Obama Administration has SLASHED Budget for Domestic Bombing Prevention by 45 Percent, Says Former DHS Assistant Secretary

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Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Pe

Barack Obama’s administration has cut the budget nearly in half for preventing domestic bombings, MailOnline can reveal. Under President George W. Bush, the Department of Homeland Security had $20 million allocated for preventing the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by terrorists working inside the United States. The current White House has cut that funding down to $11 million.

That assessment comes from Robert Liscouski, a former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15 that killed three Americans and injured at least 173 others. He told MailOnline that the Obama-era DHS is, on the whole, about as well-positioned as it was during the Bush administration to handle the aftermath of the April 15 bombings in Boston, ‘but the Obama administration has continued to cut the budget for offices such as the Office for Bombing Prevention from $20 million started under Bush, to $11 million today.’

‘Comparatively,’ he added, ‘the Defense Department’s Joint IED Defeat Organization had a budget of $1 billion per year focused on preventing IEDs in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters.’

‘Clearly more money needs to be focused on countering domestic IEDs,’ Liscouski concluded. He is now a partner at Edge 360, a security and intelligence consultancy.

The Office for Bombing Prevention (OBP) was created in 2003 when the Department of Homeland Security was founded. Its original name was the WMD/Bombing Prevention Unit, and it was part of the department’s Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate.

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Republican Money Backs Immigration Push

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Photo Credit: AP

As Congress readies for a drawn-out immigration debate, an expanding network of Republican fundraisers is pressing for a path to legal status for millions of immigrants living in the United States illegally.

Business leaders and donors who raised tens of millions in the last election are meeting with top GOP fundraisers and Republican lawmakers who may be reluctant to support what critics call “amnesty” for immigrants who broke the law.

At the same time, a coalition of fundraisers who support overhauling immigration is funneling donations to a new crop of outside groups designed to protect like-minded congressional Republicans who fear a backlash by GOP’s core supporters.

In most cases, the donors have ties to Wall Street and businesses that want more high- and low-skilled immigrants in the nation’s legal labor pool. Backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, these business-minded Republican fundraisers say they’re getting a relatively receptive audience in the face of an undeniable new political reality. Record Hispanic turnout helped President Barack Obama defeat Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney last fall. And projected population growth ensures that immigrants’ political clout will grow stronger.

The network of Republican donors is at odds with many on the GOP’s right flank — tea party activists among them — who argue for increased border security first and foremost. That was largely the position of Romney, who encouraged immigrants without legal status to “self-deport.”

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Ricin Letter to Senator Roger Wicker Intercepted at Screening Facility

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Photo Credit: Kevin Steinhardt

Police intercepted a letter laced with the poison ricin that was sent to Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), senators told reporters Tuesday.

The Senate sergeant-at-arms broke the news to members in a classified briefing, saying that the substance was intercepted at an off-site facility where Congress gets its mail, according to several lawmakers. It was tested repeatedly.

“It was caught in the screening facility. That’s why we have an off-site screening facility for mail,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “The system worked the way it was supposed to.”

She added that authorities may suspect an individual who often wrote to senators. Other senators did not describe a suspect.

“There is an ongoing investigation,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters as he left the briefing with FBI Director Robert Mueller and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano that the letter was addressed to Wicker. Mueller and Napolitano also presented detailed information on the Boston bombings.

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Global Warming? Honey Bees Dying Due to Record Cold

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Photo Credit: Reuters

The cold winter hasn’t just upset retailers trying to sell spring clothes.

The freezing temperatures have also led to shrinking honeybee populations in the U.S., according to George Hansen, president of the American Beekeeping Federation. This may seem like small potatoes – if not for the fact that honeybees pollinate $15 billion of U.S. crops, according to the USDA.

“We’re probably looking at 40% losses of colonies over this winter,” says George Hansen, the president of the American Beekeeping Federation.

Who’s Getting Stung?

Beekeepers and honey producers say they’ll be the first to get stung by poor honeybee health. Declining colony numbers are thought to be caused by a number of factors, including pesticides and the mysterious “Colony Collapse Disorder,” which Hansen says causes bees to suddenly disappear from the hive.

“I’ve seen a 65% loss over the winter … generally the loss would only range from 5% to 15%,” says Cathy Wolko of the Connecticut-based Humble Honey Bee Honey Company.

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McCain, Schumer: Obama Supports our Immigration Bill

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Photo Credit: White House

Sens. John McCain and Chuck Schumer said they were encouraged after a meeting with President Obama at the White House Tuesday, saying he supports the immigration reform bill they plan to introduce tonight and hope to pass by June.

“We’re feeling very good about this,” Schumer said outside the West Wing. “The president’s supportive of our proposal.”

“The president realizes that everybody didn’t get what they wanted,” McCain said. “We appreciate the president’s support. We believe that that’s important as we move forward with the process.”

