Freeberg nails it, as usual.

Summing it all up: The whole thing is on the honor system. If you’re not eligible to use these materials, then don’t…wink wink, nod nod.

Yeah, we know how that works.

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The ancient people who have long been thought to be the first humans to colonise North America were actually johnny-come-latelies, according to scientists who have comprehesively analysed the ancient fossilised poo of their predecessor Americans.

The new revelations come to us courtesy of Copenhagen university, where some of the investigating boffins are based. The scientists say that their results demonstrate conclusively their somewhat controversial thesis: that the “Clovis” culture dating from around 13,000 years ago – which has long been thought to be the earliest human society in the Americas – was actually preceded by human habitation at the Paisley caves in Oregon.

No doubt UFOs had something to do with it. The Truth Is Out There.

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That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

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Al Qaeda planned to burn down the Ritz or Dorchester hotel and attack an Eton College open day, documents found on a dead terror leader have revealed.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

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Apple has done its bit to defuse rapidly escalating tensions between China and Japan, by pulling an inflammatory iOS game in which the player is tasked with defending a disputed set of islands in the East China Sea from the invading Japanese.

Defend the Diaoyu Islands was taken down “recently” from the Chinese App Store, its creator the Shenzhen ZQGame Network Company told China Daily, although apparently no explanation was given by Apple.

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ZTE and its larger Chinese rival, Huawei, have been the subjects of great national security concern for years.  The US intelligence community fears that, if allowed to install equipment here, the two companies will surreptitiously permit Chinese government wiretaps inside the United States .  But proof of this suspicion has been hard to find.  And the firms, backed by Chinese government-subsidized loans, have been able to offer enormous discounts to carriers, devastating the global telecom equipment market and leaving carriers eager to buy their products.  Whether the US government would continue to act on its suspicions in the face of commercial pressure was an open question.

But wait, there’s more….

In March, Reuters reported that ZTE was supplying the Iranian mullahs with telecoms gear that could spy on Iran’s restive population. ZTE, the news agency reported, “has sold Iran’s largest telecom firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile and internet communications, interviews and contract documents show.”

That was bad.  But it got worse. Reuters further revealed that the ZTE system sold to Iran included equipment from US companies, like HP, Dell, Cisco and Juniper. Such sales violate US export control law. So ZTE soon faced an investigation by the US Commerce Department.

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Researchers have created a new material they’re calling “Aerographite” that has taken the crown of “world’s lightest material” away from the micro-lattice structure that previously held it back in November. With a density of only 0.2 mg/cc, the substance is comprised of 99.99 percent air — though a large piece of it looks like a black, opaque sponge. Aerographite consists of a “seamless interconnected network of closed shell micro tubes” and reportedly can be compressed by a factor of a thousand before springing back to its original shape. Interestingly, it’s also conductive, which the research team from the Hamburg University of Technology and University of Kiel note opens up possibilities in the technology space. MEMS, electrical shielding, and even batteries.

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On Thursday at 5:53pm in London – 12:53pm in New York – the sun let loose with a hefty solar flare, resulting in a coronal mass ejection (CME) headed straight towards Earth that will likely arrive on Saturday at 10:20 UT, give or take about seven hours.

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Force will probably have to be used to dislodge Islamists from northern Mali, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Thursday, although interim leaders must first take control of the south.

Reminds me of something … ‘Porgy, you are a white man, you have to help us….’

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You’ll note how they carefully refrain from specifying just where these ‘non-EU immigrants’ came from … it is, of course, a Voice of the Crust code-word for Pakistanis and other Asian Muslims. But it wouldn’t be Politically Correct to say so.

It would also be interesting to cross-reference these ‘non-EU immigrants’ against the crime statistics. But of course no newspaper in Britain, much less the BBC, would dare to do so; in the UK you can go to jail for that sort of ‘hate crime’.

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What, no Jane Fonda? How disappointing.

