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Honduras — Soldiers seized the national palace and flew President Manuel Zelaya into exile Sunday, hours before a disputed constitutional referendum. Congress appointed a successor, but Zelaya, a leftist ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said he was the victim of an illegal coup.

WHEN Otto von Bismarck introduced the first pension for workers over 70 in 1889, the life expectancy of a Prussian was 45. In 1908, when Lloyd George bullied through a payment of five shillings a week for poor men who had reached 70, Britons, especially poor ones, were lucky to survive much past 50. By 1935, when America set up its Social Security system, the official pension age was 65—three years beyond the lifespan of the typical American. State-sponsored retirement was designed to be a brief sunset to life, for a few hardy souls.

My friend Michael Stickings links to a story of bureaucratic outrages involving an acutely ill premature baby, but only focuses on one particular outrage while excusing the other. Because Canada does not have the capacity to deal with the demand for neo-natal intensive care for premature births, the single-payer system sent the critically ill child to the United States for treatment. Unfortunately, the parents do not have passports which are now required for crossing the border, and the US refuses to allow them into the country without them: A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton is all alone in a Buffalo,...

June 24, 2009 Obama-backed plan volunteers Americans to pay global taxes By Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media The United Nations is proceeding, with President Obama’s acquiescence, to implement a global plan to create a new international socialist order financed by global taxes on the American people. The Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis .... calling for “new voluntary and innovative sources of financing initiatives to provide additional stable sources of development finance...” The most “popular” proposals, which could generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for global purposes, involve taxes on greenhouse gas emissions and financial transactions...

KISS bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons has issued the following statement (via his Facebook page) regarding the passing of pop music legend Michael Jackson, who died Thursday (June 25) at age 50: "[I've] gotten a lot of questions from media and from quite a lot of you [regarding] Michael Jackson. "I have refused all media requests for interviews. There are enough people in the industry being quoted. Some altruistically, some for media coverage. "Either way... When I was going out with Diana Ross in the early '80s, I met Michael a few times through her. We spent social time together. Found him...

Last week, Huffington Post's Nico Pitney was accused by Washington Post's Dana Mibank for being a "planted questioner"during a President Obama press conference. The two confronted one another today on CNN's Reliable Sources in front of Howard Kurtz and Washington Times reporter Amanda Carpenter. The showdown begins to get heated when Mr. Pitney called Mr. Milbank's past reporting on Obama's swimming trunks "pathetic." According to Mr. Pitney, when the segment ended Mr. Mibank looked over at Pitney and said, “You’re such a d***.” Check out the video below.

The cancer institute has spent $105 billion since President Richard M. Nixon declared war on the disease in 1971. The American Cancer Society, the largest private financer of cancer research, has spent about $3.4 billion on research grants since 1946. Yet the fight against cancer is going slower than most had hoped, with only small changes in the death rate in the almost 40 years since it began. One major impediment, scientists agree, is the grant system itself. It has become a sort of jobs program, a way to keep research laboratories going year after year with the understanding that...

Retired Marine Corps Col. Kenneth L. Reusser, called the most decorated Marine aviator in history and was shot down in three wars, has died at age 89. Reusser flew 253 combat missions in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and was shot down in all three, five times in all. His 59 medals included two Navy Crosses, four Purple Hearts and two Legions of Merit. In 1945, while based in Okinawa, he stripped down his F4U-4 Corsair fighter and intercepted a Japanese observation plane at a high altidude. When his guns froze, he flew his fighter into the observation plane,...

The King of Pop was begged to perform by President-elect Obama. The list of celebrities invited to the Obama inauguration is growing by leaps and bounds, but one name will be conspicuously missing from the line up. Reps for the Obama camp claim Michael Jackson was personally invited by Obama, but turned down the invitation. Sources tell us that Obama “almost begged Michael” to attend but was unable to convince him. The refusal to attend the inaugaration lead many Obama organizers to speculate that Jackson is indeed ill, and his medical condition won’t allow him to perform to his high...

Early in January, a Sarah Palin op-ed appeared in the NY Times in which she argued against adding the Polar Bear to the list of endangered species because the polar bear populations in the Arctic were healthy: "...polar bears are more numerous now than they were 40 years ago. The polar bear population in the southern Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s North Slope has been relatively stable for 20 years, according to a federal analysis." The governor said that the bears were "magnificent animals" who are "worthy of our utmost efforts to protect them and their Arctic habitat," but added that...

