Watch out! Your child’s toy gun may be outlawed. State lawmakers in Michigan are “reviewing legislation that targets the use of certain toy guns. A planned proposal before the Senate would make it a crime to possess a toy gun that has its required markings removed or by having a real gun that is made up to look like a toy.”

State Senate Republican Rick Jones said that the misuse of toy guns has become a major problem, especially within the gang community. “People are taking imitation firearms that look real, cutting off the orange end and then threatening people,” he said.

It seems to me that the threat to do harm is the crime not the use of a toy gun. If I used my fist to threaten someone, the crime would be the threat regardless of what I used to make the threat. Will a clenched fist be the next thing to be outlawed? How about pointing a finger?
Seven-year-old Patrick Riley used his finger to form a pretend gun and went bang toward a wall. He was promptly suspended from Parkview Elementary in Oklahoma City.

Comments unearthed from a 2008 speech about Satan’s influence on America made Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum the target of derision and mockery today, but talk-radio host Michael Savage contends the former Pennsylvania senator is right, and his beliefs should only help his chances for the White House this fall.

“I think Santorum is right, and I think that anyone who attacks him is not seeing this for what it is,” Savage told his radio audience.

Savage said he agrees that America is primarily a Christian nation, and its churches and synagogues are “filled with parishioners who are screaming for preachers and pastors and rabbis to speak the truth, and they’re not getting it.”

Addressing students at Ave Maria University in Florida in 2008, Santorum declared: “Satan has his sights on the United States of America.”

Santorum said the devil is “attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.”

During a recent Fox News Channel debate about the Obama administration’s tax policies, Democrat Bob Beckel raised the issue of “fairness.”

He pointed out that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx enters the world with far worse prospects than a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut.

No one can deny that. The relevant question, however, is: How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more “fair” for others?

Even if additional tax revenue all went to poor single mothers — which it will not — the multiple problems of children raised by poor single mothers would not be cured by throwing money at them. Indeed, the skyrocketing of unwed motherhood began when government welfare programs began throwing money at teenage girls who got pregnant.

White House press secretary Jay Carney first says Republicans “forced” President Obama to deny the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. Later in his press briefing, Carney says Obama didn’t turn down the pipeline.

“In terms of Keystone, as you all know, the history here is pretty clear. And the fact is because Republicans decided to play political with Keystone, their action essentially forced the administration to deny the permit process because they insisted on a time frame in which it was impossible to completely approve the pipeline,” Carney said when asked about the pipeline by ABC News’ Jake Tapper.

Later in the briefing, Carney says it is the Republicans’ fault.

Jake Tapper: “How can you say that you have an all the above on approach if the President turned down the Keystone pipeline? And you blame the Republicans for making it political.”

Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham and a prominent evangelical leader in his own right, waded into contentious waters Tuesday when asked for his views on the religious beliefs of President Obama and the GOP hopefuls.

Graham, the CEO and president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, told a Morning Joe panel he couldn’t say for certain that Obama is a Christian.

“You have to ask him. I cannot answer that question for anybody. All I know is I’m a sinner, and that God has forgiven me of my sins,” Graham said. “You have to ask every person. He has said he’s a Christian, so I just have to assume that he is.”

But Graham also said he couldn’t “categorically” say Obama wasn’t a Muslim, in part, because Islam has gotten a “free pass” under Obama. Graham also said the Muslim world sees Obama as a “son of Islam,” because the president’s father and grandfather were Muslim.

According to Edina Lekovic, director of policy at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, being born in a Muslim family doesn’t make one a Muslim. A person has to make an active choice to become a Muslim, Lekovic said.

Two Western journalists, one American and one French, were killed early Wednesday as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad pursued a deadly bombardment of the central city of Homs, according to activists and officials.

Valérie Pécresse, the French government spokeswoman, identified the dead as Marie Colvin, an American reporter working for The Sunday Times of London, and Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer.

