Charles Saatchi’s admission came a day after shocking photos ran in a British tabloid showing him with his hand gripping his wife’s throat.

Saachi said in a statement that the photos appear “more drastic” than what actually happened, but his wife’s facial reaction suggests she was uncomfortable.

Saatchi, a millionaire advertising guru who owns art galleries in London and New York, had earlier brushed the incident off as a “playful tiff.”

The verse being referred to is Luke 14:26, where Jesus said, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”

This is what’s known as “hyperbole.” It is a justified statement of exaggeration –contrasting love with hate for the sake of emphasis. It means that you and I should so love God that the love we have for our loved ones should seem like hatred, compared to the love we have for the One who gave those loved ones in the first place. This shows how far we fall short of how loving we should be towards our Creator and how ungrateful we are for the gift of life.

“John Lennon was an atheist, you idiot.” – Bipin K.

Most atheists assume that John Lennon was an atheist, probably because of his famous song, “Imagine.” I have heard one well-known atheist call it “the atheist’s anthem.”

I guess he hadn’t listened to (or thought about) the words: “Imagine there’s no heaven.” If I said, “Imagine there’s no New York,” it means I think that New York exists, but we should imagine (pretend) that it doesn’t. John Lennon actually wrote the song as a prayer to God, praying that the world would set aside its differences about countries, wars, religion, etc., and be as one. He shared this in his famous 1980 Playboy interview.

“And since the auto response will be, ‘What do atheists do?’ here are a few secular charities: Doctors Without Borders, The Red Cross, UNICEF, Amnesty International, Kiva, Goodwill. Me myself, I give to all charities regardless of denomination. Saturday afternoons I volunteer at a hospital. I also do regular clean ups of our waterfront, donate blood and support businesses through Kiva.” – Bridgette P.

There is nothing more nauseating than having to listen to someone boast about their own goodness – something called “self-righteousness.” Christianity has nothing to do with doing good works.

Some who mistakenly think so quote the book of James, which says that faith without works is dead. However, if they would read the verse in context they would see that it is merely saying that good works are evidence that someone is truly a Christian. We do good works because we have been given everlasting life (from a motivation of gratitude) and not to try and earn everlasting life (trying to bribe God to forgive us by offering our good works).

Please take the time to read this verse carefully (your eternity could depend on your understanding of what it says): “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Check out NeedGod.com if you are interested in eternal life. By the way, there are thousands of secular and Christian charities. You would be hard-pressed to find even one legitimate atheist charity.

Discover Comfort’s “You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence but You Can’t Make Him Think,” autographed, at the WND Superstore!

Explore WND’s complete collection of Ray Comfort books and videos here.

If you’re like me, you want to buy American-made sunglasses, but the price is often $100 or more for a quality pair, and buying American in this area can be very costly, especially if you have a history of losing your sunglasses or end up inadvertently scratching them from just everyday use.

If you want to avoid the high price tag for American-made sunglasses, I’ve got great news for you. Right now (and this is ONLY for a limited time while supplies last) you can buy American-made, union-made RL Viper sunglasses at howtobuyamerican.com for just $24.95.

These OSHA approved American-made sunglasses have UV 400 rated shatterproof polycarbonate lenses and comfort grip adjustable arms, and come with a micro-fiber carrying case. They are also engraved with the words “Buy American” on the front so that everyone will know how important it is to you that you purchase American products whenever possible by wearing American-made sunglasses.

I used to buy Oakley sunglasses, even though they cost over $100 a pair, until they were acquired in 2007 by Italian-owned Luxottica, the world’s largest eyewear company. Luxottica is a huge company that also owns Ray-Ban, Revo, Arnette and K&L (formerly Killer Loop) brand sunglasses as well as LensCrafters, Pearle Vision and Sunglass Hut retail chains.

After Oakley ceased to be an American brand name, I discovered Gatorz sunglasses,which are also made in the USA but are also unfortunately over $100 a pair.

