Fannie Mae seeks $8.5 billion more in federal aid
Fannie Mae asked the government for an additional $8.5 billion in aid. The company said it lost $8.7 billion in the first three months of the year. The total cost of rescuing the government-controlled mortgage buyer is nearing $100 billion - the most expensive bailout of a single company. Combined with the bailout of sibling company Freddie Mac, the government expects their rescue to cost taxpayers about $259 billion.

Senate Democrats: So, Who's Up For A $2 Trillion Tax Hike?
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) on Tuesday presented a budget proposal to Senate Democrats that calls for an even balance — 50 percent to 50 percent — of spending cuts and tax increases to reduce the deficit. The emerging consensus on Capitol Hill is there should be at least $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years. To meet that goal, Congress would have to increase tax revenues by $2 trillion over the next decade with an equal amount of spending cuts.

Forbes: Return to the Gold Standard
A return to the gold standard by the United States within the next five years now seems likely, because that move would help the nation solve a variety of economic, fiscal, and monetary ills, Steve Forbes predicted during an exclusive interview this week with HUMAN EVENTS.??“What seems astonishing today could become conventional wisdom in a short period of time,” Forbes said.

Boehner: Cut 'trillions' as debt limit nears
“Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt limit increase,” Boehner said. “And the cuts should be greater than the accompanying increase in debt authority the president is given. We should be talking about cuts of trillions, not just billions.”

Obama’s Attack on Private Industry
You might think that a U.S. company’s decision to expand its manufacturing facilities and create 1,000 new jobs here at home — rather than overseas — would be hailed by the Obama Administration as a step in the right direction, especially with nine percent unemployment. You’d be wrong. Instead, President Barack Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is doing all it can to throw a wrench in the machinery of private industry.

President to Renew Muslim Outreach
President Barack Obama is preparing a fresh outreach to the Muslim world in coming days, senior U.S. officials say, one that will ask those in the Middle East and beyond to reject Islamic militancy in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death and embrace a new era of relations with the U.S.

Ariz. Sheriff: Feds Order Release of Illegals to Phony Up Numbers
The U.S. Border Patrol has told its agents to stop arresting illegal aliens crossing the border from Mexico to keep the illegal immigration numbers down, Arizona Sheriff Larry Dever tells Newsmax. He also charges that Attorney General Eric Holder is “holding hands with the ACLU” to protect illegal aliens from prosecution, says illegals are committing “heinous crimes” across America every day, and calls claims that the federal government should be solely responsible for controlling illegal immigration “balderdash.” Dever is sheriff of Cochise County, which shares an 83-mile border with Mexico, and he says his Border Patrol sector is responsible for half of all illegal aliens caught trying to enter the country and halt the narcotics entering the United States.

DOJ deflects Gunrunner, Fast and Furious blame to local officials
President Obama’s Justice Department is trying to deflect responsibility over decisions in the Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious investigations, which are being spearheaded by House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican. Last Wednesday, Issa released new Project Gunrunner documents, including an approved wiretap application bearing Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer’s name. Though Breuer didn’t sign it, his Deputy Assistant Attorney General (DAAG), Kenneth Blanc, did.

The Moral Economy of Guilt
Why should that be so? The answer is simple. With moral responsibility comes inevitable moral guilt, for reasons already explained. So if one wishes to be innocent, one must find a way to make the claim that one cannot be held morally responsible. This is precisely what the status of victimhood accomplishes. When one is a certifiable victim, one is released from moral responsibility, since a victim is someone who, by definition, is not responsible for his condition but can point to another who is responsible. The “medicalization” of bad behavior is a close cousin to this strategy, since it casts the victimizer not as a person but as a disease.

South Carolina Governor Upset with White House
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney deflected a question on National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) actions against the Boeing Company in South Carolina on Wednesday, and the state’s Republican Gov. Nikki Haley isn’t pleased.

Bin Laden death plan for blacks
The U.S. government says Osama bin Laden saw members of the black community in America as "ripe" for recruiting as terrorists, and the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, whose Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny reaches out to the black community to encourage responsible decisions, says he's not surprised.

NJ State Police "Outraged" Over Obama Rapper Invite
The young people who read this stuff, hear this stuff, are getting a very dangerous and deadly message," David Jones, president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association union, said on Tuesday. After the union made the case on Tuesday, the New Jersey State Police itself issued a statement on the controversy on Wednesday. "We cannot dictate who is invited to the White House, but we will always view Joanne Chesimard as a fugitive who killed one of our own," Major Gerald Lewis, spokesman for the state police said in a statement. "We will continue our pursuit of her until she is brought to justice."

Understanding Ayn Rand
Rand’s atheism, materialism, and reduction of the human being’s value to economic productivity are all severely problematic for a variety of good reasons. But one might compare her political and economic thought to chemotherapy, which is basically a form of poison designed to achieve a positive outcome. You don’t want to take it if you can avoid it. You hope the circumstances in which you would use it don’t arise. However, in an age of statism, it is a message that may need to be heard. Not so much in the hopes that it will prevail as much as to see it arrest movement in a particular direction which will end badly if it continues.

