A veteran TV anchorman has been fired in the wake of comments he made on the station’s Facebook page claiming “pressure” by the IRS following his 2012 interview with President Barack Obama.

KMOV-TV announced the firing of Larry Conners on its website Wednesday. Conners later told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that his Facebook posting simply raised questions about the possibility of an Internal Revenue Service vendetta. The posting followed national stories about the IRS targeting conservative political groups.

KMOV President and General Manager Mark Pimentel said in a statement that the posting of a personal political opinion on one of the station’s Facebook pages “creates an appearance of bias that is inconsistent with important journalistic standards.”

Conners owes back taxes, a fact eagerly pounced upon by the local left, and for that reason, I initially didn’t believe that Conners had been deliberately targeted by the IRS for the Dear Leader interview.

A day after the posting, Conners read a statement on the 5 p.m. newscast saying his issues with the IRS began before his interview with the president. The IRS claims Conners and his wife owe more than $85,000 in taxes from 2008-2010.

But I believe it now.

Conners told the Post-Dispatch that he had been on a payment plan with the IRS, but that after the Obama interview, the plan was cancelled and a lien was placed on his home in Clayton.

KMOV is begging Larry Conners to sue them and Conners seems only too happy to oblige.

Less than 24 hours after KMOV fired Larry Conners, attorneys for the 66-year-old former anchorman are getting their ducks lined up for a lawsuit.

In a letter released to the media at 4 p.m., Conners’ attorney, Merle Silverstein, asked station officials to “carefully preserve and not destroy any and all papers, records and documents relating to Mr. Conners’ employment and termination …”

The letter, addressed to KMOV president and general manager Mark Pimentel, then lists all of the records and emails that could relate to the firing.

Silverstein was unavailable for further comment.

Pimentel said he has not yet read the letter and declined to comment.

The letter also asks for all communications on the KMOV Facebook site — including the pages assigned to anchors Sharon Reed, Steve Savard, Jasmine Huda, Claire Kellett, Andre Hepkins, Robin Smith and Vickie Newton — from 2002 until the present.

There’s been speculation around town that KMOV was looking to ease Conners out and just used Conners’ Facebook posting as an excuse.  If that’s true, I hope that the people who report the news at KMOV realize how bad their employer has just made them all look.

Want to replace a guy like Larry Conners?  Simple.  Ignore all this, wait until his contract is up, tell him you’ve decided to go in a different direction, thank him for his years of service and let him gracefully retire.  What you most emphatically don’t do is make it look like you capped the guy because somebody leaned on you to fire Conners for making the Dear Leader look bad and right now, that is precisely how this looks.

If I were a KMOV news reporter, I would be extraordinarily pissed off at station management right now and I’d probably start e-mailing my resume around town and around the country.  Because of how this situation was handled, a lot of us in this town are never again going to trust KMOV news.

But for Larry Conners, at least, there is an upside to all this.  If he wins his lawsuit, his tax problems are very likely over.

[Goverment] Motors Corporation said it is recalling nearly 20,000 new Cadillac SRX SUVs for faulty wheel lug nuts, according to a Detroit News report on Wednesday.

The Detroit automaker told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration it is recalling 18,871 2013 SRX SUVs in the United States and nearly 1,000 in Canada over concerns that a wheel could eventually fall off.

When your 18-year-old daughter is expelled and charged with sexual battery of a child, one option is to go public and declare she’s a martyr under fire from anti-gay bias. That’s the approach taken by the parents of Kaitlyn Hunt, a Florida teen who faces two felony charges of “lewd or lascivious battery” on a child. And sure enough, the tactic has earned Hunt some high-profile left-wing media defenders.

According to the charges, Hunt, a senior at Sebastian River High School who was set to graduate this spring, pressured a 14-year-old girl four years her junior to be her “girlfriend” and engage in sexual activity with her. But when Kaitlyn faced prosecution from her underage partner’s parents, her own parents and gay activists immediately granted her victim status, claiming she was unjustly persecuted for being homosexual.

 Not surprisingly, leftie headlines followed. In the account of ThinkProgress (funded by left-wing sugar daddy George Soros), Hunt was “charged with felony for same-sex relationship with classmate,” while Huffington Post lamented that she “faces felony charges over same-sex relationship” and offers links to petitions and support pages for Hunt. 

ThinkProgress quoted Hunt’s mother talking about the underage girl’s parents: “they feel like my daughter “made” their daughter gay. They are bigoted, religious zeolites [sic] that see being gay as a sin and wrong, and they blame my daughter.” [emphasis in original] 

Talk like that is catnip to the libertine left, always eager to take a stand against sexual prudery and oppression – especially if evil religious types are involved. 

