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Doesn't the truth matter? Video at link.

Senate Democrats are about to burn the midnight oil to make their case on climate change. The previously rumored all-night session on the effects of climate change will take place Monday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse confirmed. “It’s locked in,” the Rhode Island Democrat told CQ Roll Call. “An all-nighter is an all-nighter. We’re going to go all the way through to eight or nine in the morning or whenever they need to clean it up for the next day.” That would clearly meet the established definition of an all-night session. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Whitehouse are coordinating the campaign. Whitehouse...

So when did Ann's and Obama Sr.'s "whatever happened happened fast" wedding happen? For no apparent reason, confusion abounds among Obama's biographers over the wedding date: 1. Dreams claims that Ann and Obama Sr. were in married "in 1960"; similarly, Mendell's 2007 book claims that the couple were married "sometime in late 1960" when they "slipped off alone to the island of Maui"; and both Obamaland (2008) by Ron Jacobs (with contributor David Maraniss) and a 2007 Washington Post article claim that the two were married "late in 1960." 2. A 2007 Chicago Tribune article vaguely claims that Ann and...

Three people were charged Wednesday in connection to an extensive welfare fraud scheme. The scheme involved using EBT cards to purchase products in the Twin Cities and then ship them overseas for sale in Africa. According to the Ramsey County Attorney's Office, 39-year-old Noni Shanita Snider of Eden Prairie was charged with one count of wrongfully obtaining public assistance and one count conspiracy to commit a felony; 38-year-old Walter Carr Cooper of Plymouth was charged with one count of wrongfully obtaining public assistance and one count conspiracy to commit a felony; and 40-year-old Nyla Jean Newburgh of Minneapolis was charged...

Like a simple parlor trick, the networks are able to make skeptical scientists vanish, at least from the eyes of their viewers. In some cases, the broadcast networks have failed to include such scientists for years, while including alarmist scientists within the past six months. ABC, CBS and NBC's lengthy omission of scientists critical of global warming alarmism propped up the myth of a scientific consensus, despite the fact that many scientists and thousands of peer-reviewed studies disagree. Neither CBS nor ABC have included a skeptical scientists in their news shows within the past 1,300 days, but both networks included...

LAKE ELSINORE: Girl Scouts receive counterfeit bills, woman sought Some Inland Girl Scouts got a hard life lesson this week when they discovered their cookies had been paid for with counterfeit bills. Scouts in Lake Elsinore received two fake $20s on Thursday, Feb. 27, and in Rancho Cucamonga on Saturday there were two reports of girls selling cookies who were paid with counterfeit $50s. Riverside County sheriff’s officials on Tuesday released surveillance images of a woman they described as a “person of interest” in the Lake Elsinore case and are asking for help from the public to identify her. The...

On the evening of Sunday, December 15 of last year, six weeks before the onset of the latest rash of tragic deaths of young men in their 30s employed at JPMorgan, the Pearland, Texas police received a call of a person in distress outside a Walgreens pharmacy at 6122 Broadway in Pearland. The individual in distress was Jason Alan Salais, a 34-year old Information Technology specialist who had worked at JPMorgan Chase since May 2008. A family member confirmed to Wall Street On Parade that Salais died of a heart attack on the same evening the report of distress went...

Wife killed Ga. soldier for insurance, feds say By Jan Skutch Morris News Service March 5, 2014 SAVANNAH, Ga. -- The wife of a slain Fort Stewart soldier schemed with her brother to kill her husband in exchange for a $160,000 insurance policy payout, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday. Lillie Eubank, 39, told investigators she arranged to have her brother, Carl Evan “Cowboy” Swain, travel from Alabama to Savannah, bought a T-ball bat and selected the site for the attack at a recreation park on Fort Stewart, Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Heaps Ippolito said. The victim, Army Spc. John Joseph...

Washington, D.C. may have the highest number of certified green buildings in the country, but research by Environmental Policy Alliance suggests it might not be doing much good.The free-market group analyzed the first round of energy usage data released by city officials Friday and found that large, privately-owned buildings that received the green energy certification Leadership in Energy Design (LEED) actually use more energy than buildings that didn’t receive this green stamp of approval.LEED is the brainchild of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a private environmental group.

March 3, 2014 3:45PM As we predicted/requested on Friday, The Tulving Company has gone out of business, as of Monday morning. They are no longer answering their phones, and we have reliable information confirming that they are ceasing operations. This page will be updated as more information comes in. There is a lot of information on our old page about The Tulving Company. We hope to update this page with information about what will happen next. At this point, our best guess is that The Tulving Company will file for bankruptcy. Unfortunately, we believe that there will be little in...

