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PLOVER, Wis., - Authorities in Wisconsin said a woman found to be living with more than 300 rats running loose in her trailer home is being evicted. The Portage County Sheriff's Department said Darlene Flatoff will be evicted from her Birch Tree Estates home in Plover within the next 10 days after health officials discovered the woman has been keeping more than 300 rats loose in her home since March of last year and possibly longer, the Wausau Daily Herald reported Thursday. Officials said the rodents and their droppings are posing a health risk. They said Flatoff bought her first...

**SNIP** What are citizens to do when their government refuses to follow its own laws? The answers to this question throughout history have been hugely unhappy. When individuals in government de-legitimize their own institutions by breaking the rules, rebellion, repression and general lawlessness have often been the result. This is why the rule of law has been so central to happy, healthy and prosperous lives since Cicero was still in swaddling. Americans have done better at this than anyone else, having inherited the love of the law from our British progenitors. The Founding Fathers took it a step further by...

A 2012 performance review of the The Colorado Energy Office (CEO) revealed several disturbing findings by the State Auditor last month, which included a non-existent accounting system for CEO’s 34 programs, a runaway budget, and staff who had no knowledge of program goals or standards. The forty-eight page report was was dated December 18, 2012 and included background information on the CEO, key facts and findings, the State Auditor concerns, and recommendations for the CEO moving forward. The CEO was established via executive order in 1977 as the Office of Energy Conservation. Last year, House Bill 12-1315 changed CEO’s overall...

Obama and his minions seem to think that freedom is a four-letter word. His administration has imposed an array of intrusive, nanny-state, financial, environmental and consumer-product regulations that will cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars. ... the erosion of transparency in government, wasteful spending, burdensome regulation, and waning trust in the integrity of the public sector. A senior presidential appointee who epitomizes all of those flaws is EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who has a cynical, hyper-regulatory, damn-the-science philosophy ... EPA systematically exaggerates benefits and underestimates costs. EPA is a serial offender when it comes to egregious government waste, fraud,...

The Environmental Protection Agency is moving to ban the sale of a dozen rat and mouse poisons sold under the popular D-Con brand ... The company will have at least 30 days to request a hearing before an administrative law judge. If no hearing is requested, the ban will take effect.

Updated: January 15, 2013 2:17AM When President Barack Obama is sworn in for his second term, his hand will rest not only on President Abraham Lincoln’s Bible, but on Dr. Martin Luther King’s, too. As the ceremony falls on the federal holiday celebrating Dr. King’s birth, the civil rights leader would no doubt be proud as an African-American president is sworn in on the steps of a Capitol built by slave labor, about 170 miles from Jamestown where slave ships landed. We have come a long way. But Dr. King would not be satisfied. He marched to his own drummer,...

Ald. Sandi Jackson has resigned from the Chicago City Council. The 7th Ward alderman submitted her resignation letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel today. It is effective Tuesday. "After much consideration and while dealing with very painful family health matters, I have met with my family and determined that the constituents of the 7th Ward, as well as you Mr. Mayor, and my colleagues in the City Council deserve a partner who can commit all of their energies to the business of the people. Therefore, it is with a heavy heart that I tender my resignation as Alderman of 7th Ward,...

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda operatives slaughtered nearly 3,000 Americans in an operation that marked the second major attack by violent jihadists against the World Trade Center. There wasn’t much mystery about who had carried out these atrocities — unless you were Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Marayati warned Americans not to conclude that the suicide hijacking attacks were the work of Muslim terrorists. “If we are going to look at suspects,” he told a Los Angeles radio station, “we should look at groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I...

McCaskill, Colleagues Call for Action from President ObamaSenator tells President: ‘The clock is ticking’ Posted: Friday, November 30, 2012 12:40 pm WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill and a bipartisan group of her Senate colleagues, including fellow Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, are calling on President Obama to direct the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take action ensuring that commercial navigation of the Mississippi River remains possible. “The President needs to take a look at what’s happening in the Midwest and act,” McCaskill said. “The clock is ticking while jobs and businesses in the region are endangered, and it’s imperative...

