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If you're looking to confirm the oft-repeated Israeli narrative that Hamas and terrorist groups in Gaza endanger Gazans by hiding weapons among the civilian population, then this episode is your smoking missile

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Tuesday on MSNBC "Morning Joe," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) discussed the humanitarian crisis of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors illegally flooding across the U.S.-Mexico border. The congressional leader dismissed the strain on our nations financial resources to care for all the children of the world in troubled areas, saying she believes the U.S. government should look at the children like "baby Jesus," who she added "was a refugee from violence." Pelosi said, "In Washington, I see an embrace of the idea that this is a humanitarian crisis by people who are not politicizing the issue. What we...

... “Meanwhile, I am left with the Atheist on my hands,” Dorothy Sayers once penned to C.S. Lewis in a letter in which she sought some practical advice from the popular Oxford apologist. She went on to write, “I do not want him. I have no use for him. I have no missionary zeal at all.” While many Christians likely attempt to project a little more enthusiasm for evangelism, I’m not sure they do not, deep down, resonate with Sayers’ sentiment. With the relentless barrage of new atheist bravado over the last decade, believers are liable to grow weary in...

POLITICO Chief Political Columnist Roger Simon is accusing Texas Governor Rick Perry of sending National Guard troops to the border so they can "shoot small children." Roger Simon ✔ @politicoroger Rick Perry sending 1,000 National Guard troops to border to shoot small children. Could make good headlines -- in Russia. 8:45 PM - 21 Jul 2014 First off, lets just mark this under most asinine statement of the day. Second, funny how Simon conveniently ignores why Perry is sending the troops: to stop cartels and gang members who actually shoot and murder small children from entering the United States. Here's...

Once a year rental marketIt is that time of year when San Diegans open their homes to strangers. People across the county rent rooms, apartments, condos and houses to visitors of Comic-Con. It is the largest convention in San Diego, and places to stay are hard to find and expensive -- leaving the door open the locals who want to make some extra money renting out space for the convention. But there can be complications. Besides the fact that you are opening your door to complete strangers, many rental contracts and Condo Association rules ban renting out your property. Regardless,...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's attorney, Eugene Fidell, has apparently been retained to launch a hyper-partisan political campaign against Fox News. The Army has not charged Bergdahl with anything. According to some news reports, the Army hasn't even begun investigating Bergdahl. Nonetheless, one of Fidell's first media appearances was with the Huffington Post where he vilified Fox News for vilifying his client: “It’s very unfortunate that Fox News has an opportunity to use this case in an effort to stir up the base, use this in an effort to vilify my client, who everybody knows has gone through a terrible five-year long...

If the tax passes, it will be adding an additional 2 cents per ounce. A 12-ounce can of Coke, under the new tax would now cost you an additional 24 cents. A 20-ounce bottle of Snapple would coast you an additional 40 cents. San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar said, "So two pennies per ounce to reduce the amount of harmful beverages by 30-40 percent, according to the best economist in the city." He was referring to the office of the San Francisco economist. Mar is one of the authors of the measure. He and others attending a rally at City...

League City's recent resolution rejecting refuge for Central American migrant children violates two landmark civil rights acts, a complaint to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development alleged this week. Other Houston-area jurisdictions may face similar opposition as their elected officials fight potential federal efforts to house undocumented minors in their communities. On Tuesday, Brazoria County commissioners unanimously passed a resolution urging the federal government to solve the Texas-Mexico border crisis and "cease relocation" of unaccompanied immigrant youngsters in the state. Also on Tuesday, two different measures to prevent unaccompanied child migrants from being housed in Smith County -...

In a sensational press release issued Tuesday afternoon, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) claimed that he had evidence that the Internal Revenue Service destroyed a computer belonging to a key figure in the IRS targeting scandal despite being told by experts that its data was recoverable. Camp also insinuated that the original damage to the computer was done intentionally.

Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer hard drive was “scratched” and the data on it was still recoverable. But the IRS did not try to recover the data from Lerner’s hard drive, despite recommendations from in-house IRS IT experts to outsource the recovery project. The hard drive was then “shredded,” according to a court filing the IRS made to House Ways and Means Committee investigators.