After dropping his push on immigration, Rubio is seeking to rehabilitate his image with much of the GOP base by falling back on his staunch conservative ideology while engaging in a calculated effort to broaden his domestic and foreign policy portfolio. He’s becoming a regular fundraising presence on the campaign trail and plans to play a big role in a handful of key midterm races this fall. A contingent on the right will never forgive him for backing a bill offering a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and his critics say he jettisoned the plan strictly to preserve his...

2016: If Democrats really mean it when they say global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism, why settle for President Hillary Clinton? This is a job for superman Al Gore. Secretary of State John Kerry calls climate change "perhaps the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction." A billionaire hedge fund manager and Obama donor plans to spend $100 million this year on attack ads against Democrats who don't agree. If a warming climate is so important, why give Hillary the Democratic nomination? The only climate-linked achievement Clinton could cite in her 2008 campaign was an obscure 2007 amendment...

Cary woman charged with financial exploitation of elderly woman in her care Mar 01, 2014 5:21 AM CST CARPENTERSVILLE, Ill. (Sun-Times Media Wire) - A northwest suburban woman hired to be a caregiver for an elderly resident with Parkinson's disease is facing criminal charges for allegedly using the 86-year-old victim's credit cards without her permission, running up thousands of dollars in charges. The Kane County State's Attorney's office charged Lalaine Regencia, 46, of Cary, with financial exploitation of the elderly and two counts of theft, all Class 2 felonies, Carpentersville Police Commander Timothy Bosshart told the Elgin Courier News. Regencia...

Do scientific papers ever seem like unreadable gibberish to you? Well, sometimes they really are. Some 120 papers published in established scientific journals over the last few years have been found to be frauds, created by nothing more than an automated word generator that puts random, fancy-sounding words together in plausible sentence structures. As a result they have been pulled from the journals that originally published them.

A Republican candidate for US Senate recently launched a website alleging that his primary election opponent cheated delegates and hacked into his campaign email account.David Clements (pictured above) says his allegations about Allen Weh stem from documents, pictures and purported eyewitness accounts of the Bernalillo County Republican Party pre-primary convention that occurred earlier this month. "In order for the party to be unified in defeating [sitting Democratic Sen.] Tom Udall, we are releasing all documents pertaining to the events of February 5th, with an understanding of how those events took place and how people have been pressured to change their...

Forget hiring a top hedge fund to manage your portfolio. Your better bet might be an employee at the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a new report suggesting that regulators are trading on inside information relating to investigations and upcoming enforcement actions. In the report titled "The Stock Picking Skills of SEC Employees," researchers found that SEC employees' stock purchases look like your average person's. But when these employees sell their stocks, they appear to systematically beat the market by making sales within weeks of costly enforcement actions by the agency. "These results suggest that SEC employees potentially trade...

U.S. and Japanese regulators are investigating the collapse of the world's largest exchange for trading bitcoins, the virtual currency that has grown in popularity among technophiles for buying products and services online. The separate investigations were launched Wednesday as supporters of the virtual currency insisted that the shutdown of Mt. Gox was only a temporary setback for the novel monetary system. The failure of the Tokyo exchange, which may have included the theft of almost 750,000 bitcoins worth more than $300 million, was seen by critics as derailing prospects for the virtual currency. But several high-profile bitcoin investors came forward...

I met some Democrats yesterday at the southbound on-ramp at exit 63 of the Wilbur Cross Parkway in North Haven, CT. It was the height of rush hour. Some of you may have experienced the delay. We found two brothers in the front of a late model Camry. They’d been tapped on the rear bumper by a fellow driver (a daily occurrence on these on-ramps). There was not a scratch on the car. CT State Police, North Haven FD, a tow unit and our EMS unit were on scene on a priority one (lights and sirens) basis, as result of...

Your 2014 tax return will ask if you had insurance coverage or qualified for an exemption. If not, you may owe a shared responsibility payment when you file in 2015.

FACT: The toothless 1977 regulations fully expired in July 1997, when President Clinton rewrote them to toughen CRA enforcement as part of a crusade to close the "mortgage gap" between blacks and whites. For the first time, banks were required to show results. One of the five performance criteria in the "lending test" — the most heavily weighted component of the CRA exam — was adopting "flexible lending practices" to address the credit needs of poor borrowers in "predominantly minority neighborhoods." Banks that didn't bend their underwriting rules risked flunking the exam. Ex-Federal Reserve Board Gov. Lawrence Lindsey, a staunch...

