Pending Amnesty Bill to Cost Taxpayers an Enormous $6.3 Trillion, will Bankrupt Nation

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Photo Credit: fredcaminoBy The Heritage Foundation. Granting amnesty to an estimated 11 million unlawful immigrants will cost taxpayers at least $6.3 trillion, according to a new report by Heritage Foundation scholar Robert Rector. The highly anticipated report, released today, becomes available as a Senate committee is set to mark up a “comprehensive immigration reform” bill May 9.

“No matter how you slice it, amnesty will add a tremendous amount of pressure on America’s already strained public purse,” said Rector, Heritage’s senior research fellow in domestic policy studies.

The vast majority of the fiscal costs examined are long-term – including costs associated with Obamacare, Social Security and other entitlements, plus more than 80 means-tested welfare programs. Among the major findings of Rector and co-author Jason Richwine:

·Over the course of their lives, former unlawful immigrants together would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services and pay $3.1 trillion in taxes, for a lifetime “fiscal deficit” – at minimum — of $6.3 trillion (total benefits minus total taxes).

·The typical unlawful immigrant is 34 years old, has a 10th-grade education, and already receives $14,387 per household in government benefits in excess of taxes paid. After the bill’s “interim” period of about 13 years, when former unlawful immigrants become eligible for welfare and Obamacare subsidies, that “fiscal deficit” would double to $29,500 per household.

·After amnesty, the typical unlawful immigrant will receive government benefits for 50 years, meaning his household would receive $592,000 more in government benefits during his lifetime than he would pay in taxes. At retirement, he would draw more than $3 in Social Security and Medicare for every dollar he paid in FICA taxes. Read more from this story HERE.

Rep. King: Immigration Reform Is ‘Breathtaking, Outrageous Form of Amnesty’

By Paul Scicchitano and Kathleen Walter. Rep. Steve King of Iowa tells Newsmax TV that the immigration reform bill that has emerged in the Senate is nothing more than a euphemism for the “most breathtaking, outrageous form of amnesty” for some 11 million illegal immigrants now in the U.S.

“The people that are for open borders — the people that are for granting amnesty — seem to be stuck on the idea that they can’t pass their amnesty if it’s called amnesty,” King said in an exclusive interview on Monday. “And so they try to redefine the word ‘amnesty,’ and they call it ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’”

The battle over immigration reform that is all but certain to take place in the House factored into King’s announcement last week that he will not run for the Senate.

“I didn’t want to arrive in the United States Senate in January of 2015 looking at a mess that had been created in the previous 20 or so months, and then not be in a position to undo — not be in a position to fix this immigration legislation that’s coming at us,” said King. “If that is written into law — and the president could sign something that looks anything like the 844 pages in the Senate — that’s a genie that you can’t put back in the bottle.”

A member of the House Agriculture and Judiciary committees, King said that the urgency of the fight “outrode” his opportunity to gain a stronger voice in the Senate. Read more from this story HERE.

Nuclear Saber Rattling: Russian Bombers Buzz Alaska Again

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Photo Credit: APRussian strategic bombers conducted flights within the U.S. defense zone close to northern Alaska and the Aleutian Islands last week in Moscow’s latest incident of nuclear saber rattling against the United States, according to defense and military officials.

Two Bear H nuclear-capable bombers were detected flying into the military’s Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) near the Aleutians, where a strategic missile defense radar is located, and Alaska’s North Slope region by the Arctic and Chukchi Seas on April 28 and 29, military officials told the Washington Free Beacon.

Lt. Cmdr. Bill Lewis, a spokesman with the U.S. Northern Command, confirmed the fighter intercept of the latest bomber incursion but declined to provide details.

“Two U.S. F-22′s from Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, were launched and visually identified Russian aircraft on the night of April 28, as the Russian Air Force flew standard out of area flights near Alaska,” Lewis said.

The bombers did not enter U.S. airspace, he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Liberal Democrat Agrees that Obama’s Benghazi Talking Points Were False

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Photo Credit: YouTubeFox News Chris Wallace: I want to talk to you about a controversy, a continuing controversy, about the talking points that came out afterwards that led, some people say, to a lot of disinformation. These were the talking points the administration put out after the attack. Steve Hayes of The Weekly Standard reports that the first draft by the CIA on September 14th said this: “The crowd almost certainly was a mix of individuals from across many sectors of Libyan society. That being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.” This was the first draft of talking points from the CIA on September 14th. But after objections from State and after the White House had a meeting, you can see the talking points — and it’s a little hard to see there on the screen — there were lots of lines drawn though them. They were heavily edited. And all mention of the Islamic extremists were taken out. Congressman Lynch, weren’t the talking points the administration put out in advance of Susan Rice’s appearance on those five Sunday shows, weren’t those talking points scrubbed?