A few weeks ago it was teeming with sunspots, as you would expect since we are supposed to be in the middle of solar maximum -- the time in the sun's 11-year cycle when it is the most active. But now, there is hardly a sunspot in sight. If you look closely at the image above, taken on July 18 by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, you will see a tiny smidge of brown just right of center where a small sunspot appears to be developing. But just one day before, there truly was nothing. It was a totally spotless day....

President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty for illegal aliens via the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and other executive orders is a “magnet” for illegal immigration, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News on Tuesday. “All of that is a magnet and a beacon for people to come,” Paul said when asked about Obama’s executive immigration orders during a brief interview outside the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) headquarters. “You can’t have any kind of beacon without securing the border first. It really illustrates what conservatives have been saying all along, myself included: You can’t vote for immigration reform,...

PICO UNION DISTRICT (CBSLA.com) — As concerns grow over brain injuries in teenagers and their relation to team sports, a landmark program aims to increase sport safety. About 1,200 students at Loyola High School, including non-athlete students, are being given a series of tests, known as baseline concussion tests, designed to measure brain function. The tests involve number tracking, memory and balance. “We just decided that it would be better off to have all of our students have a baseline, so that if they should ever have a concussion, we’ll have something to work with,” head athletic trainer Tim Moscicki...

Shanghai (AFP) - A scandal involving expired meat sold by a China unit of US food supplier OSI Group spread to Japan Tuesday, as McDonald's confirmed that the now shut factory provided Chicken McNuggets to its restaurants. Shanghai authorities on Sunday shut an OSI plant -- a supplier to McDonald's and KFC in China -- for mixing out-of-date meat with fresh product, re-labelling expired goods and other quality problems following an investigative report by a local television station. A Tokyo-based spokesman for McDonald's Japan told AFP the restaurant chain had sourced about 20 percent of its McNuggets from the Shanghai...

Working-class whites are no longer a majority of Ohio's eligible voters, a historic shift in a key Midwestern swing state that has political parties pledging more outreach to a broader coalition of demographic groups.

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - A Southern California city will put itself at the center of a nationwide debate over illegal immigration on Tuesday evening when officials there are expected to reject a bid by the U.S. government to open a shelter for unaccompanied migrant children. The vote by planning commissioners in Escondido, 20 miles north of San Diego, comes amid a surge in children from Central America caught entering the United States, overwhelming federal processing facilities, threatening to swamp immigration courts and creating a backlash in border-state communities. Escondido commissioners voted tentatively last month to reject a bid by federal...

BROOKLYN BRIDGE -- Someone has replaced two American flags on the Brooklyn Bridge with mysterious white flags. The white flags - international symbols of surrender - fluttered Tuesday from poles on the stone supports that hold cables above the bridge connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan. One of the flags, viewed via video, appeared to have faint traces of stars and stripes on it. Police say it isn't clear what time they were placed there - or by whom.

Nihad Awad is a born in Jordan Palestinian living in the U.S. for more than two decades. He is co-founder and CEO of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the largest Muslim civil rights organizations in the United States. He was an advisor to Al Gore and met Presidents Bush and Clinton as well as several U.S. Secretary of State. His e-mails were monitored from 2006 to 2008. "As a citizen I am beside myself that the government spies on activists. Though we have done so much for society in this country, we are still suspected." Awad believed...

ISIS militants seized a 4th century Catholic Monastery and kicked out its monks on Sunday. The monks at Mar Behnam Monastery were forced to flee the monastery on foot with only the clothes on their back.

Why would you spend millions of dollars sending troops to the border who can't actually detain anyone? That's what some Texas sheriffs of border towns are asking in the wake of Gov. Rick Perry's plan to send 1,000 National Guards members to the Texas/Mexico border in the next month, according to the Dallas Morning News. For them, it would be more useful to spend the money on hiring more deputies and police, aka people who are allowed to detain migrants. “I don’t know what good they can do,” Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio told the Dallas Morning News. “You just...

Businessman David Perdue stunned Georgia’s Republican political establishment Tuesday by capturing the party’s U.S. Senate nomination in his first run for office. The former CEO of Reebok and Dollar General toppled 11-term Rep. Jack Kingston by a narrow margin, setting up a battle of political newcomers with famous kin in the fall. Perdue’s cousin, Sonny, was a two-term governor and Nunn’s father, Sam, was a four-term U.S. Senator....

