Deion Sanders Files for Divorce, Wife Surprised

Former football great Deion Sanders has officially served his wife, Pilar, with divorce papers.

Pilar Sanders is Sanders' second wife and mother of three of his children. She reportedly received the documents Friday morning in Dallas, Texas.

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Click here for Part One of Deya Direct's recent video interview with Pilar Sanders.

Click here for Part Two.

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Here’s what Sanders said about the split: “Enough is enough. I never signed up for all this. Enough is enough. If I wanted a model or a television star, I would have married one a long time ago. All I wanted was a housewife.”

Late Monday afternoon, Pilar Sanders gave HelloBeautiful the following statement: “It’s unfortunate that my husband decided to take this course of action. I’m surprised and hurt. As I said to my children, we must take a minute, breathe and trust God.”

Pilar Sanders recently co-starred in VH1's “Single Ladies” and become a perfumista, all while running multiple charities and dabbling in music.

‘The Chicago Way’

By Howard Rich

As Barack Obama’s radical appointees on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) continue their jihad against American jobs and the free market economy, many have wondered: From where does Obama get the nerve? Based on what warped ideological mooring does the leader of the free world summon the “audacity” to tell private companies where they can (or in Boeing’s case, “can’t”) locate new jobs?
That’s easy — it’s “The Chicago Way.”

Obama’s hometown sets the standard for union appeasement — although a quick look at the Windy City’s pro-union excesses reveals just how corrupt and unsustainable such practices are.
Earlier this month, The Chicago Tribune reported that 23 retired union leaders will collect $56 million from cash-strapped government pension funds — courtesy of a few well-placed lines that were quietly inserted into the state’s 1991 labor law (with no public debate or cost-benefit analysis). It’s the latest in a long line of flagrant abuses — handouts from corrupt politicians who continue to game the system for the personal benefit of a select, powerful few.

For six decades city government workers in Chicago have been granted “leaves of absence” enabling them to work full-time for the unions while retaining their city benefits (including generous pensions). While such an arrangement is patently unfair to taxpayers and should never have been adopted in the first place, some of the abuses that have occurred under its ever-expanding auspices are downright shocking.
For example, the Tribune recently reported on the story of Dennis Gannon — former president of the Chicago Federation of Labor. Gannon has pocketed $1 million in pension fund payments over the last seven years and is in line to receive $5 million more — a level of compensation five times greater than what the typical government retiree receives.

How did Gannon get such a sweetheart deal? The City of Chicago hired him for a single day back in 1994 — and then granted him an “indefinite leave of absence.” Not only that, they pegged his pension amount to his inflated union salary.

Incidentally, Gannon now draws his exorbitant benefits on top of a six-figure salary from a hedge fund that manages public pensions — and was one of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s most generous campaign contributors.
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Team Obama Spotlight: Billionaire George Soros

Video by Frank McCaffrey

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The real crisis

By Robert Romano
Normally, when the Senate passes a piece of legislation, and then the House passes something slightly different, it’s called the legislative process. Now, it’s a crisis.

“Shutdown Fears Rise as House Passes CR That Cannot Pass Senate,” blares one headline. “Shutdown specter rises once more,” warned another. Still another read, “Shutdown Looms as GOP Bends to Will of Tea Party.”
At issue? Just $1.6 billion of spending cuts to the Department of Energy’s lending programs — including those to the bankrupt firm, Solyndra — included in the House bill. The cuts would offset increases in disaster funding.
In principle, such an outcome might result in a conference committee being appointed to hash out differences between the two bills.

But over a measly $1.6 billion less money to a failed lending program for “green” energy, Democrats are instead threatening a government shutdown.

Virginia Democrat Senator Mark Warner blamed “a small group within the House of the tea party crowd” for the impasse. Senior White House advisor David Plouffe said, “We're not going to make progress on the deficit, on things we can do right now for jobs, on tax cuts, unless those 30 or 40 Tea Party members of the Republican House stop being the focal point of our discussion.”

There’s only one problem. When the House failed to pass a continuing resolution on Sept. 21, 48 House Republicans who voted no were demanding there be much, much more in spending cuts, not just a pathetic $1.6 billion. They did not get what they wanted, and on Sept. 23 practically the same exact resolution ultimately passed.

This underscores the true crisis in Washington, D.C., which is that no spending cuts of substance at all can be achieved. Not even miniscule cuts, despite a rapidly escalating national debt of $14.7 trillion projected to rise to $26 trillion by 2021.

At best, the tea party has managed to focus some attention on the perilous debt issue, but thus far has been shut out of making any significant reforms. A little more than $300 million in cuts was found in the previous 2011 continuing resolution, and only $31 billion in cuts out of the 2012 budget in the debt deal.
To put that in perspective, that’s a cut of less than 1 percent out of the $3.7 trillion budget.

Yet we are to believe that somehow, tea party objections are holding up the latest continuing resolution, which actually won’t cut spending at all. After all, the $1.6 billion of cuts in lending programs is an offset.
Since when has the tea party movement advocated not cutting anything at all? What a joke.
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Legal action aims to reverse state bans on race and gender preferences in California and Michigan

By Kevin Mooney

In his amicus brief challenging the legality of a state constitutional amendment that bans race and gender preferences, California Governor Jerry Brown cites the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court Grutter v. Bollinger decision to make his case. Brown also invokes the same “political-structure doctrine” litigants used to overturn Proposition 2 in Michigan. The governor also appears set sign off on a bill that would reinstate preferential policies; a move that is certain to spark additional legal challenges.

On July 1, a three-judge panel on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the anti-discriminatory language included as part of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) actually violated the amendment’s equal protection clause and must therefore be overturned. The two Clinton appointees who formed the majority opinion, declared MCRI, widely known as Proposal 2, to be unconstitutional because it alters the state’s political structure in a manner that unduly burdens racial minorities.

But, Jennifer Gratz, the executive director of the MCRI, points out that opponents of race-neutral initiatives have always misconstrued and misinterpreted Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s majority opinion in Grutter.
“While it’s clear that O’Connor favored a holistic approach that included race, she also said it was acceptable for voters in states to make preferences unconstitutional,” Gratz explained. “She certainly did not mandate the use of preferences and made it clear that over the next 25 years following this decision race should ultimately cease to be a factor.”

O’Connor also ruled that law schools should make a “good faith” effort to adopt race neutral alternatives capable of yielding a diverse student composition. In addition, she encouraged other states to follow the example set by universities in California, Florida and Washington State, which all had state laws prohibiting race preferences at the time of O’Connor’s ruling.
Get full story here.