IRS audits jump by 11 percent; wealthiest targeted
The Internal Revenue Service is making it a bit riskier to cheat on your taxes. The tax agency increased the number of returns it audited by nearly 11 percent this year, statistics released Wednesday show. Wealthy taxpayers and big businesses were most likely to be targeted. The IRS also stepped up audits of charities and other tax-exempt organizations. In all, the IRS examined more than 1.58 million individual returns in the budget year that ended in September, up from 1.43 million the year before.

ADF: Providing Hope for America's Future
2010 was a year of legal turmoil... but there is hope for the future of religious freedom. ADF won 82% of its cases litigated. With your support, ADF can continue to impact what tomorrow will look like in America. Learn more at www.TellADF.org

Paul Ryan: Look, we’re going to have to suck it up and pass this tax cuts deal
Pure and simple: If you call Obama’s and Reid’s bluff by voting no, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get a better deal with a Republican House in January. After all of the theatrical leftist agony over the compromise during the past two weeks, there’s only so much the Democratic leadership can concede. They won’t make the Bush tax cuts permanent and they won’t waive the estate tax for another year; the best you could do by holding out, I suspect, is to force Democrats to pay for the new unemployment extension by cutting elsewhere, but the GOP can spearhead all sorts of spending cuts to compensate for that next year. Just get the tax cuts locked in now.

Democrats' budget bill: $1.1 trillion; 1,900 pages
Defying the political odds, Senate Democrats rolled out a year-end, government wide spending bill Tuesday that cuts more than $26 billion from President Barack Obama’s 2011 requests even as it holds firm to thousands of the appropriations earmarks so adamantly opposed by critics of Congress. Filling more than 1,900 pages, the $1.1 trillion measure represents an increase of less than 2 percent in annual spending but makes for an easy target of ridicule — a last stand by the Senate’s old bulls before the tea party takeover.

GOP in revolt over massive new $1.1 trillion spending bill
Supposedly it’s the giant number of earmarks involved in the bill that have them balking, but really they just don’t want to be locked into a Democratic Congress’s spending plan for another year. Better to pass a continuing resolution before Saturday — the deadline for funding the government, or else it shuts down — and let the tea-party Congress put out its own bill in January.

Breyer: Madison wrote 2nd Amend to appease states
It’s not just the Constitution that is a “living document,” as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer proved yesterday when discussing the Second Amendment. Breyer argued that James Madison only included the right to bear arms reluctantly, and only because the states wouldn’t sign the Constitution for fear of creating an overmighty central government. That’s why he voted against the majority in the Heller decision that overturned the federal handgun ban in Washington DC.

Chicago’s ban on gun ranges challenged in court
Just days after Chicago’s gun ban was ruled unconstitutional, the city council unanimously approved the Responsible Gun Ownership Ordinance. One of its provisions is that all Chicago residents must present a signed affidavit from a firearms instructor, saying the prospective gun owner completed a training and safety course that includes at least one hour of range time. There’s just one problem. The city of Chicago bans gun ranges. The only ranges in the city are available to federal employees and police.

Kansas Federalist and Shawnee Mission Times
A new format for our e-newspaper begins in December as the Shawnee Mission Times will be the news posting for all TKF local and Kansas area postings and stories. TKF will continue to serve its readers with its focus on regional/national news and commentaries.

Federal Judge strikes down federal health care law
A federal judge declared the Obama administration's health care law unconstitutional Monday, siding with Virginia's attorney general. Virginia Republican Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli filed a separate lawsuit in defense of a new state law that prohibits the government from forcing state residents to buy health insurance. However, the key issue was his claim that the federal law's requirement that citizens buy health insurance or pay a penalty is unconstitutional. The central issue in Virginia's lawsuit was whether the federal government has the power under the constitution to impose the insurance requirement.

Holder and Sebelius trot out the auto-insurance canard to support Obamacare
The need to reform the health-care economic model is real. Holder, Sebelius, and Barack Obama have gone in the wrong direction through the imposition of government mandates and the calcification of the third-party payer model. We need to break that model for routine health maintenance and return insurance to the role of indemnifying against substantial loss and end the tax incentives for the market distortion of the employer-based health care model.

