The most recent indication that the U.S. military may well be in Afghanistan to stay comes from Marc Grossman, the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Appearing on a panel at the annual meeting of the International Stability Operations Association in Washington on October 16, Grossman said that “the State Department is about to begin formal negotiations over the extension of U.S. troops past 2014,” according to Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy magazine.

Another day, another subsidized “green energy” firm going bankrupt. This time it’s A123 Systems Inc., a Massachusetts-based manufacturer of batteries for electric cars that received about $500 million in state and federal assistance, including a $249 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

A123, which has tumbled in value from $2.3 billion to just $11 million, filed for bankruptcy in Delaware on Tuesday after missing an interest payment on $143.8 million of debt.

The Education Minister of Ontario, Canada, — a professing Catholic who sends her children to Catholic schools — declared October 10 that the province’s publicly funded Catholic schools may not teach students that abortion is wrong because such teaching amounts to “misogyny,” which is prohibited in schools under a controversial anti-bullying law.

“Taking away a woman’s right to choose could arguably be considered one of the most misogynistic actions that one could take,” Laurel Broten said during a press conference.

“Bill 13,” she asserted, “is about tackling misogyny.”

ObamaCare’s employer mandate was supposed to guarantee that most Americans would obtain health insurance through their employers. But for those workers least able to afford insurance on their own — service employees paid on an hourly basis — the law may well be having precisely the opposite effect, as companies simply reduce the number of employees who must be covered by cutting hours.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Darden Restaurants, Inc., operator of casual dining chains such as Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and LongHorn Steakhouse, is doing just that. ObamaCare requires companies to provide “affordable” health insurance to employees working at least 30 hours per week or pay fines of up to $3,000 per employee who instead obtains taxpayer-subsidized insurance on a state exchange. Darden, therefore, is experimenting with limiting most of its employees to 28 hours per week, thus freeing it from the mandate and its accompanying fine.

A video posted by the Obama campaign clearly shows that ObamaCare was based on Romneycare — and inadvertently shows that both are the products of socialist activists. By Michael Tennant

“Social Security is structurally sound,” President Barack Obama declared during the October 3 presidential debate in Denver.

Apparently the president has yet to peruse this year’s annual report from the Social Security trustees. It would also seem that neither his opponent, Mitt Romney, nor the debate moderator, Jim Lehrer, has read the report for neither challenged him on this ludicrous statement.

President Barack Obama has been saying for months that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney plans to slash Medicare spending, thereby denying senior citizens healthcare, but that Obama himself will save and strengthen it. According to journalist Bob Woodward, however, Obama has admitted in private that he plans to cut the program by $250 billion over 10 years; he just won’t say so in public because that would be “bad politics.”

As part of an effort to encourage Mexicans living in the United States to enroll in the federal food stamp program, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) employees have met with Mexican officials over 150 times in the past eight years, the Daily Caller reports. The result: an enormous increase in the number of noncitizens participating in the program and a concomitant rise in federal spending and debt.

Those concerned about U.S. sovereignty have worried that Democrats would try to ram certain UN agreements — the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) — through the Senate during the lame-duck session following the November elections. What they may not have anticipated, however, is that they would try to sneak those treaties past their colleagues by other means.

The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute says that’s what Sen. Richard Durbin attempted during a sparsely attended session on the evening of Sept. 20. C-FAM reports: “With just a few people on the Senate floor, [Durbin] tried to pass the Disability treaty by unanimous consent.” Had he succeeded, the treaty would have been ratified with no recorded vote. Fortunately, Sen. Mike Lee was there when Durbin tried to pull this stunt — and put a stop to it.

For all his talk about cutting the deficit, President Barack Obama has been anything but shy about spending taxpayers’ money lavishly — and not just on favored political constituencies. According to the Daily Caller, last year taxpayers had to fork over a whopping $1.4 billion just to pay the expenses of the president, his family, and his staff.