Wednesday, May 10, 2017

In the news, Wednesday, April 26, 2017


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APR 25      INDEX      APR 27
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Information from some sites may not be reliable, or may not be vetted.
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from Asia Times Online

China wouldn’t respond to a US strike on North Korea—how did we get here?
Chinese state media argued on Saturday that China should not respond militarily to a surgical strike on North Korean nuclear facilities, and that should come to no one’s surprise

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from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]

What Dracula's Backstory Says about Moral Choices
You can develop a moral system for yourself, but if you live in a world that makes it impossible to practice what you think you believe, can you really hold onto it? Notice how what we call morality so quickly collapses under conditions of famine, war, or extreme deprivation following a natural disaster.

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from The Heritage Foundation
[Information from this site may be unreliable.]

Brussels Mini-Summit: Getting NATO Members to Spend More on Defense
Weak defense spending by European NATO members threatens to undermine the collective security guarantee and play into Vladimir Putin’s hands. The Brussels mini-summit is therefore a great opportunity for NATO members to recommit themselves to their treaty obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty.

Federal Land Grabs Have Gotten Out of Control. Why Trump’s Executive Order Is a Positive Sign.
Draining the swamp doesn’t just mean shrinking the size of federal bureaucracies. It means reducing the role of government throughout our society—including its ability to seize land. A good place to start is President Donald Trump’s executive order, which calls for a review of national monument designations—a tool long used by presidents to unilaterally restrict land use.

Here’s How Wrong Past Environmental Predictions Have Been
Each year, Earth Day is accompanied by predictions of doom. Let’s take a look at past predictions to determine just how much confidence we can have in today’s environmentalists’ predictions. In 1970, when Earth Day was conceived, the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University, predicted, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” Also in 1970, Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and best-selling author of “The Population Bomb,” declared that the world’s population would soon outstrip food supplies.

Freeing States from the Obamacare Insurance Mandates
A top priority for health reform has been to restore to states the authority to regulate insurance markets, which Obamacare removed from them by layering on new insurance mandates. Whether by outright repeal or by waiver, states should be freed from Obamacare’s benefit mandates, the minimum actuarial value requirement, and age-rating restrictions as soon as possible.

France's Dubious Choices
At first blush, the results produced by Round One of the French presidential election, which took place Sunday, might look somewhat like a repeat of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. French voters roundly rejected traditional political candidates and the parties behind them, and went for two outsiders. No matter which way the election goes, France is headed for a pretty dispiriting outcome.

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from Indian Country Today Media Network
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]

Native Transgender Woman Denied Food at Christian Shelter Because She Was Wearing Dress
Isabella Red Cloud, a Native Transgender woman was cited by police with trespass, Facebook video goes viral

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from Mises Institute
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]

Mises on Open Borders
Many left libertarians demand open borders. Nations have no significance, they tell us. To think otherwise, to recognize any limits to immigration, arbitrarily restricts people’s liberty. Those of us who think otherwise, they say, are no better than fascists.

Herbert Spencer Explains the Difference Between Politics and Private Enterprise
April 27 marks the birthday of Herbert Spencer, which is worth noting in several respects. He was a polymath who made important contributions in many areas, including political theory and philosophy. Spencer realized that it is "an absurdly utopian hope" that government agents will be less abusive than market actors.

Are Oil Prices to Blame for the Venezuelan Crisis?
Many analysts are venturing to link the crisis that plagues the Venezuelan economy with the fall in the price of crude oil. The Venezuelan crisis is anything but a crisis caused by the fall in oil prices. Venezuela is undergoing the typical collapse of a country that has been subject to years of all kinds of political interventions. The fall in oil price is the external shock that brings to light the embarrassing result of years of price controls, currency controls, nationalizations, uncontrolled monetary creation, and economic dirigisme.

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from Orthodox Christianity

In Geneva to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Orthodox Center of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Chambésy and the 25th anniversary of his enthronement to the Ecumenical throne, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew delivered an address to the World Council of Churches (WCC) at Geneva’s Ecumenical Center yesterday. The patriarch focused on Constantinople’s historical involvement in the ecumenical movement and last year’s Cretan Council’s place in that work, and also commented on environmental and children’s rights issues.

Archimandrite Andrei (Konanos): One of the signs of spiritual progress is to stop seeking supernatural spiritual experiences: “Oh, Batiushka, this icon moved! And that one is streaming myrrh!” I ask them, “Ok, and what of it? And what happened with you afterwards? Or did you just stand in front of them saying ‘oooh’ and ‘aaaah?’”

RUSSIA DELIVERED 3.5 TONS OF HUMANITARIAN AID TO SYRIA IN BRIGHT WEEK
Residents of Mahardah, one of the biggest Christian cities in Syria, recently received a Paschal gift of humanitarian aid from Russia.

FOR CENTENARY OF REVOLUTION CHURCH CALLS TO IMMORTALIZE THOSE WHO SUFFERED FOR FAITH IN SOVIET YEARS
Especially in this year of the centenary of the tragic Russian revolution, it is necessary to venerate the memory of and erect monuments to the New Martyrs persecuted for the Faith in the atheist Soviet years, and name streets in their honor, believes the head of Synodal Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev). “That’s who we ought to erect monuments to, and whose names we ought to give to streets and squares, instead of artificially maintaining reverence for torturers, terrorists, and murderers, immortalized in the names of the squares and streets of many cities of our great Russia,” the metropolitan said on Wednesday in St. Petersburg at a plenary session dedicated to contemplating the events of 1917.

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from Power Line

U.N. WARNS THAT REPEALING OBAMACARE MAY BE ILLEGAL
Dana Milbank reports, with glee, that the United Nations “has contacted the Trump administration as part of an investigation into whether repealing [Obamacare] without an adequate substitute for the millions who would lose health coverage would be a violation of several international conventions that bind the United States.” The warning comes from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva.

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from The Spokesman-Review

Inslee vetoes part of bill to help some Washington school districts find new sites
Gov. Jay Inslee today gave lawmakers another thing to do during the current special session: Figure out a better way for school districts to find open land where they can build new campuses outside their boundaries. Inslee vetoed a portion of a bill that would expand where new schools could locate, saying that while supporters have put hours of work into it, “we’re not quite done.”

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from The Washington Times

Trump to pull feds out of K-12 education
President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to start pulling the federal government out of K-12 education, following through on a campaign promise to return school control to state and local officials. The order, dubbed the “Education Federalism Executive Order,” will launch a 300-day review of Obama-era regulations and guidance for school districts and directs Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to modify or repeal measures she deems an overreach by the federal government.

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from The Wenatchee World

Salmon’s return to Upper Columbia not so far-fetched
Bringing salmon back to the Columbia River above Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams might not be so daunting now that recent research and tech breakthroughs are smoothing the waters. Once considered impractical if not impossible, reintroduction of salmon above the river’s biggest powerhouses now looks within reach, say fish scientists in Wenatchee this week for a conference on salmon recovery.

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