Al-Qaida hatred for Pope caused US worries about Vatican security
Speaking frankly about “the known al-Qaida antipathy to the Pope,” American embassy officials in 2008 asked the U.S. State Department to consider an effort to help Vatican security forces deal with terrorist threats. The WikiLeaks website recently published a Dec. 19, 2008 State Department cable reputedly from the U.S. Embassy in Rome. The cable, classified as “secret,” documented a request from the U.S. Vatican Embassy to plan and fund a “crisis management tabletop exercise” with Vatican security services.

Ohio Court: Planned Parenthood Violated the Law
In a ruling that may be the first of its kind, a state trial court ruled on Tuesday that an Ohio Planned Parenthood clinic violated state law by not abiding by the state’s mandatory 24-hour reflection period before a woman can obtain an abortion. Adding to the drama of this case is the fact that the woman in question was a minor at the time of her abortion. As AUL has reported in the past, the minor, unnamed in the case in the interest of confidentiality, was taken to the clinic by her 22-year-old “boyfriend” (her soccer coach), and obtained the abortion without either her parents’ consent or notification. In 2004 the “boyfriend” was convicted of sexual battery and spent three years in prison—despite Planned Parenthood’s apparent efforts to keep the pregnancy and abortion a secret.

Great Moments in Unintended Consequences
Reason.TV notes in Great Moments in Unintended Consequences that, “All actions have unanticipated side effects, but government acting through regulation or legislation is particularly adept at creating disastrous unintended consequences.”

Steele’s Announcement Bid Rife with grammatical errors
A letter from Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele to fellow RNC members announcing his bid for reelection for chairman is rife with typos.

CNN Reporter: ‘American people they big problem’
“No, I think the people are the big problem,” Fareed Zakaria said. “I mean, Americans — everybody wants to say the American people are so wonderful. You know, I think that when they come to recognize that they have to make sacrifices too that it’s not just wasteful — they need to have — they need to recognize that some of what’s going to happen here is fewer. They have to consume fewer things. They have to accept slightly higher taxes. And in the long run, you will have a much better economy.”

Christian Giving Begins with the Local Church
It’s the season for giving—not only to friends and relatives but to charitable causes and non-profits as well. There are two trends of special concern as we look at where tax-deductible charitable dollars are going at the end of the year. The first is that even though charitable giving has declined nationwide during the Great Recession, the amount of funding to church and other religious and faith-based organizations increased. Although people are giving less overall, religious charities are seeing greater donations. But this makes the second trend even more striking: while “church” and “religious organizations” are getting a larger share of a smaller pie, local congregations are seeing donations decline.

What Kids Are Missing Today
Kids are missing the creativity that comes from being bored and the socialization from family meals. Peaceful and well behaved children come from family prayer. Valuable lessons come from community service and having a good life does not equal having a lot of stuff, so children should learn the less is more approach to life. Our children are on loan to us from God. Are we doing what He would want?

May Christmas Remind Us of the Gift of Life
At Christmas gatherings, in long checkout lines, and in overcrowded parking lots, let’s remember that Christ lives in the people around us. Let’s celebrate Christmas with profound gratitude that through his Incarnation and birth, Jesus showed us the meaning of love and the priceless value of every human life.

Planned Parenthood Uses “Choice on Earth”
The national Planned Parenthood abortion business is at it again, using a sacrilegious Christmas theme to raise money for its efforts to promote and perform abortions. Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards sent out a fundraising email yesterday to her supporters with a headline image bearing the words, “Choice on Earth.”

Preparing the Way of the Lord: Caesar and Plato?
This Advent, while we are reading the stories of Israel being prepared for the coming of the Son of God, let us also remember that God was working outside of Israel as well to prepare every nation for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Parable of the 33 Miners
For Christians, and especially for Catholic Christians, who share the faith of the miners themselves, this was a profoundly Christian event, understandable both in its details and its overall scope only in Christian terms. It was a teaching moment, rich in theological references. It was a kind of parable, worth considering as an Advent reflection, with its strong movement from darkness to light.

Mary's Visit to Elizabeth & Ark Imagery
Patristic sources often link Mary, the mother of Jesus, to the Ark of the New Covenant imagery. Where did this tradition originate? The New Testament contains at least two places where the connection is made. If the new covenant is superior to the old covenant, it would also seem that the ark of the new covenant would exceed in holiness that of the old.

