The federal SNAP (i.e., "food stamp program") requires what is referred too as "workfare" --meaning recipients have to get job training or show proof they are looking for a job to qualify -- but states have been givendiscretion to grant exemptions for any number of reasons. Until now, Indiana has been pretty generous with the exemptions. No more:
Refer back to this stunning chart the next time President Obama or someone else from the "penalizing wealth" crowd goes on about the rich not paying their "fair share" of taxes:
A friend texted me on Saturday: "Bill Cosby? Rape allegations? What a world . . ." I share her sentiments.
Aww. Chris Christie has a gambling problem:
As the gaming industry continues its free fall, Christie says he wants to "stop the bleeding" in Atlantic City, where the municipal government is a financial train wreck and the casinos have become mostly losing bets for their owners as former patrons flock to competitors in neighboring states.
The Board of Health in the Massachusetts town of Westminster is considering making the town the first in the nation to ban all sales of all tobacco products. A public hearing on the proposal drew a noisy crowd of opponents, and it wasn't just smokers who thought the idea was downright stupid.
If you're gonna make some people mad, why not just go for the grand prize and upset everybody?
Well, here we go. I knew this was coming, but I didn't expect it this soon. The Marines are apparently ready to roll out a plan to evaluate women in combat roles:
In combat, the No. 4 cannoneer on an artillery crew must heave 100-pound rounds, one after another, into the loading tray of a 155 mm howitzer.
Man, this is just flat-out amazing:
Mankind has just cleared another hurdle in space exploration: landing the first spacecraft on a comet.
Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, what am I going to do with you?
I'm always on the lookout for good writing tips, both to improve my own work and to pass along to others who want to do likewise. Here's a good piece with six tips from Harvard's Steven Pinker. Two are expecially worth mentioning here.
The first is "Don't bury the lead":
It's kind of hard to keep thinking of the United States as the world's foremost champion of freedom when the commander in chief isn't exactly on board:
It was good to have a week off. My brother and sister and I traveled to our birthplace of Perry County, Ky., to visit our one living aunt and a bunch of cousins from both sides of the family. We found the county seat, Hazard, much changed from our last visit. Our childhood home of Fourseam, a coal camp so named because, you know, four seams of coal in the mine, was all but eaten up by kudzu. The vine that ate the South, indeed.
Taking my usual post-campaign season r&r vacation. Back on Tuesday, Nov. 11. Hope your candidates do well. Except unless, you know, you picked the wrong ones.
I'm not well versed in Catholic theology, so I don't know how big a deal this is. And the press has a long history of hopelessly mangling what popes say, so I'm not even sure he really even believes this. But I do find it interesting:
Isn't "post-birth abortion" what we used to call infanticide?
A trend seen by prolife activists that frequently engage college students on campuses nationwide is the growing acceptance of post-birth abortion, or killing the infant after he or she is born, campus prolife outreach leaders tell The College Fix.
OK, we shouldn't really be in panic mode over Eboal -- I get that. It's not that easily spread, and our health care workers are the best in the world and blah, blah, blah. But surely we're right to be a little worried when our public officials treat us to one stunning display of incompetence and incoherence and another. The insults to our collective intelligence are just getting more and more galling:
OK, negative political ads tend to be misleading. We all know that. Still, one that's on TV now is a little galling.
It's on behalf of Democratic state Senate candidate Jack Morris, and it is, of course, a slam on Republican candidate Liz Brown. She is "mean," the ad says, and "aggressive" and "driven by politics and revenge," all things Morris will banish with, I guess, the politics of niceness.
In a case of the pygmies feeling free to pass judgment on the giants, we have White House spokesman Josh Earnest weighing in on White House efforts to replace states' "patchwork of Ebola quarantine laws" with a one-size-fits-all national policy:
This is interesting, and I find it somewhat surprising:
