Israel Finds Tunnel Dug Under Its Gaza Border, Blames Hamas

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Photo Credit: APIsrael displayed on Sunday what it called a Palestinian “terror tunnel” running into its territory from the Gaza Strip and said it was subsequently freezing the transfer of building material to the enclave.

“The discovery of the tunnel … prevented attempts to harm Israeli civilians who live close to the border and military forces in the area,” Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in a statement, accusing Gaza’s ruling Hamas Islamist movement of being behind construction of the 2.5-km (1.5 mile)-long tunnel.

There was no claim of responsibility in Gaza but a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing wrote on Twitter that “the determination deep in the hearts and minds of resistance fighters is more important than tunnels dug in the mud”.

Hamas, along with other militant groups, tunneled into Israel in 2006 and seized an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was held for five years before being exchanged for 1,400 Palestinians in Israeli jails.

The Israeli military said it found the tunnel along its fortified Gaza border last week near a kibbutz, or communal farm. It invited journalists to view it on Sunday.

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Green Britain: Energy Blackouts Imminent

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMagThe UK is facing its greatest risk of blackouts since 2007/08 in the coming winter. The National Grid, responsible for balancing the country’s supply and demand of energy, last week has given this warning because Britain’s reserves of electricity have halved in 12 months.

The UK and the USA are in the same boat here. Both countries have governments that have – or pretend to have — fallen for the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory hook, line, and sinker.

The Obama Administration’s regulations to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, which The New York Times has described as “an aggressive move by Mr. Obama to bypass Congress on climate change with executive actions he promised in his inaugural address this year,” have been denounced as part of the president’s “war on coal.”

White House climate adviser Daniel P. Schrag, director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment, admitted in an interview with the paper that this is exactly what it is:

The one thing the president really needs to do now is to begin the process of shutting down the conventional coal plants. Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal. On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.

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Rick Perry to Appear in Anti-D.C. Ads

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Photo Credit: APAn advocacy group tied to Texas Gov. Rick Perry is poised to launch a six-figure national ad campaign criticizing dysfunction in Washington and declaring that “conservative governors” are leading the way with policy solutions, POLITICO has learned.

Americans for Economic Freedom, a conservative 501(c)4 nonprofit, will run TV ads for 10 days on Fox News, MSNBC and CNBC, as well as radio ads on a host of nationally syndicated shows. The television commercials feature Perry talking about the work of Republican state executives outside D.C.

The ads will hit the TV and radio airwaves Tuesday, against a backdrop of historic public disgust with Washington, D.C., as the federal government remains shut down and teetering on the edge of defaulting on its debts.

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Bashar al-Assad: The Nobel Peace Prize Should Have Been Mine

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Photo Credit: GETTY IMAGESBashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, has joked that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize after it was awarded to the international weapons watchdog currently destroying his regime’s massive chemical arsenal.

The prize, which was given to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Friday, “should have been mine,” he said.

The remark, which the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar quoted, was made “jokingly” during a recent meeting with visitors at the presidential palace, the newspaper said.

However, it might be viewed as inappropriate when uttered by a president whose civil war has already cost more than 115,000 lives. A chemical weapons attack in Damascus in August, widely blamed on the Syrian government, reportedly killed more than 1,200 people.

The OPCW and the United Nations have a team of 60 experts and support staff, based in Damascus, working to destroy the country’s chemical stockpiles. The arsenal is reportedly the largest in the Middle East, and the OPCW hopes to destroy it all by 2014. It is the first time that the body has attempted such a project in a war zone.

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Gabrielle Giffords Attends First Gun Show Since Shooting

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Photo Credit: AP/Tim RoskeA smiling Gabrielle Giffords toured rows of tables loaded with rifles and handguns in her first visit to a gun show since surviving a 2011 shooting, and pleaded afterward for people to come together to stop gun violence.

The former Arizona congresswoman visited the Saratoga Springs Arms Fair on Sunday with her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to highlight a voluntary agreement that closely monitors gun show sales in New York.

The trio mixed with a gun show crowd that was mostly welcoming — with a few hostile undertones — before calling for people to build on the cooperative effort.

“We must never stop fighting,” Giffords said at a post-tour news conference, her fist in the air. “Fight! Fight! Fight! Be bold! Be courageous!”