Another piece of evidence to support the theory that this administration thinks it’s doing a terrific job, on every front, all the time: David Axelrod ✔ @davidaxelrod Remember not long ago when some folks in DC were almost in awe of Putin's moxy and cunning? He's not looking so slick now. 9:05 AM - 21 Jul 2014 Washington, DC, United States 265 Retweets 147 favoritesFirst, it’s spelled ”moxie.”Second, Obama and his fans love to blur the lines between acknowledging Putin’s ruthlessness and willingness to act, with little fear of consequence, with some sort of admiration for him. Remember when this...

“Weird Al” Yankovic’s new album, Mandatory Fun, is set to take the number one spot on the music charts, making it his first number one of his career. Take that Internet parody creators! It’s fitting that “Weird Al” would claim his first number one album on the Billboard 200 here and now. Not only is his popularity booming thanks to last week’s onslaught of media coverage, but it is also the 25th anniversary of UHF (something we will be celebrating tomorrow). It would seem that Yankovic is going to have a lot to digest in celebration of this achievement, but...

A Colorado Springs man was arrested Tuesday on a felony warrant after police drew him out of his apartment southeast of Airport Road and South Academy Boulevard. Nicholas Rogers, 34, was wanted on a felony menacing warrant. Police looked for him at his apartment in a complex in the 700 block of Chapman Drive. No one answered the apartment door, but police found an extension cord running from his residence to an outlet in the laundry room, an illegal utilities connection. Police disconnected the cord and hid in the laundry room to wait. After about half an hour, Rogers left...

By Matthew Burns Raleigh, N.C. — Gov. Pat McCrory on Tuesday signed legislation designed to replace the controversial Common Core academic standards in North Carolina public schools with standards drawn up by a new state commission. The standards were adopted by the state several years ago. But their implementation in the 2012-13 school year angered some parents, who said they were inappropriate in several areas. For the past year, those critics have been pushing lawmakers to repeal the standards. McCrory has supported Common Core in the past. Just last month, he said the push to repeal the standards "is not...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and a key immigration hawk, took to the Senate floor on Monday afternoon to attack the efforts by President Barack Obama to grant amnesty via executive order to millions of illegal aliens. During his floor speech, Sessions endorsed a bill from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) that aims to curb the president’s executive amnesty efforts—and called on his colleagues to cosponsor it. Sessions said: Senator Cruz has a bill that would stop this presidential overreach. Sessions said. It’s very simple. It lays out that we won’t spend money providing legal...

Imagine if I were to tell you there is a large group of government employees, with generous salaries and ridiculously cushy retirement pensions covered by the taxpayer, who enjoy incredible job security and are rarely held accountable even for activities that would almost certainly earn the rest of us prison time. When there is proven misconduct, these government employees are merely reassigned and are rarely dismissed. The bill for any legal settlements concerning their errors? It, too, is covered by the taxpayers. Their unions are among the strongest in the country. No, I’m not talking about public-school teachers. I’m talking...

July 23, 2014Wednesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Jer 1:1, 4-10 The words of Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah,of a priestly family in Anathoth, in the land of Benjamin. The word of the LORD came to me thus: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,before you were born I dedicated you,a prophet to the nations I appointed you.“Ah, Lord GOD!� I said,"I know not how to speak; I am too young.� But the LORD answered me,Say not, “I am too young.�To whomever I send you, you shall go;whatever I command you, you...

Russia could ask its richest citizens to help foot the bill for the annexation of Crimea by paying a "solidarity tax" proposed by a group of lawmakers. Deputies from the State Duma lower house of parliament, which is dominated by backers of President Vladimir Putin, have drawn up a draft law that would increase income tax for people earning more than more than 1 million roubles ($28,700) a month. It would affect less than 2 percent of the working population but the amounts could be huge for some individuals because the daft proposes they pay up to 30 percent of...

The most jaw-dropping comments from Kanye West's just-released interview with GQ Magazine wasn't that he confirmed giving a 45-minute toast to himself on his wedding day.