Rep. Lynch: They certainly weren’t accurate. I don’t know what the process was there. But absolutely. They were false. They were wrong. There were no protests outside the Benghazi compound there. This was a deliberate and strategic attack on the consulate there. So any statement that this was sort of like the you know the other protests in Cairo and other embassies, this was not that type of attack.

Benghazi Witness: US Military Response Could Have ‘Scared’ Off Attackers, Prevented Mortar Strike

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Photo Credit: TheBusyBrainThe U.S. military could have prevented one wave of the deadly attack on American personnel in Benghazi if fighter jets had been promptly deployed, a top diplomatic official who was in Benghazi during the Sept. 11 assault told congressional investigators.

The account, contained in a transcript obtained by Fox News, was given by Gregory Hicks during an interview last month with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Hicks, a whistle-blower who is preparing to testify Wednesday before that committee, was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya — after Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed that night, he became the highest-ranking diplomat on the ground.

Hicks, in his interview, argued that after the first wave of attacks on the U.S. consulate, the U.S. military could have prevented additional violence with a quickly scrambled flight — after the first wave, terrorists would go on to launch a pre-dawn mortar assault on the CIA annex.

“And so, in my personal opinion, a fast-mover flying over Benghazi at some point, you know, as soon as possible might very well have prevented some of the bad things that happened that night,” Hicks said, according to the transcript…

“I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split,” he said. “They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Harry Reid Whines, “Tea Party Ted Cruz isn’t Playing by the Rules!!!”

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Photo credit: Gage SkidmoreThe Wall Street Journal Editorial Board is upset with Ted Cruz for leading a filibuster against gun control.

John McCain tweeted out the Journal’s editorial in a moment of wackiness.

Bill Richardson, the scandal plagued former Governor of New Mexico, says Ted Cruz can’t be called hispanic despite being hispanic because Ted Cruz isn’t a race baiter like Richardson.

And now Harry Reid calls Ted Cruz a schoolyard bully for Cruz objecting to Harry Reid trying to expand government in a bipartisan fashion.

Most interesting to me is this part of Harry Reid’s statement of frustration:

He pushes everybody around and is losing and instead of playing the game according to the rules, he not only takes the ball home with him, but he changes the rules that way no one wins except the bully who tries to indicate to people that he has won.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Surrenders in ObamaCare Battle

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Bob Unruh. The Obama administration has surrendered in a key fight with a Christian publisher over the abortion pill mandate in Obamacare, asking a federal court to dismiss an appeal of a ruling that prevented application of the mandate.

The move was confirmed today by the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Tyndale House Publishers.

Tyndale, of Carol Stream, Ill., went to court because it objects to providing abortifacients, as Obamacare requires of every health coverage plan.

Tyndale, the world’s largest privately held Christian publisher of books, Bibles and digital media, won in a lower court, which ordered that the abortifacient requirement not be applied to the publishing company.

The Obama administration appealed the ruling, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has dismissed the appeal at the request of the famously pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin Gives Up Forcing Bible Publisher to Obey HHS Mandate

By Steven Ertelt. In a huge victory for pro-life advocates taking on the controversial HHS mandate, the Obama administration is giving up its effort to force a Bible publisher to obey it.

The mandate has generated massive opposition from pro-life groups because it forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties.

The Obama administration opposed an order a judge gave temporarily stopping enforcement, arguing that Tyndale House Publishers isn’t religious enough for an exemption from the mandate, a component of ObamaCare that forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties.

Now, at the Obama administration’s request, a federal appellate court Friday dismissed the Obama administration’s appeal of an order that stopped President Barack Obama from enforcing his abortion pill mandate against a Bible publisher. The administration’s retreat marks the first total appellate victory on a preliminary injunction in any abortion pill mandate case.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing Tyndale House Publishers say the administration is apparently nervous about trying to defend its position that a Bible publisher is not religious enough for a religious exemption to the mandate. Read more from this story HERE.

Drone Wars Hit the States

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Photo Credit: Reuters Drones could soon be entering the airspace above you — and privacy-minded state lawmakers, banding together in an unusual left-right political alliance, are in a dogfight with law enforcement groups across the country as they move to put protections in place for those on the ground.

