Obama: Founding Fathers Would NOT Have Approved (+video)

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Photo Credit: APA stern President Obama lectured Republicans on Thursday, one day after they accepted a Democrat deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt limit until Feb. 7–getting nothing in return.

The president suggested that the system of checks and balances invoked by tea party Republicans in an attempt to defund Obamacare is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

“Let’s work together to make government work better, instead of treating it like an enemy or purposely making it work worse,” Obama said.

“That’s not what the founders of this nation envisioned when they gave us the gift of self-government.

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They’re Not Going To Take It Anymore: New Generation Of Immigrant Advocates Take Radical Approach

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Photo Credit: REUTERSThe frustration, say immigration advocates, is reaching a fever pitch.

That is why, many say, recent weeks have seen activists use chains and pipes to tie themselves to the tires of buses that carry immigrants slated for deportation to court, block traffic on Capitol Hill and get arrested, surround Tucson police when they targeted two immigrants during a traffic stop, and chain themselves and block the entrance of a federal detention center.

More such actions, they vow, are coming.

“It’s absolutely out of frustration and impatience,” said Marisa Franco, campaign organizer for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which helped coordinate some of the more provocative actions. “Immigrant communities who are losing 1,100 loved ones every day to deportation cannot wait for Congress to end its political games or for the President to rediscover his moral compass,” she added.

“The people will take power back into their own hands and set a true example of leadership that the Beltway will have to follow,” Franco vowed.

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New EU Rules to Curb Transfer of Data to US after Edward Snowden Revelations

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Photo Credit: Yves Herman/ReutersNew European rules aimed at curbing questionable transfers of data from EU countries to the US are being finalised in Brussels in the first concrete reaction to the Edward Snowden disclosures on US and British mass surveillance of digital communications.

Regulations on European data protection standards are expected to pass the European parliament committee stage on Monday after the various political groupings agreed on a new compromise draft following two years of gridlock on the issue.

The draft would make it harder for the big US internet servers and social media providers to transfer European data to third countries, subject them to EU law rather than secret American court orders, and authorise swingeing fines possibly running into the billions for the first time for not complying with the new rules.

“As parliamentarians, as politicians, as governments we have lost control over our intelligence services. We have to get it back again,” said Jan Philipp Albrecht, the German Greens MEP who is steering the data protection regulation through the parliament.

Data privacy in the EU is currently under the authority of national governments with standards varying enormously across the 28 countries, complicating efforts to arrive at satisfactory data transfer agreements with the US. The current rules are easily sidestepped by the big Silicon Valley companies, Brussels argues.

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Alaska’s Supply of Flu Shots Safe in Shutdown

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Photo Credit: paulswansenAlaska’s supply of flu vaccinations was not affected during the federal government’s partial shutdown, but efforts to monitor influenza were crippled before furloughed federal workers were able to return to work.

The 16-day shutdown came to a close after the House and Senate voted late Wednesday to end it.

During the shutdown, no one at the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention produced the agency’s weekly surveillance report. The CDC typically analyzes data and tracks flu cases in all 50 states.

During the shutdown, thousands of CDC workers were on furlough.

In Alaska, there should be an adequate supply of flu shots for all providers, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

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U.S. Senator Cruz Blocks Confirmation of New FCC Chairman

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan ErnstRepublican Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative whose defiant stand against Obamacare helped prompt the U.S. government shutdown, has blocked the Senate from voting on the nomination of Tom Wheeler to be Federal Communications Commission chairman.

The Senate was scheduled to vote on Wheeler, a Democrat and telecom industry veteran, late on Wednesday. Cruz held up the vote over questions about the FCC’s power to enforce disclosures of who sponsors political television advertising.

“The Senator is holding the nominee until he gets answers to his questions regarding Mr. Wheeler’s views on whether the FCC has the authority or intent to implement the requirements of the failed Congressional DISCLOSE Act,” said Cruz spokesman Sean Rushton, referring to a failed bill meant to step up political disclosures.

“Mr. Wheeler had previously declined to give specific answers, but as he’s now expressed his readiness to revisit the Senator’s questions, the Senator hopes to communicate with him soon,” Rushton said.

If Wheeler cannot resolve Cruz’s concerns, Senate Democrats could force a vote on the nomination. Majority Leader Harry Reid would decided whether to take that action.

