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A group called the Tombstone Shovel Brigade is planning an event in the Huachuca Mountains in June in an effort to make additional repairs to the cityÂ’s water supply. The City of TombstoneÂ’s waterlines and reservoirs in the Coronado National Forest were damaged by mudslides after last yearÂ’s Monument Fire, and the U.S. Forest Service refused to let the city use heavy machinery in some areas, citing the Wilderness Act. Tombstone filed a lawsuit to prevent the Forest Service from interfering with its ability to adequately access the water, but a federal judge recently ruled against the city. According to...

As America remembers her honored dead this Memorial Day weekend – those who died in uniform defending our great cause of liberty – many hearts are troubled about what we have come to. The idea of liberty on which our nation was founded seems to hang in tatters. The genius of our forefathers in giving us a government that was to be limited, constitutional, and federal appears all but extinguished. The indispensable ingredient of liberty, an independent people of good character, seems at times to be disappearing into a sorrowful sunset. But I would like to suggest a few things...

Bill Berryhill's pitch to voters at a recent candidates forum came down to more than just his positions on issues affecting San Joaquin County's 5th Senate District. It was about the balance of power in the Capitol."Do you realize if one party gets sole power, you think you're taxed to the max now? Guess what? You better grab your wallet, because they only have one way to go and that's to tax and spend, tax and spend," the Republican assemblyman told the crowd at Tracy's Kimball High. Berryhill is running in one of a handful of newly drawn swing seats...

Oxnard, Calif. (AP) -- A Southern California school district has banned the use of Mexican epithets for indigenous people in a campaign to encourage tolerance and stop bullying. The Los Angeles Times reports that Oxnard School District, home to a large community of Mexican farm workers, has prohibited the use of "oaxaquita," which means "little Oaxacan," and "indito," or "little Indian" referring to the indigenous people from Mexico's Oaxaca state.

Much has been said, here at American Thinker and elsewhere, about Barack Obama's recent pair of teleprompted references to his (presumably) non-existent sons. Thomas Lifson toys with the notion that Obama might in fact have secret sons, as a way of making sense of the seeming insanity of it. Selwyn Duke suggests it might indicate brain damage from Obama's (presumably) past drug use. (Funny, isn't it, how often one is left no choice but merely to presume about the Cipher-in-Chief.) David Paulin asks whether Obama might be the victim of a teleprompting prankster/saboteur. All of these are reasonable speculations --...

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) was one of several speakers at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth undergraduate commencement that took place this Sunday. Frank was also one of two people that received the Chancellor's Distinguished Service Medal at the event. However, Congressman Frank made a controversial comment about Hubie Jones, a black recipient of an honorary doctorate, that elicited an audible gasp from the audience. In reference to the Trayvon Martin case, Frank said "you now got a hoodie you can wear and no one will shoot at you." After the audience reacted, Frank said, "I think you'll feel, I hope,...

Last week, the Senate Foreign Relations committee turned the proud men and women of our military into a political football. During a hearing on the long-stalled Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), two top Obama administration officials constantly invoked the military a reason to ratify fatally flawed treaty. In her written testimony, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “no country is in a position to gain more” from the treaty because “as the world's foremost maritime power, the United States benefits from the Convention's favorable freedom of navigation provisions.” She also declared the treaty would “secure U.S. sovereign rights over...

More than 40 Catholic individuals, dioceses and universities have sued the Obama administration to prevent trampling of their First Amendment right to practice religion by forcing them to pay for abortifacients, sterilizations, contraception, devices and pills that would violate their religious beliefs. We would be stunned and alarmed if the courts reject their arguments, grounded as they are in the constitutionally protected right to free exercise of religion...

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Sunday that the United States is not about to “get gouged” by Pakistan — which despite having received billions in U.S. aid is demanding $5,000 for every truck that carries supplies into Afghanistan across its border. The dispute over the border crossing is once again in the spotlight after Pakistan sentenced to 33 years in prison the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA track down Usama bin Laden. Panetta on Sunday called that decision “disturbing,” though he said the U.S. government will continue to “work at” its troubled relationship with Pakistan. Yet with Islamabad continuing...

Police officers are trained manipulators. They take classes to learn how to read people’s body language and how to ask open-ended and innocent-sounding questions in order to surreptitiously obtain information they can use against you. They also have a knowledge of the laws that you don’t possess — and laws differ from State to State, and even from one jurisdiction in a State to another. Police have also been known to invent “laws,” place “evidence” that can be linked to you and twist your words into meaning something you did not intend.

