Published News
Whenever someone asks me where I’m from, I proudly say “Austin”—the land of live music, beautiful parks, active, healthy people, art, theater, and open-mindedness. It is the little blue dot in a red state. But the further I get from home, the more specific I find I have to be. For example, a conversation had in the Bahamas a few years ago:
“Where are you from?”
“Austin.”
“Texas.”
“Oh. Like George Bush, right? Where’s your horse?”
So you see the problem. But Austin is not alone in this. Regular people all over the country are surrounded every day by gun-toting, cowboy boot-wearing, country bumpkins. You know the type—they’re the folks who you run into at Walmart at 1 a.m.; NASCAR is their religion; and high school was just something they did for a couple of years, like flared jeans or TiVo were for the rest of us.
The rednecks.
Now, I don’t use this term negatively at all. In fact, thanks to Jeff Foxworthy with his hundreds of “you might be a redneck” jokes, the term has been adopted fondly, proudly, by these tobaccie-spittin’ folk. Jokes are not the only redneck litmus test, though. Turns out—and I want to get this right—yew mat just be a redneck if yew live in one of these cities:
Given the country's overcrowded prisons, the U.S. government begins to allow 12-hour periods of time in which all illegal activity is legal. During one of these free-for-alls, a family must protect themselves from a home invasion.
Walid Shoebat is well known as a fraud. CNN recently exposed him in a two part series for masquerading as a “terror expert.” The truth is that Shoebat is just one of many so called “terror expert professionals” who are banking big time on your dime when in fact they are impostors, no better then two-bit snake-oil salesmen.
Now there is a website documenting the fraud Shoebat is perpetrating: www.walid-shoebat.com. Please follow the site, favorite it and share with your networks.
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Sochi, Russia on Tuesday and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin," Haaretz reports. "Netanyahu said ahead of the meeting with Putin that the Middle East is unstable and volatile and therefore he is interested in discussing with Putin ways to 'make it more secure and stable.'"
"According to Israeli officials, Netanyahu will ask the Russian president not to supply advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Syria," the Israeli newspaper reports. "Netanyahu, who was invited to Russia on March 20, is also expected to discuss both the Syrian civil war and the Iranian nuclear program with Putin. Last Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow had no new plans to sell an advanced air defense system to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but left open the possibility that it could ship such systems to Damascus under an existing contract."
The peacekeepers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) are increasingly coming into hostile and even violent contact with the Hezbollah terrorist militia near the Lebanon-Israel border. The Lebanese troops who had taken control of the border after the last war in 2006 have largely been redeployed as a result of mounting tension on the country's eastern border due to the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Taking advantage of this power vacuum, Hezbollah has entered the area in force, and is daily confronting the blue helmets of UNIFIL. Hezbollah blocks UNIFIL patrols along the border and has even threatened to abduct members of the international peacekeeping force, similar to what Syrian rebel groups did earlier this month.
UNIFIL officers have reportedly told their Israeli counterparts that they are fed up with the situation. The moment it becomes clear the the lives of the peacekeepers are in peril, UNIFIL will withdraw from the region, driving the final nail in the coffin of UN Resolution 1701 that ended the Second Lebanon War.
As we have noted before, the UN is only "effective" when everything is quiet. With both UNIFIL and the UN peacekeepers on the Israel-Syria border threatening to flee the region, it is once more clear that Israel cannot commit its security into the hands of others.
While I've read many books about Christian persecution over the years, none of those I've encountered provide a better historic and contemporary context of Christian suffering in Muslim countries than Crucified Again:Exposing Islam's New War on Christians.
The book's author, Raymond Ibrahim is an Egyptian American, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Ibrahim and I had the privilege of moderating religious freedom panels at the Coptic Solidarity conference in Washington, D.C. last year. Because we were busy "moderating," we were unable to meet and share our common interest and passion for the suffering church.
But this week, we conversed during lunch after Ibrahim appeared on The 700 Club. We discussed the troubling mass exodus of Christians from the Middle East and the motivation of their persecutors.
I interviewed Ibrahim for several of our news shows, including Christian World News. We didn't have time in those news programs to bring you the full interview, so I'm posting it here.
Watch the complete Raymond Ibrahim interview and then consider reading his book which Pat Robertson calls "incredibly important."
Federal agents arrested a suspicious traveler with an altered Saudi Arabian passport at Detroit Metro Airport over the weekend after discovering a pressure cooker in his luggage.
According to a criminal complaint filed today in U.S. District Court, the passenger, Hussain Al Khawahir arrived at Detroit Metro on Friday from Saudi Arabia via Amersterdam [sic]. He had a visa and a Saudi Arabian passport, and told officers in the baggage control area that he would be visiting his nephew at the University of Toledo, the complaint said.
In the baggage area, two customs officers interviewed the passenger and noticed a page had been removed form the man’s passport, the complaint said. The man said that he did not know how the page was removed form the passport, and stated that the passport was locked in a box that only he, his wife and three minor children have access to in his home, the complaint said. His hometown was not listed in court documents.
While at the airport, customs and border officials also examined his luggage and found a pressure cooker inside. When questioned about it, the man initially said that he brought the pressure cooker for his nephew because pressure cookers are not sold in Saudi Arabia, the complaint said. The man then changed his story and admitted his nephew had purchased a pressure cooker in America before, but it “was cheap” and broke after the first use.
Then came the Miranda rights.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) enforcement officer read the passenger his rights. The man acknowledged that he understood those rights, both verbally and in writing at 4:25 p.m. A minute later, he invoked his right to remain silent, the complaint said.
Kawahir is in federal court in Detroit this afternoon, making his initial appearance on charges that he knowingly used an altered Saudi Arabian passport with missing pages, and made a materially false statement to a CBP officer about his pressure cooker in his possession, all to gain e
How desperate is the Imperial President to avoid being besmirched by the inconvenient truth of Benghazi? In a stellar bit of mendacity, even for him, he has labeled the latest round of testimony and evidence of White House criminal activity “a sideshow.” On Monday, President Obama, in his ongoing attempt to master the Jedi mind-trick, once again told America that what they see and hear is false. Only what he tells us is true. The trouble is that every word he said was an out-and-out lie. “The Lyin’ King” has never been a more fitting title.
For the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel, a Russian warship docked at the port city of Haifa earlier this month. The "Azov" of Russian's Black Sea Fleet came to Israel at the request of the Association of Russian War Veterans to help celebrate the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany.
Jewish veterans of the Red Army who later immigrated to Israel were invited to participate in a ceremony aboard the massive ship.
However, there was another even more important, even historical, reason for the visit - with the looming collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, Russia is on the lookout for new Middle East alliances.
A Philadelphia jury found Pennsylvania late-term abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths three infants born alive. He will now face the possibility of the death penalty in all three cases.
The 72-year-old was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the overdose death of a 41-year-old immigrant. The jury acquitted Gosnell in the death of a fourth baby.
Earlier jurors said they were deadlocked on just two counts in the more than 200 they're considering. The judge, however, asked them to come back with a unanimous verdict.
The Gosnell trial has shed new light on the abortion industry.
Every new story omits the most crucial fact in the case as to motive. These boys were Jewish and that is why they were practically beheaded by these Muslim supremacists. Islamic Jew hatred - Jews the world over (and most assuredly Israel) know it well -- for 1,400 years.
ABC news: Law enforcement officials tell ABC News that some crime scene forensic evidence provided a match to the two Tsarnaev brothers. The officials also said records of cell phones used by the Tsarnaevs appears to put them in the area of the murders on that date. Several officials confirmed the new findings but declined to be identified because they are not authorized to comment on the ongoing investigation.
There exists in the Middle East a basic willingness to use WMD against civilians -- with no hesitancy involved -- and with full Islamic religious justification. The US and the EU are trying to find a diplomatic solution to a problem that does not have one. It is Iran that must be struck. If it is, the other players will get the message. There is nothing to fear from an Iranian military retaliation so long as Iran does not have an atomic bomb. Once it does, it will be too late.
