In this year’s summer of discontent, as the nation faced a possible government shutdown in the battle over the debt ceiling, presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty was assuring voters he could handle such a crisis when his turn came. As a former Governor of Minnesota, he has, as they say, been there, done that. “I shut down a government and won,” Pawlenty said in one TV ad. Another says, “Minnesota government shut down. Why? Because Tim Pawlenty would not accept Democrats’ massive tax and spending demands. Result? Pawlenty won.” At the time, however, the Governor did not sound so triumphant. When the partial shutdown ended after nine days in July of 2005, Pawlenty cautioned against boasting by either side. “Given what the state’s been through, anybody who tries to spin this as a partisan victory should be ashamed of himself or herself,” he said at a press conference. The budget standoff ended when Pawlenty and the Democrats agreed to a 75-cent increase in the cigarette tax, an increase Pawlenty had proposed near the end of the regular session of the Legislature. It was revived during the special session as a way to help pay for public health programs. Pawlenty wouldn’t call it a tax hike, though.

Representative Thaddeus “Thad” McCotter of Livonia, Michigan, entered the presidential race in July 2011, and styles himself as a conservative, telling the Detroit NBC-TV affiliate, “I’m a Russell Kirk conservative. I’m a Ronald Reagan conservative.” But McCotter earned an anemic average of only 53 percent during his nine years as a Congressman on The New American’s “Freedom Index,” far lower than the other two Congressmen running for President, Ron Paul (100 percent) and Michele Bachmann (81 percent). The 45-year-old, five-term Michigan Congressman is basing his candidacy on what he calls his “five core principles.” Those principles are: “1. Our liberty is from God not the government, 2. Our sovereignty is in our souls not the soil, 3. Our security is from strength not surrender, 4. Our prosperity is from the private sector not the public sector, 5. Our truths are self-evident not relative.”

“I’m Ron Paul, I’m a Congressman from Texas serving in my tenth term. I am the champion of the Constitution.” — Ron Paul (R-Texas), self introduction in the CNN presidential debate, 
June 5, 2007 The statement above was not mere braggadocio; Representative Ron Paul has the most consistent record in Washington of defending the constitutional limits of government of any person in Congress. Over nearly three decades, Representative Paul has never voted for a tax increase, an unbalanced budget, a debt limit increase, federal gun restrictions, foreign aid, bailouts of private institutions, or unconstitutional spending of any kind. He consistently earns a perfect 100-percent rating on The New American’s “Freedom Index,” and has stood alone in defending the U.S. Constitution in so many 434-1 votes in the House of Representatives that he earned the nickname “Dr. No.” He is also a Duke University Medical School graduate and obstetrician who’s delivered 4,000 babies.

A report by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life indicates that religious harassment is on the rise across the world. According to the findings, people of faith have been under increasing attack by their government, and social hostilities toward them have escalated as well. Fox News notes: "The report ... looked at statistics and government data spanning from 2006 to 2009, and use[d] such criteria as government crackdowns on religion and social hostility, including religious[ly]-motivated bias, beatings and murder, to determine which countries were the least tolerant to religion." The report found that "restrictions on religious beliefs and practices rose between mid-2006 and mid-2009 in 23 of the world’s 198 countries (12%), decreased in 12 countries (6%) and remained essentially unchanged in 163 countries (82%)."

The true costs of ObamaCare continue to rise, as budget projections under the healthcare law are being understated by as much as $50 billion per year, according to a new report from Cornell economist Richard Burkhauser and his colleagues from Cornell and Indiana University. This alarming revelation is due to official budget forecasts that neglect to account for employees’ spouses and children — which could result in hundreds of billions more in taxpayers’ dollars over the next 10 years. "The Congressional Budget Office has never done a cost-estimate of this [because] they were expressly told to do their modeling on single [person] coverage," Burkhauser alleged. "A very large number of workers" will have access to federal subsidies, "dramatically increasing the cost" of ObamaCare.  

On a single day last month, a screener at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport helped herself to $100 in cash from a 16-year-old passenger’s bag while another swiped a senior citizen’s cell phone. And that’s only the froth on JFK's crime wave: earlier this year, cops arrested two screeners there for stealing $160,000 from checked luggage. These are only reported thefts – in two senses of the word: reported to the cops and by the media — at one airport over a span of just 8 months. (Nor do the cops, the media, and the Transportation Security Administration [TSA] recognize the millions of petty larcenies the agency commits daily when it forces passengers to “voluntarily surrender” their shampoo and pocket knives or forego expensive flights.) It seems a week can’t pass without yet another heist at the nation’s airports, courtesy of the TSA. Thank God the agency has a “zero-tolerance policy for theft,” as its flacks remind us after every such proof to the contrary: imagine if it encouraged plundering passengers the way it does groping them.

The British government is reportedly considering martial law and other extreme measures to quell the mayhem as violent riots, fires, looting, and destruction continue to spread across the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, citizens in some areas have started banding together to protect homes and businesses. Witnesses described the chaos in London as a “war zone” — whole city blocks burned to the ground, countless windows shattered, and more. Masked criminal gangs and growing bands of teenage thugs roaming the streets were still breaking into shops, attacking police, and setting buildings and vehicles ablaze on August 10. And the mayhem shows no signs of abating so far. By Tuesday, rioting and looting had spread to Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Leeds, Bristol, and other major cities.

Three hundred sixty six years ago today a man was born who became one of history's foremost explorers of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. His name was Eusebio Francisco Kino, and a statue honoring his contributions to what became the state of Arizona now graces National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol Building. This little-known American hero began his life in the small town of Segno, Italy. He was educated in Austria, joined the Society of Jesus in 1665, and departed as a missionary for Mexico in 1678. For the next 33 years until his death in 1711, Father Kino dedicated his life to developing civilization in the uncharted wilderness of the new world.  

According to the Telegraph, "An Israeli court is believed to have made international legal history by allowing a family to extract eggs from the ovaries of their dead daughter." The Blaze reports: The case centers around 17-year-old Israeli woman, Chen Aida Ayash. She was hit by a car in a tragic accident a couple [of] weeks ago and died after struggling for 10 days. At the time, her family donated all of her organs, but they wanted to keep one thing: her eggs. Why? To eventually make children. At first the family requested that the eggs be fertilized and frozen as embryos, because fertilized eggs have a significantly better chance of surviving the freezing procedure than unfertilized eggs, but that request was denied. The eggs have since been extracted and frozen, but the family has given up on the idea of having them fertilized.

A South Korea investigative news team has produced a documentary reporting that the largest hospital in China is selling human fetuses, placentas, and whole corpses of dead babies to a dietary supplement manufacturer for use in its line of stamina-increasing pills. Witness the following statement taken from a story in the English language China Daily: