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I estimated that there were over a thousand people in attendance. I counted 100, then counted roughly equivalent slices. I would estimate that about on third of participants were armed. The gun show a short distance away (competition for the rally) was packed. Dean Weingarten

A cloud of harmless gas smelling of sweat and rotten eggs leaked out of a chemicals factory in northwest France and wafted across the English Channel as far as London on Tuesday. The leak occurred on Monday morning at a Lubrizol France plant near Rouen, 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Paris, and winds blew the invisible gas cloud south over northern France on Monday night and then up into England on Tuesday. The fire brigade in the county of Kent, southeast of London, warned residents to keep their doors and windows closed due to a gas cloud it believed...

He swore his oath of office on Abraham Lincoln's Bible. He has asked to give the State of the Union address on Lincoln's birthday. He rode to Washington in 2009 on a train route similar to Lincoln's in 1861. He has compared his critics to Lincoln's critics. He confides to admirers that he likes to read the handwritten Gettysburg Address that hangs in the Lincoln Bedroom. Barack Obama is inviting the world to compare him not just to good presidents but to the greatest in American history. There can be majesty in invoking past presidents and the Founding Fathers....

A new asteroid-mining company launches Tuesday with the goal of helping humanity expand across the solar system by tapping the vast riches of space rocks. The new firm, called Deep Space Industries, Inc., announced Tuesday, Jan. 22, that it plans to launch a fleet of prospecting spacecraft in 2015, then begin harvesting metals and water from near-Earth asteroids within a decade or so. Such work could make it possible to build and refuel spacecraft far above our planet's surface, thus helping our species get a foothold in the final frontier. "Using resources harvested in space is the only way to...

In a stunning blow to the Internal Revenue Service’s efforts to regulate the tax preparation profession, a federal judge struck down the IRS’s licensing requirements for tax preparers on Friday, including testing and continuing education. U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ruled against the IRS and in favor of the tax preparers in enjoining the agency against enforcing its Registered Tax Return Preparer requirements. “Today’s ruling is a victory for hundreds of thousands of tax preparers across the country and the tens of millions of taxpayers who rely on them to prepare their taxes,” said lead attorney Dan Alban....

We the Government An inaugural address of striking liberal ambition and partisanship. President Obama's second inaugural address won't be remembered for stirring lines, but then its purpose seemed to be more political than inspirational. Mr. Obama was laying down a marker that he has no intention of letting debt or deficits or lagging economic growth slow his plans for activist, expansive government. Inaugurals usually include calls for national unity and appeals to our founding principles, which is part of their charm. With the election long over, swearing in a President is a moment for celebrating larger national purposes. But Mr....

The Obama campaign continues and he wants to keep both the Left and the Right mad as Hell.

Jonathan Cahn speaking at the Inaugural Prayer Breakfast yesterday.

"... By grim coincidence, even as the terrible events were unfolding in Newtown on Friday morning, the Putnam County Emergency Response Team (“ERT”) happened to be assembled for regular training in Carmel, and team members were at that very moment engaged in a mock scenario of an active-shooter in a school. The ERT is comprised of specially trained and heavily armed officers from the Sheriff’s Office and the Carmel and Kent Police Departments. When news broke of the Newtown shooting, the Putnam County ERT commander called Newtown Police and offered to have the ERT respond to the Sandy Hook school,...

When James Labrecque listed an old safe—to which he did not have the combination—on eBay, the seller warned, "What you see is what you get, no returns, and no money back." A Tennessee man purchased it for $122.93, had a welder cut it open—and found $26,000 inside. The buyer shared the news with Labrecque via a positive review on the auction site, and Labrecque quickly attempted to convince the buyer to give him some of the cash, to no avail. In fact, WMC-TV reports, the buyer quoted Labrecque's own eBay disclaimer right back to him when turning him down. "I...

2013 is ‘The Year of Cleopatra’ and ‘The Second Coming’. Michelle Obama’s new wig is a throwback to the the Cleopatra look that is supposed to be registering raves. “Conservatives have long joked that the national press corps see Barack Obama as the second coming of Jesus Christ. Today, Newsweek—at least what’s left of it, an online product for tablets and e-readers—made it official.” (Newsbusters, Jan. 18, 2013). Like the last sting of the scorpion before death, Newsweek gave its parting shot trying to immortalize Obama as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Portraying Obama as the Good Lord above...