But the sexual activity in question occurred when Hunt was an 18 year-old senior and her “girlfriend” was only 14. “Police said a 4 year age gap is a serious difference. They say a 14-year-old is not old enough to give consent,” according to a local news report. 

That’s been the line from Murder, Inc, NARAL and the rest of the pro-infanticide community so far but I don’t know how much longer they’ll be able to claim it with a straight face.  Since it will be another year or two before America’s national news media picks up this story, if it ever does, it seems that a second abortion clinic from Hell, if you’ll pardon the redundancy, has emerged in Texas:

A second ‘house of horrors’ abortion clinic is being investigated in Texas, just days after Dr Kermit Gosnell was found guilty of murdering newborns at his Philadelphia termination center.

Houston doctor Douglas Karpen is accused by four former employees of delivering live fetuses during third-trimester abortions and killing them by either snipping their spinal cord, stabbing a surgical instrument into their heads or ‘twisting their heads off their necks with his own bare hands’.

Other times the fetus was so big he would have to pull it out of the womb in pieces, Karpen’s ex-assistant, Deborah Edge, said in an Operation Rescue video, which has prompted a criminal investigation into the doctor.

‘Sometimes he couldn’t get the fetus out… he would yank pieces – piece by piece – when they were oversize,’ Edge explained.

‘And I’m talking about the whole floor dirty. I’m talking about me drenched in blood.’

Here are some cell phone pictures of Karpen’s victims taken at his clinic but I would strongly advise you to think very hard before clicking on that link.

Piece of crap.

Her daughter Rebecca relates:

You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale.

My mother’s feminist principles coloured every aspect of my life. As a little girl, I wasn’t even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent were what really mattered according to her.

To say that the relationship between Ms. Walker and her mother is strained doesn’t even begin to describe it.

I love my mother very much, but I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since I became pregnant. She has never seen my son  -  her only grandchild. My crime? Daring to question her ideology.

Well, so be it. My mother may be revered by women around the world  -  goodness knows, many even have shrines to her. But I honestly believe it’s time to puncture the myth and to reveal what life was really like to grow up as a child of the feminist revolution.

What did the prophet Isaiah mean when he said that all our righteous acts are like filthy rags?  He meant this.

Ironically, my mother regards herself as a hugely maternal woman. Believing that women are suppressed, she has campaigned for their rights around the world and set up organisations to aid women abandoned in Africa  -  offering herself up as a mother figure.

But, while she has taken care of daughters all over the world and is hugely revered for her public work and service, my childhood tells a very different story. I came very low down in her priorities  -  after work, political integrity, self-fulfilment, friendships, spiritual life, fame and travel.

Who wouldn’t enjoy finding out that your own mother considered you a curse?

I was 16 when I found a now-famous poem she wrote comparing me to various calamities that struck and impeded the lives of other women writers. Virginia Woolf was mentally ill and the Brontes died prematurely. My mother had me  -  a ‘delightful distraction’, but a calamity nevertheless. I found that a huge shock and very upsetting.

I imagine.  But hey, everybody has bad days.  And Alice Walker could be a real hands-on mom when she wanted to be.

According to the strident feminist ideology of the Seventies, women were sisters first, and my mother chose to see me as a sister rather than a daughter. From the age of 13, I spent days at a time alone while my mother retreated to her writing studio  -  some 100 miles away. I was left with money to buy my own meals and lived on a diet of fast food.

As a result of all this maternal love and attention, Rebecca Walker’s adolescence was about what one would have expected it to have been.

But the truth was I was very lonely and, with my mother’s knowledge, started having sex at 13. I guess it was a relief for my mother as it meant I was less demanding. And she felt that being sexually active was empowering for me because it meant I was in control of my body.

Although I was on the Pill  -  something I had arranged at 13, visiting the doctor with my best friend  -  I fell pregnant at 14. I organised an abortion myself. Now I shudder at the memory. I was only a little girl. I don’t remember my mother being shocked or upset. She tried to be supportive, accompanying me with her boyfriend.

A decision she later came to deeply regret.

Although I believe that an abortion was the right decision for me then, the aftermath haunted me for decades. It ate away at my self-confidence and, until I had Tenzin, I was terrified that I’d never be able to have a baby because of what I had done to the child I had destroyed. For feminists to say that abortion carries no consequences is simply wrong.

Alice Walker was not thrilled at the prospect of becoming a grandmother.

Although I knew what my mother felt about babies, I still hoped that when I told her I was pregnant, she would be excited for me.

Instead, when I called her one morning in the spring of 2004, while I was at one of her homes housesitting, and told her my news and that I’d never been happier, she went very quiet. All she could say was that she was shocked. Then she asked if I could check on her garden. I put the phone down and sobbed  -  she had deliberately withheld her approval with the intention of hurting me. What loving mother would do that?