Merkel hit with criminal complaint for being “glad” OBL is dead
The world is officially nuts. I’m not sure how else you classify what follows. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany recently remarked on the death of mass murderer Osama bin Laden saying was “glad” he’d been killed. That prompted the following from a German judge: But Hamburg judge Heinz Uthmann went even further. He alleges that the chancellor’s statement was nothing short of illegal, and filed a criminal complaint against Merkel midweek.

Lifeguards in CA received up to $200K Annually
Once we’re done paying off America’s unfunded entitlement liabilities by taxing the inexhaustible supply of wealth known as “the rich,” I hope we’ll think of the poor lifeguards trying to get by on only $120-130,000 a year. There’s no budget crunch so bad that a surcharge can’t undo its worst injustices. A Cadillac in every Hasselhoff’s driveway — that’s my motto.

Is Marriage a Dying Institution?
How can something true for thousands of years now be outdated and old fashioned? Even those who break their marital vows do so after affirming in public what marriage ought to be and was always meant to be. The answer to hypocrisy is moral correction and a return to integrity in making and keeping the sacred vows of marriage. We do not solve the hypocrisy of the liar by rejecting the very idea of truth.

Children Need Love, Time, and Direction
A recent New York Times article highlights the decline of family togetherness. Many families now spend most of their leisure time plugged in—to separate channels, websites, or play lists--even when they are together. It’s a trend that not only deprives our children of meaningful time and guidance but also worsens their health.

Death Outpaces Births in Certain U.S. Counties
With just 71 babies born on average for every 100 residents who die, Brooke County, in which Weirton is partly located, has the largest such gap in the nation among counties in metropolitan areas, save for a handful of places that are magnets for retirees. According to Kenneth Johnson, the senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, there are now 853 counties with similar population trends — “more coffins than cradles,” as he calls it — including parts of the Great Plains, the Midwest and New England.

Another Church Denomination Votes to Ordain Open Homosexuals
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) struck down a barrier to ordaining openly homosexuals, ratifying a proposal that removes the celibacy requirement for unmarried clergy. This follows the the liberation of ordinations and performing same-sex ceremonies by the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America which is the largest Lutheran group in the country, and the United Church of Christ.

25 Manners Every Kid Should Know
Helping your child master these simple rules of etiquette will get him noticed -- for all the right reasons. If you reinforce these 25 must-do manners, you'll raise a polite, kind, well-liked child.

McDonald's Goes Upscale
In an effort to revamp its image and attract new customers, McDonald's is going upscale. USA Today Monday got a sneak preview of a $1 billion plan to upgrade restaurants by installing flat-screen televisions, bringing in wooden tables and toning down the loud color scheme. That's pushing the chain into "looking less like McDonald's and more like Starbucks," as reporter Bruce Horovitz wrote.

Schools May Ban Chocolate Milk
Chocolate milk has an extra six grams of sugar than white milk. "Chocolate milk is soda in drag," said Ann Cooper, director of nutrition services for the Boulder Valley School District in Louisville, Colo., which has banned flavored milk. "It works as a treat in homes, but it doesn't belong in schools." A joint statement from several groups point to studies that show kids who drink fat-free, flavored milk meet more of their nutrient needs and are not heavier than non-milk drinkers.

Scientists Create Animals That Are Part-Human
The biological co-mingling of animal and human is now evolving into even more exotic and unsettling mixes of species. The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can’t wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus’ brain about two months ago.

Open Season on Humans
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., gave the green light for the destruction of human embryos for research purposes. In the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s document Dignitas Personae, the Catholic Church teaches the dignity of all persons from conception until natural death. Dignitas Personae puts it plainly: “The use of embryonic stem cells or differentiated cells derived from them—even when these are provided by other researchers through the destruction of embryos or when such cells are commercially available—presents serious problems from the standpoint of cooperation in evil and scandal.”

Out of Darkness
If you watch a pornographic video, you are watching mentally ill and physically diseased people having sex. So says former porn-star Shelley Lubben in the riveting new documentary, “Out of Darkness.” Like Shelley, many girls are hungry for love and not getting it at home. There has been an explosion of pornography, which fuels early sexual abuse.

Three Star Athletes Give Their Lives to Christ
Three young men tell their stories of leaving behind promising sports careers to become priests. These sacrifices are not without rewards. Frater Matthew describes his life as "very fulfilling," adding that in monastic life, as compared to baseball, "the joy goes a lot deeper."

St. Helen and the True Cross
In order to squash Christian devotion to Christ in Jerusalem, the pagan Romans erected shrines over the Christian holy sites (in about AD 146). This is well documented both historically and archeologically. Saint Helen came to Jerusalem in 326 after she had a dream about the true cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. She felt that she had been divinely appointed to find our Lord's life-giving cross.