Decades after the US gave Laos a horrific distinction as the world’s most heavily bombed nation, Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, has pledged to help get rid of millions of unexploded bombs that still pockmark the impoverished country.

It would seem more fair to make the Vietnamese pay for cleaning up the bombs — after all, they were the ones who attracted them in the first place by sneaking through the country.

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Britain no longer has the death penalty and is cutting their state pension benefits, so the way to a secure old age appears to be to kill somebody. Have an ailing spouse? Have we got a deal for you….

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, with some more inconvenient truth.

Back in 1982 a faction of Lebanese Arabs massacred Palestinian Arabs at two refugee camps in Beirut. The Israeli army, in the neighborhood at the time, was accused of turning a blind eye to the killings. Hearing of this, Menachem Begin famously muttered: “Goyim kill goyim, and they blame the Jews.”

Hence my title. NAM is an abbreviation for “Non-Asian Minority” commonly used among us wicked people who notice What Should Not Be Noticed.

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Frum certainly has embraced his inner Crust and ‘progressed’ far from the days when he pretended to be a conservative.

Darwin Award.

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Our Olympic heroes will be headed off to London this month — looking as if they’re decked out for a Hamptons lawn party.

Ralph Lauren yesterday unveiled the preppy parade uniforms that Team USA members will wear at the July 27 opening ceremony, stirring an uproar over pricey duds fit for a regatta.

The outfits include blue blazers, cream-colored trousers, white skirts — and berets.

“2012 US Olympic team is wearing berets. Really? America?” tweeted John Lee Rudnicki, a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer. “How many people in the US have you ever seen wear a beret? Five?”

“What the France?” tweeted Greg “Hollea” Rachal, a political activist and former Jacksonville, Fla., City Council candidate.

The company said the outfits embody “the spirit of American athleticism and sportsmanship.”

Sure, I believe that. I think they rather embody the spirit of Ralph Lauren’s homosexuality.

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When there aren’t any Jews or Americans handy, Muslims will quite cheerfully murder each other.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

Scott Johnson gloats.

Andrea Mitchell invited Romney campaign surrogate John Sununu to appear on her MSNBC show to discuss the Obama campaign talking point of the day (or is it month?): outsourcing. Mitchell had the Obama campaign memo, alright, and sought to execute like a good foot soldier.

But Mitchell was unprepared for the Romney campaign’s counterattack on Obama as outsourcer-in-chief. It has something to do with those vaunted green jobs brought to us by the administration. “When you’ve sent $500 million to Fisker and it goes to Finland immediately. When you send the solar money and it goes to Mexico. When you send the turbine money and it goes to Denmark. And we can go on all day,” Sununu said. “There is $29 billion worth of purchases that came out of this administration, outsourced jobs to foreign countries.”

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According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids—or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi’i, those “symbols of paganism,” which Egypt’s Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what Amr bin al-As could not.”

Not to worry  — Dennis assures us that this will never happen.

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Of course: you have to present a “government-issued photo I.D. (such as a driver’s license).”

Hey, wouldn’t want any non-colored people getting into a meeting of our explicitly racist organization.

We noted the same thing when Holder traveled to Texas to speak at the LBJ Library on the evils of voter ID. Also when Michelle Obama did a book signing. Do you think you can get anywhere near Michelle Obama without a photo ID? Of course not. And, needless to say, you can’t set foot inside Eric Holder’s Justice Department without a photo ID.

Funny how that works.

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Seven years ago, the veteran Republican created a cash gusher for the touristy Alaska Railroad by giving it a share of Congress’s mass transit bucks. In June, he stared down the Senate to keep the subsidies flowing for another two years.

The price tag: $62 million.

Those millions were part of a package meant to help mass transit lines carry commuters, not send cargo and tourists through the Alaskan tundra. And Young pulled it off at a time where member-specific earmarks are supposed to be a thing of the past — a victim, in fact, of the outrage over Young’s much-maligned Bridge to Nowhere that would have connected an Alaskan town to an island of 50 people.

