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The British Daily Telegraph reports that Hamas, which rules Gaza, is paying a heavy price in lost aid over its assistance to the rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Iran has made a meaningful cut in its aid to Hamas, which had previously reached amounts as large as 15 million Australian dollars per month. .....

Today I want to talk about The Troubles. I previously talked about Operation Banner An Analysis of British Operations in North Ireland.That is worth reading though it is a bit dry. So here we go. For a brief recap the problems between England and Ireland probably go back 900 years or so. We will focus a bit more on current history. The Anglo- Irish war from roughly (start and stop points are hard for guerrilla wars) 1919 to 1922 ended up partitioning Ireland into 2 entities. The 26 counties that make up the majority of Ireland were granted Dominion...

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama urged Congress on Thursday to fund upgrades to US embassy security around the world, as a way of truly honouring the memory of four Americans killed in Benghazi. Obama made the call in his latest bid to regain the initiative after Republicans accused his administration of covering up details of the September 11 attack to safeguard his re-election hopes last year. The president said he was committed to improving security at US posts abroad as recommended by a State Department review board set up to probe the attack on the US mission in the eastern Libyan...

While MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry has created a controversy over her comments about children not belonging to their parents, there is another comment Harris-Perry made that deserves a closer look. In a promotion for the cable news channel, Harris-Perry said: We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had a private notion of children. Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong...

(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration on Wednesday renewed its request for Congress to let it restore funding to the first United Nations agency to grant full membership to “Palestine,” arguing that defunding runs contrary to U.S. interests. Complying with U.S. laws dating back more than a decade, the administration in late 2011 reluctantly cut funding to the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), depriving the Paris-based agency of 22 percent of its operating budget. UNESCO head Irina Bokova described the resulting financial crisis as the “worst ever” in the agency’s history, but rather than urge member-states to reconsider the...

David Arsen, a self-described “school finance specialist” and professor at Michigan State University, recently published an open letter to Gov. Rick Snyder. He devoted much of this letter to criticizing legislation from last year’s session (specifically House Bill 5923) and a rough draft of proposed modifications to Michigan’s school funding laws. But Arsen also makes the claim that “[b]etween 2002 and 2011, real per-pupil funding of Michigan’s public schools fell by $2,643 or 24.5 percent,” suggesting that there has been a “collapse” in revenues for public schools. This is incorrect. Michigan schools actually received more total per-pupil revenue in 2011...

If Congress does not act to prevent $85 billion in spending cuts scheduled to begin March 1, Catholic Charities of Baltimore may be among the impacted institutions, said its executive director William J. McCarthy Jr. “It concerns me, and it concerns Archbishop (William E.) Lori,” he said. “A budget is a moral document. It sets forth our priorities as a society and as a people – what do we value, and what do we think is most important? By cutting aid to the poor, whether it’s the children, whether it’s seniors or others living in poverty at the expense of...

It’s really simple, folks. Everything boils down to Obamacare. Do we really believe that Obamacare will make private health insurance unaffordable? Do we really believe Obamacare will bankrupt the nation and relegate the next generation of Americans to a dimmer future of less freedom and opportunity? Do we really believe Obamacare will create incorrigible dependency? Do we really believe that Obamacare will lead to a deterioration of healthcare services and rationed care? Are we really serious about balancing the budget and reforming entitlements? If the answer to the aforementioned questions is a resounding yes, which is presumably the case for...

In 2011, when Gov. Rick Snyder proposed cutting $300 per student for K-12 public education, Michigan School Business Officials Executive Director Dave Martell said as many as 160 schools could go into deficit if the cuts stood. In 2010-11, the year before Gov. Snyder's first budget, there were 48 schools in deficit. If Martell's claim were accurate, that means the number of districts losing money would have more than tripled. However, nearly two years later the Michigan Department of Education's report shows that fewer schools fell into deficit in 2011-12. The MDE report stated 46 districts were in deficit last...

Earlier this month NGO Monitor released its report on foreign government funding of radical political Israeli NGOs which work to undermine Israel's international standing and subvert Israeli society. Along with the usual European suspects who give millions of shekels (or Euros or pounds) to Israeli groups like this, it works out that the US government is also funding extremely radical organizations, courtesy of American taxpayers. Notably, the three groups that reported receiving funding from the US are all in the business of waging political warfare campaigns directed at the Israeli public. According to the report, in accordance with the NGO...