Tina Dupuy is mighty sure of herself and, oddly enough (since I have never met the woman), awfully sure of me too. She explains in her piece Why you believe in gun control that we bitter clingers are actually in favor of gun control…we’re just too pig-ignorant to realize it. “If you ask the typical hyper-political gun owner (and I have … at Thanksgiving dinner), why it’s important to own a gun, they’ll bark about the Constitution. Yes, the Second Amendment: ‘The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed!’” Tina has a little problem...

The film shows a burning crucifix, gun-toting priests and the torture of a young boy. And the Roman Catholic hierarchy is loving it. The film, “For Greater Glory,” hits theaters on June 1 and tells a little known chapter of Mexican history — the Cristero War of 1926 to 1929, which pitted an army of devout Catholic rebels (led in the movie by Andy Garcia) against the government of Mexican President Plutarco Calles (played by Ruben Blades). For Catholics enraged by the Obama administration’s proposed contraception mandate, the film about the Mexican church’s fight in 1920s is a heartening and...

Chestnuthill Township supervisors will consider whether a township ordinance prohibiting guns in the township park should be repealed. The ordinance may conflict with a state law that says that municipalities don't have the authority to limit the rights of gun owners as long as the owners act in accordance with state gun laws. The possible conflict of local and state laws was brought to the township's attention by Brodheadsville resident William Gray. Gray doesn't want to fear being punished if he carries a firearm into Chestnuthill Park, he said. Gray said that, among other reasons, he'd like to have a...

A shooting near the Space Needle Saturday that apparently involved an admitted gang member from Kent will almost certainly spark a new effort by the City of Seattle, no doubt with support from Washington Ceasefire, to attack Washington State’s preemption statute. Seattle tried that in the courts and in March, that legal strategy was derailed by the state Supreme Court when it declined to review Seattle’s unanimous loss before the state Court of Appeals last fall. That was 20 months after Seattle lost at the trial court level in an effort to ban firearms from city park facilities. On the...

Meet the Stooges: Larry, Curly and Barack. Bill Clinton meets another member of the Blue Dress Brigade. Larry Flynt: the latest soldier in the Democrats’ war on women. And the Huffington Post declares jihad on sense. All this — plus — Obama eats dogs. Presented in 1080 hi-def, FOR FREE! It’s The Great Eight, from the Personal Liberty Digest™!

(ref: How Banks Bought the Tea Party) Seriously folks. The 15 freshmen Republican representatives in the House Tea Party Caucus each ran in 2010 on a populist anti-Wall Street message, highlighting their opposition to bank bailouts like the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and criticizing Washington for enabling the banking sector as it became “Too Big to Fail.” After winning, all fifteen received significant PAC contributions from the banking industry — and have become a reliable vote and mouthpiece for the financial industry, a ThinkProgress analysis of campaign contributions, voting records and public statements reveals. It would be nice...

How many things are in a person's pocket that they don't even know about? We take money for granted -- most people can't tell us which way George Washington is facing on the quarter. They can tell us that Ben Franklin is on the front of the hundred, but they can't tell us that Independence Hall (where he helped draft the Constitution) is on the back. One might think that as denominations get smaller and more common, the pictures on them would become more famous and well-known. The ten-dollar bill features Alexander Hamilton on the front. Since he was never...

Today on the U.S. Senate floor, Sen. Rand Paul introduced an amendment to the Food and Drug Administration User Fee Reauthorization bill, which would curb the Food and Drug Associations overreach and abuse of power. Sen. Paul's amendment, No. 2143, would disarm the FDA, put an end to raids on natural food stores and Amish farmers, and stop FDA censorship of truthful claims of dietary supplements.[snip] "Mr.President, today I'm offering an amendment to the FDA. I'm troubled by images of armed agents raiding Amish farms and preventing them selling milk directly from the cow. I think we have bigger problems...

Jack Hayes, the director of the National Weather Service, stepped down Friday in response to an investigation that top officials at the weather service had misappropriated $43.8 million by giving bonuses and extensions to contractors without proper justification. The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Commerce, which oversees NOAA, released the report on May 18, detailing an audit of nine contracts that include incentive pay for good work. The contracts have a maximum potential value of $1.6 billion. The investigators said there may be other contracts that provide additional awards from 2008, 2009 and 2010 but that...

Research suggests that irises do not remain the same for life after all. Identifying people by scanning the irises of their eyes may not be as reliable as some governments and the public might think. That’s according to new research suggesting that irises, rather than being stable over a lifetime, are susceptible to ageing effects that steadily change their appearance over time. With iris recognition now being used at border control in countries such as the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, this has huge implications, says Kevin Bowyer, a professor of computer science at the University of Notre...

Naveen Jindal-led Jindal Steel and Power's (JSPL) ambitious $2.1-billion investment plan in Bolivia is all but over as the company has said it is "not hopeful of continuing" with the project, which was touted as the biggest foreign investment plan in the Latin American country. Through its subsidiary Jindal Steel Bolivia (JSB), the company had in 2007 secured 40-year development rights to the El-Mutun iron ore mine, which holds reserves of around 20 billion tonnes, considered to be one of the largest untapped iron ore deposits in the world. However, with no commitment from the Bolivian government over supply of...

Yen-yuan direct trading to start in June Exchange rates between yen and yuan will be determined by their transactions, departing from "cross rate" system Japan and China are expected to start direct trading of their currencies as early as June as part of efforts to boost bilateral trade and investment, according to reports. With the planned step, exchange rates between the yen and the yuan will be determined by their transactions, departing from the current “cross rate” system that involves the dollar in setting yen-yuan rates, Kyodo News said on Saturday. The two governments are eyeing setting up markets in...

Of all of the evidence that has been released in the Trayvon Martin case, none has been debated and scrutinized more than the alleged injuries suffered by George Zimmerman, the shooter. Photos have surfaced showing Zimmerman with various cuts and bruises on his nose, head and perhaps other places. And, two days after Trayvon was gunned down, Zimmerman’s personal physician claimed Zimmerman had blackened eyes and a broken nose. Well, we all know the devil is tricky. The devil will make you think the victim is the criminal and the murderous stalker was an innocent bystander in fear of his...

Analysis: Kansas governor owns aggressive tax cutsBy JOHN HANNA | Associated Press – Thu, May 24, 2012 TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Plenty of Kansas legislators' fingerprints are on the aggressive income tax cuts signed into law this week by conservative Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, including those of some GOP moderates now describing it as a budget crisis in the making. But Brownback now owns the legislation, even though it strayed significantly from the tax plan he outlined in January and he and his allies sought less aggressive alternatives in the legislative session's final days. He not only signed the bill,...

Greece's once-thriving sex industry has become the latest victim of the debt crisis as Greeks spend less on erotic toys, pornography and titillating underwear. About 50 people, almost all young men, lined up on Friday as the Athens Erotic Dream - the country's biggest sex fair - opened its gates in a nondescript building squeezed against a highway on the outskirts of the capital. The annual show attracted big crowds when it opened in 2008, at the height of the economic bubble. But interest has wilted alongside the economy, mired in its fifth consecutive year of recession. The austerity measures...

Obama's Truth Team Being BrainwashedBy L. Vincent Poupard | Yahoo! Contributor Network – 8 hrs ago.. COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama's campaign staff is attempting to invigorate the Truth Team by giving "proof" the president' s reported spending spree never happened, according to ABC News. The president's Truth Team is being directed to a Market Watch report that attempts to refute the facts about the spending spree and the team is asked to report any political attacks they hear. As a political consultant, the idea of the Truth Team does not sit well with me. President Obama has come under...

Ex-NY Times CEO clashed with chairman's girlfriend-reportReuters – 6 hours ago REUTERS - Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s new girlfriend and the New York Times Co's declining business led to the ousting of Janet Robinson as the newspaper company's chief executive in December. A New York magazine article published this week reconstructs the events that led to Robinson's departure after 28 years of service, working her way up from advertising sales to the corner office in 2004, becoming Sulzberger's most trusted lieutenant in the process. http://tinyurl.com/6oameoz The article is based on interviews with more than 30 sources described as "intimately familiar with...

If you get home delivery of this newspaper, and I hope you do, it arrives in a plastic bag. There's a reason for that. Despite Southern California's reputation for sunny weather, occasionally rain does fall. And then there's that pesky marine layer - the so-called June Gloom - plus your neighbor's poorly aimed sprinklers, and maybe even some residual tears after another early Lakers exit from the playoffs. So your newspaper needs protection. So do your rights. But the L.A. City Council doesn't believe you should have the right to choose paper or plastic when lugging your oatmeal and bran...