**SNIP** As a teacher who worked there for many years, I can tell you that it wasn’t because the city wasn’t warned. The children of PS 106 were failed by administrators, government lawmakers and union officials — a host of top people who couldn’t be bothered to care. **SNIP** To show just how clueless and uncaring the administration was — in December 2013, PS 106 received a glowing report. At the time, there was no mandated gym, no special-education teacher (I had left and wasn’t replaced), no books, no art and no extended-day services! PS 106 received millions in extra...

Massive counterclaims, in excess of $10 million, have just been filed against climate scientist Michael Mann after lawyers affirmed that the former golden boy of global warming alarmism had sensationally failed in his exasperating three-year bid to sue skeptic Canadian climatologist, Tim Ball. Door now wide open for criminal investigation into Climategate conspiracy.Mann arrest photo Buoyed by Dr Ball's successes, journalist and free-speech defender, Mark Steyn has promptly decided to likewise countersue Michael Mann for $10 million in response to a similar SLAPP suit filed by the litigious professor from Penn. State University against not just Steyn, but also the...

Three former Barclays bank employees have now been charged with “conspiracy to defraud” in the continuing LIBOR scandal, bringing the total to 13 people charged in America and the U.K. It has been reported that three ex-ICAP brokers are next on the list for helping traders manipulate interest rates. Three former Barclays bankers have been charged “in connection with the manipulation of Libor” interest rates, the Serious Fraud Office said. The SFO alleges the three – Peter Charles Johnson, Jonathan James Mathew and Stylianos Contogoulas – "conspired to defraud between 1 June 2005 and 31 August 2007". They will appear...

A plan by the Federal Communications Commission to study how news organizations select stories has prompted about 10,000 people to sign a petition saying “no government monitors in newsrooms.” That’s according to the American Center for Law and Justice, which announced the petition Wednesday and said it reached that number within the first two hours. The agency announced a Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs last year, explaining that it wanted to understand the process of which stories are selected, station priorities, content production, populations served, perceived station bias, and perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the “critical...

An investor-visa program Congress wants to permanently extend was rife with fraud and corruption from its start more than two decades ago, with hundreds of millions of dollars improperly diverted as government officials lamented a persistent lack of oversight and an inability to investigate or prosecute the perpetrators. ... in December that the Obama administration overruled career Homeland Security officials and expedited visa applications for about two dozen foreign investors for a politically connected Las Vegas casino hotel after repeated pressure from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, and his staff.

A tipster tried to warn the Labor Department in 2011 that its unemployment statistics were being fabricated by the people at the Census Bureau who compile the data. But the warning was either missed or ignored by Labor. That allegedly allowed the data falsification to go on for years. As I’ve been telling you, the falsification is now the subject of a number of investigations, including one by the House Oversight Committee and Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. Also investigating is the Office of the Inspector General at the Commerce Department, which is in charge of Census. And I’m hearing that...

And even more surprising, in the Star Tribune poll, which usually tilts significantly in sympathy to Democrats. Barack Obama’s job approval has dropped to 43/50 in a state he easily won in two presidential elections — and it’s much worse outside of Minneapolis and St. Paul (via Instapundit): Men had an especially unfavorable opinion of the president. According to the poll, 60 percent of Minnesotan men disapproved of his job performance, compared to 40 percent of women in the state.People under 34 had the highest approval rating for Obama, with 59 percent saying they thought he was doing a good...

Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, February 16, 2014, 10:38 PM     In November 2010, Vice President Joe Biden said fraud and abuse of the stimulus bill had been kept “to a surprisingly low level.” This came a year after Barack Obama bestowed VP Joe Biden with the title of the stimulus “sheriff.” Barack Obama signs the failed stimulus into law in 2009.Fast forward five years – Investigators have proven 1,268 cases of fraud in the $840 billion stimulus program.USA Today reported: Despite thousands of fraud cases, the financial losses under the 2009 Recovery Act have been just...

Union Suffers Big Loss at Tennessee VW Plant Volkswagen workers rejected the UAW by a vote of 712 to 626. Neal E. Boudette Updated Feb. 14, 2014 11:44 p.m. ET The United Auto Workers union suffered a crushing defeat Friday, falling short in an election in which it seemed to have a clear path to organizing workers at Volkswagen AG VOW3.XE +1.10% 's plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. The setback is a bitter defeat because the union had the cooperation of Volkswagen management and the aid of Germany's powerful IG Metall union, yet it failed to win a majority among the...