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McConnell: No More Shutdowns Over Obamacare

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear on Thursday that repealing Obamacare would never be used by Republicans again to bring the federal government to a halt.

“One of my favorite old Kentucky sayings is there’s no education in the second kick of a mule,” McConnell told The Hill. “The first kick of a mule was when we shut the government down in the mid-1990s — and the second kick was over the last 16 days.”

“There will not be a government shutdown,” the Kentucky Republican added.

The Obamacare strategy was pushed by several young congressional Republicans backed by the tea party — including freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, who spoke against the healthcare plan for more than 21 hours on the Senate floor last month — which led to a 16-day partial shutdown of the government and jeopardized the nation’s borrowing authority.

“I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is,” McConnell told The Hill.

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House Panel on Benghazi Eyes White House Document, Panetta Testimony

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Photo Credit: Fox News As they wrap up their 13-month probe into the terrorist attacks in Benghazi that killed four Americans, congressional investigators have zeroed in on a press release issued the day before the murders by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

They also are seeking fresh testimony from former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Staffers with the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations told Fox News they have reached the preliminary conclusion – as the Obama administration has long maintained – that no military rescue or remedy was feasible on the night of September 11, 2012, when U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans died amid an eight-hour assault by terrorists on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and a nearby annex.

However, House investigators have also determined that the reason no military forces could be rallied to intervene in Benghazi is because U.S. military assets were poorly postured amid the turmoil of that period, as the eleventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks approached.

“My job was to look at the days and the weeks and the months and the years leading up to that day, and ask the question: Why weren’t we prepared, and who is responsible?” said Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., chair of the HASC subcommittee. “If the White House is projecting that we were safe, the White House has to take responsibility of our lack of preparedness.”

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Gov. Christie Pokes Fun at Booker’s Senate Victory (+video)

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Photo Credit: Julio Cortez, APLeave it to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to make his congratulatory wishes to Sen.-elect Cory Booker a poke in the ribs.

A day after Booker beat Republican Steve Lonegan in a special U.S. Senate election, Christie playfully complimented the Democrat’s victory by getting in a joke about Booker’s favorite football team, the winless New York Giants.

“I’m happy for the mayor today and his victory last night,” Christie said, appearing with Booker and other officials at a groundbreaking for a supermarket. “It was the first win for the Giants all year. Little did Tom Coughlin (the team’s coach) know he’d have to rely on a washed-up tight end from Stanford. Desperate times call for desperate measures, don’t they, Cory?”

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Snowden Says He Took No Secret Files to Russia

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Photo Credit: WikiLeaks, via Associated PressEdward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, said in an extensive interview this month that he did not take any secret N.S.A. documents with him to Russia when he fled there in June, assuring that Russian intelligence officials could not get access to them.

Mr. Snowden said he gave all of the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong, before flying to Moscow, and did not keep any copies for himself. He did not take the files to Russia “because it wouldn’t serve the public interest,” he said.

“What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of the materials onward?” he added.

He also asserted that he was able to protect the documents from China’s spies because he was familiar with that nation’s intelligence abilities, saying that as an N.S.A. contractor he had targeted Chinese operations and had taught a course on Chinese cybercounterintelligence.

“There’s a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents,” he said.

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GOP-Leadership-Backed CR Funds Reg Forcing Christians to Act Against Faith

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Photo Credit: APThe continuing resolution Congress approved last night with the help of the Republican leaders in both the House and Senate funds and permits implementation of an Obamacare regulation that forces Christians to act against their faith by forcing them to buy and/or provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs and devices.

An earlier version of the CR that the Republican-controlled House passed on Sept. 29 had included language that would have at least “delayed” the regulation’s impact on religious liberty until Jan. 1, 2015.

That language said that until then the administration could not force employers, insurers or individuals to buy or provide insurance coverage for an item or service if they had “moral or religious objections” to it.

However, the Republican House leadership only stood by that position for one day. In the version of the CR they pushed through the House on Sept. 30, they removed the one-year “delay” in forcing Christians to act against their faith.

The final CR permits the administration to begin forcing Christians to act against their faith as soon as they have to buy or provide an Obamacare-compliant insurance plan.

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