How Rembrandt Reinvented Jesus
Rembrandt's recasting of Christ culminates in the 1648 "Supper at Emmaus," where the unprepossessing figure of Christ seems almost stunned, slack with preoccupation, rapt in a conversation no one else hears. The painter's Jesus is no hero of suffering and sacrifice; instead, he's a kindly, hungry pilgrim.

USDA Secretary Vilsack says agency will adopt recommendations on diversity
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Tuesday that his agency would quickly adopt most of the recommendations contained in a two year study that looked at USDA’s history of discrimination and its ongoing civil rights failings. The recommendations range from making the department’s rural development programs more accessible to women to appointing a “chief diversity officer” in each of the agency’s state offices.

Gospel of John 6:44-51

Jesus said to the crowds: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets:

They shall all be taught by God. Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father?except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.”

If Olympic medals were handed out for hubris, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a gay activist group, would be the clear favorite for the gold. Its ruthless effort to deprive the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) a top-notch defense in federal court has collapsed at the starting block. But this effort highlights the fact that the fight for traditional marriage is a fight for a popular institution that the nation urgently needs to preserve.

A Campaign of Intimidation
HRC’s campaign at first appeared to succeed when the law firm King and Spalding announced on April 25 that it would no longer defend DOMA, the 1996 act of Congress that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman and allows each state to protect its definition from the acts of other states. But that triumph proved short-lived when King and Spalding partner Paul Clement, a former solicitor general of the United States and the counsel of record for the House on DOMA, immediately resigned from the firm to continue DOMA’s defense.

This development, however, was combined with news HRC surely did not expect: a near-unanimous condemnation of its tactics, and the ethics of King and Spalding, from across the political and legal spectrum. Even gay-marriage advocate Ted Olson and Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan pointed to the poor precedent that would have been set if political intimidation had prevailed in this instance. Many observers commented on the injustice that could occur in other situations where a law firm was pressured not to continue representing other “unpopular” clients, such as prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay.

The point is well taken. Only a truly adversarial legal system has any claim of integrity. But much more is involved here than a single ethical lapse or public relations misstep.

The HRC’s interference with a legal opponent’s counsel is part of a larger campaign to silence opposition to the radical redefinition of marriage. This campaign is designed to intimidate advocates of traditional values and deny them a range of fundamental freedoms, including speech, religion, and conscience. In this strategy, portraying traditional marriage as “unpopular” facilitates aggressive political action to punish—personally and professionally—those who disagree with the radical activists.

But the HRC’s campaign commits yet another offense that too many in elite media and political circles reflexively pass along: It is a gross misrepresentation of reality. Such tactics are ugly when they are used against a minority. They are no prettier when used against the significant majority of Americans who, as the radicals might put it, “cling” to traditional ideas about the marital union.

The Benefits of Marriage for Children and Society
Americans stand by marriage with good reason. Marriage is a pre-political institution based on the cooperation of the two sexes. Marriage is the very definition of a “popular” institution—it is the one that makes a populace. It is not surprising, therefore, that nearly all of the efforts by activist organizations to remake the definition of marriage have failed in the most populist institutions: the state and federal legislatures. It is likewise unsurprising that 63.6 percent of voters in 31 states have cast their ballots to preserve marriage’s timeless character. In an environment of intimidation, support for traditional marriage in the privacy of the voting booth is very likely to be higher than is reflected in more public forums like opinion polls.

An unelected judiciary has remained the alternative of choice for activist groups, because it is there that novel legal theories can be tested, driven by activist judges who believe—often mistakenly, as in Iowa last November—that they are beyond matters so trivial as the wisdom of the electorate. Even in the nation’s courtrooms, however, advocates for changing the definition of marriage have more often lost than won.

The goods that marriage uniquely delivers merit it unique protection:

Marriage captivates and orients the most elemental of human passions and orders them to something beyond the self. It attaches men and women to one another and to their children and helps all of them to learn the tasks of nurturing and provision—the work of self-government that makes community possible and limits the need for the costly and never-complete repair work of government when families fracture.

Marriage recognizes that children fare best when they are raised by their biological mothers and fathers. This truth is upheld and reflected in public policies that encourage the contributions of both men and women to the raising of their own children. Free societies have devised numerous ways to support when families dissolve or fail to form—but none of these forms of assistance justifies the abandonment of the special character of marriage or the pretense that substitutes for it have been available for centuries, just waiting to be discovered. Few would genuinely dispute that the love of a mother and father for each other and any children they make is a cornerstone of human happiness.

Children from intact families carry with them as adults a yearning to understand their heritage and connect with their ancestors. The most poignant family stories of our time are those involving children who have been unilaterally deprived of access to their own past.

For Posterity’s Sake
Americans are a tolerant people desirous of living with their fellow citizens in concord and without unreasonable demands, public or private. But the public institution of marriage is one request that champions of the family make with the best reason of all: Millions of children are born each year in the United States without the benefits that married parents can uniquely confer on them. As the nation seeks to regain its economic and social footing, it is time not to blur the meaning of marriage further but to rebuild it for the good of future generations.

This is the popular cause that DOMA, among other urgent measures, is needed to serve.