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Information from some sites may not be reliable, or may not be vetted.
Some sources may require subscription.
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from Asia Times Online
Islamic practice of divorcing a woman by saying the word 'talaq' three times is ruled a violation of the rights of Muslim women
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from BBC News (UK)
Syria's army has suspended combat operations in eastern Aleppo, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says. The move is to allow for the evacuation of civilians trapped in the battle zone. Mr Lavrov said some 8,000 people would be taken out.
Historians have unveiled a digitally-reconstructed image of the face of Robert the Bruce almost 700 years after his death. The image has been produced using casts from what is believed to be the skull of the famous Scottish king.
The singer already has seven children whose ages range from 17 to 45 and he became a great-grandfather in 2014. His 29-year-old girlfriend, American ballerina Melanie Hamrick, gave birth to a boy in New York on Thursday, the singer's publicist Bernard Doherty said.
Data from the National Center for Health Statistics showed a drop for men from 76.5 years in 2014 to 76.3 in 2015, and from 81.3 to 81.2 for women. The preliminary figures show rises in several causes of death, especially heart disease, dementia and accidental infant deaths. Life expectancy last fell during the peak of the HIV/Aids crisis in 1993.
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from CNSNews.com (& MRC & NewsBusters)
'Godspeed, John Glenn': Public hails hero of space, politics
Reality Check: CNN Thinks Obama's Legacy is Awesome. Let's Destroy That.
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from CommonDreams
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]
How to swamp Washington and double-cross your supporters big time
Given his cabinet picks so far, it’s reasonable to assume that The Donald finds hanging out with anyone who isn’t a billionaire (or at least a multimillionaire) a drag.
With New Tax, Portland Fires Opening Shot in Battle Against Extreme CEO Pay
The city of Portland, Oregon on Wednesday took a bold step towards addressing the national scourge of extreme pay inequality with the passage of a landmark tax penalty to be imposed on companies whose CEO makes more than 100 times the average worker's salary. Predicting the move will "spread like wildfire" to other cities, IPS's Sarah Anderson says we may be looking at the "dawn of a new 'pay ratio politics.'"
'We Are Protectors': After DAPL Decision, Tribal Members Look to the Future of Pipeline Fight
"We've built a movement of movements. So what are going to do next? We're going to keep on going."
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from Competitive Enterprise Institute
Andy Puzder understands that the key to economic growth and rising wages is empowering business to increase productivity, not artificial, government-imposed wage and hour mandates.
Yesterday, President-elect Donald Trump picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As the saying goes, people are policy, and Attorney General Pruitt is a leader in the pushback against the EPA’s unlawful regulatory overreach and war on coal.
Unaccountable regulators rule Americans’ lives and livelihoods. It's time Congress can take steps to increase regulatory accountability and move America toward economic growth, prosperity, and liberty. The new edition of CEI’s Agenda for Congress, Free to Prosper, offers a detailed set of recommendations, backed by legal, economic, and policy analysis, to help accomplish this objective.
read the full document:
CEI’s Agenda for the 115th Congress highlights specific steps lawmakers can take to rein in unlawful overreach by executive agencies, reduce the costs of federal regulations, and unleash America’s entrepreneurial, wealth-creating potential. These policy ideas and solutions are necessary to move America toward economic growth, prosperity, and liberty for individuals to chart their own path in a world of empowering technological advances.
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from Conservative Intelligence Briefing
The Elitist Left’s 2016 Victory: Blocking DAPL
To approve a route for a pipeline takes forever. In the case of the Dakota Access Pipeline, it took years. But after all the hoops that were jumped through and the regulatory nightmare was over for DAPL, the Army sided with the radical left’s out-of-touch stance by agreeing to reroute the much-needed pipeline. It only took a few liberal elitists groups rallying an army of radical environmentalists to undo it all and the total compliance of the media. And now, funny enough, the only way to fight back is the same way blue-collar America fought back in November: with Donald Trump. As long as the President-elect makes DAPL a priority.
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from The Daily Beast
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]
John Glenn, Last of America’s First Astronauts, Dead at 95
The war hero gave America its first decisive win in the Space Race and made it possible for man to walk on the moon.
