Cantor Blasts Obama Over Phone Call On Immigration Reform (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Obama called House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to prod Republicans to bring up immigration reform, but the conversation apparently did not go well.

Cantor issued a blistering statement afterward, criticizing Obama for calling him just after delivering what he called “a partisan statement” that indicated “no desire to work together” on immigration, a top priority for Obama that House Republicans have largely ignored.

“After five years, President Obama still has not learned how to effectively work with Congress to get things done,” Cantor said in the statement. “You do not attack the very people you hope to engage in a serious dialogue. I told the president the same thing I told him the last time we spoke. House Republicans do not support Senate Democrats’ immigration bill and amnesty efforts, and it will not be considered in the House.”

A White House official said Obama had called Cantor to wish him a happy “Passover, and immigration reform then came up.

The official said the White House was suprised by the tone of Cantor’s statement, which didn’t reflect the call.

Read more from this story HERE.

Common Core’s Dirtiest Trick: Dividing Parents and Children

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

When you look back at New Math (ca. 1965) and Reform Math (ca. 1990), one of the most striking and persistent features was that parents could not understand the homework their children brought home.

Mystified parents were trying to advise mystified children. The parents, presumably the wise members of the society, were helpless to say anything useful when confronted by the weird complexities of “reform” math, which has now been rolled forward into Common Core.

Here is a commonplace horror story that can stand in for millions of others: “When Mike and Camille Chudzinski tried to help their son with his homework earlier this fall, they were bewildered. The fourth-grader brought home no spelling lists, few textbooks, and a whole new approach to solving math problems. When he tackled multi-digit addition, for instance, Patrick did not just line up the two numbers and then add the columns, as his parents had been taught to do. Instead, he sketched out a graph with a series of arrows and marks that appeared at first to his parents as indecipherable as hieroglyphics.”

When we hear these stories, we typically focus on the comical oddity of adults not being able to do homework intended for children. How is that even possible? But the ramifications are anything but funny. The real damage is that Reform Math opens up fractures throughout society. Parents are cut off from their children. Parents and schools are pitted against each other. Students are alienated from their teachers and schools.

Sociologist James Coleman said that the most important thing in successful education is what he called “social capital.” Ideally, parents, kids, schools, and community are on the same page, working toward the same goals. In this way the children feel they are doing appropriate and necessary things. Energy is used to complete tasks, not to debate the merits of the tasks.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Warns of “Consequences” for Russian Actions Destabilizing Ukraine

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U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin talk before the first session of the G20 Summit in Los CabosPresident Obama put Russian President Vladimir Putin on notice Wednesday evening, warning that further actions to destabilize the interim Ukrainian government will result in consequences from both the United States and Europe.

In an interview with CBS News White House Correspondent Major Garrett , Mr. Obama said it was “absolutely clear” that Russia had violated Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity by annexing Crimea last month, and they continue to do so by supporting “non-state militias” in southern and eastern Ukraine.

Still, the White House has not abandoned diplomatic solutions. Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Geneva Wednesday evening to prepare for four-party talks with European, Russian and Ukrainian officials. Ukraine is willing to offer amnesty to the armed separatist groups who have carried out violence and seized buildings in the east, if Russia agrees to pullback support for those pro-Russian groups and withdraw the 40,000 troops that it has positioned on Ukraine’s border, CBS News State Department Correspondent Margaret Brennan reports.

Read more from this story HERE.

Nevada Rancher: ‘The Founding Fathers Didn’t Create A Government Like This’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: George Frey / Getty Images

Photo Credit: George Frey / Getty Images

By CBS Las Vegas/AP.

A Nevada rancher said Monday he’s trying to determine if federal agents damaged his cattle when the animals were rounded up then released in a showdown with angry protesters over a decades-long dispute about rangeland rights.

U.S. Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze said the agency backed off to avoid a potentially violent situation over the weekend.

However, he vowed to go to court to collect more than $1 million in back grazing fees he says Cliven Bundy owes for trespassing on federal lands since the 1990s.

Bundy, whose family has operated a ranch since the 1870s southwest of Mesquite a few miles from the Utah line, does not recognize federal authority on the land that he insists belongs to Nevada.

On Saturday, the bureau released about 400 head of cattle it had seized from Bundy. The operation had been expected to take a month to collect as many as 900 cattle.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Rory Reid: Rancher Cliven Bundy “Should Be Prosecuted”

By Real Clear Politics.

RORY REID, SON OF SEN. HARRY REID: We believe in a country in which we are subject to laws and you can’t just ignore the laws we don’t like. I think clearly if state and local prosecutors look at this more closely, they’re going to find that he broke the law and he should be prosecuted.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ron Paul Group to Defy IRS

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Photo Credit: AP / Steve Helber

Photo Credit: AP / Steve Helber

Ron Paul’s nonprofit Campaign for Liberty will fight the Internal Revenue Service’s demand that it reveal its donor list to the agency, despite having already been fined for refusing to do so.

“There is no legitimate reason for the IRS to know who donates to Campaign for Liberty,” Megan Stiles, the communications director at Campaign for Liberty, told the Washington Examiner in an email on Tuesday. “We believe the First Amendment is on our side as evidenced by cases such as NAACP v. Alabama and International Union UAW v. National Right to Work. Many 501(c)(4) organizations protect the privacy of their donors in the very same way as Campaign for Liberty. For some reason the IRS has now chosen to single out Campaign for Liberty for special attention. We plan to fight this all the way.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Rep. Louie Gohmert: Holder’s ‘Childish and Lame’ Performance at Hearing Undermines His Credibility On the IRS Scandal

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Gary Cameron

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Gary Cameron

Republican Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert said that his recent heated exchange with Attorney General Eric Holder exposed Holder as a “partisan and extremely petty” individual and undermined Holder’s ability to defend the Obama administration on the IRS scandal in coming weeks.

“I know what it’s like to be in the heat of a very nasty conversation. I perhaps have been in those kinds of conversations more than our attorney general. And that’s why his comments were so childish and lame,” Gohmert told The Daily Caller in a conference call Tuesday night.

“You don’t want to go there, buddy! You don’t want to go there okay,” Holder snapped at Gohmert at a Judiciary Committee oversight hearing last week after Gohmert mentioned Holder’s 2012 contempt of Congress charge over the Fast and Furious scandal. Holder then spoke last week at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference, telling a black audience, “it had nothing to do with me. Forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?”

“John Mitchell got treated much much worse than Eric Holder and he deserved it. He was even sent to prison and he still didn’t whine as much as this attorney general did and he didn’t go around calling people ‘buddy,’” said Gohmert.

Read more from this story HERE.

‘We’ve Got to Make Them Afraid of Us’: Guess Who Plans to Spend $50 Million to Create Anti-Gun Version of NRA

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Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

Bloomberg to spend $50M on new gun control effort in challenge to NRA

By Fox News.

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will spend $50 million this year to build a nationwide grassroots network on gun control in a direct challenge to the National Rifle Association, The New York Times reported.

The new lobbying group, called Everytown for Gun Safety, will encompass other gun control groups funded by Bloomberg, Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, the report said.

Bloomberg told the Times the strategy will focus on expanding the background check system for gun buyers at the state and national levels. He made nearly $14 million in federal campaign contributions for gun-control candidates in the 2012 elections.

“They say, ‘We don’t care. We’re going to go after you,'” he said of the NRA. “‘If you don’t vote with us we’re going to go after your kids and your grandkids and your great-grandkids. And we’re never going to stop.'”

The 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut —where a gunman used an assault rifle to kill 20 children and six others— led some cities and states to enact laws banning high-capacity magazines.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP / Seth Wenig

Photo Credit: AP / Seth Wenig

‘We’ve Got to Make Them Afraid of Us’: Guess Who Plans to Spend $50 Million to Create Anti-Gun Version of NRA

By Jason Howerton.

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to spend $50 million in 2014 to build a “nationwide grass-roots network to motivate” anti-gun voters, the New York Times reports.

Basically, the billionaire wants to create the anti-Second Amendment version of the National Rifle Association. Eventually, he wants the group to be able to overpower the NRA. Bloomberg says gun control advocates should learn from the NRA and make sure there are consequences for failing to go along with their agenda.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Chops 3 1/2 Years Off Pot Sentence

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Photo Credit: NewsBusters

Photo Credit: NewsBusters

President Barack Obama has issued a commutation to a drug convict, shortening his sentence by three-and-a-half years in what the White House said was an effort to correct a sentencing error.

Ceasar Cantu of Katy, Texas pled guilty in 2006 to possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and money laundering. He received a 15-year prison term but a White House official said it was subsequently discovered that a presentence report contained a mistake which caused the extra three-and-a-half years to be added to his sentence.

“A judge ruled that Mr. Cantu did not discover this error in time to correct it through any judicial means; as a result, it can now only be rectified through clemency,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said at the daily briefing, repeating word for word a comment offered on background by another Obama aide earlier in the day.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dems ‘Race’ To The Bottom

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Conservative pundit Laura Ingraham on Tuesday ripped House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Rep. Steve Israel, calling their recent comments on racism in the GOP “reprehensible” and a “race to the bottom.”

“Steve Israel is reprehensible in what he said. Nancy Pelosi, throw her into the ring. And I say this is the race to the bottom,” Ingraham said on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends.”

Her criticism follows Israel’s remarks on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, in which the New York congressman said “not all” of his GOP colleagues in the House are racist. Similarly, Pelosi accused Republicans for not bringing up an immigration bill because of race.

Read more from this story HERE.

Biden Being Biden: Vice President Tells Boston Marathon Bombing Survivors ‘It Was Worth It’

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By Mike Miller.

Sometimes, the best part about Joe Biden’s many gaffes is that he has no idea he’s making them. Such was the case in Boston Tuesday, as the city marked the one-year anniversary of the Marathon bombing.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: WBZ-TV

Photo Credit: WBZ-TV

Bomb Squad Detonates Bags Near Boston Marathon Finish Line

On the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, Boylston Street was evacuated and two bags were detonated by the Bomb Squad near the finish line.

One of the bags was being carried by a barefoot man who was wearing a long black veil and screaming “Boston Strong.” That man has been identified by sources as 25-year-old Kayvon Edson.

A source tells WBZ-TV that when Edson was stopped by police, he told them he had a rice cooker in his bag. That is when the Bomb Squad was called to the scene.

A source tells CBS News that the rice cooker in the bag was full of confetti.

Read more from this story HERE.