Obama refines economic pitch by focusing on steady jobs growthBy Amie Parnes - 05/27/12 04:30 PM ET Obama is highlighting job growth and a steep decline in the unemployment rate to convince voters his policies are working. President Obama’s campaign is highlighting job growth and a steep decline in the unemployment rate over the last year to sell the public on the idea that his economic policies are working. Obama’s greatest challenge this campaign cycle is convincing voters to give him another four years to try to improve the economy, the central issue of the 2012 campaign. Republican Mitt Romney...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The USS Iowa — the iconic World War II-era battleship that once served as transport to President Franklin D. Roosevelt — left San Francisco Bay on Saturday on its way to its new home in Southern California. Surrounded by pleasure boats and other vessels, the 887-foot long, 58,000-ton battlewagon was towed through the bay and passed under the Golden Gate Bridge at about 2:30 p.m. Crowds watched from both sides of the bridge as the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Sockeye provided an official escort and the San Francisco fireboat Phoenix led the way... The center's future...

General Colin Powell said on Wednesday that he supports gay marriage, representing a turning point for the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I have no problem with it," Powell told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview. "In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that's called marriage, and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country. And so I support the president's decision."

The provision of primary medical care and medicines to about 9 million people is at risk of collapse due to the accumulated debts of the National Organization for the Provision of Health Services (EOPPY), as the government has reneged on its promise to settle all arrears to private suppliers of the old insurance funds that now comprise EOPPY by the end of March, totalling 1.7 billion euros. Pharmacists last week decided to indefinitely suspend dispensing medicines on credit, protesting the accumulation of debts of 540 million euros for prescriptions up to March. The insured now have to pay themselves for...

Political uncertainty and fears of a Greek eurozone exit that have recently come on top of the protracted recession and choking lack of liquidity seem to have accelerated the downturn in the real economy, which is near crash condition. Together the rise of the black economy and the freeze in payments, the clearest sign of disintegration is in public revenue collection. After showing a timid rise in the beginning of May, it nosedived right after the May 6 elections. By May 20 the fall was in the order of 20 percent, with taxpayers putting off paying dues and the practice...

America's newest veterans are filing for disability benefits at a historic rate, claiming to be the most medically and mentally troubled generation of former troops the nation has ever seen. A staggering 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials said. What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones...

No, this isn’t a story about Mark Block. Out in the Land of Lincoln, the state is facing a serious shortfall in their Medicaid funding. (A story which is being repeated across the nation, in case you haven’t been keeping score.) But the Governor has a plan! Fear not, citizens. We’ll raise the money to help people with their medical bills by counting on people smoking more. What could possibly go wrong?

The Hellfire Missile is great, but personally, I love it when the 30mm Chain Gun is employed. The first few shots may miss some of the bad guys, so they try to run away, praying to Allah for "mercy" the whole time. But then, they all die tired and breathless, knowing Allah has failed them. Actually, not all die, but it's always great to leave a few survivors to tell everyone else what happens when you mess with Army Aviation.

President Obama departed Joint Base Andrews following a round of golf Saturday afternoon, but the press pool tracking his every movement got left behind as the president headed back to the White House. The vans carrying the reporters and photographers who rotate through following the president are generally at the tail end of his motorcade but, on Saturday, they were about 10 minutes behind Obama's car. The protective pool, as it's sometimes called, is meant to follow the president as he moves from place to place, to convey news to other journalists and to, in the case of catastrophe, convey...

Rhode Island police have arrested a man they say escaped from a South Carolina prison on Christmas Day over 30 years ago... ...Christian had been living in Bristol. He was arrested and charged with escaping a correctional facility. A South Carolina prisons spokesman says Christian walked away from the now defunct Piedmont Work Center near Greenville on Christmas Day in 1980. He was sentenced to 11 months in prison in November 1980 for domestic non-payment of child support...

I am asking all GOP voters in the Texas GOP primary on May 29, 2012, in state house district 64(Denton) to vote for Mike Brucia against six term incumbent Myra Crownover. Myra Crownover is a statist. She is another John McCain in the making(i.e. getting ready for a US House or Senate run). She is very anti-tobacco, and has made it her crusade to dictate to private business owners how they run their businesses over a legal product, tobacco. I know that alot on FR are anti-tobacco, but this is a core issue, what's next? Food and guns? Those who...

Nearby today readers will notice excerpts from a memo written to Ronald Reagan by his economic advisers between his November 1980 election and inauguration. We share the memo because it shines a historical perspective on our own economic dilemmas as the Presidential race hits its Memorial Day turn. The memo was sent to us by George Shultz, who later became the Gipper's Secretary of State but had served previous stints at Treasury, Labor and the White House budget office. The signers include some of the last century's most consequential economic figures, notably the great Milton Friedman, tax-cut evangelist Jack Kemp...