Researching further, fortunately I found AO Eyewear, which makes and sells the Original Pilot sunglasses that have been a favorite of American military pilots since 1958. Pilot sunglasses are engineered to the actual military specifications that apply to the sunglasses that are issued to U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen.

As stated above, I only have a limited amount of RL Viper sunglasses, which I was able to have customized with “Buy American” engraved on the front. These sunglasses were originally made as a promotional item for the United Steelworkers of America, and the number of sunglasses produced resulted in an overstock. Once they are gone, they are gone. So if you want a pair of American-made sunglasses at a super-reasonable price, please visit howtobuyamerican.com. You won’t find these U.S-made sunglasses at this price anywhere else.

What should you do if you aren’t able to get a pair of RL Viper sunglasses, or if you do buy a pair and you happen break them or lose them, and they are no longer available? Then I would suggest that you do what I would do, and buy the Pilot sunglasses from AO Eyewear.

More and more Americans are putting more emphasis these days on making sure that everyday items like clothing and apparel are American-made. Sunglasses are one of those accessories that we all need, use almost every day during certain seasons, and provide protection and comfort to us especially during those bright and hot summer months out in the sun. They should be American-made too.

I make sure everything I wear every day is made in the USA. For me, as the author of four books on Buying American, anything less would be hypocritical and fall short of what I believe should be a characteristic of being a patriotic American citizen.

So here’s your chance to make sure you’re sporting American-made sunglasses this summer, and let everyone know you support the “Buy American” cause at the same time. Get your RL Viper American-made sunglasses at howtobuyamerican.com today, while they last!

“Sales of online apps to encrypt cell calls are soaring,” reports Fox News correspondent David Lee Miller. “For as little as a few dollars a month there are now at least half a dozen companies such as Silent Circle and Seecrypt selling apps, making it difficult if not impossible for the government or anyone else to monitor your private communication.”

Miller notes both the sending and receiving cell phones need the app for the call to remain secure.

Michael Janke, CEO of Silent Circle boasted to Fox News that the encryption service his company runs would take “all of the world’s supercomputers put together 44 years to break the encryption of 1 message.”

Harvey Boulter, chairman of Seecrypt, revealed his company is following another trend: alternative technology providers locating overseas to avoid the reach of the NSA.

“All of our developers are based in South Africa,” Boulter said, “so we aren’t subject to the laws of the United States or the Patriot Act.”

The push for privacy has been enflamed by interviews and documents produced by whistleblower Edward Snowden, a former information technology specialist contracted to work for the NSA, who claimed the intelligence agency has the ability to “wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president.”

Boulter told Fox Business in a separate interview that subscribers to his company’s app doubled in 24 hours after news of the NSA surveillance broke. The cost of his app: after an introductory free trial period, three dollars per month.

“People are getting it,” Boulter said. “People are suddenly realizing mobile is not secure.”

The Washington Post further reported that it obtained a top-secret document on a government program in which the NSA and FBI are “tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets.”

The program, code-named PRISM, was utilized to obtain information that has become a critical part of President Obama’s daily briefing, according to the Post, which added, “NSA reporting increasingly relies on PRISM as its leading source of raw material, accounting for nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports.”

Matthew Green, chief scientist at Cryptography Engineering LLC and assistant research professor at Johns Hopkins University told Fox News, “I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that the FBI and intelligence agencies have a lot of capabilities to hack into computer systems, and they can use that ability right now to eavesdrop on people even if they are using encryption.”

Miller added that some of the apps being developed also work with texting, emails and videoconferencing.

Video of the Fox News report, from KTVI-TV in St. Louis, Mo., can be seen below:

Boulter’s interview with Fox Business can also be seen, in the video below:

As WND reported, news that top companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, PalTalk, AOL and Skype are participating in the PRISM program have sent many Americans looking for ways to protect their privacy online as well.

StartPage.com and its sister search engine, Ixquick.com, were launched in 2006 to provide a private way for Americans to conduct Internet searches. StartPage provides a private portal to Google results, and Ixquick allows users to retrieve private results from other search engines.
WND reported in 2010 when Katherine Albrecht, a Harvard-trained privacy expert who helped develop StartPage, warned, “It would blow people’s minds if they knew how much information the big search engines have on the American public. In fact, their dossiers are so detailed they would probably be the envy of the KGB.”

