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(Reuters) - Egyptian police battled thousands of protesters outside President Mohamed Mursi's palace in Cairo on Tuesday, prompting the Islamist leader to leave the building, two presidential sources said. Police fired teargas at demonstrators angered by Mursi's drive to hold a referendum on a new constitution on December 15. Some broke through police lines around his palace and protested next to the perimeter wall. Several thousand people had gathered nearby in what they dubbed "last warning" protests against Mursi, who infuriated opponents with a November 22 decree that expanded his powers. "The people want the downfall of the regime," the...

The vast majority of faculty and staff members from the nation’s top Catholic universities donated to President Barack Obama’s campaign over Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s this cycle, according to a new report. Ninety-one percent of the employees at 23 different Catholic schools gave to Obama, according to Federal Elections Commission data available on OpenSecrets.org and analysed by the conservative college site Campus Reform. Much has been made of Obama’s Affordable Care Act mandate requiring employers to provide contraception coverage, a requirement that church officials say conflicts with Catholic religious doctrine,

Nationally, firearm NICS checks broke the record in November, with 2,006,919 checks. This beat the prior December 2011 record of 1,862,327.

A controversial decision by Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council to completely refrain from supervising a referendum on the recently approved constitution remains the top story in the Arab press. “Egypt: Judiciary boycotts the referendum… and the constitutional committee suspends work,” reads the main headline of the London-based daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, long known for its anti-Islamist leanings. The paper reports that judges on the council — all appointed by deposed former president Hosni Mubarak — feared for their safety when they saw crowds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters blocking the roads leading to the gates, “climbing the fences… and inciting the people against...

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's opening bid to Speaker John Boehner, a demand for $1.6 trillion in new taxes, was not meant as a serious offer. It was an ultimatum couched in an insult. Translation: "We won the election. We have the whip hand. Not only are you going to sign on to higher tax rates and higher tax revenues, we are going to rub your Tea Party noses in your coming capitulation." That Boehner did not throw the offer back in Geithner's face and tell him, "Give me a call, Tim, when you're serious," suggests that the speaker feels he...

The Israeli press is reporting that “The United States was behind the summoning of Israeli ambassadors by several European nations, Israeli sources with close ties to US administration officials said Monday. ‘The European move is essentially an American move,’ one official said. ‘The Brits asked the Americans how to act.’” The same story quotes an Israeli official saying “The Europeans got the green light to respond with extreme measures . . .” No proof is offered and proof in these circumstances will be hard to produce. But the story has a great deal of logic behind it. The Obama administration...

What’s going on here? Does Big Guy really want us to go off the fiscal cliff?  All I know is that I heard Val-Jar explaining that since we WON, he can raise taxes on anybody he darn well feels like. And she reminded him that the Republicans need to be punished…for being Republicans.(snip) Butt never mind that: let’s move on to the real news of the day. Anna Wintour for Ambassador?  President Barack Obama is considering nominating Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, to be either his next ambassador to the U.K. or France, as he looks to reward his...

Fiscal Policy: Talk of Clinton-era tax rates ignores the fact that the former president, working with a GOP Congress, cut spending as a share of GDP and produced four balanced budgets by focusing on growth, not spending. Even as he pushes $150 billion in new "stimulus" spending, President Obama argues that to avoid the fiscal cliff we must return to Clinton-era tax rates for wealthy households, with a top marginal rate of 39.6% vs. the Bush-era 35%. Clinton's was an age of balanced budgets and economic growth. But it was also an era of budgetary restraint in which both parties,...

The Russian Navy's Northern Fleet announced yesterday the permanent deployment of the 200th Motorized Brigade of the Russian Army adjacent to the Norwegian border. It is the first of two brigades to be permanently assigned to the Northern Fleet and placed under the overall command of Vice Admiral Vladimir Korolev. This development is not only significant for the size of the formation itself and where it is being deployed, but also for the composition of forces within the brigade. Current Russian military commanders like their Soviet Era predecessors take the 'combined arms' warfare approach to force composition and structure with...

Given what we know in 2012, saying that capitalism will make a society richer than socialism should be about as controversial as saying the earth is round, not flat. Yet, a recent Gallup poll shows that more liberals have a positive view of socialism than capitalism. This is only possible because there are so many perverse incentives that drive the promotion of socialism. If you're a politician, socialism puts power in your hands while capitalism takes it away. If you want to use the government to control people's lives, socialism is a wonderful vehicle to do just that while capitalism...

Amid all the political and media hoopla about the "fiscal cliff" crisis, there are a few facts that are worth noting. First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days. And what will the government do to pay for the other 355 days in the year? All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting...

