The Front Page Cover
"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened"
Featuring:
On Steven Scalise—and Al Sharpton
Dennis Saffran
"Rise up together as one voice"
"Be careful where you stand"
~~~lll~~~
A pox on media mice - Peter Beinart at The Atlantic: “But because these assaults aim to intimidate movie studios and journalists, their impact cannot be measured merely by how governments respond. Historically, terrorists and dictators have often used violence to blackmail democratic governments into changing policy. Now they are using violence to blackmail editors and studio heads into doing so. Which means that journalists and media executives, rather than merely politicians, must choose either appeasement or defiance. By first refusing to disseminate The Interview, and then agreeing to, Sony pivoted from the former to the latter. With most of its staff murdered, Charlie Hebdo itself may, tragically, not have the choice. But in deciding whether to show the images that seem to have gotten Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists and editors killed, countless other magazines, newspapers, websites, and television networks will be acting as either hawks or doves.” -Fox News 
WITH YOUR SECOND CUP OF COFFEE…
Today would have been Elvis Presley’s 80th birthday and one might wonder what the King of Rock and Roll would be like today had he not died in August 1977 at age 42. Well, consider this: On December 4, 1956 there was an impromptu jam session at Sun Records Memphis studios included Elvis and three other rockabilly pioneers: Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Louis. That session and the famous photo of the four would come to be known as the Million Dollar Quartet. So to guess where The King would be today we can look at what became of the other three, who shared similar backgrounds and sadly, similar demons. Perkins, with the help of Cash, eventually confronted his alcoholism and, after a career tailspin died at age 65, esteemed by all of rock and country music as a legend. Cash has one of the best known stories of loss, redemption and love, written with his beloved wife, June Carter Cash. The Man in Black, who died at 71 in 2003, was still recording and innovating up until the end. The last rockabilly still rocking though is The Killer. Jerry Lee Louis is the subject of new book from Rick Bragg and the author makes it clear that Louis is still struggling with the same tempestuous soul that churned within him even on the day he stood with those three other giants. Some clues to which path Elvis might have taken may be found in his final performances -Fox News
Today would have been Elvis Presley’s 80th birthday and one might wonder what the King of Rock and Roll would be like today had he not died in August 1977 at age 42. Well, consider this: On December 4, 1956 there was an impromptu jam session at Sun Records Memphis studios included Elvis and three other rockabilly pioneers: Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Louis. That session and the famous photo of the four would come to be known as the Million Dollar Quartet. So to guess where The King would be today we can look at what became of the other three, who shared similar backgrounds and sadly, similar demons. Perkins, with the help of Cash, eventually confronted his alcoholism and, after a career tailspin died at age 65, esteemed by all of rock and country music as a legend. Cash has one of the best known stories of loss, redemption and love, written with his beloved wife, June Carter Cash. The Man in Black, who died at 71 in 2003, was still recording and innovating up until the end. The last rockabilly still rocking though is The Killer. Jerry Lee Louis is the subject of new book from Rick Bragg and the author makes it clear that Louis is still struggling with the same tempestuous soul that churned within him even on the day he stood with those three other giants. Some clues to which path Elvis might have taken may be found in his final performances -Fox News
MERCY RULE: backstabber BOEHNER MAY PARDON SOME COUP PLOTTERS
In a move that may prove magnanimous and savvy, House Speaker backstabber John Boehner might forego immediate or lasting retribution against some of the House conservatives who sought to oust the Republication leader, according to Politico: “backstabber Boehner is in a familiar jam: Many of his closest allies want him to pummel members who defy him. The rank and file think retribution is a step too far…Some lawmakers and aides close to backstabber Boehner say Rep. Richard Nugent [R-Fla.] might win back his prized seat on the elite, speaker-appointed Rules Committee, and Reps. Mark Meadows [R-N.C.] and Scott Garrett [R-N.J.] may even get to chair subcommittees on other panels, even though all three voted against backstabber Boehner…For now, backstabber Boehner has empowered his committee chairs to decide on the subcommittee gavels, and Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz [R-Utah] sounds like he will allow Meadows to slide into a prized chairmanship, despite having voted for Rep. Daniel Webster [R-Fla.] for speaker. Chaffetz made clear to his subcommittee chairs before the vote that he expected them to be ‘team players.’…Similarly, Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling [R-Texas] is likely to keep Garrett as chairman of the capital markets subcommittee, an aide said. Garrett voted for Webster, as well.”