Lest anyone think that Republicans are immune from the disease of buying votes with taxpayer money.

“Throughout my career in Congress, I have fought hard to ensure a level playing field between Alaska and its lower-48 counterparts — and the Alaska Railroad is no different,” Young said in a statement to POLITICO.

In other words: ‘There’s loot to be had, and we want our share.’

“There is no reason why the Alaska Railroad should be treated differently than other American passenger rail systems — and that is exactly why this provision is so important.”

Sure there is — it’s not cost-effective. You’d think that a Republican would know that — which he certainly does; he just isn’t going to admit it.

Critics say it’s too much to spend on a train that carried 412,200 passengers last year, few of whom actually commute. The New York City subway system gave more than 1.5 billion rides last year. Even Salt Lake City’s light rail carries 40,000 people per day.

Any system can be gamed, and government systems more easily than others.

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I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

After all, Democrats are right up there with Muslims as far as being peace-loving people who wouldn’t harm a fly.

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Just can’t wait until these people are in charge of our health care.

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Prior to Egypt’s presidential elections, Islamists made clear that the electoral process was an obligatory form of “holy war.” Then, any number of Islamic clerics, including influential ones, declared that it was mandatory for Muslims to cheat during elections—if so doing would help Islamist candidates win; that the elections were a form of jihad, and those who die are “martyrs” who will attain the highest levels of paradise. Top Islamic institutions and influential clerics, such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, issued fatwas decreeing that all Muslims were “obligated” to go and vote for those candidates most likely to implement Sharia law, with threats of hellfire for those failing to do so.

The point was simple: democracy, elections, voting, even the individual candidates, were all means to an end—the establishment of Sharia law. Cheat, fight, and kill during elections, as long as doing so enables Sharia; vote only for whoever will enable Sharia; avoid hell by enabling Sharia. (It is precisely for this reason that the very first demand made by Islamic leaders is that President Morsi implement the totality of Sharia law in Egypt. That is, after all, why so many voted for him.)

Another pointed reminder that neither democracy nor honesty are Muslim values.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

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Movies that show actors smoking tobacco should automatically earn an R rating in order to minimize copycat smoking among impressionable tweens and teenagers, the authors of a new study suggest.

PG-13 films account for nearly two-thirds of the smoking scenes adolescents see on the big screen, according to the two-year study, which surveyed roughly 5,000 children ages 10 to 14 about the movies they’d seen and whether they’d ever tried a cigarette.

Smoking in PG-13 films — including background shots and other passing instances — was just as strongly linked with real-world experimentation as the smoking in R-rated films. For every 500 smoking scenes a child saw in PG-13 movies, his or her likelihood of trying cigarettes increased by 49%. The comparable figure for R-rated movies was 33%, a statistically negligible difference.

This, of course, presumes that anybody pays any attention to the ratings on movies. The number of films that are seen ‘on the big screen’ as opposed to Netflix or other online providers (not to mention just buying the damned thing from Amazon, who will cheerfully sell you an R-rated movie without asking your age) makes this exercise in optimism Just Another Crustian Inconvenience, producing a warm fuzzy feeling on the part of the ruling class without any effect in the real world.

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Yet another study has shown that the so-called “obesity” epidemic sweeping the wealthy nations of the world has been massively over-hyped, as new results show that is is far more dangerous to be assessed as “underweight” than it is to be assessed even as “severely obese” – let alone merely “obese” or “overweight”.

“There is currently a widespread belief that any degree of overweight or obesity increases the risk of death, however our findings suggest this may not be the case,” says health prof Anthony Jerant, lead author of the study. “In the six-year timeframe of our evaluation, we found that only severe obesity was associated with an increased risk of death.”

Everything the Voices of the Crust tell you is wrong … but you knew that.

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Denise Rich, the wealthy socialite and former wife of pardoned billionaire trader Marc Rich, has given up her U.S. citizenship – and, with it, much of her U.S. tax bill.