StartPage and Ixquick, however, say they have neither participated in PRISM nor shared Americans’ data with the federal government.
“The privacy of our users rests on three important foundations,” explained StartPage and Ixquick CEO Robert Beens. “We are based in the Netherlands, we use encrypted connections, and – most importantly – we don’t store or share any of our users’ personal search data.”
A statement from StartPage and Ixquick explained:

• No user data stored: StartPage and Ixquick never store user data, including IP addresses and search queries, so government agencies have no incentive to ask for these. This privacy is so complete; the company doesn’t even know who its customers are, so it can’t share anything with Big Brother.

• Encrypted (HTTPS) connections: StartPage and Ixquick were the first search engines to use automatic encryption on all connections to prevent snooping. When searches are encrypted, third parties like ISPs and the NSA can’t eavesdrop on Internet connections to see what people are searching for.

• Not under U.S. jurisdiction: StartPage and Ixquick are based in the Netherlands, so they are not directly subject to U.S. regulations, warrants, or court orders. They can’t be forced to participate in spying programs like PRISM. The company has never turned over a single bit of user data to any government entity in the 14 years it has been in business, which is not surprising since there is no data in the first place.

“Unfortunately, it takes a scandal like PRISM to wake people up to the erosion of privacy, ” Albrecht said. “As people get fed up with being spied on, they look for alternatives. We already serve nearly 3 million private searches each day, and we expect that number to grow as people seek shelter from search engines that store and share their private information.”

This summer, the company plans to launch a new email service called StartMail, which will provide a paid and heavily encrypted private email application. Anyone interested in being a StartMail beta tester can now sign up.

McInerney also wonders how there can be any talk of a U.S.-led no-fly zone in Syria since the Obama administration has grounded a large percentage of the Air Force, allegedly over sequestration.

The general rose to assistant vice chief of staff in the U.S. Air Force and was vice commander in chief of U.S. Air Forces in Europe. He is currently a Fox News military analyst.

Last week, the Obama administration publicly concluded that the Bashar al-Assad regime deployed chemical weapons against the rebels earlier in the year and the U.S. will begin arming the rebels and helping to effect regime change

But McInerney told WND it’s hard to see the compelling U.S. interest in getting involved in another nation’s civil war. He’s even more concerned that the administration can’t even identify the trustworthy actors in a rebellion featuring forces loyal to al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“What are our interests in Syria today? They want to back Gen. (Salem) Idris of the Free Syrian Army? That’s the wrong part of the Free Syrian Army. They don’t even know the right part of the Free Syrian Army that they want to back,” McInerney said. “So that makes it even more troubling, and we’re going to get into what we got in in Libya and resulted in Benghazi – supporting a radical Islamist state when we already had a tyrant there who was supporting us.”

McInerney said while it is possible to find the right factions within the rebellion and deal exclusively with them, the Obama administration seems to have little interest in correctly identifying those elements.

“This administration doesn’t want to listen to the people who know who the reputable allies are, so that’s the real difficulty,” he said.

The general also scoffs at the idea of a no-fly zone in Syria, thanks to what he considers wrong priorities by the administration in response to some modest belt-tightening.

“You know where the no-fly zones are today? Over all the U.S. Air Force bases,” McInerney said. “We have grounded one-third of the United States Air Force because of sequestration and the lack of the administration’s initiative to ensure that these units are not standing down. So we have a huge problem there.

“If we tried to do a no-fly zone against a rather sophisticated air defense system in Syria, it would cost a lot of resources that, frankly, aren’t available right now because of the sequestration and the stand down driven by the Obama administration,”he said.

So what should the U.S. do? McInerney largely agrees with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, who says containing the threat posed by any remaining weapons of mass destruction is by far the top U.S. national security interest in Syria. McInerney said it is especially critical to make sure the weapons don’t get to Hezbollah.