WARSAW (Reuters) - Bulgaria called for more NATO troops in southeastern Europe and the Black Sea, as well as more joint military exercises, to improve security in the region after Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea. An ex-communist state on the Black Sea, Bulgaria was a close Cold War ally of Moscow but joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union three years later. "The events in Ukraine proved that we cannot take peace and security in Europe for granted," President Rosen Plevneliev said at a meeting in Warsaw of heads of state of NATO countries in central and eastern Europe,...

Citing Maryland’s recently enacted firearm laws and the prospect of more restrictions, the U.S. arm of legendary Italian gunmaker Beretta announced Tuesday that it would move its manufacturing operations to Tennessee next year. The move makes Beretta the latest maker of guns or ammunition to move all or part of its operations to another state because of tightened gun control laws. General Manager Jeff Cooper said an early version of a statute passed last year by the Maryland state Senate would have prohibited the company from manufacturing or storing products in the state. “While we were able in the Maryland...

Perhaps sensing a leadership vacuum with Mayor de Blasio enjoying la dolce vita overseas, former Mayor Bloomberg is back in the news. With an international message: He's traveling to Israel to blast the FAA's decision to ban flights to Israel. Earlier today, the FAA announced that flights to and from Tel Aviv would be prohibited for up to 24 hours after reports of a rocket strike landing about a mile from Ben Gurion this morning. Which prompted Bloomberg to plan a trip. He wrote on his website: This evening I will be flying on El Al to Tel Aviv to...

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a great point on CNN on Tuesday when she conceded that it is hard to dispute that forces loyal to Hamas in the Gaza Strip are using human shields in order to protect their military assets. She implied that this tactic has resulted in an inordinate number of Palestinian causalities over the course of the ongoing conflict with Israel. After conceding that Hamas is intentionally making civilian casualties more likely, she said that it was nevertheless the case that those causalities are sapping Israel of its “moral authority.”

NEWINGTON — When Talia Maselli envisioned her perfect prom date, one man immediately sprang to mind: Vice President Joe Biden. “Joe Biden makes me laugh,” the Maselli said. “He just cracks me up.” So she mailed Biden a handwritten note last fall asking him to escort her to the Newington High School prom. “I am inviting you so far in advance because I’m sure many 17-year-old girls send you prom invitations, and I had to beat them to it,” Maselli said in her letter. “I could only tolerate a high school dance if I was to be escorted by the...

During United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s visit to Israel on Tuesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu presented him with the rockets and operating methods of Hamas terrorists. Netanyahu showed Ban, among other things, some of the long-range rockets that Hamas has used to target central Israel. Netanyahu also showed the UN chief some proof that Hamas has been using civilians as human shields.

After Russia orchestrated the absorption of Crimea into the Soviet Union – oops – into Russia, the Prime Minister told a German audience that Mr. Putin was a “throwback” to the USSR. “Unfortunate as it sounds,” Mr. Harper observed, “it’s increasingly apparent to me that the Cold War has never left Vladimir Putin’s mind.” Then the Prime Minister added, “we simply … cannot afford the risk of Europe going back to being a continent where people seize territory … where the bigger military powers are prepared to invade their neighbours or carve off pieces.” The economy was important, he went...

MacDailyNews presents live notes from Apple’s Q314 Conference Call with analysts starting at 5pm EDT/2pm PDT today. For its fiscal 2014 third quarter ended June 28, 2014, Apple today announced Q314 financial results with quarterly revenue of $37.4 billion (vs. $35.3 billion YOY) and quarterly net profit of $7.7 billion (vs. $6.9 billion YOY), or $1.07 per diluted share.“Our record June quarter revenue was fueled by strong sales of iPhone and Mac and the continued growth of revenue from the Apple ecosystem, driving our highest EPS growth rate in seven quarters,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “We...

Beretta U.S.A. announced Tuesday that company concerns over a strict gun-control law enacted in Maryland last year have made it necessary to move its weapons making out of the state to Tennessee. The well-known gun maker said it will move to a new production facility it is building in the Nashville suburb of Gallatin that is set to open in mid-2015. Beretta general manager Jeff Cooper said that a sweeping gun-control measure that was passed last year initially contained provisions that would have prohibited the Italian gun maker from being able to produce, store or even import into Maryland the...

