Hillary Clinton Takes Aim at 2nd Amendment: Time to ‘Rein In’ An ‘Article of Faith’

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Photo Credit: Stephan Savoia

Photo Credit: Stephan Savoia

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday the nation’s gun culture has gotten “way out of balance” and the U.S. needs to rein in the notion that “anybody can have a gun, anywhere, anytime.”

The former Secretary of State and potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate said the idea that anyone can have a gun is not in the “best interest of the vast majority of people.” But she said that approach does not conflict with the rights of people to own firearms.

Clinton waded into the polarizing issue of gun politics during an appearance at the National Council for Behavioral Health conference in Oxon Hill, Md., pointing to recent shootings that involved teens who had been playing loud music and chewing gum and a separate incident involving the typing of text messages in a movie theater.

“I think again we’re way out of balance. I think that we’ve got to rein in what has become an almost article of faith that anybody can have a gun anywhere, anytime,” Clinton said. “And I don’t believe that is in the best interest of the vast majority of people. And I think you can say that and still support the right of people to own guns.”

The Democratic-controlled Senate voted against legislation pushed by President Barack Obama last year that would have expanded background checks for firearm purchases to gun shows and online sales. The legislation came in the aftermath of the deadly Sandy Hook elementary school shootings in Connecticut.

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Charles Krauthammer Burns White House Global Warming Proposals To The Ground

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Photo Credit: Glyn Lowe Photoworks

Photo Credit: Glyn Lowe Photoworks

On FOX NEWS Charles Krauthammer commented on the just-released and massive 840-page report on climate change from the Obama Administration, which forecasted dire consequences as a result of “increasingly disruptive” changes in the weather.

In the context of various proposals to counter these changes, such as increases in renewable energy, reductions in carbon emissions, and increased vehicle fuel standards, Krauthammer was extremely critical.
Two of the most salient comments:

“We don’t control the carbon emissions of the other 96% of humanity, especially China and India.”

“All we are doing is committing economic suicide in the name of do-goodism that will not do an iota of good.”

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Leona Lewis: Abortion of Down Syndrome Babies ‘Hurts My Heart’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Upon learning that 90% of babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted, singer/songwriter Leona Lewis said it was “incredibly sad” and “hurts my heart a bit.”

Lewis, a Brit who shot to fame and a successful musical career after winning the X Factor in 2006, made her remarks on Wednesday at the Global Down Syndrome Foundation Gala at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.

At the event, CNSNews.com asked Lewis, “What do you think of the statistic that nine out of ten babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted?”

Lewis said, “I think that’s so sad. I think that’s incredibly, incredibly sad and, yeah, it hurts my heart a bit.”

The high rate of abortion after a diagnosis of Down Syndrome was reported in the New York Times as early as 2007 and has been confirmed by several different studies.

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Why Should I Work When I Can Sit Home and Smoke Weed?

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Photo Credit: Amac

Photo Credit: Amac

A welfare recipient called in to a radio show in Austin, Texas gloating about how she gets to just sit at home and do nothing. She claims she also gets to smoke weed. In addition to her gloating, she got on to the radio hosts’ “moralizing” work ethic. TheDaily Sheeple’s video description quotes this proud parasite:

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The Climate Change Debate Is Over, And Environmentalists Lost

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Photo Credit: The Federalist

Photo Credit: The Federalist

The bloodcurdling National Climate Assessment is here and it portends catastrophe; floods, clouds and other assorted weather events are imminent! … but , says the report, “there is still time to act to limit the amount of climate change and the extent of damaging impacts.”

Have you noticed that we’re always at the cusp of a cataclysm, yet the deadline to act always moves to a politically convenient not-too-distant future? I guess when the time to act runs out – it will at some point, right? — we can begin thinking about defunding all these panels and reinvesting in something more productive: like figuring out how we can adapt to the future.