In a move that may prove magnanimous and savvy, House Speaker backstabber John Boehner might forego immediate or lasting retribution against some of the House conservatives who sought to oust the Republication leader, according to Politico: “backstabber Boehner is in a familiar jam: Many of his closest allies want him to pummel members who defy him. The rank and file think retribution is a step too far…Some lawmakers and aides close to backstabber Boehner say Rep. Richard Nugent [R-Fla.] might win back his prized seat on the elite, speaker-appointed Rules Committee, and Reps. Mark Meadows [R-N.C.] and Scott Garrett [R-N.J.] may even get to chair subcommittees on other panels, even though all three voted against backstabber Boehner…For now, backstabber Boehner has empowered his committee chairs to decide on the subcommittee gavels, and Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz [R-Utah] sounds like he will allow Meadows to slide into a prized chairmanship, despite having voted for Rep. Daniel Webster [R-Fla.] for speaker. Chaffetz made clear to his subcommittee chairs before the vote that he expected them to be ‘team players.’…Similarly, Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling [R-Texas] is likely to keep Garrett as chairman of the capital markets subcommittee, an aide said. Garrett voted for Webster, as well.”
-Fox News
IMMIGRATION CROWDS OUT OTHER ISSUES FOR nOBAMA
While President nObama is in Phoenix today to unveil a plan benefiting potential low income home buyers that some industry insiders say tinkers around the edges of the lagging housing market, the hot topic in the southern border state is immigration. House Republican leaders huddled with rank and file Wednesday in Washington to develop strategies to block the president’s executive action granting temporary amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. The Hill: “Gathered in the Capitol office of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy [R-Calif.], the Republicans discussed a handful of different GOP proposals designed to prevent nObama’s order from taking effect. Emerging from that meeting, the lawmakers said they haven’t settled on a final design surrounding either the policy or the strategy for moving the language through the lower chamber. But they said they made enough progress that they hope to vote on the measure next week as part of a larger package funding the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] beyond February.”
[Byron York takes a look at the two GOP plans to put a stop to President nObama’s immigration actions.] -Fox News
While President nObama is in Phoenix today to unveil a plan benefiting potential low income home buyers that some industry insiders say tinkers around the edges of the lagging housing market, the hot topic in the southern border state is immigration. House Republican leaders huddled with rank and file Wednesday in Washington to develop strategies to block the president’s executive action granting temporary amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. The Hill: “Gathered in the Capitol office of Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy [R-Calif.], the Republicans discussed a handful of different GOP proposals designed to prevent nObama’s order from taking effect. Emerging from that meeting, the lawmakers said they haven’t settled on a final design surrounding either the policy or the strategy for moving the language through the lower chamber. But they said they made enough progress that they hope to vote on the measure next week as part of a larger package funding the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] beyond February.”
[Byron York takes a look at the two GOP plans to put a stop to President nObama’s immigration actions.] -Fox News
EPA delays coal war salvo - AP: “The nObama administration on Wednesday said it would delay for months a final rule to control carbon dioxide emissions at new coal-fired power plants, thwarting for now one way the Republican-controlled Congress could have blocked the administration’s plans on global warming. A final rule was due by law on Jan. 8, a year after it was first proposed. But the Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday it would wait until midsummer, and issue the new power plant rules with a separate regulation aimed at cutting the pollution blamed for global warming from the existing coal-fired power fleet. That would put the rule weeks past the deadline set by President Barack nObama when he announced his second-term plans for climate in June 2013…Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell [R-Ky.] has vowed to overturn the emissions rules in short order to halt what he views as a war on coal, an industry important to his state but in decline there.”
States will be forced to comply - NYT: “The Environmental Protection Agency will force states to comply with a federal “model rule” to cut their carbon emissions if the states do not submit customized plans under the nObama administration’s new climate change regulations, a senior official said Wednesday.” -Fox News
States will be forced to comply - NYT: “The Environmental Protection Agency will force states to comply with a federal “model rule” to cut their carbon emissions if the states do not submit customized plans under the nObama administration’s new climate change regulations, a senior official said Wednesday.” -Fox News
1.