John Glenn, Last of America’s First Astronauts, Dead at 95
The war hero gave America its first decisive win in the Space Race and made it possible for man to walk on the moon.
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from The Federalist Papers
The “Fake News” Story That Turned Out To Be FAKE Itself
The Washington Post has been forced to effectively admit that its “fake news” story was, itself, “fake news.” After standing by their story for two weeks, the Post has added an “Editor’s note” to their Nov. 24 article “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say.”
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from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]
The Three Most Pressing Threats to Liberty
Identity politics (left and right), populism, and radical Islam share common intellectual fountainheads. Now is the time to defend the liberty that makes possible a global civilization that enables friendship, family, cooperation, trade, mutual benefit, science, wisdom — in a word, life — and to challenge the modern anti-libertarian triumvirate and reveal the emptiness at its heart.
Bureaucracy Buries the Human Spirit with Paperwork
In a bureaucratic society, thought is neither required nor appreciated, only compliance.
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What does the Carrier deal mean for limited-government politics? How can principled conservatives accommodate themselves to Trump’s scrambling of political categories? Balancing a pro-growth economic policy with a pro-work social policy and shaping (or trying to shape) trade relations to advantage American workers might be the formula for a successful limited-government politics.
“Come out from her!” says a heavenly voice to the saints (Revelation 18). Come out from Babylon, the harlot city, the doomed city. Commentators hasten to spiritualize: The command doesn't require a change of place but only a metaphorical exodus, an exodus of the heart. It's a flight from pagan culture, not from one location to another. Well, yes and no.
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from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California
Prevalent in many western capitals is the narrative that Vladimir Putin is striving to regain dominance of the “lost” Soviet empire, and his aggressive behavior in Ukraine—especially his blatant annexation of Crimea in March 2014—is just the beginning of a great Russian advance toward another Pax Russiana. This is a misreading of Putin’s motives and Russia’s strategic reality. What Putin is fighting for is neither Moscow’s world dominance, nor its opposition to the superpower status of the United States. Putin does not want a duopoly comprising Washington and another superpower rival of the United States in a new bipolar geopolitical structure whereby Russia is less relevant or even irrelevant. Instead, Putin wants to be the world’s Number 2, and to prevent anyone else from filling that position so that Moscow and Washington can still bilaterally decide world affairs, just like the old days in the Cold War, sans ideological and geopolitical fervency. There should be no illusion about Putin’s nostalgia for the Soviet empire. However, Putin’s nostalgia is not driven by a desire to revive communist ideology. Nor is Russia able any time soon to achieve parity with the United States in modern military hardware or new weapons platforms. In a nutshell, Vladimir Putin is a Russian economic nationalist.
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from LifeZette (& PoliZette)
Veterans Who Need Care Have Important Rights
No one outside the VA was supposed to see the rankings about quality issues at these facilities
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from The Living Church
TBT: ‘WELCOME TO THE NCCCUSA’
This Living Church editorial from the end of 1950 addresses the founding of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America (almost always today called the National Council of Churches or NCC) on Nov. 29, 1950, and the election of the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Henry Knox Sherrill, as its first president. The NCC brought together a large number of interchurch agencies as a representative ecumenical body of Protestant and Orthodox churches.
AN ENGINEER LOOKS AT PRAYER: GOD AT THE CENTER
Yesterday, I wrote about how I used to view prayer: as a way to get stuff done. This is a temptation for me, an engineer, and for people like me. But what happens when you place God at the center of prayer? This might not help, if we keep the idea of “doing things” central. If fact, we are in danger of treating God as our “heavenly valet.” (Ironically, this is a point where skeptics focus their questions. Christians sometimes talk about God as if he exists simply to do stuff for us, and skeptics rightly point out that God doesn’t seem to do what we ask.)
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from Martin Van Creveld
Welcome, Mr. Secretary
At one point during his election campaign, President-Elect Donald Trump promised to spend the first hundred days on the job restoring the U.S military. And following the endless unsuccessful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, restoring it certainly needs. Now he has come up with the man who is supposed to do the restoring: four-star Marine Corps General (ret.) James Mattis.
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Welcome, Mr. Secretary
At one point during his election campaign, President-Elect Donald Trump promised to spend the first hundred days on the job restoring the U.S military. And following the endless unsuccessful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, restoring it certainly needs. Now he has come up with the man who is supposed to do the restoring: four-star Marine Corps General (ret.) James Mattis.
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from The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA)
No baby Jesus this year for Gig Harbor
Sorry, Gig Harbor, baby Jesus won’t be lying in a manger next to the city’s holiday tree this year. A Wisconsin-based atheist, agnostic and “free thinker” organization threatened legal action against the city if it allowed a nativity scene on public property. The city chose not to challenge the Freedom From Religion Foundation this year because of special circumstances, but city leaders believe the display is allowed because it is free speech in a public forum, said City Administrator Ron Williams.
from NPR (& affiliates)
John Glenn, First American To Orbit The Earth, Dies At 95
The first American to orbit the Earth has died. John Glenn was the last surviving member of the original Mercury astronauts. He would later have a long political career as a U.S. senator, but that didn't stop his pioneering ways. Glenn made history a second time in 1998, when he flew aboard the shuttle Discovery to become the oldest person to fly in space.
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from Republican National Committee (GOP)
Nomination of Wilbur Ross – Secretary of Commerce
Wilbur Ross’s extraordinary business career and history of bringing struggling companies back to profitability make him the ideal person to lead the Commerce Department and to implement President-elect Trump’s America First economic agenda.
Elaine Chao: The Right Leader to Modernize Our Infrastructure and Transportation
In keeping with an America First agenda that will prioritize America’s interests, President-elect Trump will nominate Elaine Chao to serve as the next Secretary of Transportation. Chao is the perfect choice to help enact President-elect Trump’s bold plan to modernize and improve our crumbling infrastructure and transportation systems.
from Salon
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]
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from Space.com (& CollectSpace)
John Glenn, First American to Orbit the Earth, Dies at 95
John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, died today (Dec. 8). He was 95. The former astronaut and U.S. senator was being hospitalized at the Wexner Medical Center at Ohio State University in Columbus when he died.
Astronaut John Glenn: An American Hero's Greatest Moments Remembered
A gallery of highlights from the career of John H. Glenn, first American to orbit the Earth.
John Glenn: 1st American to Orbit Earth, Oldest Man in Space
The first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn made history again when, at the age of 77, he became the oldest person to travel in space. But before he was nationally recognized as a hero, he had put his life on the line for his country many times.
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from The Spokesman-Review
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from UPI News Agency - United Press International
upi.com
9:21 PM "Godspeed, John Glenn. Ad astra [to the stars]," NASA said after the astronaut's death Thursday.
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from The Washington Post
Trump names Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general suing EPA on climate change, to head the EPA
Pruitt has spent much of his energy as attorney general fighting the agency he is being nominated to lead.
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from Zero Hedge
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]
Deutsche Bank Provides "Smoking Gun" Proof Of Massive Rigging And Fraud In The Silver Market
Back in April, when we first reported that Deutsche Bank had agreed to settle allegations it had rigged the silver market in exchange for $38 million, we revealed something stunning: "in a curious twist, the settlement letter revealed that the former members of the manipulation cartel have turned on each other", and that Deutsche Bank would provide docments implicating other precious metals riggers. To wit: "In addition to valuable monetary consideration, Deutsche Bank has also agreed to provide cooperation to plaintiffs, including the production of instant messages, and other electronic communications, as part of the settlement. In Plaintiff’s estimation, the cooperation to be provided by Deutsche Bank will substantially assist Plaintiffs in the prosecution of their claims against the non-settling defendants."
Deutsche Bank Provides "Smoking Gun" Proof Of Massive Rigging And Fraud In The Silver Market
Back in April, when we first reported that Deutsche Bank had agreed to settle allegations it had rigged the silver market in exchange for $38 million, we revealed something stunning: "in a curious twist, the settlement letter revealed that the former members of the manipulation cartel have turned on each other", and that Deutsche Bank would provide docments implicating other precious metals riggers. To wit: "In addition to valuable monetary consideration, Deutsche Bank has also agreed to provide cooperation to plaintiffs, including the production of instant messages, and other electronic communications, as part of the settlement. In Plaintiff’s estimation, the cooperation to be provided by Deutsche Bank will substantially assist Plaintiffs in the prosecution of their claims against the non-settling defendants."
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