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TOKYO — Just weeks after three Americans detained in North Korea were released, a United States citizen has shown up in the repressive state, appearing on television to denounce his home country as a “Mafia enterprise” and call American democracy “an illusion”. Although details remain sketchy, it seems that the man, Arturo Pierre Martinez of El Paso, Texas, willingly went to North Korea and he says he is not being detained. At a press conference in Pyongyang Sunday morning, Martinez vigorously criticized the United States for alleged human rights violations. “The illegal war carried out against the nation of Iraq...

Did you know that there’s been a massive uptick in white thugs setting black folks on fire, yet the media has been virtually silent on this horrendous subject? Sure, we all have heard of Darren Wilson's shooting Michael Brown, but there has been no coverage of the aforementioned. Like in zero… nada… nothing… zilch. What kind of racist “news outlets” would be so heinous to cover up such gross and unspeakable evil? Why haven’t the most powerful people in our government and the entertainment industry spoken out and condemned this obvious xenophobic act of viciousness? How come there has been...

JimScott wrote:“God is not a divine being or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life,”In the Italian Pope Francis said "demiurgo" which looks to me like "demiurge". So this should read "God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life".Yeh message to this sad misguided wannabe NYT reporter (i.e John Ransom) the Gnostic heretics of old believed in two gods the "good" god of the New Testament and the evil lesser god of the Old (i.e demiurge).-- --Can the Pope Shut Up Too?Dear Comrade Scott,I'll take a lot of criticism,...

Now that Republicans will control both houses of Congress, they will have an opportunity to deal with Obamacare. What should be done? They can begin by repealing the worst features of Obamacare. They can do that by keeping three promises many of them made to voters during the last election: Keep your job; keep your health insurance; and keep your doctor. The most direct way to get rid of all the anti-job provisions of ObamaCare is to repeal the employer mandate. The most direct way to insure that people can keep insurance they like is to repeal the individual mandate....

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Sarah New International Version (NIV) 16 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she...

Governor Palin posted to Facebook:See more here:http://insider.foxnews.com/2014/12/13/eric-bolling-blasts-cia-torture-report-i-have-zero-sympathy-terrorists  Connect with Governor Palin on Facebook

Congressional Republicans who vow to defeat President Barack Obama’s “War on Coal” can do little to defend the industry against a growing international threat — the drying up of its once-promising markets overseas. Just a few years ago, domestic producers had high hopes for selling coal to energy-hungry Asia, but prices in those markets are plummeting now amid slowing demand and oversupply, ceding much of the market space to cheaper coal from nations like Indonesia and Australia. Meanwhile, a lot of U.S. coal can’t even get out of the country, thanks to greens’ success in blocking proposed export terminals in...

State Senate Democrats have decided to resume the annual Pro Tem Cup golf fundraiser in 2015, a year after the event was canceled in the wake of criminal charges filed against three Democratic Senators. The event at Torrey Pines golf course in San Diego is the Senate Democrats' largest political fundraiser for the state party and has been criticized for allowing special interests to mingle with lawmakers in exchange for tickets costing between $15,000 and $65,000 per person. The indictment of Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) on public corruption charges a week before this year's event was to be held...

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Just two days before this year’s election, when it was clear there would be a Republican wave, the New York Times ran an op-ed that called for the abolition of midterm elections. Written by a college professor and one of his students, the piece was couched as being in favor of democracy because midterms have notoriously low voter turnout. But the real reason the pair opposed midterms is because Republicans had done well in 2010 and were poised to do better in 2014. It was typical progressive pap, pre-electoral sour grapes, not a serious proposal. But I have a proposal...

Somebody has to be the good guy. So says Peggy Noonan this week in the wake of the torture report, a 14 million page accounting of mostly standard, typical, usual, unremarkable methods of forcibly extracting information from an enemy. And isn’t that a word we seem to have forgotten: enemy. The concept of an enemy is one of the most basic, primitive understandings possible. It is obvious, and should require no explanation. And yet here we are. Because we don’t have them, anymore. There is no evil empire. The modern sensibility, informed heavily by pseudo-leftist pop culture and leftover hippie...