Sen. Rand Paul, a leading critic of drones, recently helped drive them into the national debate with his 13-hour filibuster on the issue and a later comment that it would be OK if a drone were used by police in the U.S. to kill an armed robber at a liquor store. That comment infuriated some of Paul’s libertarian followers and sent the Kentucky Republican and possible 2016 candidate into full damage control mode.

While Paul brought the issue more mainstream attention, activity had already been under way in legislatures. In more than three-quarters of the states this year, legislators who fear the “surveillance state” are seeking to limit the use of the unmanned, unarmed aircraft in the name of privacy rights, clashing with police and industry organizations that argue the efforts unfairly stigmatize a still-developing, widely misunderstood and potentially useful technology that has an unfortunate link to the killing of terrorists in faraway deserts.

“We want to make sure we don’t create a system where Big Brother is always up there watching us,” Michigan state Rep. Tom McMillin, a Republican sponsoring a bill restricting drones, told POLITICO. “These can be used, but only in certain instances.”

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Directly Blames China’s Military for Cyberattacks, Espionage

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Photo Credit: Gary LerudeThe Obama administration on Monday explicitly accused China’s military of mounting attacks on American government computer systems and defense contractors, saying one motive could be to map “military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis.”

While some recent estimates have more than 90 percent of cyberespionage in the United States originating in China, the accusations relayed in the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on Chinese military capabilities were remarkable in their directness. Until now the administration avoided directly accusing both the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army of using cyberweapons against the United States in a deliberate, government-developed strategy to steal intellectual property and gain strategic advantage.

“In 2012, numerous computer systems around the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, continued to be targeted for intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military,” the nearly 100-page report said.

The report, released Monday, described China’s primary goal as stealing industrial technology, but said many intrusions also seemed aimed at obtaining insights into American policy makers’ thinking. It warned that the same information-gathering could easily be used for “building a picture of U.S. network defense networks, logistics, and related military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis.”

Read more from this story HERE.

NASA Chief Confident that Manned Mars Mission will Happen Soon

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Photo Credit: Reuters If the prospect of spending a thousand days up to 140 million miles away from the Earth was not enough of a deterrent, killer radiation levels and enforced radio silence would surely deter most volunteers from travelling to Mars. Nasa, however, has revealed that near-record numbers are applying for its astronaut training programme, as renewed enthusiasm for space travel is fueled by growing hopes of a manned Mars mission.

Since the successful landing of the Curiosity rover in August, the scientific community has begun to take more seriously a promise from President Obama, made in 2010, to land humans on the surface of Mars within 20 years or so. Some privately-backed rival ventures are even forecasting that they will get to Mars orbit as early as 2018; Nasa plans a deep-space practice mission, to rendezvous with a captured asteroid, by 2025.

“Interest in sending humans to Mars has never been higher,” Nasa’s chief administrator, the former astronaut Charles Bolden, told a conference in Washington on Monday. “‘We now stand on the precipice of a second opportunity to press forward with what I think is man’s destiny, and that is to go forward to another planet.”

Within the next few weeks, Nasa plans to announce which 20 trainee astronauts it has chosen from 6,300 recent candidates – its second-highest application total since the agency was established, in 1958. “These astronauts will be among the first trained specifically for long-duration space flights,” said Bolden.

Despite sweeping US budget cuts under the sequestration, Nasa still hopes for an annual budget of $17.7bn – which will be increasingly targeted on the Mars mission. The agency is seeking congressional approval to outsource to private contractors all future rocket missions to low earth orbit, so it can concentrate on deep space instead.

Read more from this story HERE.

China’s H7N9 Killer Bird Flu Virus Has Now Spread to Dozens, 24% Mortality Rate

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Photo Credit: anthrovikHealth officials in China reported two new H7N9 infections, both from Fujian province, and four more deaths, boosting the outbreak’s total to 130 cases, 31 of them (24%) fatal.

One of the patients is a 9-year-old boy whose infection was detected during routine flu surveillance, according to official and media reports today. He has been discharged from the hospital, according to a statement Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection (CHP).

The other patient is a 69-year-old man who is hospitalized, according to a separate statement yesterday from the CHP. So far none of the man’s nine close contacts have shown any symptoms.

China’s National Health and Family Commission today put the number of deaths at 31, an increase of four since the group’s last update, Xinhua, China’s state news agency, reported today. The report did not include any other details about the deaths. The report also said 42 patients have recovered from their H7N9 infections.

In other developments, China’s agriculture ministry yesterday announced five more poultry and market environmental samples that tested positive for H7N9, according to a report from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE)…

Read more from this story HERE.