Easy.  A loving mother wouldn’t do that.  Of course I can’t speak for God but from the looks of it, I’d say that Rebecca Walker is pretty much off the hook for Exodus 20:12.

Worse was to follow. My mother took umbrage at an interview in which I’d mentioned that my parents didn’t protect or look out for me. She sent me an e-mail, threatening to undermine my reputation as a writer. I couldn’t believe she could be so hurtful  -  particularly when I was pregnant.

Devastated, I asked her to apologise and acknowledge how much she’d hurt me over the years with neglect, withholding affection and resenting me for things I had no control over  -  the fact that I am mixed-race, that I have a wealthy, white, professional father and that I was born at all.

But she wouldn’t back down. Instead, she wrote me a letter saying that our relationship had been inconsequential for years and that she was no longer interested in being my mother. She even signed the letter with her first name, rather than ‘Mom’.

Then feminist icon Alice Walker did this.

And I have since heard that my mother has cut me out of her will in favour of one of my cousins. I feel terribly sad  -  my mother is missing such a great opportunity to be close to her family. But I’m also relieved. Unlike most mothers, mine has never taken any pride in my achievements. She has always had a strange competitiveness that led her to undermine me at almost every turn.

And so, whether aware of it or not, Rebecca Walker did what most people with parents like hers do.  She rejected just about everything her “mother” believes in.

It’s been almost four years since I have had any contact with my mother, but it’s for the best  -  not only for my self-protection but for my son’s well-being. I’ve done all I can to be a loyal, loving daughter, but I can no longer have this poisonous relationship destroy my life.

I know many women are shocked by my views. They expect the daughter of Alice Walker to deliver a very different message. Yes, feminism has undoubtedly given women opportunities. It’s helped open the doors for us at schools, universities and in the workplace. But what about the problems it’s caused for my contemporaries?

The ease with which people can get divorced these days doesn’t take into account the toll on children. That’s all part of the unfinished business of feminism.

Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating.

But far from taking responsibility for any of this, the leaders of the women’s movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them  -  as I have learned to my cost. I don’t want to hurt my mother, but I cannot stay silent. I believe feminism is an experiment, and all experiments need to be assessed on their results. Then, when you see huge mistakes have been paid, you need to make alterations.

Alice Walker inadvertently taught her daughter about the only thing that endures.

The other day I was vacuuming when my son came bounding into the room. ‘Mummy, Mummy, let me help,’ he cried. His little hands were grabbing me around the knees and his huge brown eyes were looking up at me. I was overwhelmed by a huge surge of happiness.

I am my own woman and I have discovered what really matters  -  a happy family.

That, as they say, is going to leave a mark.  Read the whole sad thing.

For five days, reporters at the Associated Press had been sitting on a big scoop about a foiled al-Qaeda plot at the request of CIA officials. Then, in a hastily scheduled Monday morning meeting, the journalists were asked by agency officials to hold off on publishing the story for just one more day.

The CIA officials, who had initially cited national security concerns in an attempt to delay publication, no longer had those worries, according to individuals familiar with the exchange. Instead, the Obama administration was planning to announce the successful counterterrorism operation that Tuesday.

AP balked and proceeded to publish that Monday afternoon. Its May 2012 report is now at the center of a controversial and broad seizure of phone records of AP reporters’ home, office and cellphone lines. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the unauthorized disclosure about an intelligence operation to stop al-Qaeda from detonating explosives aboard a U.S. airliner was among the most serious leaks he could remember, and justified secretly obtaining records from a handful of reporters and editors over a span of two months.

AP’s story about the foiled plot was at odds with the calming message the White House had been conveying on the eve of the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. On April 30, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying that there was “no indication of any specific, credible threats or plots against the US tied to the one-year anniversary of Bin Laden’s death.”

Henry Owen Pawlak was born at 8:55 pm on 5/17/13. 9 lbs 3 oz. and 22 inches long. Mother and baby are fine. Daddy’s tired…

When the Barack H. Obama Foundation sought tax-exempt status to raise money for good works in Kenya, the Internal Revenue Service provided quick help.

The IRS approved charitable status for the foundation, which was run by President Obama’s brother and named after his father, in about a month’s time. The IRS also agreed to give the group this important financial status retroactively, back to 2009, when it had begun its fundraising.

The 34 days the IRS’s Cincinnati office took to process the foundation’s application stands in contrast to the waits of several months — and sometimes longer than a year — that several conservative groups say they experienced with the same office. Obama has apologized, saying Americans have a right to be angry that the office improperly targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny.