Against the backdrop of the World Health Organization notifying the public the death toll has now reached over 900, and a second Ebola patient is confirmed in Nigeria, a new bulletin reflects a New York hospital may have just encountered a U.S. Ebola patient:

BREAKING IN NYC: Person has been quarantined at Mt Sinai Hospital after returning from a West African country & SHOWING SYMPTOMS OF EBOLA
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 4, 2014

CNN BREAKING: Patient at Mt. Sinai Hospital in NYC being tested for #Ebola — high fever, reporting recent travel to west Africa

— Vaughn Sterling (@vplus) August 4, 2014

New York officials are asking the public to remain calm, and if needed to panic in an orderly manner, until further testing can confirm.
Meanwhile in Liberia society has turned downright medieval. (more…)

(Via Daily Beast)  In a major defeat for Kurdish forces the Iraqi town of Sinjar was captured Sunday by the group known as ISIS, now calling itself the Islamic State. This is the Kurds first major loss to ISIS and a catastrophe for the religious minorities who had taken refuge in the area and are now at imminent risk of being slaughtered.
Reports from the region describe an unfolding tragedy with young women being abducted, religious monuments destroyed, and the ISIS flag now hanging over government buildings. (more…)

Everyone knows there are professional pundits in the establishment GOP who’s entire existence is essentially dependent on maintaining a relationship with the power elites.
In the Mississippi Senate challenge between the establishment’s professional Alzheimer’s patient, Thad Cochran, and conservative challenger Chris McDaniel the desperation of pundit transparency is turning comical.
Against a bit of backlash from the pesky unwashed conservative less than’s, the Daily Caller wing (Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter et al) decided to remain in the kitchen.   Still intent on service to the party however, they well trimmed the cucumber sandwich crusts, and dispatched Matt Lewis into the crowd carrying his platter of “white bread only” samples.
Lewis strolls around notifying everyone that he garnered inside Intel on the pesky racists in Mississippi:

Chris McDaniel’s team issued a press release late last week saying that the Mississippi GOP is “prohibited from recognizing Thad Cochran as their nominee for U.S. Senate in accordance with the rules of the Republican National Committee” — because Democrats participated in his election.

But a first draft of that same release, obtained by The Daily Caller, twice called out “black Democrats” as the culprits.

While both references to “black” were stripped out of McDaniel’s public press release, the “1st Draft” refers to “black Democrats” and talks about Cochran campaign soliciting “black Democrat votes.”   (link)

So there.   (more…)

In response to a lawsuit filed by government watchdog Judicial Watch, a federal court rejected legal arguments by the Obama administration and ordered the Justice Department to release certain information about “Fast and Furious” documents it is withholding from Congress and the public. Analysts and lawmakers have long argued that Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, the latter of whom is still in criminal contempt of Congress, are trying to cover-up details in the deadly “Fast and Furious” scandal, which saw the Obama administration put thousands of weapons into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. The latest order could finally shed some light on what the executive branch is trying to hide.
(more…)

Initially a trial judge convicted him, he appealed to -and received- a jury trial.  The jury thought the accused showed remarkable restraint only firing once.   Same accusations/charges, two trial types, 180° divergent results.

VIRGINIA – After battling authorities for more than a year, a Portsmouth, Virginia, man was handed a verdict of not guilty by a jury who determined that he did not, in fact, act recklessly when he fired a warning shot at officers who attempted to make forcible entry into his home, only to later discover that they had gone to the wrong house.
The incident, which happened last January, unfolded while Brandon Watson and his wife were watching late-night TV and heard noises coming from the back yard.
“She said, ‘Oh my gosh, someone is in the backyard,’” Watson told reporters. “The noises got closer and then she heard the clicking of the backdoor handle.”
At that point Watson ran to grab his gun, which was legally owned.
“We ran upstairs very quickly,” Watson recalled. “She saw guys in all black.”
Watson didn’t immediately call 911 because he couldn’t find his cell phone. However, he wasn’t about to let anyone come into his home and possibly harm his family either. So he ran back downstairs, gun in hand.
Watson called out into the darkness, saying, “Who is that? I have a gun.”
He received no response, but instead then saw a red laser aimed at his chest. (more…)

WASHINGTON DC – Only two years ago, House Republicans voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Recently, Senate Republicans have trashed the former head of his civil rights division, Thomas Perez, and blocked his current choice to run the division, Debo Adegbile. […]
Holder remains indifferent to conservative protests that he is an ‘activist’ looking for trouble by digging into what he calls “policies [with] disproportionate impact on communities of color.”
“If you want to call me an activist attorney general, I will proudly accept that label,” he said. “Any attorney general who is not an activist is not doing his or her job. The responsibility of the attorney general is to change things [and] bring us closer to the ideals expressed in our founding documents.”
Later, he defiantly added that critics who say his department includes an “activist civil rights division and this is an activist attorney general — I’d say I agree with you 1000 percent and [I am] proud of it.”  (read more)

Cetera is an avid reader and friend of the Tree House, and an occasional commenter.  He currently resides in Wyoming, having given up on Colorado after 10 years and deciding to move his family to a more politically friendly state.  What follows is his effort at communicating Truths inspired by his Christian faith and the Spirit. The first two posts are linked at the bottom, this being the third in a series of five.

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We are all here to support each other, to keep a watchful eye on each other and our Republic, and to fight the good fight when and where it is needed.  Each of us shoulders responsibility we assign only to ourselves, that we pick up voluntarily, and in each of our own ways we promote Truth and Justice.  In short, we are here to keep the faith, because at some level each of us feels that faith under assault or under siege.
For a great many of us, we may never have put into words or closely examined the fundamental principles and truths that we feel inside of us, and what they mean.  I would like to have a discussion on these First Principles over this and several future posts.

Charity touches on a great many pieces of ourselves that we are striving to perfect.  Firstly, charity is an act or action.  We have to choose it and physically carry it out, making it at the very least an act of will. (more…)

After Hamas previously refused the Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire, Egypt’s President el-Sisi gave the PA some much needed straight talk; telling both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority they needed to (“both”) come to consensus *before* Cairo could/would mediate any agreement with Israel.   The approach worked:

[*we would be remiss if we did not note that el-Sisi will not be attending the African Summit in DC]

EGYPT – A Palestinian delegation including Hamas agreed joint demands Sunday to present to Egyptian mediators in Cairo for a truce with Israel, including an end to the Gaza blockade, officials said.
The delegation, which includes members of president Mahmud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, will meet the Egyptian mediators later on Sunday.
Cairo will then relay the demands to Israel, which baulked at sending negotiators after accusing Hamas of breaching a 72-hour truce moments after it began on Friday.
The Palestinians, who met earlier on Sunday to hammer out a joint position, agreed on “a ceasefire; Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza; the end of the siege of Gaza and opening its border crossings,” said Maher al-Taher, a member of the delegation.
The Palestinian demands also include fishing rights up to 12 nautical miles off Gaza’s coast and the release of Palestinian prisoners demanded by Hamas and Abbas, said Taher, a senior official with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
A Hamas official confirmed the agreement, saying: “These are the main points, but they must be discussed with the Egyptians. We hope things go smoothly.” (more…)

This is really a great example of how sunlight on truth can become antithetical when the media who find it have an opposing agenda.

(Via The Blaze)  A correspondent covering the Gaza conflict for a Finnish media outlet reported seeing a rocket being launched from Gaza City’s main hospital, Shifa, but later lashed out at the pro-Israel media for its “disgusting” use of her report as a “propaganda weapon.”
The report filed by Aishi Zidan of Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat noted that the rocket was fired from the backyard of the hospital. Israel has widely derided Hamas for what it calls a human shields policy, hiding its military assets and firing from behind civilian sites including mosques, schools and hospitals.

We swear we are not kidding when we say “Milli Vanilli”. He really is not intelligent. It’s all a ruse. This is the first affirmative action lip-syncing president ever.   Most often it’s only noticed when he doesn’t ask for help in pronouncing the lyrics.
“Michael and I”… Really? Good grief….