June 28, 2009, (Sawf News) - Debbie Rowe, mother of Michael Jackson's children Michael Joseph, Jr., 12, and Paris Michael Katherine, 11, has claimed that she was impregnated using sperms from an anonymous donor. Debbie also claims that she does not want custody of the children and may never see them again. Debbie, 50, made the startling admissions with huge legal ramifications while speaking to journalist Rebecca White at a ranch in California, where she now lives in seclusion, over several months during which the two became close friends. Excerpts from the interview are carried by UK's News of the...

KALAMAZOO -- It resembled most any Sunday afternoon picnic in Bronson Park. Except most of the people assembled around tables filled with watermelon and grilled goodies had firearms in holsters strapped to their waists. The Glocks and the Smith & Wessons remained holstered but visible during a three-hour Open Carry Picnic designed to raise public awareness of what organizers called Second Amendment rights in Michigan to openly carry a firearm in most places. They were high school teachers, college students, computer geeks and housewives with one thing in common. Rather than a cell phone, the leather pouch they wore at...

AP reports President Manuel Zelaya’s private secretary told the AP that Zelaya was arrested and brought to a base on the outskirts of the capital, Tegucigalpa. An AP reporter saw dozens of green-helmeted soldiers surround the president’s house Sunday morning and then later jump in trucks and drive away, according to the report. About 60 police continue to guard the house, it said, adding that the president did not appear.

Top White House aide David Axelrod told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos today that the administration intends to explore a number of means by which it can overhaul the nation’s health care system, but refused to reaffirm then-candidate Barack Obama’s “firm pledge” to not raise taxes on middle class Americans. “The president had said in the past that he does not believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here,” said Axelrod. “He still believes that, but there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see.” Obama has not always been open to...

THERE'S a huge difference between what South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford did, and what ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer did. "I didn't fall in love with any of them," Spitzer was overheard telling LMDC executive director Avi Schick the other day at Solo in the Sony Building on Madi son, where they had the $24 prix-fixe lunch. And Spitzer didn't use any taxpayer money on his trysts, while Sanford is reimbursing the state about $12,000 for travel expenses to Buenos Aires. Schick had Vietnamese beef spring rolls and a grilled chicken salad.

The government has taken unprecedented actions over the past 15 months to stabilize the economy, including taking direct ownership stakes in private companies.  This creates a dangerous conflict of interest between the federal government and the private sector.  The government shouldn’t be an owner of companies it regulates in the private marketplace. Ends government ownership of private companies by: Preventing the U.S. Treasury from purchasing additional ownership stakes in private companies in any form, including preferred stock, common stock or warrants.Requiring the U.S. Treasury to sell any ownership stake of private entities by July 1, 2010.Requiring the Secretary of the...

BOSTON -- It's more than many people pay for a house. An unidentified buyer paid $300,000 for a coveted private parking space in Boston's Back Bay Wednesday. It is the most expensive parking space in the city's history, according to Debra Sordillo of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, who brokered the deal. Sordillo said that several residents at 48 Commonwealth Ave. engaged in a bidding war for the space, driving the original asking price of $250,000. The prime space is in a neighborhood just a block from the Public Garden, where parking spots are in short supply. "There's only so many...

Chambliss blocks regulatory pick over animal lawsuits By Alexander Bolton Posted: 06/28/09 07:57 PM [ET] Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) has blocked President Obama’s candidate for regulation czar, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, because Sunstein has argued that animals should have the right to sue humans in court. Obama has picked Sunstein, his adviser and longtime friend, to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an office that has power to review and assess all draft regulations proposed within the administration. But Chambliss worries that Sunstein’s innovative legal views may someday lead to a farmer having to defend himself in...

BEIRUT -- Sunni supporters of Lebanon's prime minister-designate and Shiite rivals from the parliament speaker's political faction traded gunfire in a Beirut neighborhood Sunday. Security officials said one civilian was killed and two others were wounded in the first outbreak of violence since this month's elections. Automatic rifle fire and three explosions were heard in the brief gunbattle that underlined the continued sectarian tensions despite recent pledges by political leaders to work together. Those pledges followed a bruising election campaign. Hours earlier, the Western-backed billionaire who is to become the country's next prime minister, Saad Hariri, was holding talks with...

Via Gateway Pundit. I understood The One’s logic for not wanting to meddle in Iran. I don’t understand his logic for wanting to meddle in Honduras.