Here's what fiscal fraud Paul Ryan (R-WI) said about Social Security in his State of the Union rebuttal.

This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency.

Turns out, when Ryan was an able-bodied young lad, he used that hammock to pay for his college education. (h/t Gottalaff)

On the day Paul Davis Ryan was born in 1970, President Richard Nixon unveiled his record-setting $200.8 billion federal budget proposal for the upcoming year - a budget that included a large increase in Social Security payments. [...]

One day as a 16 year old, Ryan came upon the lifeless body of his father. Paul Ryan, Sr. had died of a heart attack at age 55, leaving the Janesville Craig High School 10th grader, his three older brothers and sisters and his mother alone. It was Paul who told the family of his father's death. [...]

With his father's passing, young Paul collected Social Security benefits until age 18, which he put away for college.

College costs have skyrocketed since Ryan entered Miami University in 1988, yet Ryan wants to slash the very system that he benefited from because it produces "dependency."

Figures. This is a guy who requires his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged, and we now know that Ayn Rand was a big welfare queen herself.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced its decision to grant non-regulated status for alfalfa that has been genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide commercially known as Roundup.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today announced its decision to grant non-regulated status for alfalfa that has been genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide commercially known as Roundup.

"After conducting a thorough and transparent examination of alfalfa through a multi-alternative environmental impact statement (EIS) and several public comment opportunities, APHIS has determined that Roundup Ready alfalfa is as safe as traditionally bred alfalfa," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. "All of the alfalfa production stakeholders involved in this issue have stressed their willingness to work together to find solutions. We greatly appreciate and value the work they've done so far and will continue to provide support to the wide variety of sectors that make American agriculture successful."

After releasing a final EIS in December 2010, USDA took another step to ensure that this issue received the broadest examination before making its final decision. USDA brought together a diverse group of stakeholders to discuss feasible strategies for coexistence between genetically engineered (GE), organic, and other non-GE stakeholders. The stakeholders helped to identify areas of consensus; issues where the group disagreed and opportunities for further dialogue exist; and areas where USDA could - or should - play an important and helpful role.

Concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood

Israel is watching developments in Egypt with concern. The government is standing by autocratic Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, out of fear that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood could take power and start supplying arms to Hamas.

Israel is usually a country where politicians have an opinion on any topic, and vociferously so. But in recent days, Israel's leadership has been unusually silent on a certain question. No one, it seems, is willing to make an official comment on the ongoing unrest in Egypt, where protesters have been holding anti-government rallies. It's not because Israel does not care about the riots ravaging its southern neighbor -- on the contrary, Israeli news channels, normally prone to parochialism, have been closely following recent events in the Arab world, from Tunisia to Lebanon.

Since the horrors of World War II, people in the U.S. have feared that one day our intelligence community would create an organization to spy upon innocent citizens, collecting and storing information about them for some devious purpose like the Nazi Gestapo or SS once did. Some people believe that day has come.

An article published on Dec. 20, 2010, by the Washington Post stated "a vast domestic intelligence apparatus" was in the process of being expanded. The story, the result of a multi-month investigation included almost 100 interviews and 1,000 documents. It reported that the federal government was working to consolidate the manpower of the FBI, local police, state Homeland Security officials and military criminal investigators in their efforts to fight terror at home.

The initiative, Top Secret America, is composed of 3,984 federal, state and local agencies, of which at least 934 have been created since Sept. 11 because of their involvement in counterterrorism, the Post reported.

According to the Post, each agency has their own jurisdiction and is charged with certain tasks regarding counterterrorism operations. Working collaboratively, these agencies will collect, store and analyze information gathered on thousands of U.S. citizens and legal residents, most of whom have no criminal record.

"I'm kind of scared about getting naked again in my own home because some nerdy little NSA analyst has the government's permission to see through walls. Next thing you know, they're going to be sticking chips in our babies' heads in order to know all things at all times," said Andrew Dixon, freshman biological and agricultural engineering major.

Not only has the workforce expanded, but they now have new toys as well. Military-grade hardware has migrated from the front lines to the homefront in efforts to eradicate homegrown terror. Police departments, state branches of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies use equipment such as infrared scanners, hand-held fingerprint scanners, Predator drones equipped with real-time, full-motion video cameras and biometric identification machines to observe and catalogue "suspicious activity," the Post reported.

Wikipedia deleted the page about Rahm Emanuel's father in 2008. Makes you wonder.

Washington D.C. - Note from Publisher: In an effort to assist our government in keeping information "transparent", we are publishing this important article by Wayne Madsen, on the father of Rahm Emanuel. You won't find his bio on wikipedia, or any where else easily accessed. It has been deleted.

Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel held a top position in our country's leadership and his example of ethics and integrity is of the highest importance. This is not diminished regardless of his aspirations to leave the national spotlight and become the mayor of Chicago.

But, it seems, some secrets must just be harder to share. This revealing article will leave you with a better understanding of why no one wants to talk about Benjamin Emanuel. And why they should.
- Bonnie King

A well-placed British source informed WMR that Rahm Emanuel's father, Benjamin Emanuel, specialized in the terrorist bombings of buses carrying British troops and policemen during the British Mandate in Palestine.

British MI-6 files contain information on the elder Emanuel's participation in the terrorist activities of Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Jewish terrorist organization that targeted British forces, UN officials, and Palestinian Arabs in the lead up to Israeli independence in 1948.

Benjamin Emanuel, a Jew from Russia whose real name was Ezekiel Auerbach, was arrested by British police for terrorist activities in the months prior to Israeli independence. Many of the British policemen killed by Emanuel and his Irgun colleagues between 1947 and 1948 had been transferred to Palestine upon Indian and Pakistani independence in 1947. Irgun saw the increase of British policemen from the Indian subcontinent as a major threat.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced on Thursday that the current color-coded terror alert system will be replaced with a new two- tiered system.

"Today I announce the end of the old system of color-coded alerts. In its place, we will implement a new system that is built on a clear and simple premise," Napolitano said during a speech at George Washington University in Washington, D.C..

"When a threat develops that could impact you -- the public -- we will tell you. We will provide whatever information we can so you know how to protect yourselves, your families, and your communities," she said.

The current terror alert system, which uses five colors to represent different levels of terrorist threat, was created in March 2002 by then president George W. Bush, but was widely criticized as being confusing and too vague.

Under the new system, there will be two levels of threat -- " imminent threat" and "elevated threat," Napolitano said.

Israeli soldiers tell Channel 4 News they were ordered to "cleanse" Palestinian neighbourhoods, as filmmaker Nurit Kedar says "the atmosphere was that nobody should talk about this war".

I find it ironic that the media, the British government, and leaders in medical academia jumped on board attacking and destroying Dr. Andrew Wakefield's reputation based on "fraud" charges related to a study he conducted about the link between the measles vaccine and autism.

It is ironic for a number of reasons. How can the British government, itself drowning in deception at every level, dare accuse anyone of fraud?

The panel assembled by the government and academia to judge Wakefield, ironically, dares to speak of fraud, yet their main complaint is that his findings "might endanger the 'sacrosanct' vaccine program," not that his principal findings were wrong. In fact, several independent researchers found the same measles vaccine-related colitis that he described.

A recently released charge by the BMJ editors is that Wakefield was poised to get huge profits from a product stemming from his research results. I am not here to defend Wakefield, rather, I demonstrate the double standard regularly practiced by his vocal critics.

Virtually every paper published on drugs, such as statins, is authored by individuals having financial links to as many as three to four pharmaceutical companies each. The same is true of papers published by major journals extolling vaccine efficacy and safety. They know these papers violate every ethical principle known, yet they are published in some of the most prestigious journals.

Abundant evidence has shown that these very same people destroy the reputations of anyone producing evidence, no matter how well researched and of the highest ethical standards, if it in any way endangers this vaccine program. It is ironic that these accusers speak of "blatant fraud," when virtually all of the vaccine safety evidence they use abundantly is fraudulent by careful design.

"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must." - Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

With Comcast's takeover of NBC, the era of the mega-mega-merger is upon us.

For more than a century, American law has recognized the destructive power of corporate monopolies. When one company controls an entire resource, means of production, or delivery system for products, it gets an unfair advantage over competitors. It can overcharge them out of existence or drive them into bankruptcy. Since Teddy Roosevelt's presidency, our government has tried to ensure that monopolistic business practices don't destroy fair pricing and consumer choice.

Then how can it justify the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, which the Federal Communications Commission approved on January 18? The FCC is supposed to reject any media merger that doesn't advance the public interest. But Comcast's takeover of NBC will give one mega-corporation control of too much of what we watch and how we watch it.