Random links of interest, concern or curiosity from the past week or so, that deserve at least a SHORT mention:

 
Michigan Teachers Union to members: “Pay up or we’ll sue!” ~ Doggedly trying to get around the state’s new right-to-work legislation. The MEA’s not real big on choice – because, of course, “Parent’s DON’T know best.”
 
Life imitates art… Liberals see the world as they imagine it is, not how it actually is ~

Politicians on the left no longer look to objective facts to define the world around them. Rather, they look at the world as they would like it to be and interpret it accordingly. How else could one explain the lunacy that pervades the Democrat party today?

 
Fuzzy, distorted art has lead the Left to a fuzzy, distorted worldview. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to live with the consequences of their warped philosophy.
 

Shock claim: Obama only wants military leaders who ‘will fire on U.S. citizens’ ~ “Shocking,” primarily because it’s coming from a fairly credible source.
Less credible, but a whole lot scarier, is this story: Obama Death Squads Fan Out Across America As Rebellion Looms

 
Ted Nugent on Bloomberg: ‘What Kind of Idiot Thinks That Our Founding Fathers Were Protecting Deer Hunting?’ ~ I’m with “the Nuge” ~ “Those who would take away the right to keep and bear arms or infringe upon it in any way are the enemies of freedom,” Nugent said.
 
And while we’re on the subject of weapons ~ Gun Violence is Not a Republican Problem, It’s a Democratic Problem. It’s not Bible-clinging conservatives doing the shooting ~

There are, as John Edwards said, two Americas. America is a country that runs pretty well. And then there’s Obamerica. Not all of Obamerica is broken, but a lot of it is. America does not have a gun violence problem. Obamerica does. And Obamerica has a gun violence problem for the same reason that it has a drug problem and a broken family problem…
 
… If Obama really wants to get serious about gun violence, then all he has to do is turn to the man standing next to him (Jay-Z). But Obama, like every Chicago politician before him, don’t [sic] want to end the violence. The death toll is profitable, not just for rappers writing bad poetry about dealing drugs and shooting rivals, but for the politicians atop that heap who score money and gain power by using the problems of Obamerica as some sort of call to conscience for the rest of the country.

 
Pakistani doctor’s fate is still undecided ~ Dr. Shakil Afridi, who helped the U.S. find bin Laden, has been sitting in a Pakistani jail since the raid on the terrorist’s compound (May 2011). And our feckless government hasn’t done much of anything to get him released.
 
Running down the clock on Benghazi ~ Well-written re-cap by Doug Hagmann at CanadaFreePress of Wednesday’s Benghazi farce ~

Conducted as fact-finding hearings, many Americans were hopeful that the officials they elected to represent them were finally going to get to the bottom of a deadly event that has been mired in deception since the minute it began to unfold. Instead, Americans were sorely shortchanged by a combination of inept questioning and lengthy monologues of professional praise, the latter which served as an effective tactic to run down the game clock while limiting any errant exposure to the truth.