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As the Obama administration tries to salvage its Taliban talks initiative, the group continues to boast of—and exaggerate—the battlefield exploits of the “Islamic emirate’s” holy warriors as they face “the invading terrorist forces” of the U.S.-led coalition and their Afghan “puppets.” Talks between U.S. and Taliban officials, initially scheduled to have begun in Doha on Thursday, were delayed after Afghan President Hamid Karzai reacted angrily to the way the Taliban presented itself at the opening of its office in the Qatari capital earlier this week. Karzai was unhappy that the Taliban declared the office to represent the “Islamic Emirate Of...

French cuffs, suit-appropriate ties and no coloured shirts in the evening. It’s a safe, understated dress code—but maybe not the one you’d expect from hockey commentator Don Cherry. Cherry agreed to share the following sartorial wisdom for our Book of Lists, so long as it was reproduced verbatim. What follows are his top 10 fashion tips, in his own words: “When people think of me and my clothes, they think of the wild jackets that I wear on Coach’s Corner, and they are very disappointed when they see me in a sensible suit. I have one set of clothes for...

A massive waterspout roared just offshore Grand Isle, Louisiana on Wednesday and the photos and video are incredible. Local news indicates nobody was injured and there was only minor damage once the storm came ashore.

June 22, 2013 Dear GCO Member, This email is being resent to correct errors in the previous email.  Apologies to all. We reported yesterday that Mayor Bloomberg's Mayor's Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) bus will visit Atlanta, Monday, June 24 at 11:30 AM at the Georgia State Capitol.  We also reported that the web site for Demand Action is stating the No More Names stop for Atlanta will be at 11:30 AM at the Georgia State Capitol as well. However, after checking the Georgia State Capitol's Event Calendar, the rally, according to their calendar, is scheduled for 9:00 AM Monday...

Television chef Paula Deen, who lost her gig Friday with the Food Network after admitting and apologizing for having used racial epithets, including the “N-word,” is a supporter of President Barack Obama and campaigned on his behalf in 2008. The Southern-bred television personality also invited Michelle Obama onto one of her television programs and praised the first lady’s healthy eating agenda.

“Last month, the EPA released for public comment an 81-page ‘Draft Technical Guidance for Assessing Environmental Justice in Regulatory Analysis,’” reports Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow Dr. Steven F. Hayward. “… The ‘technical guidance’ lays out a detailed framework for assessing the demographic and racial impact of regulations, such as how to identify minority populations at higher health risk. ‘Minority, low-income, and indigenous populations experience greater exposure and disease burdens that can increase their risk of adverse health effects from environmental stressors,’ the guidance states.”

Isabel, a New York City lawyer, has a fiancé who appears a perfect catch. Eric is sensitive, smart, kind and handsome. He’s an attentive lover, the sort of man who, on Valentine’s Day, draws her a bath surrounded by candles and arranges rose petals into a heart shape on the bed. Isabel loves Eric, even though her passion for him dwindled months after they became involved. She misses her erotically charged relationship with her ex-boyfriend who, though not marriage material, made her feel desired, his “possession.” Still, Isabel tries to rev up her low libido for sex with Eric, buying...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog In Sweden, six scumbags convicted of gang raping a 15-year-old girl will not receive any time in prison The Local reports:Six teenage boys aged 15 to 17 were convicted on Friday after raping a 15-year-old girl in a north-western suburb of Stockholm in March.Five of the boys have been sentenced to over 100 hours of community service each, and have been ordered to pay 55,000 kronor ($8,500) each in damages to the victim.This is despicable.For all practical purposes, rape is now legal in Sweden.For a country that has a reputation of being one of the best...

The website for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group formed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to push stronger gun safety laws, is registered to NYC government servers and administered by NYC government staffers, according to Politico, raising questions about whether Bloomberg has blurred the line between his dual roles as mayor and advocate. The domain names for the gun group - mayorsagainstillegalguns.com and mayorsagainstillegalguns.org - are both registered under the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, which was first reported by Ace of Spades blogger John Ekdahl. Bloomberg has poured millions of dollars into an...

CALGARY -- It could be days or weeks before Calgary's downtown core is open for business, says the city's emergency management chief. Bruce Burrell of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency said much of the downtown core is still without power but some residents and business owners will be let in Sunday to check on their properties. But it's unclear how long it will take crews to restore power to the city's business hub. "There's a big chunk of the downtown core still without power," Burrell said. "It may be without power for days, it may be without power for weeks."...

Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence contractor who leaked classified documents revealing US internet and phone surveillance, has asked Ecuador for asylum. The request was confirmed by Ecuador's foreign minister on Twitter. Mr Snowden had fled the US for Hong Kong but flew out on Sunday morning and is currently in Moscow.

It will take something more than a nuclear attack to wipe out taxpayers' obligations to the Internal Revenue Service. An addition to the Internal Revenue Manual, which is supposed to guide the conduct of all I.R.S. employees, declares that if the bomb is dropped, ''operations will be concentrated on collecting the taxes which will produce the greater revenue yield.'' An I.R.S. spokesman, Johnell Hunter, said today that the new section -titled ''National Emergency Operations'' - had been added to the manual in response to a directive to Government departments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Gunmen stormed a camp on Pakistan’s second-largest mountain Sunday, killing nine foreign climbers, including a U.S. citizen, in a brazen assault that could deal a blow to the country’s efforts to jumpstart its tourism industry. Pakistan’s Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, calling it retribution for a suspected U.S. drone strike last month that killed Wali ur-Rehman, the second-highest-ranking leader of the terrorist group. “Through this killing we gave a message to international community to ask U.S. to stop drone strikes,” said Ehsanullah Ehsan, a Taliban spokesman. The attack in northern Pakistan at Nanga Parbat, the world’s ninth-tallest mountain, occurred...

The Senate will vote Monday on a five-part amendment to the approximately 1,075-page immigration bill that would legalize illegal aliens and eventually allow them to become citizens of the United States. The text of the amendment has been posted on the website of the Senate Judiciary Committee--and part of it is presented in illegible handwriting scrawled across the margins of a page in the draft bill.Click here to see a copy of the page and the proposed legislative language scrawled on it.In his weekly address on Saturday, President Barack Obama urged Americans to contact their senators and tell them "now is...

On Andrea Tantaros radio show last week, conservative columnist and author Pat Buchanan warned of an unintended consequence of the immigration reform bill, a bill which doesn’t place a high priority on assimilation. According to Tantaros, her previous guest, former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, said that the immigration legislation funnels money to so-called community organizing groups like La Raza with the idea of teaching immigrants “American history, the Constitution and civic participation.” That leaves open the possibility of activist groups teaching with a partisan slant — and impedes assimilation. Buchanan, author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America...

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa man's online classified ad offering an oak coffin for sale neglected to mention the full skeleton inside, so police interrupted the deal and seized the bones.

Remember when the ironically-named Accountability Review Board assigned blame for the Benghazi debacle on low-level employees at the State Department?  When challenged by Congress as to why the ARB never interviewed Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, ARB co-chair Thomas Pickering replied that they had already concluded that blame for the unprotected diplomatic facility rested below his level. Whistleblower Eric Nordstrom told Congress, however, that the decisions that left the consulate defenseless against the terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11 came from Kennedy’s level — at least. A new report from Fox vindicates Nordstrom, although it might not be quite...

Brother and sister patriots, this is it. This is the big one. If we lose this battle, it is game over unless God intervenes. America as founded will be over. Democrats and socialist/progressives will rule forever. Therefore, this is the Tea Party issue of our times. I am talking about the passing of the Amnesty Bill. The reason and urgency to pass amnesty is rooted in a big fat lie. Democrats and their cohorts in the mainstream media have convinced Republicans that Hispanics hate them. The Democrat's and MSM's tag-team lie is if Republicans do not pass amnesty, the Republican...

I’m pretty sure it was my first Washington mentor, the great M. Stanton Evans, who told me—and perhaps originated—the famous story of a senior Senate aide explaining American democracy to a Russian visitor shortly after the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991. The story is probably apocryphal, but like Xenophon’s re-telling of Cyrus the Great, or Machiavelli’s subtle mis-tellings of so many stories, it contains the “effectual truth” of the matter: It’s true, we have a two-party system in America: The Evil Party, and the Stupid Party. And every once and a while the Evil Party and the Stupid Party...

Sunday, June 23, 2013 The End of the World Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 0 Comments Two years ago, the media had a prolonged belly laugh at a group that predicted the end of the world. Now media outlets from The New York Times to The New Republic to The Economist are wrestling with the question of why their own ideology's doomsday predictions are not coming to pass. "If scientific models can’t project the last 15 years, what does that mean for their projections of the next 100?," the New Republic asks. It means that the...