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In a measure of solidarity with those affected by the budget-slashing government sequestration, President Obama is giving up 5 percent of his salary for rest of the year, which is almost as admirable and sensible as a mansion-owner shutting off his marble fountains during a drought. This is not to imply that the president shouldn't demonstrate some unity with those who've been furloughed or lost work because of the blind slashing the sequestration prompted. People like Jeff Maryak, profiled by BuzzFeed, who is considering re-enlisting to make ends meet after a 27 percent pay cut. People like those who've lost...

Classic idiotic remarks by the current occupant of the White House as organized by Glenn Beck.

President Obama’s Energy secretary nominee regards a carbon tax as one of the simplest ways to move the energy industry towards clean technologies, though he notes that government would have to come up with a plan to mitigate the burden this tax places on poor people, who would pay the most. “Ultimately, it has to be cheaper to capture and store it than to release it and pay a price,” MIT professor and Energy nominee Ernest Moniz told the Switch Energy Project in an interview last year. “If we start really squeezing down on carbon dioxide over the next few...

It's Passover, and although Barack Hussein Obama's lineage is far removed from that of Abraham, the man should at least put a little of the emergency transfusion blood that they bring along in the president's motorcade over the lintels of his door. Mr. Obama's first trip to Israel as president was similar to his Jakarta jaunt in 2010 and his "Return to Moneygall" tour in 2011. In Indonesia, the trip was cut short when Java's Mount Merapi began spewing ash in Air Force One's direction. In Ireland, while revisiting his roots, Obama's limo got hung up on a bump as...

The Twitter account @BarackObama tonight retweeted Yoko Ono’s picture of John Lennon”s bloody glasses from the day he was murdered. The arresting photo, which includes text that more than a million people have been killed by guns since Lennon was shot in 1980, has been retweeted more than 11,000 times since it was posted Wednesday. A retweet by the account associated with President Obama forwarded it to his more than 28 million followers. Retweets aren’t always endorsements in Twitter etiquette, but Ono’s activism comes at a time when President Obama and Democrats’ push for more gun control after the Sandy...

The map of the Middle East displayed in an Obama administration video released days before President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel shows the Jewish state dispossessed of substantial parts of its current territory, including its capital. The map of Israel, displayed repeatedly during the video, shows the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, northern Israel, and areas surrounding what is currently the West Bank as non-Israeli territory. The Golan Heights is shown as part of Syria; Jerusalem is shown as part of the West Bank; and northern Israel is shown as part of Lebanon. The itinerary on the White House website also implies...

Barack Obama certainly enjoys the trappings and perks of the Office of President. The actual job of being President, however, doesn't seem to interest him. His desire to avoid being tied to any specifics of any proposal have caused him to do what no modern President has done. He is the first President since 1921 to abdicate the task of drafting a federal budget to Congress. Congress established the modern budget process in 1921. Under the terms of the law, the President is required to submit a budget for the federal government no later than the first Monday in February....

ABC is defending its decision to edit out an apparently erroneous claim by Michelle Obama in its broadcast of the first lady’s interview on Good Morning America today, saying it made the changes “solely” for the sake of time. As The Washington Examiner reported this morning, the first lady claimed during an interview with Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts that 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who was killed in Chicago shortly after performing during the President’s Inauguration, was shot because “some kids had some automatic weapons they didn’t need.” In fact, Chicago Police reported Pendleton was shot by a man who “opened...

CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama won’t have to worry about his paycheck if the spending sequestration included in the Budget Control Act that he signed into law in 2011 begins taking effect this Friday. A report published last month by the Congressional Research Service--“Budget Sequestration and Selected Program Exemptions and Special Rules"--identifies certain programs that are exempt from sequestration and lays out special rules that govern the sequestration of others. Section 255 of the Budget Control Act includes “Compensation for the President” as one of those exemptions (Page 19).

I'm getting a lot of email asking me how Israel could be awarding its 'highest civilian honor' to the most anti-Israel President of the United States ever, Barack Hussein Obama. Here's some fairly typical coverage from Fox News. Israel will award President Barack Obama the country's Presidential Medal of Distinction during his upcoming visit. Israeli President Shimon Peres' office said Monday that Obama will be recognized for his "unique and significant contribution to strengthening the State of Israel and the security of its citizens." Obama is scheduled to visit Israel in March -- his first as president. Obama has often...