President Barack Obama’s campaign to raise tax rates on the top 2% will cause far more economic pain to the 98% than to the truly rich. First, the truly rich have already demonstrated their ability to avoid much of the Obama tax hikes. At the same time, the higher marginal tax rates he demands will reduce the opportunities for economic activity, leading to slower growth and fewer job opportunities for the 98%. Finally, those with high incomes inevitably will shift much of the burden of Obama tax hike to those with lower incomes. Let’s start with the ruse that the...

Freedom Outpost has previously reported on the fact that gun sales represent at least one booming sector of the American economy since the re-election of Barak Obama. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to interpret that piece of data in terms of sociology: What must people be thinking? That’s a legitimate question, and it’s easy to think of an answer. Horror icon, Stephen King, has a theory that the same sort of “weather vane” indication of the public mood can be discerned from the popularity, or lack thereof, of current scary movies. In his nonfiction book about creating horror fiction, Danse...

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama urged Russia on Tuesday to work with the United States to "update" a decades-old agreement on dismantling nuclear and chemicals weapons that is set to expire in mid-2013. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in October that Moscow intended to end the 1992 agreement, the latest sign that the much-vaunted "reset" in relations between the Cold War-era foes may be running out of steam. Obama, attending a conference of nuclear anti-proliferation experts at the National War College in Washington, took note of Moscow's complaints and expressed optimism the pact would be extended. "Russia has...

(Reuters) - The Internal Revenue Service has released new rules for investment income taxes on capital gains and dividends earned by high-income individuals that passed Congress as part of the 2010 healthcare reform law. The 3.8 percent surtax on investment income, meant to help pay for healthcare, goes into effect in 2013. It is the first surtax to be applied to capital gains and dividend income. The tax affects only individuals with more than $200,000 in modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), and married couples filing jointly with more than $250,000 of MAGI. The tax applies to a broad range of...

Islamofascism: To hear the president and his media stenographers, Egypt´s new leader is a "practical" guy who´s surprisingly Westernized. He loves our movies and even the "ERA." Such positive reviews provide Mohammed Morsi a fig leaf of secularism and legitimacy. But they cannot hide his dark Islamist heart. Time magazine does its best, however, in an "exclusive interview" with Morsi. It lets him filibuster, uninterrupted, about his alleged support for America´s once-proposed constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights for women, claiming that´s what his Muslim Brotherhood party stands for, too. Sharing more details from the interview on MSNBC,

Geithner’s fiscal cliff offer might not even be able to pass Democratic SenateTreasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner did what Washingtonians call the “full Ginsburg” on Sunday. The term refers to Monica Lewinsky’s lawyer, William H. Ginsburg, who was the first to appear on all five network Sunday interview shows in one day. Mr. Geithner’s whirlwind tour revealed more of the White House’s endgame for the fiscal cliff negotiations, and it’s evident President Obama is positioning himself to the left of his own party. For the first time, Mr. Geithner revealed to Fox News’ Chris Wallace the White House determination to...

Last week, the White House tried (or at least, tried to appear like they were sincerely trying) to grease the skids on the fiscal cliff negotiations with a proposal that included $1.6 trillion in new taxes and the virtual elimination of the debt ceiling — a proposal to which Republicans responded with open laughter.On Monday, the House GOP counter-offered their own jumping-off point, calling for $800 billion in new revenue via tax-code reform and spending cuts and entitlement reforms that would trim off a couple trillion from the budget. Looks like Mary Katharine and Guy Benson came pretty close to...

McCaskill, Colleagues Call for Action from President ObamaSenator tells President: ‘The clock is ticking’ Posted: Friday, November 30, 2012 12:40 pm WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill and a bipartisan group of her Senate colleagues, including fellow Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, are calling on President Obama to direct the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take action ensuring that commercial navigation of the Mississippi River remains possible. “The President needs to take a look at what’s happening in the Midwest and act,” McCaskill said. “The clock is ticking while jobs and businesses in the region are endangered, and it’s imperative...

Fiscal Policy: Talk of Clinton-era tax rates ignores the fact that the former president, working with a GOP Congress, cut spending as a share of GDP and produced four balanced budgets by focusing on growth, not spending. Even as he pushes $150 billion in new "stimulus" spending, President Obama argues that to avoid the fiscal cliff we must return to Clinton-era tax rates for wealthy households, with a top marginal rate of 39.6% vs. the Bush-era 35%. Clinton's was an age of balanced budgets and economic growth. But it was also an era of budgetary restraint in which both parties,...