The general also noted that the public is giving thumbs down to the Obama policy, an assessment backed by a new poll showing 70 percent of Americans oppose arming the rebels.

“The American people do not want to get involved, particularly with boots on the ground, with any forces in Syria right now. And they’re right,” McInerney said. “Should we take out Bashar Assad? Yeah, I’d take him out, but that still won’t solve the problem. You’ve got Russia, Iran and Hezbollah all backing Bashar Assad right now. So that’s the difficulty.”

Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, the Iranian military chief of staff, warned, “Obama has made his most dangerous blunder today as president of the U.S. when, with the deceit of the Israelis, he issued an order of sending weapons for terrorists in Syria,” reported Fars News Agency, a media outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards.

“Today the shipment of arms to the Syrian terrorists won’t solve anything as the Syrian nation with its national army will force the Israeli mercenaries to retreat and escape,” he said.

Firouzabadi claimed that providing weapons to “al-Qaida terrorists” and others in Syria is similar to the West providing chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. He said the weapons will be used against the Syrian people even though “the U.S. generals and the Zionists” blame the Syrian government for using chemical weapons against civilians.

The general also criticized France: “It is very strange that French officials demand the Syrian national army not to free their occupied country from the hands of terrorists.”

The Islamic regime has repeatedly warned against any attempt to overthrow Assad, an action which it has called a red line. The regime’s officials have openly stated that an Assad victory in Syria is essential to a greater power and role by the Islamic republic in the region and on the world stage.

As reported in 2011, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic republic, in a letter filled with threats to Obama that reportedly had been delivered by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, accused the U.S. of meddling in Syrian affairs. Khamenei ordered the U.S. to cease and desist in pressuring the Syrian regime leadership. He warned that Iran would retaliate against America’s interests should Obama refuse to take him seriously.

About that time, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, a media branch of Hezbollah, quoted several of its Tehran-based sources as saying that the Iranian leadership also warned Turkey against taking any military action against Syria. The report said any “militaristic meddling” in Syria by the Turks would be considered “crossing a red line” and would not be tolerated by the Iranian regime. Iran asked Hezbollah to join forces with the its Quds Forces to help the Assad regime, Al-Akhbar said.

As WND reported exclusively last year, a joint war room was created among Iran, Hezbollah and Syria to defeat the opposition in Syria and respond to any possible attack by U.S. or NATO forces with a directive for an immediate response.

The response would be a barrage of missiles from the three allies not only toward Israel but also at American assets in the region.

The London Independent reported Sunday that Iran has decided to send 4,000 troops from its Revolutionary Guards forces to Syria to assure Assad’s survival.

Sources have previously indicated that Qassem Soliemani, the head of the regime’s Quds Forces, has a permanent presence in Syria’s war room overseeing and managing the attacks on the opposition.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed his commitment to continue selling arms to the Assad government, including sophisticated weapons such as anti-ship Yakhont cruise missiles and the S-300 antiaircraft system.

The Obama administration indicated Friday that it will provide military support to the Syrian rebels, citing evidence of Assad crossing the red line by using nerve gas against the rebels.

“Following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year,” said a White House statement.

CBS reported that Obama held an hour-long video conference with the leaders of Britain, Germany, France and Italy to build consensus for his Syria policy.

Since the Syrian uprising in March 2011, at least 93,000 people, including women and children, have lost their lives and more than 1.5 million Syrians have taken refuge in neighboring countries.

Become a part of the investigative reporting team uncovering the truths about Iran, and get author Reza Kahlili’s “A Time to Betray” about his life as a double agent inside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

A coalition of education organizations has told the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education that’s the impact of a newly reached agreement regarding sexual assaults at the University of Montana that is being touted as a model for schools nationwide.

‘The agreement provides that ‘a university must take immediate steps to protect’ a party complaining of harassment, even ‘taking disciplinary action against the harasser’ before investigation of the complaint begins,” said a newly released letter that was addressed to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez and Seth Galanter, acting assistant secretary for the Education Department.