Everett Stadig recuperating in the hospital after being shoved and breaking his hip. Photo courtesy of Everett Stadig. Denver, Colo., Nov 21, 2012 / 04:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The arrest of a prominent Denver relator who allegedly assaulted a senior citizen collecting signatures for a pro-life petition has lead to new developments in three unsolved rape cases. “Were it not for Mr. Costello’s arrest at the grocery store in July, there would have been no new leads, and there would have been no charges filed in connection with these three unsolved sexual assaults,” Lynn Kimbrough of the Denver District...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A former Los Angeles mayor leading an effort to change pensions plans for newly-hired public employees says he has evidence that a low-level union member is behind an alleged illegal counter-campaign. KNX 1070′s Bill Polish reports Richard Riordan is hoping to amass enough signatures to put a plan to transition newly-hired city workers away from taxpayer-guaranteed pensions and towards 401(k)-style accounts before voters in May. Download: 2-fraud-bpo-w-rick-riordan-fmr-la-mayor.mp3 According to an email obtained and released by Riordan, an employee with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 721 sent out an email calling on members to sign...

The House Science Committee is investigating whether Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson used the secret email alias "Richard Windsor" to hide internal communications from government watchdogs—an action that may violate open-records laws.

Poor management decisions by MF Global's former CEO Jon Corzine triggered the brokerage firm's collapse, while lax protections for customer funds contributed to the loss of an estimated $1.6 billion of customer money, U.S. congressional investigators have determined.

New York Times best-selling author Brad Thor, based in Chicago, tells TheBlaze that the Obama campaign may be planning to preemptively announce victory in the presidential election based on early voting numbers in an attempt to “demoralize Mitt Romney supporters.” Citing a “very solid source” in Chicago, Thor says the Obama campaign is looking to make it appear to voters that they have “this thing sewed up and are less than 24 hours to victory,” according to his source. Meanwhile, team Obama will also urge voters to get out and vote so they can say they were part of the...

<p>U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando, was evacuated last week from the Central African nation of Niger, where he was stranded during a coup, by a military contractor the outspoken congressman has railed against in the past.</p> <p>Grayson was on a House Committee on Science and Technology tour last Thursday when a military coup closed the airport in Niger and then took over the government, violently entering buildings close to the U.S. Embassy compound where he was staying.</p>

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says in a new interview that she can’t stand “whining” by women who are unhappy with the work and family choices they’ve made in life and complain that they have no options. Clinton, in the interview with Marie Claire, was discussing Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning at the State Department who left in 2011. This summer, Slaughter wrote a much-discussed cover story in the Atlantic - “Why Women Still Can’t Have It all” - about leaving her job because of the difficulty of balancing her work at State with the needs of...

Vice President Joseph Biden speaks only for himself and President Barack Obama, and neither man was aware that U.S. officials in Libya had asked the State Department for more security before the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, a top White House official told The Cable. Biden has come under fire for saying at Thursday night's debate, "We weren't told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security there." The Cable asked Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications Ben Rhodes whether Biden was speaking for the entire Obama administration, including the State Department,...

Video at link...Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said Thursday that the “entire reason” the terrorist attack at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans has “become the political topic it is” is because Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan talk about the attack. STEPHANIE CUTTER: In terms of the politicization of this — you know, we are here at a debate, and I hope we get to talk about the debate — but the entire reason this has become the political topic it is, is because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. It’s a big part of their...

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are among the 15 wealthiest members of Congress, according to a new survey. The annual rankings by Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, showed the two San Francisco Democrats have a combined worth of at least $68 million, and potentially much more. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, tops the list with a minimum net worth of $306 million, roughly 4,000 times greater than the average American household. His wife, Linda, is the daughter of Lowry Mays, founder and CEO of Clear Channel Communications. No. 3 on the list, Rep. Darrell Issa,...

With its candidate having been swamped in the debate by an aggressive and articulate Gov. Mitt Romney, the Obama campaign is switching fully into attack mode, moving beyond earlier assaults on Romney’s business record and wealth toward a new drive to destroy his character. Casting completely aside the Obama 2008 brand of a hopeful unifier, Obama’s operatives Thursday dived straight the jugular, working on multiple fronts to brand Romney a liar. The campaign, Obama aides made clear, would henceforth be conducted exclusively Chicago style. In a vicious and personal assault rarely conducted at the highest level of U.S. politics, White...