For now, though, the congressionally mandated report claims we’re no longer merely dealing with impending disaster. The United States, it asserts, has already incurred billions of dollars in damages from severe weather-related disruptions due to climate change. The political hope is that some of this ugly weather will generate more urgency to do something. President Obama will use the report to bolster his case for unilaterally enacting carbon dioxide regulations, neglecting, one imagines, to mention that while there is consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change, there isn’t much agreement on whether severe weather has actually gotten worse over the past years, or, if it has, that climate change is the cause.

Nevertheless.

“We’re committed to moving forward with those rules,” John Podesta said in a bit of an anti-democratic rant the other day. “We’re committed to maintaining the authority and the president’s authority to ensure that the Clean Air Act is fully implemented.” Don’t worry, though. Podesta says this is “actionable science” so separation of powers and consent of the governed and other trifling concerns are no longer applicable.

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Obama Unleashes the Left

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Photo Credit: Martin Kozlowski

Photo Credit: Martin Kozlowski

In the U.S., the politics of the left versus the right rolls on with the predictability of traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge. It’s a lot of honking. Until now. All of a sudden, the left has hit ramming speed across a broad swath of American life—in the universities, in politics and in government. People fingered as out of line with the far left’s increasingly bizarre claims are being hit and hit hard.

Commencement-speaker bans are obligatory. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice withdrew as Rutgers’s speaker after two months of protests over Iraq, the left’s long-sought replacement for the Vietnam War. Brandeis terminated its invitation to Somali writer Hirsi Ali, whose criticisms of radical Islam violated the school’s “core values.”

Azusa Pacific University “postponed” an April speech by political scientist Charles Murray to avoid “hurting our faculty and students of color.” Come again? It will “hurt” them? Oh yes. In a recent New Republic essay, Jennie Jarvie described the rise of “trigger warnings” that professors are expected to post with their courses to avoid “traumatizing” students.

Oberlin College earlier this year proposed that its teachers “be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression.” The co-chair of Oberlin’s Sexual Offense Policy Task Force said last month that this part of the guide is now under revision.

I think it’s fair to say something has snapped.

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Congress Holds Lerner in Contempt

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Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster

Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster

By Stephen Ohlemacher.

House Republicans voted Wednesday to hold a former Internal Revenue Service official in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify at a pair of committee hearings about her role in the agency’s tea party controversy.

The House also passed a nonbinding resolution calling on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate the IRS.

Lois Lerner directed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. A year ago this week, Lerner publicly disclosed that agents had improperly singled out tea party applications for extra, sometimes burdensome scrutiny.

An inspector general’s report blamed poor management but found no evidence of a political conspiracy. Many Republicans in Congress believe otherwise.

“Who’s been fired over the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS? No one that I’m aware of,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday. “Who’s gone to jail for violating the law? When is the administration going to tell the American people the truth?”

Read more from this story HERE.

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In Showdown With Lerner, House Imprisonment Not Out of the Question

By Katy O’Donnell.

Former tax official Lois Lerner’s confrontation with Congress over a potential contempt citation may get emphatically more dramatic, depending on how far back into congressional history House Republicans want to reach.

Deep in the recesses of congressional power — and in precedent stretching back to the 18th century — is the ability to pursue “inherent contempt” against individuals, including the right to imprison a person in the Capitol to compel compliance with lawmakers’ authority.

Congress hasn’t exercised inherent contempt power since 1935 and there’s no suggestion that lawmakers are actively considering the option in Lerner’s case.

But House attorneys, and lawyers for the former Internal Revenue Service official, are looking at the potential legal paths as House leaders consider first whether to take a contempt citation to the floor and, if it passes, whether the Justice Department will pursue prosecution.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted on party lines to recommend the full House hold Lerner in contempt and refer her to the Justice Department for refusing to testify before the committee on allegations of political targeting at the IRS of conservative political groups seeking tax-exempt status. The GOP members said Lerner, who resigned from the IRS last year under fire for her role as the head of the office at the heart of the controversy, waived her Fifth Amendment privilege by delivering an opening statement declaring her innocence before the panel last year.