Giffords, a face of the national gun control effort, slowly walked hand-in-hand with Kelly through the large room where Winchester rifles, muzzle-loaders, antique knives and other weapons were on display and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags hung from poles.

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Feds Removed Handles From 40 Public Water Pumps Along C&O Canal

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Photo Credit: APNational Park Service (NPS) rangers removed the handles from some 40 public water pumps and closed restrooms in the 184.5 mile- C&O Canal National Historical Park, but they haven’t been able to keep hikers and bikers off the popular trail known as a “cyclist’s dream.”

“It’s full every day,” said Gail Hall, who runs Mountain Side Bikes at the trailhead in Cumberland, Md. “They’re bringing in their own water and utilizing the tree-lined areas [of the park] for restrooms. Some towns like Harper’s Ferry even brought in potties to accommodate them. As long as they can pedal, they don’t care.”

Cumberland Times-News reporter Matthew Bieniek, who first reported that the handles on the park’s old-fashioned water pumps had been removed as part of the federal government shutdown, told CNSNews.com that Park Superintendent Kevin Brandt told him that the pumps had been disabled “to discourage people from attempting to use the park.”

But Michael Nardolilli, president of the non-profit C&O Canal Historical National Park Trust, which runs interpretive programs at the park’s historic lockhouses, later said that the pump handles were removed for “public health reasons.”

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Protesters Chain Themselves to Stop Deportations in Arizona

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Photo Credit: notonemoredeportation .comImmigrant-rights protesters have chained themselves in front of an detention facility in Eloy, Ariz., and planned to blockade the main federal immigration office in Phoenix later Monday, hoping to stop anyone from being deported.

The moves are the latest act of civil disobedience from activists who are demanding the Obama administration halt all deportations. Among the protesters were illegal immigrants.

“Undocumented — unafraid,” the protesters chanted as they blocked the road at the facility Monday morning, which is southeast of Phoenix and is one of the busiest detention locations in the country.

The protesters aired their action in a webcast.

While activists have demanded action from Republicans in Congress, they are increasingly critical of President Obama over his record of deportations. Under his watch, immigration authorities have set records by deporting about 400,000 immigrants a year.

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Cruz, Lee, Palin Speak at WWII Memorial – Protestors Tear Down Barricades (+video)

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A crowd converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, pushing through barriers Sunday morning to protest the memorial’s closing under the government shutdown.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were among those who gathered Sunday morning, along with former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, according to WTOP radio. Cruz said President Obama is using veterans as pawns in the shutdown.

“Tear down these walls,” the crowd chanted. Protesters also sang God Bless America and other patriotic songs as they entered the memorial plaza.

The memorial has become a political symbol in the bitter fight between Democrats and Republicans over who is at fault since the shutdown began. Earlier rallies have focused on allowing access for World War II veterans visiting from across the country with the Honor Flight Network.

Sunday’s rally was more political. A protest by truckers converged with a rally by a group called the Million Vet March at the World War II Memorial. Participants cut the links between metal barriers at the National Park Service site and pushed them aside.

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No Evidence Dems Can Take Back House

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHoteyThe 2010 midterm election that swept Republicans into power in the U.S. House of Representatives was a mandate to put the brakes on President Obama and his agenda.

Aside from voters also hoping that Republicans would do something – anything – to boost the economy, restraining Obama was pretty much the issue of that election.

It was the second wave election in four years (Republicans were dumped from the majority in 2006). And it had less to do with voters finding Republicans appealing once again and more to do with putting a halt to the Democrats’ overreach.

At the center of that overreach was the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare – which is why many of those elected to office in that cycle and reelected last year have been adamant about repealing it, even at the cost of a government shutdown.

Or even at the cost of losing their seats, which has led to talk of a Democrat wave election cycle. It is a possibility pushed by paid pundits as reality, but the facts do not support it.

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Rand Paul: Dems Treating Government Shutdown as ‘a Parlor Game’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: Reuters On Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s “State of the Union,” Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul slammed Democrats for trying to score political points by making the partial government shutdown as painful as possible.

Paul told host Candy Crowley the hit the Republican Party is taking is exaggerated and said that ultimately both sides will held accountable.

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