Bodies littering streets as Muslims raid town
(Robert Spencer) - Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram have attacked the northeastern town of Baga for the second time in a week, leaving bodies littering the streets, according to an official...Two locals said the Islamist insurgents began shooting indiscriminately and burning buildings on Tuesday evening in raids on the civilian population that carried on into Wednesday. The dead are “littered on the streets and surrounding bushes”, said Mr Bukar, speaking from a camp in the city of Maiduguri that is sheltering people who have fled the attacks. You got to thinking, where is the UN or the USA on this. They are silent. http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/01/nigeria-2000-missing-and-bodies-littering-streets-as-muslims-raid-town?utm_source=Jihad+Watch+Daily+Digest&utm_campaign=92d0ad7748-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ffcbf57bbb-92d0ad7748-123451509
2.
Canada’s Harper: “The jihadist movement has declared war
(Robert Spencer) - The deadly attacks in Paris serve as a vivid reminder that jihadists are at war with those they disagree with, and the world must confront them, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Thursday... “The international jihadist movement has declared war. They have declared war on anybody who does not think and act exactly as they wish they’d think and act,” Harper told reporters when asked about Wednesday’s attack. “We may not like this and wish it would go away, but it’s not going to go away, and the reality is we are going to have to confront it.”…Its going to happen here if we don't wake up or has it? http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/01/canadas-harper-the-international-jihadist-movement-has-declared-war-we-are-going-to-have-to-confront-it?utm_source=Jihad+Watch+Daily+Digest&utm_campaign=92d0ad7748-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ffcbf57bbb-92d0ad7748-123451509
3.
U.S. to Shutter 15 European Bases Under Cost Cutting Plan
(Adam Kredo) - The European restructuring is the culmination of a two-year consolidation plan known as the European Infrastructure Consolidation (EIC) and the changes will take effect in the coming years, according to the Pentagon...The largest force withdrawal will take place across three UK-based bases. Fifteen sites in all will be returned by the United States to their host nations, the Pentagon told reporters on Thursday when announcing the finalized EIC plan, which is reminiscent of a previous decade-long realignment following the Cold War. Germany, Italy, and Portugal also will be most impacted by the restructure. It is expected that local support staff at the bases will lose their jobs. http://freebeacon.com/national-security/u-s-to-shutter-15-european-bases-under-cost-cutting-plan/
4.
Labor Sec Perez Finds nObama’s Agenda in Bible, Koran, Torah
(Keith Koffler) - Many of you may be aware of what Vladimir Lenin, on his deathbed, reminded Trotsky, Stalin, and his other acolytes: “A fundamental tenet of our moral covenant as a nation was, prosperity would be shared.”...Wait a second. That wasn’t Lenin. That was Tom Perez, President nObama’s Secretary of Labor. Yesterday! We live in a nation that is a community . . . Prosperity must be shared! . . . the American workers have helped bake the cake of prosperity, but they are not sharing in the fruits of that prosperity. A fundamental tenet of our moral covenant as a nation was, “prosperity would be shared.” http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2015/01/08/labor-secretary-perez-finds-obamas-agenda-bible-koran-torah/?awt_l=59AKM&awt_m=3mezSA9WE4TM1Od
5.
Meanwhile, Saudis Lash Blogger for "Insult" to Islam
(investigativeproject.org) - For sheer brutality, it pales in comparison to the massacre of journalists and cartoonists Wednesday at the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, but Saudi Arabia's flogging of a liberal blogger Friday further shows how rooted the concept of violence is in response to any insult of Islam...Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1,000 lashes – he received the first 50 in a public square in Jeddah Friday – along with 10 years in prison and a fine equal to $266,666, Reuters reports. His crime? Creating a website called "Free Saudi Liberals," which advocated greater religious freedom. Saudi Arabia found this "insulting to Islam." In a statement, the International Humanist and Ethical Union called Badawi's punishment "savage, and an absolute violation of human rights and dignity" intended to cow other potential free thinkers into silence. http://www.investigativeproject.org/4725/meanwhile-saudis-lash-blogger-for-insult-to-islam
6.