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House Committee Has Voted Unanimously to Rein in the NSA

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Photo Credit: Bill O'Leary / The Washington Post

Photo Credit: Bill O’Leary / The Washington Post

A key House committee has approved a package of NSA reforms that would end the spy agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, nearly a year after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed the program’s existence.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 32-0 Wednesday to rein in the NSA with the USA FREEDOM Act, a measure that places new requirements on the government when it comes to gathering, targeting and searching telephone metadata for intelligence purposes.

In addition to prohibiting the NSA from engaging in what the bill’s sponsors have called “dragnet surveillance,” the bill would also require authorities to get permission from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on a case-by-case basis. It would establish a panel of privacy experts and other officials to serve as a public advocate at the court. And it would also give businesses more latitude to tell the public about requests it receives from the government for user data.

The bill represents “the best chance in a decade” to correct an imbalance between national security and privacy, said co-sponsor Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.). It is the first surveillance reform bill to proceed to the House floor.

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The Obama Lie That Was So Bad the Washington Post Said, ‘On Just About Every Level, This Claim is Ridiculous’

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Photo Credit: AP / Susan Walsh

Photo Credit: AP / Susan Walsh

President Barack Obama earned “four Pinocchios” from the Washington Post Fact Checker, the highest ranking for a political lie, for asserting that Republicans filibustered 500 pieces of legislation, an exaggeration of nearly five times the reality.

Obama spoke at a fundraising event for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Los Angeles Wednesday, and made the charge against Republican lawmakers.

“Here’s what’s more disconcerting; their willingness to say no to everything — the fact that since 2007, they have filibustered about 500 pieces of legislation that would help the middle class just gives you a sense of how opposed they are to any progress — has actually led to an increase in cynicism and discouragement among the people who were counting on us to fight for them,” Obama said.

The Post unsparingly said of the president’s assertion, “On just about every level, this claim is ridiculous.”

“We realize that Senate rules are complex and difficult to understand, but the president did serve in the Senate and should be familiar with its terms and procedures. Looking at the numbers, he might have been able to make a case that Republicans have blocked about 50 bills that he had wanted passed, such as an increase in the minimum wage,” the Post said. “But instead he inflated the numbers to such an extent that he even included votes in which he, as senator, supported a filibuster.”

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Miller Blasts Begich for Climate Change Deception

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Joe Miller today blasted Democrat Mark Begich for his full-on embrace this week of Barack Obama’s newly released Climate Change Assessment. Begich is calling for an end to scientific debate and for immediate action. 

“Mark Begich wants to have it both ways,” Miller said. “On the one hand, he uncritically accepts this administration’s alarmist conclusions and demands action. But on the other hand, he’s trying to distance himself from Obama’s proposed agenda, even to the point of disavowing ‘solutions’ he advocated for when it wasn’t election season.”

Mark Begich signed a 2010 letter to Harry Reid urging decisive action on climate change, stating, “We believe the scale of this challenge dictates the need for a comprehensive solution that includes making polluters pay through a price on greenhouse gas emissions.”

Apparently, our junior senator is unaware that there are good reasons to doubt the alarmists’ conclusions. For instance: 

•    A recent study conducted by the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks concluded that the average temperature in Alaska declined by 2.34 degrees between 2000-2010.

•    A Fox News story last fall cited a National Snow and Ice Data Center report of a 60% increase in Arctic sea ice just between 2012-2013.

•    In a CNSNews article this spring, a Canadian evolutionary biologist warned that Arctic polar bears could be threatened by too much sea ice.

President Obama and Mark Begich’s pronouncements of an end to the scientific debate regarding climate change are based not on any new or conclusive findings of the scientific community, but on a willingness of ideologically driven politicians to exercise raw power to move their agenda forward.

Miller concluded, “What’s important is not what Mark Begich says this year, it’s what we know he will do next year if we give him another term in the United States Senate. We have watched him carry the water for Barack Obama and Harry Reid for five years now. Last year alone, he voted with the President 97% of the time. If Mark Begich is not in agreement with Barack Obama’s policies, why has he not put up a fight against this administration’s enactment of its anti-development climate change agenda through unlawful executive actions and bureaucratic fiat?”