The deaths were reported less than a week after Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died last Thursday of an apparent asthma attack on his way back to Turkey after spending nearly a week reporting covertly inside Syria.

Video footage posted on social networking sites showed what seemed to be two bodies lying face down in rubble inside a building identified in news reports as a makeshift media center in a beleaguered neighborhood of Homs, where rebels have been under sustained fire for almost three weeks. Three other Western journalists were injured in the attack, activists said.

May 1881 US explorers approached Jeannette Island and Henrietta Island and claimed them for the United States. According to some US individuals, including the group State Department Watch, eight Arctic islands currently controlled by Russia, including Wrangel Island, are claimed by the United States. However, according to the United States Department of State no such claim exists. The USSR/USA Maritime Boundary Treaty, which has yet to be approved by the Russian Duma, does not address the status of these islands nor the maritime boundaries associated with them.

The Obama Administration is reportedly giving away Wrangell, Bennett, Jeannette and Henrietta islands in Alaska to Russia. The federal government drew the line to put these seven Alaskan islands on the Russian side.

Former senatorial candidate Joe Miller broke this story:

Part of Obama’s apparent war against U.S. energy independence includes a foreign-aid program that directly threatens my state’s sovereign territory. Obama’s State Department is giving away seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands to the Russians. Yes, to the Putin regime in the Kremlin.

It is with much sadness that we report the two-year war waged by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) against Pennsylvania Amish farmer Dan Allgyer has been a success.The Washington Timesand others are now reporting that, following a ruling last month by Judge Lawrence F. Stengel that Allgyer could no longer ship raw milk across state lines, he is officially shutting down his entire Rainbow Acres Farm.

Provoking Allgyer to shut down his farm appears to have been the goal of the FDA all along, which back on February 4, 2010, conducted a gestapo-style raid on Allgyer’s Kinzers, Penn., property to search for evidence that he was shipping raw milk across state lines. After illegally trespassing on the man’s property, the agents proceeded to harass Allgyer about his supposed involvement in interstate commerce. . . .

A report on that February 4 raid relates the reference to Constitutional powers:

The agents – Schafer did most of the talking – said they had a right to be there because “you produce food for human consumption.”  Dan asked why they believed that and they said, “Well, you have cows.  You cannot be consuming all the milk you produce.” They further stated, “If you get a milk truck in to move all this milk you sell milk to the public, therefore we have jurisdiction.”

Unemployment in the U.S. rose to nine percent in mid-February, up from 8.3 percent a month earlier, according to a new Gallup survey. The polling company said this suggests that it is “premature” to assume the economy will not feature prominently in the 2012 election season.

Gallup figures typically provide an indication of what the government will report at the end of the month.

“The U.S. unemployment rate, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is 9.0% in mid-February,” Gallup said in its mid-month unemployment survey, released on February 17. “The mid-month reading normally reflects what the U.S. government reports for the entire month, and is up from 8.3% in mid-January.”

Gallup said the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) would likely report a rise in the official unemployment rate in early March, when it publishes its February figures.

The geographic concentration of much of President Obama’s political support in a few large Blue States and urban areas means that he could be defeated for re-election this November even while winning the popular vote. What few seem to have seriously considered so far is how daunting the present shape of the political battlefield actually is for the President on a state-by-state level, and what that means when it comes to using national tracking polls as a metric to guess who would win a Presidential election held on any given day. If you look closely enough at the numbers, it becomes clear that it is both mathematically and practically possible for the right Republican candidate to assemble a majority in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote by as much as 5%.

Let’s travel back in time to 2008. Obama won the popular vote with a margin of 7.27%. He won the Electoral College 365-173. In the intervening time, the post-2010 reapportionment of seats in the House of Representatives means that, if the popular vote in 2012 were to be exactly the same, the electoral vote would instead by 359-179 thanks to population shifts over the last decade from Obama states to Republican ones.