The future or the flavor of the month? Some of the businesspeople who crowded around as driver David Cox pumped natural gas into his 18- wheeler Monday weren’t sure that the fuel – plentiful and cheap in the United States because of shale drilling – is inevitable as a substitute for diesel. But that didn’t stop them from pulling out their iPhones to document the moment as they considered the evidence. “You see the oil companies getting into it,” said Marion Barnes, president of Frontier Trailer Associates in Rocky Mount, N.C. “They’re spending billions, not millions. Boone Pickens is spending...

President Obama spent his first term pushing from power long-standing Arab allies in Egypt and Tunisia; seeking to engage the now blood-soaked Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad; pulling his punches against Iran’s nuclear program; and putting “daylight” between his administration and Israel. Now for his second term, he has nominated for the highest posts bearing on the Middle East three figures who give the strongest indication we can expect much more of the same – John Kerry for State, Chuck Hagel for Defense and John Brennan for the CIA. Kerry opposed Congress’ 2009 hold on appointing an ambassador to a regime...

  THE ELEPHANT'S JOURNEY TO PAY RESPECT, BUT HOW DID THEY KNOW? Lawrence Anthony, a legend in South Africa and author of 3 books including the bestseller The Elephant Whisperer, bravely rescued wildlife and rehabilitated elephants all over the globe from human atrocities, including the courageous rescue of Baghdad Zoo animals during US invasion in 2003.   Anthony, Nana and calf (Photo courtesy of the Anthony family) On March 7, 2012 Lawrence Anthony died. He is remembered and missed by his wife, 2 sons, 2 grandsons and numerous elephants. Two days after his passing, the wild elephants showed up...

In his press conference this week, President Obama suggested that policymakers only need to pass another $1.5 trillion worth of deficit reduction, on top of the $2.5 trillion already enacted, to stabilize the growth of the nation’s debt and, in his words, “finish the job.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, two well-respected fiscal policy organizations, basically agree with the President’s math, and there is nothing to quibble about in those calculations regarding stabilizing the debt. However, that level of deficit reduction would hardly mean the “job is finished.” In fact,...

It was a speech liberals will love, conservatives will hate and history will forget. It was 18 minutes of paying off the base and rewarding the coalition. It was a president who won 52 percent of the vote thumbing his nose at the other 48 percent. There was pomp and circumstance, a torturous poem and some good singing. The family looked good, the crowd seemed large, the Capitol was stunning. As inaugurations go, it was a good, solid medium. It upheld tradition, it showcased the president, it followed tradition and law. Sure, there was too much Schumer, and the crowd...

Thomas Friedman, among many other columnists, is complaining that the so-called “Peace Process” isn’t a factor in the Israeli election. Neither is perpetual motion, the infinite money tree or anything else that doesn’t exist. “Meanwhile, with a few exceptions, the dome and wall have so insulated the Israeli left and center from the effects of the Israeli occupation that their main candidates for the Jan. 22 elections — including those from Yitzhak Rabin’s old Labor Party — are not even offering peace ideas but simply conceding the right’s dominance on that issue and focusing on bringing down housing prices and...

f you're into special airplanes even a little, here is a video I'm sure you'll enjoy. These guys do a remarkable job getting their aircraft back on the ground with a minimal amount of damage. It could have very easily gone the other way. Also, notice early in the video there is a sequence showing a F-111 dumping fuel with the afterburners on lighting up the night sky. Something a little unique to the F-111. The Australians flew the F-111 a lot longer than our Air Force. The airplane was originally designed to land on a carrier deck so the...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - It’s the Message and Yes the Messengers — NOT the VotersPosted By David Horowitz On January 21, 2013 @ 4:02 pm In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 41 Comments Bruce Thornton, a highly intelligent and eloquent writer is one hundred percent wrong in attributing the Republican election loss to the alleged fact that 47% of the country are now “takers” from government. If Thornton is right, how is it that Republicans were the minority party in 1960 and 1964, before Medicare and all the entitlements that followed the Great Society programs were in place? I say...

President Obama is the first sitting president in recent history to speak out against criminal justice policies that hurt inner city and rural communities. This is a big deal. With state budgets and vulnerable communities crippled by misguided criminal justice policies, the president is certainly right that the time for reform has come. ...... Over the last 40 years, our American criminal justice system has been brutally damaged by politicians’ commitment to misguided “tough-on-crime” policies. It started in the 1970s, on the heels of a major uptick in crime rates, but our obsession with incarceration quickly surpassed its utility. Since...