In The Detroit News, the presidents of the University Research Corridor schools argue that a dollar of state appropriations for their institutions returns $17 in economic benefits. But this analysis, regardless of accuracy, does not justify the appropriation. These multiplier analyses are meant to show the economic impact of spending in one area compared to another. For instance, this 17-times spending multiplier is awfully close to the returns promised from spending on early childhood education, where advocates argue that spending a dollar generates $16 in economic activity, despite evidence to the contrary. An even greater claim, using the same form...

Will this finally be enough to break the Obama administration's hold over Senate Democrats when it comes to the Hagel nomination? Chuck Hagel has refused to disclose to the Senate Armed Services Committee the sources of his foreign funding over the last five years. Is Chuck roast? (Hat Tip: Noah P). Republican members of the committee asked Hagel last week for information on whether any of the organizations received funding from any foreign government, individual, or corporation — a request he declined late Tuesday in a letter citing confidentiality agreements. "[T]he information you seek is legally controlled by the individual...

Before Mitt Romney said he was going to stop the subsidy to PBS, even though he likes Big Bird, at the first presidential debate, Sherrie Westin, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Sesame Workshop, told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien that cuts to public broadcasting will not ‘kill Big Bird.’ Westin says, “Sesame Workshop receives very, very little funding from PBS. So, we are able to raise our funding through philanthropic, through our licensed product, which goes back into the educational programming, through corporate underwriting and sponsorship. So quite frankly, you can debate whether or not there should be funding of...

Last Friday, GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney disclosed his tax returns and health records. In particular, the release of the tax information was a pleasant surprise –released without pre-announcement or fanfare. Romney gave information that dates back to 1990 which ought to close Harry Reid’s mouth for a time .....–it would be absolutely wonderful if the “right” would get such a disclosed-documentary surprise from President Barack Obama. ...What are Americans on the “left” afraid of learning about Obama? Simple curiosity would demand that Obama’s academic records be released –let alone really wanting to know about the past of the man...

Three of Livingston County's five high schools scored poorly on the Mackinac Center's high school report card: Howell, Fowlerville and Pinckney high schools received D's. Howell High School's ranking was 27.7 percent — meaning that more than 70 percent of Michigan's other high schools did better. Fowlerville ranked in the bottom 22.3 percent, while Pinckney ranked the lowest in the county, at 21.2 percent. The Mackinac Center's high school report card is different from other state assessments. It takes into account student socioeconomic status — a well-known variable that impacts standardized test scores — when evaluating schools in order to...

PHOENIX, AZ --(Ammoland.com)- The lamestream media told you: NBC News is reporting that American politics has reached a milestone. Spending on the 2012 presidential campaign for broadcast radio and TV has surpassed a half billion dollars, and that was before Labor Day, according to Brian Williams. That is greater than the entire cost of the campaign in 2008. The implication is that money is ruling politics and that is not a good thing. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: Missing from NBC’s report is who GETS the money. NBC does, along with their other media colleagues. The broadcast media and...

Military: The administration thanks the troops for their service by failing to comply with a law requiring that it help soldiers deployed overseas cast ballots in their home states. The administration has taken various states to court to block voter ID laws on the grounds it will disenfranchise voters. But it has no qualms about the disenfranchisement of military voters overseas through its failure to comply with and enforce the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, passed by Congress in 2009 and signed into law by President Barack Obama. The law acknowledges the difficulties caused by time and distance...

Recently, many Ann Arbor parents received a letter informing them that there was a relatively large gap between high-performing and low-performing students in their child's school. They could, the letter said, choose to transfer their child to another school with a smaller achievement gap. The twist, noted AnnArbor.com, is that the alternative schools with low achievement gaps also tended to report lower overall student performance. The letters were to communicate a new school measure created by the Michigan Department of Education in response to federal policy. Schools identified as having a larger-than-average gap between the top 30 percent of student...

State argued that it is not required to subsidize organizations that advocate elective abortions AUSTIN, Texas — A federal appeals court ruled late Tuesday that Texas can cut off funding for Planned Parenthood clinics that provide health services to low-income women before a trial over a new law that bans state money from going to organizations tied to abortion providers. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans lifted a federal judge's temporary injunction calling for the funding to continue pending an October trial on Planned Parenthood's challenge to the law. Texas officials sought to cut off funding...

Already reeling from big cutbacks in Medicare funding, hospitals in the Los Angeles metropolitan area would lose another 2.4 percent of their federal reimbursement under a new analysis ordered by Congress.