I recently upgraded my Verizon cell phone because the one I was using had been discontinued. As part of the change I received a note that I could apply for a $50 rebate through Verizon. I did so, after searching online for the form which was not provided by Verizon. I completed the form and returned it with all the receipts. I have received back via email a denial because I "did not provide the sales receipt or bar code." I did provide them. So I tried calling Verizon to get this corrected. You cannot call Verizon. To call Verizon...

President Barack Obama will ask Congress to set up a $1 billion “Climate Resilience Fund” in his proposed budget next month. Obama travels to Fresno, Calif., today to discuss the drought plaguing most of California and the Western U.S. and to announce new administration actions, including the proposed billion-dollar fund. According to the White House, the fund would go to research on the projected impacts of climate change, help communities prepare for climate change’s effects and fund “breakthrough technologies and resilient infrastructure.” […] As another snowstorm socks the East Coast, the coal industry has a message for the nation’s electricity...

The director of Colorado’s health exchange has been placed on administrative leave after the state discovered she had been indicted for stealing from a non-profit, the Denver Post reports:[Christa Ann] McClure, 51, pleaded not guilty Feb. 6 in federal District Court in Montana to eight counts of theft and fraud from a nonprofit housing agency in Billings. She was indicted Jan. 16 and notified her current Denver employer, the state-sponsored health exchange, on Monday, a few days after the story broke in Montana media, Connect for Health spokesman Ben Davis said in a telephone interview.

The fly-by-night group has tried to represent itself as something more official by presenting a list of respected Democrats as its "advisory board," complete with fabricated quotes, when they hadn't even heard of the organization, theWashington Examiner found. 21st Century says it was founded by Sen.Tom Harkin of Iowa in 1985 and was previously known as the official-sounding "Democrats 2000." Its web site names no staff and instead lists an "advisory board" including former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, former Labor secretary Robert B. Reich, and David Wilhelm and Don Fowler, former Democratic National Committee chairmen. In reality there is nothing official...

John Podesta, the former Clinton Administration chief of staff who is spearheading President Barack Obama’s aggressive strategy of government-by-regulation, has also been helping United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with an even more ambitious job: setting the stage to radically transform the world’s economic, environmental and social agenda.

Colorado health-exchange director on paid leave DENVER — A director with Colorado's health-care exchange is on paid leave after it was discovered she has been accused of stealing from a nonprofit housing organization she oversaw in Montana. Christa McClure is the director of partner engagement for Connect for Health Colorado, the state program that implements the Affordable Care Act. According to the Denver Post, program spokesman Ben Davis says in her Colorado job, McClure does not have access to any of exchange's finances. The eight-count indictment against McClure was filed in U.S. District Court in Billings, Mont., in January.

A “massive and concerted attack” has been launched by a bot system on numerous bitcoin exchanges, Andreas Antonopoulos has revealed. This has lead to popular exchange Bitstamp putting a temporary halt on all bitcoin withdrawals. Antonopoulos, who is the chief security officer of Blockchain.info, said a DDoS attack is taking Bitcoin’s transaction malleability problem and applying it to many transactions in the network, simultaneously. “So as transactions are being created, malformed/parallel transactions are also being created so as to create a fog of confusion over the entire network, which then affects almost every single implementation out there,” he added.

<p>Nagin skates on count 7 but nailed on 20 counts.</p>

Enough people were upset with my previous post claiming that Mt. Gox is suffering a bitcoin bank run because it is holding only a fractional bitcoin reserve that it caused me to think twice about the claim.I could have been wrong, but I doubt it.Actually, the backlash was strong enough that it made me think that perhaps I was using some common terms in strange ways. I referred to Mt. Gox as a bank, which is a stretch by some definitions, but it definitely stores bitcoin for clients and as such, acts as a custodian.Maybe it was the term “bank...

In his State of the Union address, President Obama mentioned fixing a broken health care system. Unfortunately, the president provided no specifics about how to fix errors already experienced during the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), such as securing ethical and well-screened insurance navigators who handle personal information of health insurance enrollees. Dropping the ball on consumer protections, the federal government’s inadequate screening and training process for navigators exposes consumers to serious risks of fraud and identity theft. Fortunately, states are addressing these neglected privacy and fraud concerns, adopting stricter requirements for health insurance navigators — the people...

