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The Palestinians on Friday persuaded the U.N. cultural agency to list the Church of the Nativity—the place where Christians believe Jesus was born—as an endangered World Heritage site despite misgivings by churches in charge of the basilica.The Palestinians hailed the nod by UNESCO as a step forward in their quest for global recognition of an independent Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967. The centuries-old basilica is located in a part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank where the Palestinians have self-rule. UNESCO's decision was seen by them as validation of their rights to...

What's next? I'll tell you what's next!

So the Supreme Court — defying many expectations — upheld the Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare. There will, no doubt, be many headlines declaring this a big victory for President Obama, which it is. But the real winners are ordinary Americans — people like you. How many people are we talking about? You might say 30 million, the number of additional people the Congressional Budget Office says will have health insurance thanks to Obamacare. But that vastly understates the true number of winners because millions of other Americans — including many who oppose the act — would have...

Press Secretary Jay Carney sought to get out ahead of the GOP's campaign rhetoric alleging that Obamacare is a huge tax imposed on the middle class. “There's no way this is a tax,” Carney insisted. “The President doesn't call it a tax. The legislation doesn't say it's a tax. Calling it a tax is idiotic. The President has made it quite clear that the $2,000 a person has to pay for refusing to buy health insurance is a punishment for disobedience, not a tax.” The fact that the Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare was founded on Chief Justice John Roberts'...

The image of the night in Warsaw on Thursday wasn’t Mario Balotelli ripping off his shirt and, despite his best efforts, failing to keep an ice-cool straight face after he scored the goal of the tournament to take Italy into the final of Euro 2012. It was following the referee’s final whistle. And it involved Balotelli again — of course — as he buried himself deep into the hug of his adoptive mother, Silvia, her face creased in emotion as he whispered that the two goals to defeat Germany were dedicated to her.

The family of China's next president has amassed a fortune running into hundreds of millions of pounds, according to a hugely damaging new report. The revelation comes as the Communist party faces increasingly difficult questions about how its leaders, who are paid ministerial salaries of just £8,000-a-year, live such gilded lives. Xi Jinping, who turns 59 this month, is all but certain to be unveiled later this year as China's next paramount leader. Mr Xi has carefully fostered a reputation for clean government, and there is no evidence that he has a personal fortune. Chinese officials are forbidden from accumulating...

NHS patients should expect continued rationing of common operations for years to come, while hospital closures are “inevitable”, according to an influential think-tank. John Appleby, chief economist at The King’s Fund, also warned services in some hospitals could seriously deteriorate due to the impact of the economic crisis. He said it was highly unlikely the NHS budget would be significantly increased in the foreseeable future. Against this grim financial background...

Chicago -- Obama doesn't just denounce outsourcing on the stump. His campaign HQ is a living test of the theory that everything can be done best in-house. Out on the campaign trail, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are at the moment engaged a spirited rhetorical debate over what it means to be an "outsourcing pioneer," a phrase borrowed from the Washington Post's coverage of Romney's Bain Capital past. For the most part, it's been discussion waged in generalities. But a tour of Obama's headquarters half-seriously suggests that the president might just want to point to his own campaign as a...

As expected, more than two-thirds of the lawmakers in Germany's parliament moved on Friday to approve the permanent euro rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, and a fiscal pact long championed by Chancellor Angela Merkel. However, the treaties still face a review by the country's highest court before they can be ratified. It's been a rough few years and a particularly long and stressful day for Angela Merkel. But, for now at least, Germany's chancellor can breathe a sigh of relief. Late Friday evening, Germany lawmakers -- including politicians from two opposition parties -- approved two key pillars of her...

The one-time president of a prominent abortion-right group was sued Friday by the New York Attorney General’s office for using charity funds for designer shopping sprees, a five-bedroom house rental in the Hamptons and transporting her children to and from school. The office of state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a civil suit in Manhattan that accuses former NARAL Pro-Choice New York president Kelli Conlin of using more than $250,000 in charity funds during her tenure to for her own benefit, despite a compensation package that reached $380,000 in 2010....

CAIRO - In his first public speech addressing tens of thousands of mostly Islamist supporters, Egypt's president-elect Mohammed Morsi has vowed to free the blind sheik jailed in the U.S. for a plot to blow up New York City landmarks. Morsi, Egypt's first Islamist and civilian president-elect, promised Friday to work to free Omar Abdel-Rahman, the spiritual leader of men convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He also promised to free detained Egyptian protesters facing military tribunals.

Is America ready for its first all-Mormon-raised ticket? We're not talking Romney-Huntsman; we're talking Romney-Rubio. Buzzfeed reports that Marco Rubio, the GOP star senator from Florida, was baptized into the Church of the Latter-Day Saints when he was 8, and remained "active in the faith for a number of years during his early youth," according to family members, and confirmed by the Rubio camp. The family converted after moving near close relatives, the Denises, who had joined the church in the seventies. But Rubio's father, a bartender also named Marco, never converted himself; he "had little use for a religion...

Today, Chief Justice Roberts had the ability to put the stake through the heart of the 3,000 page Obamacare excrement foisted upon us by the likes of Nazi Pelosi, Dirty Harry Reid and Urkel Obamao, and he failed — miserably, so Obamacare pops back up to haunt and terrorize us again. Joining Sonia “The Wise Latina” Sotomeyor, Elena Kagan and Ruth Buzzie Ginsburg, Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion that stated that the mandate was really – a tax. Obama, Pelosi and Reid and their bands of flying monkeys swore up one side and down the other that Obamacare...

Now, I’m fixin’ to get into this week’s junk, but first I’m gonna have to do some explainin’. The reason I’m explainin’ is because it has to do with the story. This explainin’ may be borin’, but hang with me because the story at the end is worth it. There are a lot of you out there that already know about what I’m fixin’ to explain, but some of you won’t, and I want to those that don’t know, to know. Man, I may have to do some explainin’ just to explain what I just explained. Anywho, here’s the explainin’....

Proposal for an Amendment to US Constitution

Do you really think there aren’t liberal policy gnomes in Congress, think tanks and universities already hard at work coming up with new and exciting ways to make mischief with the tool Roberts just handed them? If you don’t, you’ve missed the last 80 or so years of the Democratic (and sadly, all too often the Republican) party’s history. What did Roberts get? Institutional respect for the Court from people who have no respect for the Courts unless they win? If you think liberals will say, “we’ll let it slide next time we lose a 5-4 decision and promise to...

According to Ben, then if Obamacare is a tax as per the USSC, then the bill had to originate in the house. He claims that it did not. Watch the Video. Can anyone with great understanding validate if what he says is true. Did the final bill not originate in the house? Someone at youtube suggests that the senate used a gutted bill from the house. True or False?

Have you even lived in or visited a communist country? What was your experience?

(Reuters) - A powerful storm hit the U.S. capital on Friday, downing trees with wind gusts of up to 79 miles per hour, topping hurricane force levels and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes in the Washington area. Bands of rain lashed the city and winds toppled power lines and littered the streets with tree limbs as the fast-moving storm, which started in the Midwest after a day of severe heat, reached Washington and its suburbs late in the evening. WTOP radio said more than 800,000 people in the Washington area were without power. The Washington Post...

In a surprise ruling, the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, maintaining the “individual mandate” as constitutional, not under the commerce clause, but under the taxing clause. The only part of Obamacare the Court limited was the law’s requirements on state Medicaid programs to expand or face a loss of all Medicaid funding. So, here are the several pro-life and religious freedom problems that now stand with the Court’s blessing, and other items of concern (section references are to PPACA, P.L. 111-148): I. The abortion subsidies and funding scheme stand (see chart of Obamacare abortion scheme for more detail) Federal subsidies for...