Things are heating up on planet Earth. Average global temperatures shattered records this June ... for the second month in a row, according to a new report from the National Climactic Data Center. The NCDC, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, analyzed data from 2,000 weather stations scattered across the globe measuring both ocean and land temperatures and found that global average temperatures surpassed the previous record by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit. That makes June 2014 the warmest June since record keeping began in 1880. If this trend continues, 2014 could top 2010 as the warmest year recorded.

...In a report out of Michigan, a protest was organized over the prospect now seemingly beyond the people's control, that the federal government under the leadership of Barack Obama will be sending dozens of the tens of thousands of children who have come into the nation through our southern border, to the small town of Vassar.  Filled with anger and resentment against the open border policies of this president, the people demonstrating described the move as anarchy.But, within the report, it was revealed that the move was being organized by a foundation called the Heartland Alliance: Grosse Pointe Park-based Wolverine Human Services...

With 148 counties out of 169 reporting, WRDW-TV in Augusta, GA has called this very, very close primary runoff for Perdue, a political "newcomer", his word. Details: Jack Kingston 234,238 votes 49% David Perdue 242,137 votes 51%This has been a particularly nasty campaign.

Mexico Foreign Minister José Antonio Meade Kuribreña on Tuesday challenged Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s characterization of the flow of Central American children into the U.S. as an “assault” on Americans and their security. “There’s a need to respond to the upsurge in minors, but I don’t see how the upsurge of minors threatens the security of the U.S. — and I certainly don’t see how it threatens the security of Texas,” Meade said in an appearance at The Chronicle’s editorial board. “There’s a need for a response. … That response should have a high level of humanitarian concerns within it....

In an interview published by The Guardian on Sunday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden explained that sometimes racy images intercepted by the NSA were shared by analysts. During the interview, which was conducted in Russia, Snowden said that some of the American military personnel working on the NSA’s programs were between 18 and 22 and did not always respect the privacy of those whose communications were intercepted. “In the course of their daily work they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work, for example an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation but they’re extremely...

I don't know exactly why, but I wanted to share this. This is how it's done.

Civil rights leaders at the NAACP’s annual convention worry that black voters won’t show up at voting booths in November this year. Black voting turnout hit records in presidential elections during Barack Obama’s presidency but dropped sharply in 2010. A wave of newly elected Republicans passed several laws targeting voter fraud after those elections that critics say make it harder for minorities to vote. …

In a major setback for the Affordable Care Act, the D.C. Circuit just released a fractured opinion invalidating the IRS’s rule extending tax credits to federally facilitated exchanges. The case, Halbig v. Sebelius, centers on the portion of the ACA governing the calculation of tax credits. The statute specifies that tax credits are available to most people who purchase a health plan “through an Exchange established by the State under 1311.” (See my earlier posts for a more detailed recap.) About two-thirds of the states, however, declined to establish exchanges. In those states, the federal government stepped in and established...

In scandal after scandal in the Obama administration, President Obama has said he didn’t know about the problems until he heard it on the news. But the president changed his tune about his supposed ignorance at a Democratic fundraiser near Seattle on Tuesday night. Mr. Obama told supporters that he doesn’t watch the news because, “Whatever they’re reporting about, usually I know.” That contrasts with the explanations that the president and his aides have given from scandals in the past few years ranging from long wait times and deaths at the VA, to the IRS targeting tea party groups, to...

Full title: The Philosophers and the Jews: Black Eggs and White Cheese The Secret of Jewish Resilience. The Inner Story of The Three Weeks Note: only 40 min long and the rabbi translates everything, very little 'yeshivish' (annoying mix of English, Hebrew, and Yiddish) A beautiful explanation on polar opposite sides of the Jewish calendar-- the 3 weeks between the 17th of the Jewsish month of Tammuz (the day the walls of Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar) and the 9th of Av (the day of the destruction of both Holy Temples) AND the 3 weeks between Rosh Hashana and [the day...

Russia has released military monitoring data, which shows Kiev military jets tracking the MH17 plane shortly before the crash - and posed yet another set of questions to Ukraine and the US over the circumstances of the tragedy. Military officials – chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Andrey Kartopolov and chief of the Air Force Main Staff Lt. Gen. Igor Makushev - posed a number of questions to Kiev and Washington concerning the possible causes of the catastrophe in Eastern Ukraine that killed almost 300 people last Thursday. 1. Why did the MH17 plane leave the...