BRITISH SOLDIER BEHEADED IN LONDON

Pretty chilling account.  Don't think this will be on the evening news.

IRS: A PERSONAL STORY

From National Review.  What happened when Democrats and then the IRS, OSHA, the FBI, and ATF dealt with a business woman who started a Tea Party group.  Government bureaucracy used for political ends.

GLOBAL WARMING: NOT HAPPENING?

From the BBC.  Global warming has been "at a standstill" since 1998.  Yet we have Al Gore and others preaching this as a fact.  A number of research articles are quoted.

IRS SCANDAL

From TaxProf blog:  A summary of the developments in the IRS scandal involving holding conservative, religious, pro-life, and Tea Party groups to different standards than liberal, Democrat groups seeking tax exemption status. Liberal politics in the IRS. 

And Obama first heard about the scandal (SNL version--"The same sources as his aunt.") on TV.  What kind of advisors does he have?

Liberal Democrat Senator McCaskill (MO) calls for all IRS officials involved in scandal to be fired.

Obama officials knew of IRS scandal during 2012 election but hid the details because of the election. The Treasury Department also knew in 2012.

IRS TREATED LIBERAL GROUPS DIFFERENTLY

From USA Today. While the IRS was asking for much more information about "Tea Party" groups, it was approving liberal groups without asking for the same information.

Tim Carney.   IRS employees overwhelming donate more to liberal Democrats. . .and some employees are activist Democrats.

In the past three election cycles, the Center for Responsive Politics' database shows about $474,000 in political donations by individuals listing "IRS" or "Internal Revenue Service" as their employer.

This money heavily favors Democrats: $247,000 to $145,000, with the rest going to political action committees. (Oddly, half of those GOP donations come from only two IRS employees, one in Houston and one in Annandale, Va.).

Did Harry Reid get Romney's tax returns from the IRS?  In the 2012 election Reid was talking like he knew what was on Romney's returns--supposedly he hadn't paid taxes for 10 years.

Investor's Daily. 

Obama joked about auditing enemies in 2009. 

Christian, conservative, and pro-Israel groups refused tax exemptions but not Muslim groups.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE

From the Daily Beast.  A discussion of student debt and how it has a bigger impact at third and fourth tier institutions.  Online will not be the savior of weakening institutions. 

The colleges with the most to conceal tend to be expensive 2nd- and 3rd-tier private institutions. For instance, 85 percent of students from Ohio Northern graduated with debt averaging almost $49,000, while the median starting salary for graduates is just $44,800. Compare these figures with the statistics for Princeton, where the average debt is $5,225 for the 23 percent of graduates with any debt, while the median starting salary is $56,900.

Adjuncts anxious about job security have realized that giving higher grades improves their student evaluations, which often determine whether they remain employed. The “resortification” of colleges also encourages students to view themselves as customers, and instructors as retail workers employed to serve them. The A is now the most common grade on college campuses nationwide; it accounts for roughly 43 percents of all grades given. Meanwhile, results of the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a test used by more than 500 colleges to measure academic progress, reveal that 36 percent of students make absolutely no improvement in writing, complex reasoning, or critical thinking during four years of college.

EVANGELIZING CHRISTIANITY IN SAUDI ARABIA

A Lebanese man who encoruaged a Saudi women to convert to Christianity received 60 lashes.

OBAMA ON RADICALIZATION OF ISLAM

According to Alan Johnson Obama is right on some things and has underestimated other issues that lead to radicalization.  Johnson also proposes that it is not just government that radicalizes, but that family and community also matter.

The battle of ideas against radical political Islamism of the kind that influenced the Tsarnaev brothers is tough for three reasons. First, we are talking about a systemof ideas, an ideology, which is notoriously difficult for the neophyte to contest. Second, these are sacralized systems of ideas, ideologies upon which lingers the whiff of incense, and these are near-impossible for a non-expert to critique. Third, there are some points of support in the wider intellectual culture—not for terrorism, but for an inchoate negativism in the form of anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism, and conspiratorialism. The Islamist recruiters know how to surf that wave, believe me.