It was written by Kevin Theriot, senior counsel, and David J. Hacker, senior legal counsel, of the Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of leaders of Young America’s Foundation, National Association of Scholars, Students for Life of American, Ratio Christi, Campus Bible Fellowship International, Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow and Beta Upsilon Chi.

The letter warns that “the agreement fails to require UM and other universities to show ‘continuing danger to persons or property,’ or provide notice and a hearing immediately following the disciplinary action.”

“As one commentator noted already, this is ‘reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland’s ‘sentence first, verdict afterwards,’” the letter says.

“But a mere investigation into clearly protected activity violates the Constitution. … The agreement requires UM and other universities to violate students’ due process.”

WND reported the May 9 guidance from the U.S. Department of Education was understood to mean that every flirtation on a college campus in America and every request to go out on a date could be considered sexual harassment.

The federal government then tried to explain away the controversy.

The department advisory apparently eliminated the standard of whether a “reasonable person” would consider certain actions harassment. It explained that any comment, action, insinuation or implication would be harassment if it were unwanted.

The advisory also warned that the school’s sexual harassment policy “improperly suggests that the conduct does not constitute sexual harassment unless it is objectively offensive.”

The university policy had held that “whether conduct is sufficiently offensive to constitute sexual harassment is determined from the perspective of an objectively reasonable person of the same gender in the same situation.”

That standard is not acceptable, according to the advisory, signed by Anurima Bhargava, chief of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Educational Opportunities Section, and Gary Jackson, a region chief for the U.S. Department of Education.

“Whether conduct is objectively offensive is a factor used to determine if a hostile environment has been created, but it is not the standard to determine whether conduct was ‘unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature’ and therefore constitutes ‘sexual harassment,’” the advisory said.

Read the advisory.

The advisory was addressed to University of Montana President Royce Engstrom and university lawyer Lucy France. It was a “resolution” of an investigation into the sexual harassment climate at the school and its “compliance review” of officials’ actions.

“Sexual harassment is unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. When sexual harassment is sufficiently severe or pervasive to deny or limit a student’s ability to participate in or benefit from the school’s program based on sex, it creates a hostile environment,” the federal officials warned the state.

Hans Bader of the Chronicle of Higher Education called the position adopted by the Department of Education “radical.”

Now the education groups have stepped up to voice their concerns.

“Students should be able to speak freely about issues such as race, gender, religion and politics without fearing retribution,” said senior legal counsel David Hacker. “While we condemn actual harassment, which has a clear legal definition, this anti-harassment blueprint is nothing less than a vague and broadly defined speech code that will end up prohibiting speech the First Amendment protects.”

ADF said the Obama administration strategy “leaves universities with the enormous, and unbridled, administrative burden of policing what is and is not actionable harassment. Free speech will suffer in the end.”

“Free, spontaneous discourse on college campuses is supposed to be a hallmark of higher education rather than the exception to the rule,” added senior counsel Kevin Theriot. “The policies of the Department of Justice and the Department of Education should always allow students to exercise their constitutionally protected freedoms.”

Said the letter to Washington: “There is no question that universities like UM should protect students from actual harassment, but they can do so and comply with the First Amendment under a severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive standard. The agreement’s broad definition of harassment, however, fails to protect real victims. Their cries for help will be drowned out by frivolous complaints of insults, teasing, jokes, and other clearly protected activity. In the end, that leaves speech chilled and victims without justice.”

The Obama administration also recently came under fire for determining that on-campus sex assault cases would not be decided, as in courts, by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

The federal government requires colleges to use a preponderance of evidence standard, which means someone would think there is more evidence something did happen than not.

On April 4, 2011, the Education Department issued a directive on campus sexual assault that states, “A school’s grievance procedures must use the preponderance of the evidence standard to resolve complaints of sex discrimination.”

By “sex discrimination,” the department also meant rape. The direction on grievance procedures is listed under a heading titled “What are a school’s obligations under Title IX regarding sexual violence?”

College campus courts using the preponderance of evidence standard to weigh sexual assault cases have many onlookers outraged.

