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The National Rifle Association has gained more than 100,000 new members in the last 18 days, the organization told POLITICO’s Playbook on Thursday. The number of paid new members jumped from 4.1 million to 4.2 million in that time frame.

Pay up, or we’ll turn you into a Hobbit! This is what our public science establishment has reduced itself to?Science fiction writers have infiltrated universities. They’re running amok, and while it’s all very entertaining (thanks for the laughs) some poor sods (like The Express) might think this is actually science. Mass extinction forecast with 6C temperature rise HUMANS will have to become like Hobbits to survive the rapid climate change facing the world, a report claims today.It says that in the past species have coped with a warming climate by turning to dwarfism.This is because food is less nutritious...

Original story & 4 follow-ups... This is where our tax dollars go.

A hard-working disabled mother with five jobs has been left thousands of pounds a year worse off than she would be if she claimed benefits. Nina Friday, 45, has been in constant pain ever since she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis as a 16-year-old schoolgirl. However, instead of living on state handouts, the mother-of-two has overcome her physical problems to work six days a week in five different jobs. Ms. Friday manages to work as a cleaner, a school midday supervisor, a care worker at a nursing home, and as a caretaker at a second school. She even finds time...

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<p>Individuals seeking a permit to buy firearms in New Jersey would have to submit results of a psychological evaluation before they could buy a gun, under a bill introduced yesterday in the Legislature by West New York Assemblywoman Angelica Jimenez.</p>

"I am not a welfare queen," says Melissa Bruninga-Matteau. That's how she feels compelled to start a conversation about how she, a white woman with a Ph.D. in medieval history and an adjunct professor, came to rely on food stamps and Medicaid. Ms. Bruninga-Matteau, a 43-year-old single mother who teaches two humanities courses at Yavapai College, in Prescott, Ariz., says the stereotype of the people receiving such aid does not reflect reality. Recipients include growing numbers of people like her, the highly educated, whose advanced degrees have not insulated them from financial hardship. "I find it horrifying that someone who...

The Jacksonville Jaguars fired coach Mike Mularkey Thursday after just one season, the worst in franchise history. New general manager David Caldwell made the announcement, giving him a clean slate heading into 2013. Caldwell said he made the move just 48 hours after he was hired because he wants to immediately explore every avenue possible to turn the Jaguars around.

Speaking with characteristic clarity Ronald Reagan summed up talking to liberals saying, “It isn’t that Liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” The Great Communicator’s point was that in “Liberal-speak” making sense is not important; how you feel about something and how your words make others feel is the desired end result. Barack Obama has a perfect understanding of this feature of the liberal psyche. He has reintroduced “No soap radio” to unsuspecting dupes trying to be relevant. Obama uses it to herd stupid people into thinking whatever he says makes sense and the...

In a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, former President Bill Clinton outlined the importance mobile technology but also talked about political issues like gun control calling the availability of high-capacity gun magazines "nuts." FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: I grew up in the hunting culture, but this is nuts. Why does anybody need a 30 round clip for a gun? Why does anybody need one of those things that carries 100 bullets? The guy in Colorado had one of those.

WASHINGTON — — Governments in nine states have awarded at least $49 million in subsidies in the past five years to gun and ammunition makers whose products are under scrutiny after the school shootings in Newtown. Almost 85 percent of those tax breaks or grants have gone to two companies: Olin Corporation, the Clayton, Mo.-based maker of Winchester-brand bullets and shotgun shells, and a unit of Freedom Group, the Madison, N.C.-based company that produces the rifle used in the Dec. 14 killing of 20 children and six women at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The subsidies from state and local governments...

BURLINGTON - A deaf man was stabbed several times Wednesday after another man mistook sign language for gang signs, according to police. The victim was walking down East Morehead Street at 5:10 p.m., using sign language with another man who was also deaf, said Burlington police staff Sgt. Mark Yancey.

Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday morning shows race has tightened a bit since November. Democratic gubernatorial candidate and McLean resident Terry McAuliffe and GOP candidate Ken Cuccinelli are virtually tied at the beginning of the race for the governor's seat in Virginia, according to a new poll released Wednesday morning. The Quinnipiac University poll shows McAuliffe with 40 percent to Cuccinelli's 39 percent. One in five voters say they are undecided, according to the poll. In November, a similar poll showed McAuliffe with 41 percent to Cuccinelli's 37 percent. "While all three candidates for governor have run statewide previously, voter...

Noting Army flap, Marine Corps orders its spouses clubs to allow same-sex members By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor Marine Corps leaders have directed their legal teams to alert spouses clubs at all Marine bases to begin allowing same-sex spouses as members if those social groups want to continue operating on Marine installations, Marine officials confirmed to NBC News Wednesday evening. In an all-hands memo to legal offices across the branch, the Marine commandant's Staff Judge Advocate warned against discrimination based on sexual orientation, and he specifically mentioned a controversial decision made last month by the officers' spouses club at...

Photo: Telegraph  REUTERS/Marian StriltsivSpare a thought for people in Russia. Its the coldest winter since 1938. Temperatures may hit -25 in Moscow this weekend. They have already hit -50C in Siberia. Twenty-one people froze to death in one day. (See the Telegraph photo gallery) Down to -50C: Russians freeze to death as strongest-in-decades winter hits Russian TimesRussia is enduring its harshest winter in over 70 years, with temperatures plunging as low as -50 degrees Celsius. Dozens of people have already died, and almost 150 have been hospitalized.­The country has not witnessed such a long cold spell since 1938, meteorologists said,...

Seth MacFarlane will host the Oscar show when it airs live by ABC from Hollywood's Dolby Theatre on Feb. 24. With 12 nominations, Lincoln led the pack as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated nine movies for its best picture Oscar on Thursday morning. Academy voters embraced a widely eclectic list of films that included the French-language drama Amour and the indie breakout Beasts of the Southern Wild as well as Argo, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Silvers Linings Playbook and Zero Dark Thirty. In a year that appeared to embrace extremes, the nominees for...

To paraphrase Ms. Parker, “What fresh tyranny is this?” “With this pen, I thee shred.” What part of “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” does the professor of Constitutional Law not grasp? Ah! That’s not really the operative question, is it?(snip) Joey’s out there floating some trial balloons: how far can we go before the people raise those arms they’ve been given the right to bear? h/t Doug Ross Don’t worry though, the Oscar nominations just came out. That means that politics-weary country can turn its attention back to Hollywood as...

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It is generally held that Catholic Social Teaching begins with Pope Leo XIII’s masterly encyclical, Rerum Novarum (1891). That, as I’ve tried to show, is a dreadful mistake. Pope Leo considered it his duty to apply to current concerns the constant teaching of the Church and of the word of God. Like Thomas Aquinas, the study of whose works he promoted vigorously, he would have considered “originality” a vice, not a virtue. Perhaps we are misled by the title, Rerum Novarum. In our anti-society of rapacious consumption of the “new” and “improved,” and the unease instilled in us by mass...