Ah. Another Republican 1%-er. The swine.

Rich, 68, a Grammy-nominated songwriter and glossy figure in Democratic and European royalty circles, renounced her American passport in November, according to her lawyer.

Wait a minute…. Democratic circles?

Marc Rich received a presidential pardon in 2001 on President Bill Clinton’s last day in office. Federal prosecutors and Congress investigated the pardon, and in 2002 a House of Representatives committee concluded Denise Rich had swayed the action through donations to the Clinton library and campaign.

Whoa….

One way or another, Obama’s ‘soak the rich’ program will make sure that American soon has no more rich to soak.

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Saw that coming.

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How can this be? I thought that the 1% (among which the owners and employees of Google certainly rank) are all homophobe Republicans?

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Earlier this week, President Obama gave listeners a history lesson on why he was running for higher office. “The reason I ran for president,” Mr. Obama said, “the reason I ran the first time for a state senate seat [in 1996] on the south side of Chicago, was because . . . we had gone through a decade where people were working harder and harder but we didn’t see an increase in income. . . . Jobs weren’t growing fast enough. And the cost of everything . . . kept going up faster than people’s income.”

Was high unemployment, high inflation, and low growth what the U.S. was experiencing in 1996, or in the decade before that? No. That describes the 1970s–a decade of big government with price controls, the war in Vietnam, price fixing in oil, and massive inflation of the currency by the Federal Reserve. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which topped the 1,000 mark in 1966, was at about 800 fifteen years later. The 1980s, however, began a change. We saw a more stable currency, tax rate cuts, decontrol of oil prices, and relative peace abroad (and the collapse of the Soviet Union).

In 1996, the year President Obama ran for the Illinois state senate, President Clinton downsized government through welfare reform. By cutting welfare benefits, the welfare rolls were cut by almost 50%, and President Clinton had budget surpluses his last two years in office. In 1996, the U.S. saw 2,500,000 new jobs created and only 3% inflation. Americans, contrary to the president’s statement, experienced massive job increases, and they watched their growing incomes outpace inflation. The U.S. economy had strong decades in the 1980s and 1990s.

So, why the pretend history? Because pretend history is the only way to make increases in debt and in the size of government appear to be the correct political move.

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We have the technology. Or will soon.

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A lot of higher end cars are now coming out with RF fobs that unlock and start the car. There is no longer a physical key that is inserted in the ignition. It turns out that for BMW this means stealing the cars is extremely easy for a sophisticated criminal. We always liked the idea of metal keys that ALSO had a chip in them. The two-tiered security system makes sense to us, and would have prevent (or at least slowed down) the recent  rash of BMW thefts that are going on in the UK.

We They have the technology.

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Council tenants will go to the High Court today over plans to station surface-to-air missiles on the roof of their tower block during the Olympics.

Question: If there were no Muslim terrorists, would this even have crossed anybody’s mind? Answer: Of course not.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

A sample.

There doesn’t appear to be a ‘current cartoon’ link, so the link at right goes to the home page – click on the ‘page xxx >>’ caption at the top for the latest.

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Climate change, this global warming thing, it’s going to mean that the tropical forests frazzle up and then we all die, right? It will mena the death of the “lungs of the planet” – such as the miles upon miles of Amazon jungle – which turn CO2 into the O2 that we inhale. It’s titsup for humanity, basically. Except, according to one new paper in Nature, that’s not the way it will work. CO2 is indeed plant food and more plant food means more plants, more forests and thus we’re all saved: or perhaps not quite as screwed as some seem to think at least.

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Even Princesses get the blues….

She was Saudi Arabia’s “Barbie” princess; the pampered granddaughter of the Kingdom’s founder and daughter of one of his most powerful and favoured sons.

Princess Sara bint Talal bin Abdulaziz, however, is claiming political asylum in the UK over fears for her safety back home.

And the feminists say … [chirp] … [chirp] … [chirp] ….

The Other McCain points out some inconvenient truth.

