Jimmy Carter Leading Efforts to Undercut Sanctions on Known Islamic Terrorist Groups

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Photo Credit: gademocrats

Photo Credit: gademocrats

Former President Jimmy Carter is spearheading an effort to convince the U.S. to weaken sanctions on terrorist groups so peace organizations can legally work with them.

In a petition to Secretary of State John Kerry delivered Thursday, Carter and other foreign policy experts ask Kerry to exempt peace groups from policies that make it a crime to offer negotiation training and humanitarian law classes to terror groups.

“The Secretary of State can, and should, exempt peacebuilding activities from this counterproductive application of the law,” says the petition. “Doing so would open the door for professional peacebuilders to fully engage in helping to end armed conflicts and suffering around the world, while making the U.S. safer.”

The Charity and Security Network, which is spearheading the petition, declined for legal reasons to provide examples of current programs impacted by anti-terrorism sanctions. The organization told The Hill that in the past, efforts to build bridges with the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and leftist guerillas in Colombia have all been stymied.

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Troopers Use New Armored Vehicle to Arrest Homer Man Firing Pistol

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Photo Credit: Megan Peters

Photo Credit: Megan Peters

Alaska State Troopers used an armored tactical response vehicle Wednesday night to persuade a Homer man to surrender after troopers said he fired a .44-caliber handgun when troopers announced themselves outside his house on Char Court.

Timothy A. Magee, 39, was arraigned Thursday on two counts of third-degree assault, a felony, for causing fear of injury to Wildlife Trooper Trent Chwialkowski and Trooper David Chaffin. He also was charged with fourth-degree misconduct involving weapons for allegedly being drunk while shooting a weapon.

The Special Emergency Response Team responded to the scene with a BearCat armored tactical vehicle, one of three $280,000 trucks purchased last March. This was the first use of a BearCat on the Kenai Peninsula.

No weapons were fired by troopers and no one was hurt in the incident, including a woman at the home at the time, said Lt. Dane Gilmore, deputy commander for E Detachment.

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Mountain Rescue Ends Well (+video)

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Photo Credit: Wolfgang Kurtz

Photo Credit: Wolfgang Kurtz

A distressed hiker on Mount Marathon called into City of Seward Dispatch via 911 at 4:33 p.m. on Wednesday, June 12. Dispatch advised the Seward Fire Department that the hiker was calling from his cell phone and had said that “he was in a bad spot.” Fire department personnel made contact with the stranded hiker to determine an approximate location and identify the best access to him.

Phone conversations and visual scanning of the mountain eventually helped locate the hiker who was clinging precariously to the mountainside on a near vertical slope south of the established climbing and hiking paths.

Rescue crews were transported to the top by Seward Helicopter Tours and then hiked down the ridge to a point above the stranded hiker. During the operation, the fire department volunteers set off a flare which brought another couple of good samaritans racing to the scene.

According to SFD Chief Eddie Athey and Assistant Fire Chief Sean Corrigan, the hiker had received a laceration to the head, and was dehydrated and disoriented.

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Six Women Picked as Jurors in George Zimmerman Trial (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Six women were chosen Thursday to decide the fate of George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch captain accused of murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

The six jurors were seated after a nearly two-week long jury selection process, in which potential jurors were grilled about their prior knowledge of the case and their personal beliefs on guns, law enforcement and media coverage of the fatal shooting.

Two men and two women also were picked as alternate jurors.

The six final jurors are all women – five are white and one is Hispanic.

“We’ve got a jury, which is great,” Zimmerman attorney Mark O’Mara said at a press conference Thursday afternoon. “I sort of hoped that we would get one in Seminole County, thought we would and I’m very glad that I was right, because this way we don’t have to trouble moving around.”

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Angler Gets Jail Time for Cheating at Fishing Tournament

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Photo Credit: parkrapidsenterprise

Photo Credit: parkrapidsenterprise

A Long Prairie angler long suspected of cheating at fishing tournaments was given seven days in jail Monday for cheating at the Park Rapids American Legion Community Fishing Derby this winter.

Alfred “Tom” Mead, 72, pled guilty to a felony charge of Theft By Swindle May 20, for sneaking a previously caught fish into the tournament Feb. 2. He has two prior gaming convictions and a decade-long trail of suspicion about his tournament winnings.

“Your conduct had a major impact on these things (fishing tournaments),” Judge Robert Tiffany scolded him. “I hope you realize the seriousness of your conduct.”Cheating, the judge said. “takes the enjoyment and joy out of it for those who bring their kids” and honest participants.