The group Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, or SAVE, believes the department policy is unconstitutional. SAVE issued a statement declaring the preponderance of evidence standard is “stripping the accused of the presumption of innocence and allowing students to be expelled without the benefit of legal counsel.”

SAVE has published a list of 13 organizations that have issued letters calling on the department to rescind its sexual assault directive, including the American Association of University Professors, the American Council for Trustees and Alumni, the National Association for Scholars, Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University, eight civil rights scholars, Accuracy in Media, the Heartland Institute, the Alliance Defending Freedom and Feminists for Free Expression.

A year ago, WND reported a case of severe injustice caused by the department’s preponderance of evidence policy.

Student Caleb Warner was found guilty of sexual assault by a campus court at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks in 2010 despite the facts established at the time by city police.

Officers not only refused to charge him but also alleged his accuser made a false report. Police issued a warrant for her arrest.

It took 18 months – during which Warner not only was banned from the UND campus but also from all college campuses in the state – after the university to agree to reconsider the conviction and clear his record.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education said: “Nobody should be surprised that [Warner] does not want to return to UND. The university showed less than zero concern for disrupting his life and career and branding him a criminal based on an extremely low standard of evidence, and has shown zero inclination to be remorseful about what it has done.”

On video.

It happened with several folks who work with the You Can Run But You Cannot Hide ministry, which is a nonprofit run by rock star Bradlee Dean to reach out to America’s next generation “through principles of morality, true freedom, and personal responsibility.”

The organization explains its mission is to “equip our next generation with the Christian values that made America great through a unique avenue of music and educational event forums in colleges, schools, churches, festivals, and arenas.”

The goal is to present that message in schools.

Jake MacAulay, a spokesman for the ministry, told WND it happened at a station in Davie, Fla., just a few days ago.

The woman verbally and physically attacked ministry workers Elizabeth Ilse and Chase Schomberg.

“Ilse was standing behind one of her ministry’s tables while distributing Christian literature to those visiting the gas station. She simply said, ‘Hello,’ to the woman, but after approaching and reading the sign on the ministry’s table that said, ‘Support Christianity in Public Schools, The Constitution, and Honoring Soldiers,’ the woman viciously attacked the cause by screaming ‘shame on you for wanting Christianity in schools,’ calling Miss Ilse a ‘bigot,’ and [she] stated that ‘Christians are the problem.’”

The video reveals the rest: how the woman said, “You can put me on YouTube because I am absolutely for our Constitution.” That, she claimed, includes separation of church and state.

However, when asked where that was referenced, she changed her mind about the video, apparently trying to grab the recorder, or slap at it.

She threatens to call police, and then does, as she goes into the store.

Coming out, she has a new verse: telling the ministry workers to get away from her car, even though there is another vehicle between them and her.

“Get away from my car,” she yells. “I’ll tell police you are not just harassing, but are assaulting me.”

Then she blasts the cameraman with her bag.

She speeds off, but returns a short time later to talk with police.

She doesn’t approach the ministry table again, but the ministry workers do report that police ask them if they wanted to press charges against her.

They hadn’t decided immediately.

The rampage, in context:

It’s just one of a number of attacks in recent months on Dean’s ministry. WND reported when a high school principal in Florida cut off Dean’s First Amendment rights mid-sentence. Dean later returned to the school to finish delivering his message.

Principal William Latson of Spanish River Community High School in Boca Raton, Fla., “acted arbitrarily” and “without notice” in ordering Dean out of the school building in the middle of his presentation in mid-February, according to reports.

Dean, his band Junkyard Prophet and the Sons of Liberty Radio were invited to the school by the school’s Spanish club. Dean was to speak to the group, while Sons of Liberty Radio planned to broadcast the event.

After being thrown out of the school, Dean requested that the nonprofit legal advocacy group Liberty Counsel step in to remind the school administration of the constitutional rights of the students and the speakers.

A letter to school officials describing their actions as “viewpoint discrimination” may have prompted school officials to rethink their position and allow the program to come back to the school.

WND also previously reported controversy over Dean’s appearance at a public school in Iowa.