Even Obama's experts say his gun control policies won't work. According to an internal Department of Justice memorandum, a gun ban, like the one being debated right now in Congress, will not work without a mandatory gun buyback, and "universal" background checks will not work without requiring gun registration. Call Congress at 202-224-3121 and tell them to reject President Obama's gun control agenda -- and to get serious about prosecuting criminals and fixing our broken mental health system.

Environmentalists have cheered the decision by the Obama administration to tap Recreational Equipment Inc. CEO Sally Jewell as secretary of the interior, a position to be vacated by Ken Salazar. “In Jewell, President Obama chose a leader with a demonstrated commitment to preserving the higher purposes public lands hold for all Americans – recreation, adventure, and enjoyment,” Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said in a statement. “Jewell’s unique experience and her love of America’s outdoors will be invaluable to the stewardship of the waters, lands and wildlife we’ve been entrusted to protect for our children,” said Frances Beinecke, president...

(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama opened his second inaugural address by quoting the statement from the preamble to the Declaration of Independence that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." He then went on to say that if men were in fact created equal, then homosexual “love” must be equal as well. “What makes us exceptional, what makes us American," said Obama, “is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by...

“Hundreds” of death threats have been made against the president of the National Rifle Association just since the first of this year. And those threats reflect President Obama’s political tactics. That’s what NRA President David Keene told talk show host Ernest Istook on Thursday. Keene says those threats reflect attempts by the Left and by President Obama “to demonize and blame those who disagree with him for everything he doesn’t like.” Keene also is literally targeted by a video game that invites people to shoot him, which he calls the “Kill David Keene” game. The good news, according to Keene,

Jeffrey Goldberg, an indefatigable defender of the president when it comes to Israel, has done the president no favors by revealing President Obama’s deep-seated arrogance and lack of respect for our democratic ally Israel. Goldberg writes: In the weeks after the UN vote [on Palestinian observer status], Obama said privately and repeatedly, “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are.” With each new settlement announcement, in Obama’s view, Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation. . . . On matters related to the Palestinians, the president seems to view the prime minister as a political...

Elections have consequences. One of them is continuing US support for the European Project and the process of ‘ever closer union’, following Barack Obama’s re-election last November. Had Mitt Romney won, there would have been a very different approach towards the EU, with a far greater emphasis upon advancing ties with nation states in Europe as opposed to currying favour with Brussels. Romney’s approach was distinctly Eurosceptic, with frequent warnings against America ending up like Europe, with its big government, high tax approach. As David Blair has reported, Philip Gordon, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian...

Cuba was singled out by Human Rights Watch in 2011 as being the only Latin American country that represses virtually all forms of political dissent. It is difficult to understand how such tyranny could get worse. Both Reuters and the Miami Herald report that Cuban Security agents broke their previous records of government political repression in 2012 with 6,602 confirmed detentions of political dissidents. In 2011 there were 4,123 confirmed political arrests which was even higher than the 2,704 arrests from 2010. Both Reuters and the Miami Herald based their data on a 2012 year-end report from the Cuban Committee...

America is entering a new economic normal, a reality where almost everything that should be going up is going down, and everything that should be going down is going up. The United States begins 2013 in uncharted economic waters; America has never been here before. Consider, for example, these seven “firsts” for the U.S. economy: 1. All-time record annual average gas price: In 2012, the average cost of a gallon of gas eclipsed the previous record by nine cents, bringing the annual average to $3.60. 2. All-time record food stamp participation: As of last month, for the first time in...

Speaking before a friendly crowd of “middle-class families” at the Old Executive Office building in Washington, D.C., this afternoon, President Obama addressed the ongoing fiscal cliff negotiations, claiming that the deal was not achieved in his preferred “balanced approach” because of Republicans unwilling to negotiate higher taxes on the wealthy. While noting that the current plan includes no new spending cuts, he also added that any future debt deals will have to include more tax increases. “The potential agreement that’s being talked about would not only make sure the taxes don’t go up on middle class families, it also would...

Some interesting news has broken in the wake of the latest push for gun control by President Obama and Senate Democrats: Obama sends his kids to a school where armed guards are used as a matter of fact. The school, Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, has 11 security officers and is seeking to hire a new police officer as we speak. If you dismiss this by saying, "Of course they have armed guards -- they get Secret Service protection," then you've missed the larger point. The larger point is that this is standard operating procedure for the school, period....