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Saturday, January 23, 2016 IL Auditor General reportedly doled out $213k to Happy's Super Service SPRING VALLEY - Happy's Super Service Station in Spring Valley, Illinois, provided a reported $213,338.31 in gas and vehicle repairs over 10 years to Illinois' new Auditor General Frank Mautino, which has drawn national attention in Forbes.com. The hundreds of thousands of dollars Mautino spent at Happy's since 2005 averaged about $20,000 a year. That's either a whole lot of gas or Mautino's campaign vehicles are lemons - all of them. Mautino was a member of the House Speaker Mike Madigan's Democrat leadership, but now...

Basketball star Shaquille O'Neal made a special trip to Gainesville to play basketball with a group of kids, more than a week after someone called police to complain they were playing too loudly in the street. Shaq plays ball in Gainesville Last week, someone called the Gainesville Police Department to make the complaint. Officer Bobby White responded and instead of reprimanding the kids, he decided to join in and play with them. His dash camera was rolling and captured more kids showing up to join in. "Have fun. Glad to see y'all doing this than out there causing problems," Officer...

Republican operative Karl Rove is behind an attack ad aimed at turning Iowa caucus-goers against her, Democrat Hillary Clinton said Sunday on "Meet the Press." Clinton was asked by moderator Chuck Todd whether big banks paying her more than $200,000 per speech hurt her credibility. Clinton responded that she gave speeches to a "wide array of groups," after ending her stint at President Barack Obama's secretary of state. "People were interested in what I saw, what I thought," she said. "Americans doing business in every aspect of the economy want to know more about the world." "You don’t think they...

Koller, author of an impassioned anti-gun letter to the Baltimore Sun in 2013, slugged the armed robber in a Thursday night scuffle that ended with a gunshot tearing through her right shoulder, sources said. "I think it's random," said NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce of the perp's choice of targets.

Hillary on FBI Investigation: 'I Can't Control What the Republicans and Their Allies Do' Katherine Timpf Hillary Clinton says she “not concerned” about the FBI investigation into her handling of highly classified material “because I know what the facts are.” Appearing this morning on Meet the Press, Clinton blamed Republicans for the latest reports her server contained material beyond top secret. “I never sent or received any material marked ‘classified,’ I cannot control what the Republicans leak and what they are contending,” Clinton said. She then echoed her campaign manager, Brian Fallon, who said the intelligence community’s inspector general is...

Abortion and promiscuity. Planned Parenthood and "slut shaming." I was reminded on this, the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's disgraceful Roe v. Wade abortion-on-demand opinion, how inexorably linked are America's abortion death culture and her ongoing sexual revolution.As the story goes, Winston Churchill was talking with a socialite: "Madam, would you sleep with me for 5 million pounds?" he asked. "My goodness, Mr. Churchill," she replied. "Well, I suppose we would have to discuss terms, of course." Churchill: "Would you sleep with me for 5 pounds?" Socialite: "Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!"...

PHOENIX -- There's no earthly chasm disrupting tree-lined Central Avenue here as it placidly heads north of Bethany Home Road, past well-off residences. However, there might as well have been an abyss between U.S. Sen. John McCain's former home on Central and the church auditorium not far away where local Republican precinct committeemen convened for their annual assembly. McCain left that neighborhood once his children were grown, and the regular January meeting of Maricopa County GOP precinct ground troops, resounding with denunciations of their own party's dispiriting record, in effect voted overwhelmingly that McCain should leave the Senate, too, although...

Germantown, MD – An ambulance transported a female patient of late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart to a Germantown hospital on the evening of January 19, 2016, about a month after another similar incident that also resulted in emergency hospitalization of another of his patients. Security camera footage obtained by Operation Rescue shows an ambulance arriving at Germantown Reproductive Health Services in Germantown, Maryland at approximately 7:46 p.m. according to the video time-stamp. Seven minutes later, emergency responders are seen leaving the late-term abortion facility with the injured women on a gurney. Carhart and his wife, Mary Lou, are also seen exiting...

While on the scene at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend, Danny DeVito took a moment to comment on the tinderbox subject diversity in the entertainment industry, and the actor-producer didn't mince words at all. Bluntly attributing the lack of diversity in Hollywood and subsequently in awards-recognized films to systemic racism, he said that "it's unfortunate that the entire country is a racist country."