Dean and his band were accused of “gay bashing” in an appearance at a Dunkerton, Iowa, school and warned by the fire chief that the town’s roads would be shut down to keep the band from returning.

But after a letter from Liberty Council, Dean returned to Dunkerton and spoke at the city’s library during the Dunkerton Days festival.

“We were given a victory by God’s providential hand and the example was given to this generation, and anyone else, how they can receive the same victory for truth,” Dean told WND.

“As I travel this awesome God-given nation, I come up with the same conclusion every event I am part of,” Dean said. “The majority of Americans share the conservative Judeo-Christian values I fight for. We can win this culture war when we fight together. It is leadership we are lacking in our cause, someone willing to risk reputation to set the precedent that our silent majority is waiting to join.”

WND also has reported on Dean’s dispute with Rachel Maddow and MSNBC. Maddow was served with a lawsuit alleging defamation for her references to Dean’s group. The case is on appeal.

Find out more about the You Can Run ministry.

Related offers:

Bradlee Dean: The Prayer that Rocked the Capitol [DVD]

My War: 5-Part Documentary [DVD]

My War: The Testimony of Bradlee Dean [Paperback]

The Price, by Junkyard Prophet (Audio CD)

Comedian Bill Maher brought the wrath of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin upon himself when he reportedly referred to her special needs son as “retarded” during a comedy show at the Palms in Las Vegas on Saturday.

After learning about Maher’s so-called “joke,” “Mama Grizzly” Palin went after Maher on Twitter.

“Hey bully, on behalf of all kids whom you hatefully mock in order to make yourself feel big, I hope one flattens your lily white wimpy a#*,” Palin wrote.

“I’m in your neck of the woods this weekend, little Bill. Care to meet so I can tell you how I really feel?” she added.

Time to take a stand

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said during an interview with Glenn Beck last Friday that 20 illegal aliens brazenly walked into his congressional office last Thursday demanding they be given amnesty. King is one of 70 Republican House members who have banded together to fight against Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) “Trojan horse bill” to trick the GOP into voting for amnesty for illegal immigrants.

King tweeted about the invasion:

“Illegal aliens were brought into my office to demand we legalize their illegal activity,” King told Beck during the radio interview.

King urged concerned Americans to attend a press conference/tea party this Wednesday, June 19, from 9 a.m. to noon and again from 2 to 5 p.m. in Washington, D.C. to show support for the Republican House members “who are planning a political showdown with Boehner to force additional discussion on immigration,” according to the Blaze.

“Conservative lawmakers are planning a day-long Lincoln-Douglas-style debate on immigration in front of the U.S. Capitol building next Wednesday,” the Blaze reports, “to counter what they say has been a lack of legitimate debate inside the halls of Congress. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said the open-forum debate will feature ‘border security, anti-amnesty members of Congress.’ King is one of several House Republicans leading a charge for a special Republican conference meeting on an immigration bill they say will mean amnesty for illegal immigrants. … members of Congress will join with an already-planned tea-party rally against the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative organizations.”

Privacy apps on the rise

The recent bombshell revelations (“bombshell” – a red flag word?) that the NSA is collecting all our data is the development of privacy protection apps for your electronic devices. Watch this video to learn more about companies that are developing protections from eavesdropping. Have you heard of Hush Mail? Capitalism and the free market are good things.

Spoof: Facebook changes “privacy” feature

When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg insisted that his social network was not involved in giving up its users’ data to the federal government, Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge used sardonic humor to challenge him, depicting a “new privacy setting”:

2nd Vote

Developed by a concerned conservative from Tennessee, here’s an app for computer and cell phones that keeps your spending aligned with your conservative values. Called 2nd Vote, its website features a video that explains how easy it is to learn which companies support conservative issue which include the Second Amendment, pro-life, marriage, corporate welfare and what companies support liberal agendas.

This app rates them by how they finance the issues. Use the free market system while we still have it.

ESPN’s pink slip makes Facebook news

Popular ESPN on-air personality Howie Schwab was swept out the door as the sports network trims its sails because of a financial crunch.