California has a “single-subject rule” limiting ballot propositions to just one issue. This is to reduce confusion and prevent massive proposals from being enacted. Thus, it’s no surprise the tax increases on this November’s ballot do not also contain government-reform measures. But there’s nothing stopping the backers of these proposals from endorsing companion legislation designed to soften the burning revulsion that so many people feel for state government, at least enough to allow one or more of the measures to pass. In fact, I think that’s exactly what voters need to see before they agree to pay more taxes. According...

Wisconsin's Republican Governor Scott Walker, fighting a recall election, against his challenger Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, face-off June 5, 2012, in one of most important contests of our generation.. Background noise? Not even close..Make no mistake, this pesky little contest will determine the momentum, on both sides, and serve as a preamble of the major General Election this November.. All of the important Democrat lifeblood constituencies are at stake, and are being challenged, and hanging by a slim thread, thanks to a true hero, GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER. He and the fighting spirit of his fellow Wisconsinites, dared to touch...

The Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization, today blasted Vice President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for bashing ordinary Americans who believe in governmental fiscal responsibility. Jenny Beth Martin, Co-founder and National Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, reacted strongly to accusations that the Tea Party Movement bears responsibility for the financial crisis facing our nation: “Only entrenched career politicians in Washington, D.C., would think living within your means is ‘extreme.’ What is truly extreme are the lengths Vice President Biden and Sen. Reid will go to blame everyone else for their lack of courage to...

I feel something washing over me. I’m standing in New Jersey, so it’s probably red ink. No, wait a minute — it’s glowing ink! It could only be one thing: more conservative hagiography about the Garden State’s GOP governor. Chris Christie is so not one of us that articles like “Christie Is One of Us” — a new contribution to the genre, from National Review’s Noah Glyn — are churned out regularly as the governor’s smitten admirers, from Ann Coulter to NR staffers, labor to convince us of what they’ve convinced themselves of: that an ostensibly gruff, internally milquetoast, progressive-lite,...

Sometime in the next month, the United States Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of Obama's individual mandate, the provision forcing everyone in the United States to buy health insurance. Based on how badly this provision was defeated in the oral arguments, it will likely be struck down as unconstitutional. If the law's most popular provision, the ban on excluding pre-existing conditions, is also struck down, Obama has nobody to blame but himself. Obama campaigned against the individual mandate. In fact, it's the issue he won the nomination on. Obama said four years ago: "The main difference between...

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Sunday indirectly confirmed recent remarks by the Ambassador to Israel that the U.S. is “ready from a military perspective’’ to stop Iran from making a nuclear weapon if international pressure fails. The U.S. and members of the United Nations Security Council recently met in Baghdad for talks about Iran’s suspected nuclear weapon program. Iran denies it has military intentions but has called for the destruction of Israel. “We have plans to be able to implement any contingency we have to in order to defend ourselves,’’ Panetta said on ABC’s This Week. Earlier, Panetta said,...

Much has been said about the bullying history of both of the presumed presidential nominees for 2012. Last week a North Carolina teacher was put on paid suspension because she got caught bullying her own classroom on the topic of which candidate had been the worse bully years previous. Bullies--we are told--are the cause of everything from eating disorders to teen suicide. The Trayvon Martin case had originally been sold through the media as a case in which an older vigilante wanted to bully a young child. Bullying as a subject itself has even been bullied a great deal. Specifically,...

As part of a recent AIM Report, I wrote briefly about the release of documents last week in the George Zimmerman case. Zimmerman has been charged with second degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin. But more has come out since then, and attorney Alan Dershowitz has stepped up his criticism of the special prosecutor in Florida who brought the charges. Here is what I wrote: As we are going to press, a trove of documents was released on the George Zimmerman case that appears to bolster his defense that he is not guilty of second degree murder in...

Hugo Chavez In Amerca: A 2nd Obama Term Means No Indepdendent Judiciary President Obama’s most blatant first term abuses can be struck down by the check on Presidential power by an independent judiciary. For example, last year Obama purported to make “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), when the Senate was not in recess. But the first time the NLRB so constituted tries to bring any enforcement action for any violation of any of its regulations, the defendant can nullify the prosecution by arguing it was not authorized by a legally constituted Board. Similarly, the so-called Consumer...

House lawmakers will consider an international proposal next week to give the United Nations more control over the Internet. The proposal is backed by China, Russia, Brazil, India and other UN members, and would give the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) more control over the governance of the Internet. It’s an unpopular idea with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress, and officials with the Obama administration have also criticized it. “We're quite concerned,” Larry Strickling, the head of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said in an interview with The Hill earlier this year.