You will notice that when a conservative proposes a general rule of human behavior, liberals are quick to cite some exception to that rule. However, when liberals propose general rules, no conservative is permitted to cite exceptions, and thus any attempt to discuss human behavior with liberals is doomed to end in the accusation that conservatives are arguing unfairly.

Indeed, I have noticed that.

The case of Angel Adams is also probably helpful as a basic political litmus test of sorts. You may have noticed that liberals delight in making crude jests about pro-life Christian families like the Duggars. Yet if anyone calls attention to the case of a hyper-procreative welfare mother with multiple babydaddies including an imprisoned cocaine dealer — a dreadful situation that imposes heavy costs on innocent taxpayers — the very same liberals will predictably scream, “RAAAAACIST!”

Yet it is not the race, but rather the behavior, of Angel Adams which is the problem, and her behavior is rooted in an attitude, one that is commonly labled “the entitlement mentality.” I’ve seen the entitlement mentality manifested in various ways by all types of people. No race has a monopoly on such selfish attitudes, but liberals go out of their way to justify the entitlement mentality when it comes to certain groups of people whom liberals apparently view as Official Victims of Society.

Whose turn is it to be the victim…?

Liberalism, as a philosophy, requires such victims as proof that America is fundamentally unjust, thus in need of the kind of “reforms” that liberals advocate. Examining the arguments of liberals — to the extent that liberals actually engage in arguments, rather than mere name-calling — the conservative points out that much of the “social injustice” bemoaned by today’s liberalism is actually a direct byproduct of previous liberal “reforms.”

In the case of Ms. Adams, for example, one sees not only the result of LBJ’s “Great Society” expansion of welfare programs, but also a fairly predictable consequence of the Sexual Revolution that liberals insisted was necessary for Americans to escape the oppressive shackles of our nation’s puritanical Judeo-Christian heritage.

Flap flap flap ye chickens, coming home to roost….

President Obama and his liberal friends like to lecture us about the alleged evils of “the 1%” — the ultra-rich who supposedly refuse to pay “their fair share” of taxes to support Angel Adams and her children (or to keep Garry Brown Sr. in prison). But where is the justice or morality in compelling the ultra-rich (or anyone else) to pay more to foot the bill for these predictable consequences of liberalism? How can anyone be faulted for an unwillingness to pay for new liberal “reforms” when they can see with their own eyes the endless misery produced by old liberal “reforms”?

No matter — it’s their job to pay, and to pay, and to pay, so long as there are useless mouths to be fed, and parasites are available to   suck the blood of the productive.

“A lot of people have gone way extra miles for you,” Sheehan said. “Do you understand that?”
Adams replied quietly, “No comment, your honor.”

Gratitude? What’s that? Sorry, no room for that in the Entitlement Mentality.

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Modernity is amazing. We are surrounded by innovations, gadgets, and ideas that make life better. And just as a fish doesn’t notice the water he swims through, we are often oblivious to the incredible things that surround us. For example, we used to only be able to eat certain foods when they were in season. If your grandparents had a hankering for asparagus when they were young, they could only satisfy it if it was April or May. If they wanted a tomato, they’d have to wait until summertime.

Today, we can eat whatever we want, when we want. People don’t really appreciate it, but for most of human history, that just wasn’t possible. It takes all kinds of technologies to make that happen. Faster transportation is one of them. Trains, planes, automobiles, and boats with engines rather than oars make it possible to ship fresh food from all over the world to supermarkets.