Schwab, who previously hosted his own program, took to his Facebook page to express his dismay at the firing: “After 26 years at ESPN, I am extremely disappointed to say farewell. I have been proud of my association and my work during my tenure. I was a loyal employee, displayed respect for others, worked with numerous charities, represented the company well. I always did everything asked of me and more. What did I get in return today? … Word that I should get lost. The only thing that mattered was my salary, which in my view was the lone reason I lost my job.”

Casinos not betting with Google Glass

If you’re heading for an evening of gambling in a casino, better leave those Google Glasses home. Quite aware of the potential for cheating at card games, casinos are forbidding gamblers from wearing the tiny eyeglasses-mounted device capable of shooting photos, filming video and surfing the Internet, according to the Boston Globe.

“The New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement issued a directive on Monday ordering Atlantic City’s 12 casinos to bar casino patrons from using the device,” the Globe reports. “The directive was first reported by The Press of Atlantic City. Similar bans are in place at casinos in Las Vegas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Connecticut, among other places.”

”If these eyeglasses were worn during a poker game, they could be used to broadcast a patron’s hand to a confederate or otherwise be used in a collusive manner,” David Rebuck, the division’s director wrote in a memo to the casinos.”

Related: Here’s what happened when Business Insider writers tried on Google Glass for the first time.

Where ya from?

A series of online maps showing regional accents and dialects has been compiled by a Ph.D student at North Carolina State University. Joshua Katz has published fascinating visualizations of a linguistic survey that looked at how Americans pronounce words. “Po-tay-to” or “po-tah-to”?

William Binney

The IRS may have utilized surveillance data collected by the National Security Agency to harass political opponents of the Obama administration, including the tea party, charged NSA whistleblower William Binney in a radio interview.

After working in the intelligence community for more than 30 years, Binney retired from the NSA in 2001. He co-founded a unit on automating NSA signals intelligence and served as technical leader for NSA intelligence in 2001. Binney is credited with helping to modernize the NSA’s worldwide eavesdropping network.

Asked on Aaron Klein’s WABC radio show Sunday whether he believes data collected on millions of Americans was used by the government against political enemies, Binney replied in the affirmative.

“That’s exactly the danger about letting the government have all this kind of information about its citizens,” the ex-NSA official stated.

“For example, one of the [tea party] people testifying to Congress that was being harassed by the IRS said that the IRS, one of the questions the IRS asked them was what relationship do you have with this other person, and they gave a name. The real question that needs to be asked is how does the IRS know about that relationship?”

Binney was referring to testimony on Capitol Hill earlier this month in which tea party activists said they were confronted with questionnaires about their donors and affiliations.

Continued Binney: “The point is if you take in all this metadata … you can figure out who is in the tea party and who is central to the tea party and then if somebody is applying for a tax-free or tax-exempt status, you can check against your list of the tea party and say you should or should not harass them based on that if they match. So, I mean, that’s the hazard of it.

“The real question is, the IRS needs to answer, is how do you know about that relationship? I mean, that’s the key question because that then will tell you about whether or not the government internally is using that, or someone in the government.”

Binney explained how government officials and outside contractors can access private data on citizens.

“See that’s the real problem. You not only have to trust the government to do the right thing. You got to trust all the people working in the government to do the right thing. And then all the contractors that they hired to manage the system, you have to trust them, too.”

Binney also responded to a claim from US intelligence agencies that they only checked the metadata of under 300 telephone accounts in 2012.

“It’s kind of hard to believe that they have on the order of, you know, 10,000 people looking at three hundred phone calls,” he stated.

Binney became a vocal critic of the NSA after his retirement. He has estimated the NSA has intercepted 20 trillion communications “transactions” of Americans, including emails, phone calls and financial data. He has claimed the NSA is “purposefully violating the Constitution.”

His home was raided in 2007 as part of a leak investigation in which he was eventually cleared. Binney had been accused of serving as a source for a 2005 New York Times article exposing the NSA’s warrantless eavesdropping program. His NSA security clearances reportedly have been revoked.

Listen to Part I of the interview:

Part II:

Part III: