New ‘Gang of Eight’ On Immigration

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Make way for a new Gang of Eight.

An octet of senators has begun to meet to discuss immigration reform, multiple sources told POLITICO. It’s a possible sign of progress on what’s expected to be a top legislative priority on Capitol Hill next year.

Sources said the fledgling group’s members include: Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, and Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mike Lee of Utah and Sen.-elect Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Some of the senators are already publicly teaming up on the issue. For instance, Schumer announced on “Meet the Press” shortly after the election that he and Graham were joining forces again on immigration, reviving talks from 2010 when the duo had outlined a four-point comprehensive reform proposal.

“Graham and I are talking to our colleagues about this right now and I think we have a darn good chance using this blueprint to get something done this year,” Schumer said on the Nov. 11 show. “The Republican Party has learned that being … anti-immigrant doesn’t work for them politically and they know it.”

Read more from this story HERE.

DeMint Move Ignites Talk of 2016 Presidential Run

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photo credit: gage skidmore

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s surprise announcement that he will leave the U.S. Senate in January to take over leadership of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank has ignited speculation among grass-roots conservatives that DeMint may use the new post as a launching pad for a presidential bid in 2016.

“Jim DeMint will have a bigger microphone than before,” conservative direct-marketing pioneer Richard Viguerie tells Newsmax. “If he wants to, this opens up a lot more opportunities for him. I think there’s a decent chance that he’ll be a serious presidential candidate in four years.”

Viguerie called the move to Heritage “an intermediate step.”

“It’s going to be a boon to the cause, to Heritage,” he said. “And it gives [DeMint] a major opportunity to run for president in four years. And if so, he would be the instant front-runner among most conservatives.”

DeMint already had effectively term-limited himself by announcing he would not seek another six years in the Senate. When GOP hopes of seizing control of the Senate were dashed in November, he was looking at four more years of life as a back-bencher, with relatively little influence over legislation passed by the upper chamber.

Read more from this story HERE.

Salvation Army Seeing Record Number Of Families In Need (+video)

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Officials with the Salvation Army say they’re seeing a record number of families asking for help this holiday season.

Nearly 18,000 families have registered for Christmas assistance in the last month. That number has grown by 2,500 since last year, breaking the 2009 record.

Registered families will get free toys, money for food and other donated items at up to six Salvation Army locations as well as other partnered agencies.

Read more from this story HERE.

You can donate to Salvation Army HERE. And in case you’re interested in its history, the following is a brief video on Salvation Army’s background:

FEMA Teams Told to ‘Sightsee’ as Sandy Victims Suffered

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Hurry up and wait.

That’s what first responders were left to do after being deployed by FEMA to assist in the storm-ravaged areas in the initial days after superstorm Sandy, FoxNews.com has learned. A FEMA worker who spoke to FoxNews.com described a chaotic scene at New Jersey’s Fort Dix, where emergency workers arrived as the storm bore down on the Atlantic Coast. The worker said officials at the staging area were unprepared and told the incoming responders there was nothing for them to do for nearly four days.

“They told us to hurry, hurry, hurry,” the worker, who works at the agency’s headquarters in Washington and volunteered to deploy for the storm recovery effort. “We rushed to Fort Dix, only to find out that our liaison didn’t even know we were coming.”

“The regional coordinator even said to us, ‘I don’t know why you were rushed here because we don’t need you,’” said the worker, who spoke out of frustration with the lack of planning and coordination following the devastating storm.

‘I worked in Katrina and Katrina was run better than Sandy.’

Read more from this story HERE.

FEC Report: Romney and RNC Donors Taken to the Cleaners

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Federal Election Commission financial reports filed Thursday showed that two consulting firms with close ties to key staffers at the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee were paid more than $152 million by the three organizations that funded Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign.

FLS Connect, LLC, the Minnesota-headquartered firm where RNC chief of staff Jeff Larson was a partner from 1999 to 2010 and Romney campaign political director Rich Beeson was a partner from 2005 to 2007 and again from 2009 to 2011, received $56.3 million during the 2011-2012 election cycle. $38.6 million was paid to the firm by the Republican National Committee between January 1, 2011 and November 26, 2012, according to FEC reports. In addition, the Romney campaign paid FLS Connect $17.7 million during the same period . . .

Targeted Victory, LLC, the Virginia-headquartered firm that was co-founded by Romney campaign digital director Zac Moffat, received a total of $96.4 million during the 2011-2012 election cycle. $72 million came from Romney Victory, Inc., $22 million came from the Romney campaign, and $2.4 million came from the Republican National Committee.

Read full story HERE.

Smith and Wesson Posts 48% Increase In Second Quarter Sales As Demand Surges For All Firearm Products

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photo credit: gre.ceres

U.S. firearms manufacturer Smith and Wesson reported a 48 percent increase in sales in its announcement of the company’s second-quarter financial results for fiscal year 2013.

The company’s press release read: “Net sales from continuing operations for the second quarter were a record $136.6 million, up 48.0% from the second quarter last year. The increase was led by continued strong sales across all of the company’s firearm product lines.”

As CNSNews.com previously reported, gun sales have surged since the reelection of Barack Obama, reaching an all-time single day record on Black Friday this year with 154,873 background checks completed by the FBI.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lord Monckton Ejected From U.N. Climate Meeting For Telling Truth

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photo credit: harshil.shah

Stifling Dissent: A lone voice cried out against the global warming sham at the United Nations climate change conference and it was unceremoniously silenced. What are the alarmists afraid of?

Christopher Monckton, the third viscount of Benchley, adviser to Margaret Thatcher and global warming realist, shook up the U.N.’s talks in Doha, Qatar, when he told the delegates that “in the 16 years we have been coming to these conferences, there has been no global warming at all.”

“If we were to take action,” he continued, “the cost of that would be many times greater than the cost of taking adaptive measures later. So our recommendation, therefore, is that we should initiate very quickly a review of the science to make sure we are all on the right track.”

His statement was met with boos and heckles — and, of course, an ejection and seizure of his credentials.

The U.N. will justify the ejection on grounds that Monckton deceptively posed as a delegate from Burma when he spoke. But how else could a skeptic speak at such a gathering?

Read more from this story HERE.

Unemployment Rate Falls; Number of Unemployed Stays the Same

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If it looks like there’s something weird in today’s unemployment announcement, that’s because there is. While the U-3 unemployment rate has declined slightly, to 7.7 percent, that doesn’t seem to reflect an increase in the number of Americans who are actually working.

In fact, labor force participation, the more important statistic for American workforce measurements, is down slightly. The unemployment rate looks better because it’s being measured against a smaller denominator. At Eagle Daily Investor, which is owned by the parent company of Human Events, Paul Dykewicz explains why it’s important to look beyond the headline statistic:

” . . . in November, 2.5 million persons were “marginally attached” to the labor force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier. The data, which are not seasonally adjusted, reflect individuals who the federal agency described as not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. However, those people were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics explained.”

Read full story HERE.

Coburn: GOP’s 2014 Candidates Must Come from ‘Real World’

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Breitbart News recently sat down with Oklahoma Senator Dr. Tom Coburn to get his thoughts on the fiscal cliff and what Republicans can do to win the 2014 midterm elections.

On November 15 Dr. Coburn gave a speech at the American Spectator’s Annual Dinner, addressing these issues. He called the current situation in America a “Valley Forge” moment for conservatives and suggested the GOP concentrate on a few points: truth, oversight, action, and accountability.

Dr. Coburn is famous for keeping an eye on wasteful spending by the government, but the majority of his colleagues ignore his reports. If the government took into consideration his reports and managed the waste instead of making excuses, the current financial mess would not be so difficult to overcome.

“Oversight isn’t very popular in Washington because politicians on both sides prefer to create new programs instead of looking at whether the programs we’ve already created are working,” said Dr. Coburn. “But I believe, oversight resonates with families because that’s how they live their lives every day. In the real world, people look at their budgets and make choices. In Washington, we make excuses, and defer choices to future generations.”

“The task before us is simple,” he explained. “Telling the truth, conducting oversight, taking action and holding politicians accountable will lead us out of our Valley Forge and on to victory.”

Read more from this story HERE.

The Royal Presidency: Obama Lives Better Than Kings

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From the New York Daily News: “Snooki Gives Kate Middleton Advice on Being a New Parent.”

Great! Maybe Kate could return the favor and give Snooki and her fellow Americans some advice. About fiscal prudence, for example. Say what you like about a high-living, big-spending, bloated, decadent, parasitical, wastrel monarchy, but, compared to the citizen-executive of a republic of limited government, it’s a bargain. So, while the lovely Duchess of Cambridge nurses her baby bump, the equally radiant president of the United States nurses his ever more swollen debt belly. He and his family are about to jet off on their Christmas vacation to watch America slide off the fiscal cliff from the luxury beach resort of Kailua. The cost to taxpayers of flying one man, his wife, two daughters, and a dog to Hawaii is estimated at $3,639,622. For purposes of comparison, the total bill for flying the entire royal family (Queen, princes, dukes, the works) around the world for a year is £4.7 million — or about enough for two Obama vacations.

According to the USAF, in 2010 Air Force One cost American taxpayers $181,757 per flight hour. According to the Royal Canadian Air Force, in 2011 the CC-150 Polaris military transport that flew William and Kate from Vancouver to Los Angeles cost Her Majesty’s Canadian subjects $15,505 per hour — or about 8/100ths of the cost.

Unlike a republic, monarchy in a democratic age means you can’t go around queening it. That RCAF boneshaker has a shower the size of a phone booth, yet the Duchess of Cambridge looked almost as glamorous as Snooki when she emerged onto the steps at LAX. That’s probably because Canada’s 437 Squadron decided to splash out on new bedding for the royal tour. Amanda Heron was dispatched to the local mall in Trenton, Ontario, and returned with a pale blue and white comforter and matching pillows. Is there no end to the grotesque indulgence of these over-pampered royal deadbeats? “I found a beautiful set,” said Master-Corporal Heron. “It was such a great price I bought one for myself.”

Nevertheless, Canadian journalists and politicians bitched and whined about the cost of this disgusting jet-set lifestyle nonstop throughout the tour. At the conclusion of their official visit to California, Their Royal Highnesses flew on to Heathrow with their vast entourage of, er, seven people — and the ingrate whining Canadians passed the baton to their fellow ingrate whiners across the Atlantic. As the Daily Mail in London reported, “High Fliers: Prince William and his wife Kate spend an incredible £52,000 on the one-way flight from LA to London for themselves and their seven-strong entourage.” Incredible! For £52,000, you couldn’t take the president from Washington to a state visit to an ice-cream parlor in a Maryland suburb. Obama flew Air Force One from Washington to Williamsburg, Va., requiring a wide-bodied transatlantic jet that holds 500 people to ferry him a distance of a little over 100 miles. And, unlike their British and Canadian counterparts, the American media are entirely at ease with it.

Read more from this article HERE.