One of the things the president didn’t want, Schumer said, was a trigger that tied the opening of a pathway to citizenship to tighter border security. But, he said, he and the other members of the Gang of 8 senators who brokered the legislation felt it was important to prevent a so-called third wave of immigrants, who would flood the country and require another immigration-reform bill in the future.

McCain credited the election in November with helping to build support for the measure, and he said it has a much better chance of succeeding than previous efforts. “Most Americans support this proposal far more than did in 2007,” he said.

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Police: Stolen Diamond Engagement Ring Swallowed By Thief

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Photo Credit: Facebook

A Manchester, N.H., man was arrested Thursday after he attempted to steal a diamond engagement ring by swallowing it at Bellman’s Jewelers, reported WMUR-New Hampshire.

52-year-old Ronald Perley allegedly attempted to flee with a $2,000 white gold and diamond ring but was stopped by employee-controlled safety door looks.

“The gentleman walks in and says, ‘I’m looking for an engagement ring,’ so she brings him over to the showcase and she starts showing him a few rings,” said owner of Bellman’s Jewelers, David Bellman.

“While she’s doing that he takes one of the rings and says, ‘Thank you very much,’ and then goes to run out the door,” he said.

Perley can be seen on the store’s surveillance footage quickly putting the ring in his mouth, but according to employees, Perley refused to admit to any wrongdoing and waited peacefully for police.

See this hilarious video for what happened next:

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Police Chief, Former High School Librarian Charged in Kidnap, Rape, Torture, Murder Plot

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

A police official at a Massachusetts veterans hospital and a former New York City high school librarian were charged in a plot to kidnap, rape, torture and kill women, children and infants, authorities said Monday.

The case against Robert Christopher Asch, 61, and Richard Meltz, 65, was built by many of the same investigators who successfully prosecuted a former New York City police officer [Gilberto Valle] on kidnap conspiracy charges in a high-profile cannibalism plot case…

There was no mention of cooking or eating women in the charges unveiled Monday against Asch, a former librarian at Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan, and Meltz, the chief of police at the Bedford Veterans Administration Medical Center in Massachusetts. Both were ordered held without bail after an initial court appearance.

Authorities said in court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that the men conspired since the spring of 2011 to attack multiple victims, including the relatives of an unidentified co-conspirator who claimed in Internet communications that he wanted to solicit individuals to kidnap, rape and kill his wife, his sister-in-law and her children, and his stepdaughter. A criminal complaint said the men referred to the planned killings in communications as the “snuffing” of women, children and infants.

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Axelrod: Obama Thinks Boston Bombings Could be Related to Tax Day (+video)

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Photo Credit: Intel Photos

In an interview on the Daily Rundown, Chuck Todd discusses with David Axelrod why Obama didn’t describe the bombings in Boston as a “terrorist attack.”

Axelrod says that Obama was thinking at the time of the bombing that “it was Tax Day, was it someone who was prot[esting]…”


Axelrod also contends that “terrorist attack” now means something different in the US than before 9/11 and that wrongly characterizing the bombings could have “reverberations all over the world.”

CNN, Esquire Blame the 'Right Wing' For Boston Marathon Bombing

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Photo Credit: Getty

By Victor Medina. In the early hours after the Boston Marathon was attacked with multiple bomb blasts, both CNN and Esquire Magazine indulged in speculation that right wing extremists may be responsible for the attacks. In one instance, Esquire Magazine’s Charles P. Pierce attempted to link the bombings to right wing extremists similar to Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. In another, CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen speculated that the type of bomb device could link it to right wing extremist groups:

Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce wrote in an online post on the magazine’s website that we should not jump to conclusions and blame foreign terrorists, then blames it on right-wing domestic terrorists. He stated “remember that this is the official Patriots Day holiday in Massachusetts, celebrating the Battles at Lexington and Concord, and that the actual date (April 19) was of some significance to, among other people, Tim McVeigh, because he fancied himself a waterer of the tree of liberty and the like.” Read more from this story HERE.

Boston Marathon bombing: The latest Patriots Day tragedy

By Emanuella Grinberg. It didn’t take long Monday for speculation to ramp up online over the timing of the Boston Marathon bombings, which came on Patriots Day, a state holiday in Massachusetts and Maine marking the anniversary of the opening battles of the American Revolutionary War.

The American uprising against British authority in Lexington, Massachusetts, was on April 19, 1775, but Patriots Day is celebrated on the third Monday in April, falling this year on April 15.

“It’s a day that celebrates the free and fiercely independent spirit that this great American city of Boston has reflected from the earliest days of our nation,” President Obama said Monday, a few hours after a pair of bombs rocked the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing at least three and injuring dozens more.

For many New Englanders, it is a day of pride that comes with historical re-enactments, the Boston Marathon, baseball and a day off for schools and government employees.

It’s now a day that will go down in history along with other violent U.S. incidents in April, including the 1993 FBI siege of David Koresh’s compound in Waco, Texas, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, a mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999 and the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007. Read more from this story HERE.