The Social Security Administration, which announced in April that it would stop trying to collect debts from the children of people who were allegedly overpaid benefits decades ago, has continued to demand such payments and now defends that practice in court documents. After The Washington Post reported in April that the Treasury Department had confiscated $75 million in tax refunds due to about 400,000 Americans whose ancestors owed money to Social Security, the agency’s acting commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, said efforts to collect on those old debts would cease immediately. But although some people whose refunds were seized were reimbursed in...

Washington (AFP) - The US Congress unanimously approved fresh economic sanctions against Russia and lethal weapons for Kiev, defying President Barack Obama and hardening American lawmakers' response to a Kremlin-backed insurgency in Ukraine. Identical texts of the Ukraine Freedom Support Act passed both the Senate and House of Representatives on Thursday, but because of a technical issue it returned to the Senate where it passed by unanimous consent moments before the chamber adjourned late Saturday night. It is now up to Obama to either sign or veto the measure. The White House said Thursday it was "looking at it."

The first time she witnessed a student's major tantrum — a 2-year-old hurling a toy stove filled with plastic pots and pans—Shanikia Johnson had just started as a teacher at Little Flowers Child Development Center in West Baltimore.She knew toddlers acted out. But the rage-filled reaction, triggered when Johnson wouldn't allow the boy to play with a toy, stunned the 22-year-old teacher. Then, time and time again, she saw other children throwing classroom furniture. Bookcases, chairs, tables—all were flung around the room.Some students bit classmates, leaving teeth marks on hands and cheeks; a few threatened to hurt staff members. Other...

Ready for Warren? Run Liz Run? Run Warren Run? Draft Warren? Progressive activists haven’t agreed on what to call the movement urging Elizabeth Warren to run for president, but they largely concur on this: with every recent anti-establishment move the Massachusetts senator grows more attractive as a 2016 candidate, both in her own right and as a progressive foil for Hillary Clinton. Such sentiments were on vivid display this week at RootsCamp, a gathering of some 2,000 progressive activists held in Washington, D.C. The event was held as Warren and others on the left have been denouncing the “cromnibus” spending...

Bill Whittle delivers again. This time the target is the Progressive Agenda and its use of crisis as seen in Ferguson.

Kevin McCarthy of Thousand Oaks, California, was surprised last spring, when he learned his family doctor of 14 years could not accept the Blue Shield insurance he'd purchased under Obamacare. He said he was "outraged" because when he was shopping for his policy, Blue Shield confirmed his doctor was covered. "We were duped," McCarthy said. "Hoodwinked is another good term." Here's what happened. Insurance companies -- to save money -- are quietly selling what are called "narrow networks." They sharply restrict the number of doctors and hospitals people can see. In some cases, people may be limited to 30 percent...

Companies linked to Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg and Gennady Timchenko, both close allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, were given contracts worth 309 billion roubles (£3.6 billion, $8.1 billion) since western sanctions were imposed on the men in March, according to a Bloomberg report. The deals included a 228-billion- rouble project to build a bridge to Crimea from the Russian mainland as well as a large chunk of the 770-billion-rouble Power of Siberia gas pipeline.

Karen Dawisha's new book Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia shows how Russian president Vladimir Putin has enabled his cronies to become enormously wealthy under his kleptocratic rule. Copyright © 2014 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required. ARUN RATH, HOST: Karen Dawisha, professor of political science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, spent the last five years investigating how Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, came to control so much of that country's wealth. Her new book is "Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?" Karen Dawisha, welcome to the program. KAREN DAWISHA: Thanks for...

American in North Korea denounces U.S., seeks Venezuela asylum: media Reuters 2:54 a.m. EST, December 14, 2014 A U.S. citizen who illegally entered North Korea delivered a lengthy denunciation of U.S. domestic and foreign policy on Sunday and said he was seeking political asylum in Venezuela, the North's official media said. The man identified himself as Arturo Pierre Martinez, 29, from El Paso, Texas, in video footage of a press conference released by the North's KCNA news agency and said he had taken "a risky journey to reach the (North) so that I could pass along some very valuable and...