Cash-strapped cities and towns across America are having to pay out millions of dollars on new signs under orders of the federal government - because they are the wrong letter size. Washington officials have demanded that every single street sign in the nation which is currently in capitals must be replaced because they are supposedly too hard to read. In their place will be new signs with the same green background and the same font, the only difference being that they are in lower-case letters. For some cities the cost will be millions of dollars at a time when budgets are being cut and salaries frozen. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334218/A-case-wrong-case-U-S-cities-forced-spend-millions-changing-street-signs-capital-letters.html#ixzz16mzvebdb

(CNSNews.com) -- The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitals, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show's catalog as "homoerotic."MORE

By Dennis Prager, National Review By now, most people (with the exception of many psychotherapists) recognize that the self-esteem movement officially launched by California in 1986 has been at best silly, and at worst injurious to society, despite whatever small benefit it may have had to some individuals. READ IT HERE

By Debra J. Saunders, Townhall.com In Greece earlier this month, Al Gore made a startling admission: "First-generation ethanol, I think, was a mistake." Unfortunately, Americans have Gore to thank for ethanol subsidies. In 1994, then-Vice President Gore ended a 50-50 tie in the Senate by voting in favor of an ethanol tax credit that added almost $5 billion to the federal deficit last year. And that number doesn't factor the many ways in which corn-based ethanol mandates drive up the price of food and livestock feed. READ IT HERE

(CNSNews.com) - In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.MORE

WASHINGTON - Though some American firms are bringing overseas work back home, evidence is growing that companies are moving more jobs than ever to China and other countries - a trend that could exacerbate efforts to bring down the nation's stubbornly high unemployment rate. One sign of increased offshoring is the rising number of applications for federal Trade Adjustment Assistance, which usually goes to factory workers who lost their jobs because their work was sent overseas or was undercut by cheaper imports. For the six months that ended Sept. 30, workers at about 1,200 offices and plants nationwide were approved for federal Trade Adjustment Assistance. That's about 20 percent more approvals than in the same six-month period last year, according to the U.S. Labor Department.MORE

Battle-weary Bay State Democrats are getting squeezed by U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry this Christmas, as the nation’s richest senator puts the arm on cash-strapped party donors to fill his campaign war chest — even though he’s not up for re-election for another four years. “I think people feel very tapped-out,” said Phil Johnston, former Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman, who is helping to organize Kerry’s Dec. 13 gala. Johnston, who said he is seeing steady ticket sales, still expects a full house.MORE

By Michael Barone We won’t be able to say we weren’t warned. Continued huge federal budget deficits will eventually mean huge increases in government-borrowing costs, Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of Barack Obama’s deficit-reduction commission, predicted this month. “The markets will come. They will be swift, and they will be severe, and this country will never be the same.” READ IT HERE

By Yuliya Chernova, Wall Street Journal One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said. The union blamed financial problems it said were caused by the state’s health department and new national health-insurance requirements. READ IT HERE

By Jeffrey Kuhner, Washington Times President Obama is engaging in a relentless assault on our freedoms and constitutional government. The growing backlash against the new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport screening procedures signifies that Americans finally may have had enough. READ IT HERE

The American Thinker In today's America, feelings have replaced facts as our governing policy. Shame has been relegated to the back of the bus, and squeaky wheels have been given the place of honor.

Politico.com For Democrats in the South, the most ominous part of a disastrous year may not have been what happened on Election Day but in the weeks since. After suffering an historic rout — in which nearly every white Deep South Democrat in the U.S. House was defeated and Republicans took over or gained seats in legislatures across the region — the party’s ranks in Dixie have thinned even further. READ IT HERE

Iceland’s President Olafur R. Grimsson said his country is better off than Ireland thanks to the government’s decision to allow the banks to fail two years ago and because the krona could be devalued. “The difference is that in Iceland we allowed the banks to fail,” Grimsson said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Mark Barton today. “These were private banks and we didn’t pump money into them in order to keep them going; the state did not shoulder the responsibility of the failed private banks.”MORE

The Onion WASHINGTON—Having admittedly "reached the end of [his] rope," President Barack Obama sent a rambling 75,000-word e-mail to the entire nation Wednesday, revealing deep frustrations with America's political culture, his presidency, U.S. citizens, and himself. READ IT HERE