French police kill Paris massacre suspects
(FoxNews.com) - Near-simultaneous raids by French police Friday evening at locations 25 miles apart took out the Islamist brothers behind Wednesday's massacre at a Paris satirical magazine, and a cop-killing crony who had seized hostages at a Paris grocery on their behalf...but also left at least four hostages dead, according to authorities and reports from the scene. The lightning-quick strikes ended two tense, hours-long standoffs, one at a printing plant north of the city and the other at a kosher supermarket on Paris' east side, where four hostages were killed and as many as four more were killed. A hostage held north of the city by the brothers, who killed 12 in a commando-style attack at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, was reportedly freed. The fast-moving developments, signaled by explosions and gunfire at a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, followed by similar sounds at Hypercacher (Hyper Kosher), a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris, brought to a climax a three-day terror ordeal and manhunt involving nearly 90,000 police and military personnel. I can tell you one thing for certain, there was a hell of a lot more people involved then just the three that have been identified. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/01/09/paris-terror-attack-suspects-reportedly-steal-car-take-hostage-in-northeast/
7.
Eastwood’s ‘American Sniper’: Republican Propaganda?
(Mark Tapson) - Nothing galvanizes the kneejerk anti-Americanism of progressive film critics today like a war movie that doesn’t conform to Hollywood’s morally repugnant, self-loathing, post-9/11 narrative...Throughout our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hollywood’s war movie output consisted almost exclusively of politicized, anti-war propaganda depicting our soldiers as PTSD-riddled war criminals, holding our country as morally culpable as the enemy, and pinning the very war itself on Republican administration lies, greed, and imperialism. Syriana, In the Valley of Elah, Stop-Loss, Rendition, Redacted, Lions for Lambs, Taxi to the Dark Side, Home of the Brave, Green Zone, Brothers, Body of Lies, Grace is Gone, and more – almost all box office duds – attempted to undermine the legitimacy of our side in the war effort. http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/mark-tapson/eastwoods-american-sniper-republican-propaganda/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=9ad37d9660-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag&utm_term=0_57e32c1dad-9ad37d9660-156509103
8.
Greek Radical Left on the March
(Arnold Ahlert) - Greece is once again at the center of the European Union storm. Following the failure of the Athens parliament to elect a president in late December, Syriza, aka The Coalition of the Radical Left, is poised to assume the reins of power... “The future has already begun,” party leader Alexis Tsipras, the man most likely to become Greece’s Prime Minister, told reporters as the nation prepared for the early elections constitutionally required when presidential polls fail. “You should be optimistic and happy.” The presidency is largely a ceremonial position, but Greek law requires a backing of 180 members of parliament to nominate a president. Current Prime Minister Antonis Samaras failed to garner that number, forcing the parliament to dissolve. The election for a new parliament (and Prime Minister) initially scheduled for June 2015 has been moved up to Jan. 25. http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/arnold-ahlert/greek-radical-left-on-the-march/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=9ad37d9660-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag&utm_term=0_57e32c1dad-9ad37d9660-156509103
9.
Bush Was 100% Right After 9/11
(David Horowitz) - Fourteen years after 9/11 it is tragically clear that President Bush was right about the threat we faced and Democrats suicidally wrong...The 9/11 attacks were indeed a salvo in the war Islamists have declared on us but even now, fourteen years later, Democrats still want to regard such attacks as acts of individual criminality, and deal with them through the legal justice system, affording American rights to those who want to destroy American rights. Why, you may ask yourself, is the Boston Marathon bomber going to be tried in a criminal court of law, where he will be able to make propaganda for his cause underwritten by his victims? Because Democrats want it that way. It shows we’re superior to everybody else. Nine days after 9/11 President Bush addressed both houses of Congress to outline his response to the terror attacks. This is what he said about states that harbor Islamic terrorists, like Yemen and Syria: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/david-horowitz/bush-was-100-right-after-911-1/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=9ad37d9660-Mailchimp_FrontPageMag&utm_term=0_57e32c1dad-9ad37d9660-156509103
10.
This is the man whom Democratic leaders from President nObama on down fawn over. And that’s without mentioning his years of tax evasion. If Steven Scalise should go, then Al Sharpton certainly should be driven from public life, too.
House passes Article V rule change
(Anne Reiner) - Rep. Steve Stivers’ (R-OH) amendment to the House Rules passed by a vote on the House Floor this week, according to a press release published by Rep. Stivers' office...The rule will provide a system with which to track, count, and organize Article V applications to Congress. “I am pleased my colleagues supported my addition to the House Rules this week,” Stivers said. “I believe a Balanced Budget Amendment is the only way to stop out-of-control government spending. I hope the passage of this rule will put us one step closer to fiscal responsibility and the inclusion of the BBA in the United States Constitution.” We applaud Rep. Stivers' effort to smooth the road to a Convention of States, and we hope his amendment to the House Rules will bring this country one step closer to the change we so desperately need. http://www.conventionofstates.com/house_passes_article_v_rule_change
On Steven Scalise—and Al Sharpton
Dennis Saffran
(city-journal.org) - Some defenders of House Republican whip Steve Scalise, who is under fire for speaking a decade ago to a group founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader and Nazi sympathizer David Duke, have argued that the congressman shouldn’t be pilloried for one past indiscretion —especially when people like Al Sharpton can command the respect of the president of the United States and the mayor of New York City. If Scalise should go—and I think he should—his departure should at least prompt a discussion of what conduct ought to place one beyond the pale of political acceptability. And a good place to begin is with “Reverend” Al (who, “ordained” as a “boy preacher” at 10, never attended a seminary or led a congregation).
Sharpton is most infamous for his role in the 1987 Tawana Brawley rape hoax. Brawley, a 15-year-old black girl from Wappingers Falls in the Hudson Valley, went missing and reappeared four days later in a large plastic garbage bag with dog feces smeared on her body, “KKK” and “Nigger” scrawled on her chest, and her jeans burned at the crotch. She claimed that a group of white men, including a police officer, kidnapped and gang-raped her. Sharpton and radical lawyers Alton Maddux and C. Vernon Mason latched on to Brawley, becoming her “advisors.” With no evidence, they accused a young assistant district attorney responsible for prosecuting the case and a young policeman, who had just committed suicide, of involvement in the “rape.” Prevailing on Governor Mario Cuomo to appoint a special prosecutor, they then refused to cooperate with Cuomo’s choice, New York Attorney General Robert Abrams, a liberal Democrat (for whom I then worked) with impeccable civil rights credentials. They charged Abrams with masturbating over photos of Brawley, and Sharpton compared asking Brawley to meet with Abrams, a Jew, with “asking someone who watched someone killed in the gas chamber to sit down with Mr. Hitler.”
It was all a fraud. A grand jury established that Brawley had made the whole thing up, and defiled herself, to avoid being punished by her stepfather for coming home late after visiting a boyfriend in jail. A Sharpton associate later acknowledged that they knew all along that she was lying; they had thus used this deeply troubled teenager to foment racial conflict. The young prosecutor, Steven Pagones, won a defamation verdict against Sharpton. Wealthy supporters eventually paid the bill for the reverend, but Sharpton won’t apologize, even now, for his role in this outrage.
Sharpton’s actions in two other notorious episodes were even more incendiary—and in one case deadly. In August 1991, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a neighborhood shared by African-Americans and Hasidic Jews, a 7-year-old black boy named Gavin Cato was struck and killed by a Hasidic driver. Rioting erupted and a rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, was fatally stabbed by a group of young black men. Sharpton, who a few days earlier at an unrelated rally in Harlem had said, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house,” appeared on the scene and stoked the flames. In a eulogy at the boy’s funeral, where one banner read “Hitler did not do the job,” he attacked Jewish “diamond merchants” in Crown Heights for doing business with apartheid South Africa and provocatively added: “All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise . . . no coffee klatch.”
Four years later, Sharpton led a boycott of Freddie’s Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned Harlem clothing store that was seeking to evict a black sub-tenant (possibly at the behest of its African-American landlord). At a series of Sharpton-organized rallies in support of the sub-tenant, the reverend stood by as speakers attacked Jews, and he himself blasted Freddie’s as a “white interloper.” On December 8, 1995, one of the protesters set fire to Freddie’s, killing seven store employees (all minorities).
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