Yesterday “TheBlaze” published an interview with Romanian Lt. Gen Ion Pacepa, a discussion which arose around the publishing of his work, “Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism.” Pacepa is a defector to the United States, but not just any run-of-the-mill defector. He is the highest-ranking Soviet intelligence officer to ever defect. He crossed over back in 1978 and was given political asylum by then President Jimmy Carter. He has made a practice since that time to write in defense of freedom while living his life under threat of assassination, hiding out...

The NAACP planned a peaceful march to protest the requirement of voter ID laws on Saturday at the "Moral March on Raleigh." Organizers said 20,000 to 30,000 Americans showed up to the protest. Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, stated, "We return to Raleigh with a renewed strength and a renewed sense of urgency. This Moral March inaugurates a fresh year of grassroots empowerment, voter education, litigation and nonviolent direct action." Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/02/08/3601888/annual-march-rally-builds... In a flyer sent out entitled “Important Do’s and Don’ts for Marchers,” some very responsible marching elements were listed for people's safety....

Feds deny requests from 3 states to require proof-of-citizenship on voter registration forms WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The U.S. Election Assistance Commission found Friday that heightened proof-of-citizenship requirements likely would hinder eligible citizens from voting in federal elections, handing down a ruling that denied requests from Kansas, Arizona and Georgia to modify the registration form for their residents. The decision came just hours before a court-imposed deadline in a lawsuit filed in federal court by Kansas and Arizona that seeks to force the commission to modify state-specific requirements for registering to vote in those states. Georgia, which has a similar...

HONOLULU — Hawaii has some of the most generous welfare benefits in the country, and one man took full advantage of them. The man, who went by the name “Vaughn Sherwood” — a name he apparently stole — took more than $200,000 from taxpayers, the FBI said. On Thursday, shackled in handcuffs and dressed in a white prison uniform, he pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to four counts related to theft of government property, identity theft and illegal possession of a firearm.

As ugly as this was, it is worse than it seems. Briffa’s trees did match Hansen, 1981. The next graph overlays Briffa on Hansen, 1981 northern latitude temperatures. The match was almost perfect.

What is this about? New to me. Any more insight on it? PAW (which I despise) posts this without any explanation.

The Democrats’ plan to hold onto their narrow Senate majority goes by the name “Bannock Street project.” It runs through 10 states, includes a $60 million investment, and requires more than 4,000 paid staffers. And the effort will need all of that — and perhaps more — to achieve its goal, which is nothing short of changing the character of the electorate in a midterm cycle. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is preparing its largest and most data-driven ground game yet, relying on an aggressive combination of voter registration, get out of the vote, and persuasion efforts.

Thomas Monson issued court summons to answer allegations of fraud - 2/4/14 The Prophet of the LDS Church, Thomas S. Monson has been ordered to attend court and face allegations of fraud. A court in London, England has issued Thomas Spencer Monson with 2 summons (see below) containing allegations of seven offences in contravention of Section 1 Fraud Act 2006. Mr. Monson is required to attend the court, Westminster Magistrates’ Court, on 14th March 2014. The court will then almost certainly refer the case to Southwark Crown Court for further proceedings. Failure of Mr. Monson to attend the Court on...

IT’S WELL KNOWN AMONG THE SMALL WORLD of people who pay attention to such things that the liberal-leaning reporters at The Wall Street Journal resent the conservative-leaning editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. What’s less well known—and about to break into the open, threatening the very fabric of the institution—is how deeply the liberal-leaning reporters at The New York Times resent the liberal-leaning editorial page of The New York Times. The New York Observer has learned over the course of interviews with more than two-dozen current and former Times staffers that the situation has “reached the boiling point” in...

A scam that repeats itself in modified forms every few years is once again spreading throughout the United Sates. Don’t be a victim! Criminals target people simply by calling them. Intended victims receive a call on their phones from area code 473 which rings once and then disconnects, thereby arousing the call-recipient’s natural curiosity – “who just called me and from where?” Sometimes the caller actually allows the phone to ring long enough for the victim to answer -- after which the caller (or the caller’s robocaller system) makes groaning sounds or otherwise indicates that he or she is in...

“Tonight is not whether people should or should not own guns,” Sawyer insisted. Right. ABC’s Diane Sawyer and David Muir joined forces Friday night for their 20/20 special, Young Guns, traveling to neighborhoods in which guns are a presence in the home in their effort to characterize guns as threats to children, rather than tools of self-defense. As you’ll see, the producers’ anti-gun agenda was apparent from the start. First, the journalists conducted a little experiment to discover the obvious: kids like playing with guns.