By Anthony W. Hager, The American Thinker In the George Orwell classic Animal Farm, there lived a horse named Boxer. He was strong, willing, and dependable. In fact, Boxer was so dedicated to his assignments and his leader that he often said, "Napoleon is always right," followed by his personal pledge to "work harder" toward accomplishing the state's goals. READ IT HERE

EUGENE -- Two men tried to rob a Dutch Bros. coffee shop Wednesday and police say one of them may have been shot dead by a barista acting in self-defense. The shooting took place about 9 p.m. at a Dutch Bros. near the University of Oregon campus at Franklin and Walnut. Police said at least one of the suspects was armed.  A witness counted 18 police cars responding to the shooting. "We left the restaurant, came down the alley here. There was a gentleman here that said he heard multiple gunshots, sounded like one series then a break, then a small other series."MORE In case you don't know what a barista is: www.starbucks.co.nz/index.cfm?contentNodeID=267

It is starting to look like the president who campaigned on closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay may end up doing something wholly different: signing a law that would pave the way for terrorism suspects to be held indefinitely. Administration officials are looking at the possibility at codifying detention without trial and are awaiting legislation that is supposed to come out of Congress early next year.MORE

By Peter Ferrara, The American Spectator The American people showed on Election Day that this is still America, and that everywhere except on the West Coast we are still able to govern ourselves. But, unfortunately, it was only a first step on a long journey to save our country, the last, best hope for mankind, as has been said. READ IT HERE

The Washington Examiner While lawmakers will be pressing the House to address expiring tax cuts and an arms treaty with Russia when Congress returns this week from its Thanksgiving break, Democratic leaders in the Senate plan to make one last effort to pass an immigration reform bill before their majority diminishes significantly in January. READ IT HERE

Canada Free Press “Winston, come into the dining room, it’s time to eat,” Julia yelled to her husband. “In a minute, honey, it’s a tie score,” he answered.  Actually Winston wasn’t very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington.  Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its “unseemly violence” and the “bad example it sets for the rest of the world,” Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be.  Two-hand touch wasn’t nearly as exciting. READ IT HERE

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is setting aside 187,000 square miles in Alaska as a "critical habitat" for polar bears, an action that could add restrictions to future offshore drilling for oil and gas. The total, which includes large areas of sea ice off the Alaska coast, is about 13,000 square miles, or 8.3 million acres, less than in a preliminary plan released last year.MORE

The growing outrage over the Transportation Security Administration’s new policy of backscatter scanning of airline passengers and “enhanced pat-downs” brings to mind these wise words from President Ronald Reagan: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.’” So, what is all the concern really about — will these radiation scanners increase your risk of cancer or other diseases? A group of scientists and professors from the University of California at San Francisco voiced their concern to Obama’s science and technology adviser John Holdren in a well-stated letter back in April. The group included experts in radiation biology, biophysics, and imaging, who expressed “serious concerns” about the “dangerously high” dose of radiation to the skin.MORE

The College Accreditation Scam Malcolm A. Kline, November 18, 2010 Parents and children who breathe a sigh of relief because the college of their choice is “accredited” may want to wait to exhale. “The main reason for this failure is that the system relies too heavily on colleges to self-regulate,” Andrew Gillen, Daniel L. Bennett and Richard Vedder write in a paper for the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP). “For example 83% of the board for Middle States Commission on Higher Education is comprised of people that work for institutions that they then accredit.” Moreover, despite the long history of accreditation, the main product of a college education, knowledge, has only recently been a concern of accreditors. “Since 1992, accreditors have been required to collect evidence of student learning, but the college lobby has ensured that these are self designed assessments,” Gillen, Bennett and Vedder write. “Thus we are left in the peculiar position in which the ‘standards for accreditation, which vary by region, are based on an institution’s self-study of the extent to which the institution feels it has met its own purposes.’” The situation has not improved since the 1990s. “For instance, a 2006 study by the former president of Teacher’s College at Columbia University concludes that accreditation has failed to provide even a minimum standard for quality of education programs, and even those standards which accreditors have set up to measure quality are ‘misplaced and outdated,’ allowing programs with low quality to receive their stamp of approval,” the authors from CCAP note.MORE