Even the poorest of ‘the poor’ can eat fresh veggies, if only as garnish on a Big Mac, rather than subsisting on gruel and porridge as they did in times not so long ago. And yet there is no end of whining by limousine liberals about the lack of access to organically-grown arugula by the Underclass — as if they would eat it if they had it.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

Police Tape App From NJ ACLU Offers Yet Another Way to Document Inappropriate Police Conduct

10 Life Skills You Can Learn From YouTube

A Scientific Explanation of Your Hangover (And How to Cure It)

Spread Fingers Like A Fork To Swim Faster, Scientists Find

Sticky Note Wristwatch – a Note to Self

SponsoredBy

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Back in 2006, California’s legislature passed and then-Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act which aims to reduce the Golden State’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. As I reported earlier this goal would be achieved by a mix of policies including a cap-and-trade carbon market along with a set of complementary measures. Those measures include setting fuel efficiency standards for appliances and buildings, requiring that 33 percent of the state’s energy be produced from renewable sources, setting a low carbon fuel standard for vehicles, and zoning changes to discourage automobile travel, among other new regulations and mandates.

A 2010 study by the California Air Resources Board, the agency in charge of implementing carbon rationing under the Global Warming Solutions Act, reported that its best case analysis estimated that implementing the law would boost California’s employment by 10,000 extra jobs by 2020; its worst case projected 330,000 fewer jobs than there would otherwise have been by 2020.

A new study commissioned by the California Manufacturers and Technology Association finds that that worst case is the likely case.

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In just five months, the Obama administration has freed schools in more than half the nation from central provisions of the No Child Left Behind education law, raising the question of whether the decade-old federal program has been essentially nullified.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

That whole thing in the Constitution about ‘he shall take care that the laws shall be faithfully executed’ was apparently just advisory.

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Police narrowly escaped an undressing after stumbling into a rowdy hens’ night in northern Australia where they were mistaken for strippers by the bride-to-be and her friends.

Gotta love Australians.

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Here’s an odd one. The School of Economics and Management in Essen, Germany is suing former student, Marcel Pohl, for graduating too quickly. You see, he finished all of the necessary exams for both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in 20 months — representing three semesters. Normally, it takes students 11 semesters, and the school feels ripped off. The complaint is that, even though they charge per semester, what they’re really charging for is the degree, and Pohl didn’t pay enough for his. So they want another €3,000.

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Proponents of government-run health care view Health Savings Accounts as the bane of their existence.  They provide a health care based on individual responsibility with market-based accountability that drives down the price of health care services.

HHS has proposed new regulations that would force over five million Americans who have individual HSA policies to lose them.  It’s not hard to make the case that Kathleen Sibelius and her army of bureaucrats are specifically targeting HSAs because they demonstrate that government is not the solution to our health care insurance ills.

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Col. Crews recounted an interchange in 2010 between Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a military chaplain.  While Adm. Mullen was briefing the troops on what the repeal might look like, the chaplain asked if those with “biblical views that homosexuality is a sin [would] still be protected to express those views?”

Adm. Mullen reportedly responded, “Chaplain, if you can’t get in line with this policy, resign your commission.”

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I’m not saying the waitress was a Communist, but when you’re wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of a Communist, the customer wonders how to tip. Maybe patrons should run out of the restaurant without paying, so they don’t perpetuate the system of capitalist oppression? Not sure what the etiquette is supposed to be here. Except that when you know the guy on the T-shirt said, “I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood,” you’re less inclined to order the hamburger rare.

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 Christoph Zollikofer witnessed the first birth of a Neanderthal in the modern age. In his anthropology lab at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 2007, the skull of a baby Homo neanderthalensis emerged from a photocopier-sized machine after a 20-hour noisy but painless delivery of whirring motors and spitting plastic. This modern miracle had endured a lengthy gestation: it took years for Zollikofer’s collaborators to find suitable bones from a Neanderthal neonate, analyse them with a computed-tomography (CT) scanner and digitally stitch them together on the computer screen. The labour, however, was simple: Zollikofer just pressed ‘print’ on his lab’s US$50,000 three-dimensional (3D) printer.

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 Parents of students at England’s Gartocham Primary School were excited to learn that Alan Bell, the chief starter of the London Olympics, would be firing his starter’s pistol for races at the school’s annual sports day. Local health and safety officials were not excited. They banned Bell from firing the pistol, saying it could frighten the children.