the continent’s Bureau of Meteorology has added two new colors to the weather map to reflect the rising mercury. The map currently shows the weather in orange tones at the top, which indicate temperatures 40 to 48 degrees Celsius. But forecasts are...

C.E.S. 2013: Panasonic’s TVs Can Recognize a Face Panasonic’s new product introductions at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas touch on what is becoming a common theme —–making your TV do the work of finding shows you want to watch.. The company announced a feature called “My Home Screen” that will show a viewer customized suggestions of TV shows, streaming shows and Internet content, all on one screen. The idea is to put all of the content in one place so a viewer does not have to search separately for TV shows and video on demand, for instance. Each...

Two brothers were found dead Tuesday morning inside a restaurant where one of them worked in the Parkway Plaza Shopping Center near Lynnhaven Mall. A delivery driver who arrived at the Rally’s fast food restaurant at 845 Lynnhaven Pkwy. about 2:10 a.m. found one of the men and called police to report a gunshot wound, said Officer Tonya Borman, a police spokeswoman. Officers discovered the second man when they arrived on the scene.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- A California assemblywoman introduced a bill on Monday that aims to regulate ammunition sales. The measure, AB48, would establish restrictions similar to those covering gun sales, including requiring sellers to be licensed and buyers to have and show valid identification. "When we have so many safeguards in place around the purchase of guns, why is it so much easier to buy bullets, the things that make guns deadly?" Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner asked as she unveiled the measure during a news conference outside her office in Oakland. "Today, it is easier in California to buy bullets than it...

McCAIN MAY BE WORKING TO STAB US IN THE BACK It was reported yesterday that Vice President Joe Biden “guaranteed” to ailing Boston Mayor Tom Menino that sweeping gun control legislation would be passed by the end of January. How sweeping? A quick look at Feinstein’s semi-auto ban legislation suggests that up to 75% of all handguns currently in circulation would be banned, along with 50% of all long guns. Depending on its configuration, the AR-15 you already have would probably be treated like a machine gun. You would have to be fingerprinted, background checked by the FBI, and undergo...

Ed Koch: I Knew Obama Would Betray IsraelI admire former Mayor Ed Koch’s willingness to break with his own party on issues of principle, but his comments to the Algemeiner today are mind-boggling. In between some very strong denunciations of the Chuck Hagel nomination, Koch casually let it drop that he suspected Obama would abandon his pro-Israel positions after the election. The former mayor, of course, endorsed Obama’s reelection and served as one of his surrogates to the pro-Israel community: “Frankly, I thought that there would come a time when [Obama] would renege on what he conveyed on his support...