Cardinal Burke Denounces Catholic Colleges in Name Only
Too many "Catholic in name only" colleges and universities have embraced today's "secularist dictatorship" instead of fighting it, warned one of the Vatican's top-ranking Americans in a frank assessment of Catholic higher education. Cardinal Burke is Prefect of the Vatican's highest court and Ecclesiastical Advisor to The Center for the Advancement of Catholic Higher Education. "The first and chief teacher at every institution of Catholic higher education is Our Lord Jesus Christ Who is the fullness of the revelation of God to us".

Somali Teenage Girl Shot to Death for Embracing Christ
A 17-year-old girl in Somalia who converted to Christianity from Islam was shot to death last week in an apparent “honor killing,” area sources said. Nurta Mohamed Farah, who had fled her village of Bardher, Gedo Region to Galgadud Region to live with relatives after her parents tortured her for leaving Islam, died on Nov. 25.

Our Government on Smoking Vs. Sex
The CDC, like most school health educators, is crystal clear about tobacco. It's dangerous. Don't use it. When it comes to sex, also no doubt like most school health teachers, the CDC sends mixed messages. Here's how to use a condom -- even though it might not protect against diseases that can be deadly. It's time for our government -- and the culture at large – to acknowledge and then tackle the serious health risks of sex outside of monogamous relationships.

The Twelve Days of a Large Family Christmas
This song is based on the comments that a large family hears over and over.

Cute Digital Story of the Nativity
This Youtube video tells how social media, web and mobile would have told the Nativity story had Jesus been born today.

Kerry pushing cap and trade alternatives
Cap and trade may be dead, but Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry recently told an audience he intends to push legislation in the 112th Congress that will have a similar effect on the nation’s carbon emissions.

Gospel - Lk 7:18b-23

18b And John's disciples told him of all these things. 19 And John called to him two of his disciples, and sent them to Jesus, saying: Art thou he that art to come; or look we for another? 20 And when the men were come unto him, they said: John the Baptist hath sent us to thee, saying: Art thou he that art to come; or look we for another? 21 (And in that same hour, he cured many of their diseases, and hurts, and evil spirits: and to many that were blind he gave sight.) 22 And answering, he said to them: Go and relate to John what you have heard and seen: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are made clean, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, to the poor the gospel is preached: 23 And blessed is he whosoever shall not be scandalized in me.

Michael Steele’s days should be numbered as the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The gaff-prone RNC chair has refused to go away and has weathered one scandal after another. Furthermore, Steele has had questionable expenditures, high overhead, and sloppy bookkeeping in his administrative duties.

Now, according to the Washington Post, Steele faces questions over a pre-convention spending spree that includes more than $630,000 getting ready for its 2012 convention in Tampa, which is 18 times more than its pre-convention tab at this point four years ago.

Steele, who just announced his re-election bid has placed the National GOP $15 million in debt, decimated the major donor base, and as a network of impoverished state party committees in his wake.

Gentry Collins, ex-RNC political director, who quit the RNC last month, also has called for a management overhaul. In a blistering memo when he stepped down, Collins assailed the RNC for allowing “its major donor base to wither,” wasting money on overhead and neglecting the state parties.

In July of this year RNC's treasurer Randy Pullen accused chairman Michael Steele of hiding more than $7 million in debt to inflate the party's finances and mislead donors. Steele assumed the RNC chairmanship in January 2009 with no debt and $8.7 million in the bank, meaning the committee has been $4.4 million in the red during Steele’s chairmanship.

And then there was the infamous statement that upset social conservatives. In an interview with GQ's Lisa DePaulo, Michael Steele declares that abortion is an "individual choice" -- a fairly startling policy position for the leader of the Republican Party. Steele later recanted but was it a gaffe or true belief?

Then there is the race card. Steele has often turned to the subject of race in his nearly two-year tenure. According to the Daily Caller just last month, in a radio interview with Rev. Al Sharpton, Steele ratcheted up the rhetoric, appearing to agree with Sharpton that if he is not reelected as RNC chairman, it will be because the GOP is racist, making “the brother take the fall.”

The National GOP needs to get its own house in order and replacing Steele is the first step. Instead of having a Chair from the liberal Northeast United States, the RNC should elect a true conservative that embraces all the Republican Platform, not just by talking the talk but walking the walk as well.