Mead is to report to the Hubbard County jail in one week.

He will be on probation for four years, during which he is barred from the Legion Club, was fined $200 and ordered to pay a $75 public defender co-payment.

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Rush on Obama’s Failed Berlin Speech: Why the President Has to Have a Teleprompter (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

A number of commentators, not just on the right but also liberal pundits like Chris Matthews, all agreed that Obama’s speech in Berlin fell flat.

Rush Limbaugh contends that the President’s lackluster performance was due to the fact that he wasn’t using a teleprompter (apparently the sun interfered with its use). Rush explains why the teleprompter is so important to Obama:

Obama, if you’ve noticed, he’s lost without that prompter. And I know why. I know why he’s always on the prompter. And that is to make sure he doesn’t slip up and portray what he really thinks and what his plans really are. It’s so Obama stays confined in the way that he has been marketed and presented, and he participates in that of course, and the way they manage, ’cause it’s all about the Limbaugh Theorem. It’s all about Obama appearing detached, unattached.

It’s all about Obama disguising what his real intentions are. With no prompter and no discipline, he might actually let it slip what his real plans are, and that would be devastating. The fact of the matter is that most liberals cannot be honest with you about what they really hope happens or what they really want to happen or what they really intend to do, because if that ever happens — and it has — they don’t win much. They’re resoundingly defeated, particularly in national elections. So that’s the primary reason for the prompter, is to keep Obama on message and disciplined so that he doesn’t wander off and give up the game.

..[T]he end of the Obama’s speech today at the Brandenburg Gate kind of fizzled. It had no pizzazz, and Chris Matthews — the sycophantic thrill-up-the-leg Obamaite — said that it was because of the sun, the setting sun was obscuring Obama’s prompter, and he wasn’t able to see the words on the prompter, and without the prompter we he doesn’t know what he’s saying, apparently. What else is there to conclude? Well, we know the real reason he’s on prompter.

They gotta make sure he doesn’t drift off and reveal what’s really on his mind.

Here the President’s Berlin speech:

Teacher Goes Ballistic, Beats Activists with Her Purse Following Debate on Constitution (+videos)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

A woman who described herself as a teacher of the Constitution was caught on video clashing with members of a controversial Christian organization. Bradlee Dean, a figure TheBlaze has covered in the past, founded “You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International,” a ministry that delivers assemblies and speeches in public schools. Members of this organization recently engaged a woman in a contentious conversation — one that led her to physically attack the Christian activists.

The incident, which was captured on video and later released by the group, shows the volatile exchange that unfolded at a 7-11 gas station in Florida. The debate erupted as Dean’s ministry was apparently trying to nab support for the Bible and Christian values in public schools.

Videos:

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[If you have time, here’s the longer clip of the exchange between the teacher and Dean:]

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Obama Compares Protestant, Catholic Schools to Racial Segregation

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Likening religious schools to segregation–a racist system that forced blacks to attend different schools and use different facilities than whites in the American South–President Barack Obama told a town hall meeting for youth in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Monday that there should not be Catholic and Protestant schools because such schools cause division.

“Because issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity–symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others–these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it,” said Obama. “If towns remain divided–if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs–if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.

“Ultimately, peace is just not about politics,” he said. “It’s about attitudes; about a sense of empathy; about breaking down the divisions that we create for ourselves in our own minds and our own hearts that don’t exist in any objective reality, but that we carry with us generation after generation.

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Director Admits FBI Using Drones For Surveillance in the US

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged Wednesday that the bureau has a limited number of drones that it uses for surveillance on U.S. soil.

The practice, however limited, could raise further concern about government snooping amid the ongoing controversy over the administration’s phone- and Internet-tracking programs.

Mueller addressed the matter during a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill, under questioning from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Asked if the FBI has drones, Mueller said, “Yes, and for surveillance.”

He later said they are deployed on U.S. soil, but clarified they are used in a “very, very minimal way and very seldom.”

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Allen West: I May Challenge Rubio for Senate Seat (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

Former U.S. Rep. Allen West said Wednesday that he hasn’t ruled out a challenge to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, even as the former congressman acknowledged that it would be a difficult and expensive road to take.

West, a favorite of conservatives who lost his House seat in 2012, said he’d draw on his faith to make a decision on a future political contest.

“We’ll see what happens down the pike,” West said on WMAL’s “Morning at the Mall” radio show. “God will set my feet on the right path.”

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