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — The rain didn’t deter thousands of pro-life supporters at the annual March for Life, in San Francisco on Saturday. The group marched and rallied outside City Hall. “We believe in showing the world that there’s this vast number of people her supporting this cause,” said Sebastian Lemmon. The late Martin Luther King’s niece, Dr. Alveda King, led the opening prayer. This year’s march comes on the heels of a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood over videos that claim to show staffers negotiating prices for aborted fetal tissue.

rise in the number of banks giving up primary dealer roles in European government bond markets threatens to further reduce liquidity and eventually make it more expensive for some countries to borrow money. Increased regulation and lower margins have seen five banks exit various countries in the last three months. Others look set to follow, further eroding the infrastructure through which governments raise debt. While these problems are for now masked by the European Central Bank buying 60 billion euros ($65.5 billion)of debt every month to try to stimulate the euro zone economy, countries may feel the effects more sharply...

As we hit yet another anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on January 22, 1973, it might be good time to look back even farther, to 70 years ago when George Orwell wrote a trenchant essay on how language is misused and manipulated to, as he said, defend the indefensible. Calling his work “Politics and the English Language,” he probably could not anticipate how truly his words could be applied today. By now, arguments from both sides of the abortion debate are familiar, but there’s one aspect rarely discussed: the way the pro-abortion side...

The boom years left the US oil industry deep in debt. The 60 leading US independent oil and gas companies have total net debt of $206bn, from about $100bn at the end of 2006. As of September, about a dozen had debts that were more than 20 times their earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. Worries about the health of these companies have been rising. A Bank of America Merrill Lynch index of high-yield energy bonds, which includes many indebted oil companies, has an average yield of more than 19%. Almost a third of the 155 US oil and...

March for Life organizers had pledged that neither a blizzard forecast nor icy cold temperatures would keep them from descending on the nation’s capital Friday for the annual pro-life event - but returning home is proving to be a more difficult task. A massive winter storm that rolled through the mid-atlantic and Northeast Friday night has reportedly left busloads of march participants stuck on the side of major highways. Six buses carrying a group of 330 students and chaperons who traveled to the District of Columbia from Omaha, Nebraska have been stuck on the Pennsylvania turnpike for 11 hours due...

The United States is scrutinizing developments in Poland, the U.S. trade czar said on Sunday when asked if Washington was concerned about the European Union's rule of law inquiry into Poland and Standard and Poor's cut to Warsaw's credit rating. "As a fellow democracy we do follow developments here very closely," U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman told reporters during his visit to Google Campus in Warsaw. "We certainly do follow it. As a democracy, we want to make sure that Poland's democracy continues to address the issues."

It is 361 days, 23 hours, 49 minutes, 36 seconds until the Communist gay Kenyan crypto-Muslim President "Stompy-Foot" Obama leaves office. That is: 361 days 8687 hours 521269 minutes 31276176 seconds Note: This timer is synched to January 20, 2017 at precisely 12 noon. It includes the Leap Year day.

The FBI is investigating whether members of Hillary Clinton's inner circle "cut and pasted" material from the government's classified network so that it could be sent to her private e-mail address, former State Department security officials say. Clinton and her top aides had access to a Pentagon-run classified network that goes up to the Secret level, as well as a separate system used for Top Secret communications. Somehow, highly classified information from SIPRNet, as well as even the super-secure JWICS, jumped from those closed systems to the open system and turned up in at least 1,340 of Clinton's home e-mails...

Last year, 42 North American drillers filed for bankruptcy, according to law firm Haynes and Boone. It's only likely to get worse this year. Experts say there are a lot of parallels between today's crisis and the last oil crash in 1986. Back then, 27% of exploration and production companies went bust. Defaults are skyrocketing again. In December, exploration and production company defaults topped 11%, up from just 0.5% the previous year, according to Fitch Ratings. That's a 2,000%-plus jump. It's just the beginning, says John La Forge, head of real assets strategy at Wells Fargo. If history repeats, people...

* See above slide show of 22 photos sent to LifeSiteNews from pro-lifer marchers at the scene. Click on blue arrows to advance photos.* Update 9:10 p.m. Sat: This just now from Mandie DeVries who has two middle school girls and a four month old baby. She said baby is sleeping peacefully. Dubuque County RTL bus started moving at 7 pm. Iowans for LIFE bus about 40 min later. The backup was said then to be 32 miles long and some won't get out tonight. No idea about any of the many others PENNSYLVANIA TURNPIKE, January 23, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) –...

Not too cold today. It is up to 35F here at 8500 ft elevation west of Denver. There may be some rain/snow toward the end of the game. I wonder if Patriots have been practicing at elevation to acclimate---probably. If the Broncos keep dropping the ball they don't have a chance. If they play well it could go either way. Got beer in the fridge.