Meth Lab Found at California Retirement Community

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Photo Credit: Jeff Roberson, APA 64-year-old Northern California man has been arrested by police on suspicion of cooking methamphetamine in his apartment at a retirement community.

Robert Short was pulled over by police in a routine traffic stop in Fresno late Saturday. During the stop, officers learned that Short was on supervised release for selling meth. While conducting a search of his car, they found 4 ounces of crystal meth, plastic bags and an electronic scale, Sgt. Brian Valles said.

Investigators then went to Short’s apartment at the California League-Fresno Village. There, they found a half-pound of crystal meth with a street value of about $1,700, some heroin and materials for a small meth lab, Valles said.

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Begich Earmarked Millions for Bankrupt Green Energy Company

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Photo Credit: APAs Sen. Mark Begich (D., Alaska) seeks to shore up his energy policy credentials, a now-bankrupt green energy company to which he steered federal subsidies could cloud his message.

Begich received campaign contributions from a lobbyist for an Alaska geothermal plant after helping the company obtain federal financing. The company is now bankrupt, but Begich continues touting his support for alternative energy.

The senator, who is facing reelection in November, will address the Alaska Wood Energy Conference on Wednesday. The conference brings together leaders in the state’s biomass industry.

He has also promoted fossil fuel development, including effort to open areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, and to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

However, Begich’s critics are pointing to his involvement with a now-bankrupt Alaska utility as evidence of a troubling record on energy policy.

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Obama ‘Went to Bed While People Died’

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Photo Credit: WNDAfter all is said and done, the Benghazi scandal boils down to just the same two key questions as those in the Watergate scandal: What did the president know? And, when did he know it?

That’s according to a man who used to guard the president for a living, former secret service agent Dan Bongino, author of the WND bestseller, “Life Inside the Bubble,” and current candidate to represent Maryland in Congress.

Bongino strongly suggested the answers to those questions will show President Obama just as responsible for the scandal as President Nixon was for his. The difference was, he said, people died in Benghazi.

Parodying the phrase used by former Secretary of Stare Hillary Clinton, Bongino rhetorically asked, “What difference does it make?” He then answered by saying four men were killed and nothing was done to help them.

The man who used to personally guard the president was one of more than a dozen expert panelists convened by the Heritage Foundation and the Benghazi Accountability Coalition for a four-hour examination of the scandal called, “Benghazi: The Difference it Makes is Accountability.”

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Urgent Prayer, Help Needed for Iraq’s Christians

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Photo Credit: AFP / Getty ImagesIn the wake of the growing crisis in Iraq, a plea for prayer and help has been issued by the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf and the Anglican vicar of St George’s Church in Baghdad.

An estimated half a million people, including hundreds of Christian families, are fleeing the area with many attempting to find refuge in the nearby Kurdish provinces of Northern Iraq. At least one Assyrian church in Mosul has been burned down in the recent violence.

A statement from the diocese said that Christians are feeling particularly vulnerable, “especially in light of the treatment of Christians in the Raqqah province of northern Syria where ISIS* has also established its authority.

“Recall that, in February 2014, ISIS commanders in Raqqah forced Christian community leaders to sign a contract agreeing to a set of stringent conditions. These included the payment of a special tax (known as jizya), conduct of Christian rites only behind closed doors so as to be neither visible nor audible to Muslims, and adherence to Islamic commercial, dress code and dietary regulations.

“Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh plain is the traditional heartland of Iraq’s Christian communities. Many Christians fled to this region when forced to leave Baghdad and other areas in recent years. Christians are alarmed at the ISIS take-over of Mosul, fearful that this will further accelerate the decline of the Christian presence in Iraq.”

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Feds Lowball Number of Children Crossing the Border

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Aaron Klein.

The Department of Homeland Security appears to have low-balled its estimates of the number of unaccompanied alien children it’s publicly claiming will arrive in the U.S. during the fiscal year of 2014.

DHS claimed in its new budget proposal that current trends lead it to estimate 60,000 unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, will cross illegally this year.

A closer look at DHS’s own numbers, however, show that as of May 31, a total of 47,017 UACs has already arrived, mostly from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

If those trends continue, the numbers could eclipse 100,000 by the end of the year.

Indeed, earlier this month, Breitbart News cited a leaked internal draft memo from Deputy Chief of Border Patrol Ronald D. Vitiello that revealed the DHS expects UAC apprehensions this year to be about 90,100 and 2015 to see 142,000 unaccompanied alien children enter the country.

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Photo Credit: Sara A. Carter / TheBlaze‘They Keep Coming’: The ‘Rehearsed’ Answers Illegal Immigrants Are Using at the Border to Gain Entry Into the U.S.

By Sara Carter.

A Honduran woman clutched her small baby boy from the back of a Border Patrol transport truck. She was sitting with 12 other people, mostly children, who had just made their way from Reynosa, Mexico, across the Rio Grande by the Anzalduas port of entry in Texas.

The mother, who had crossed first with one baby, had left her infant and older son along the banks of the river in Mexico. Her two children followed in a second raft and joined their mother after the Border Patrol took her into custody.

“We’re fleeing gang violence,” the mother told the Border Patrol agent, who detailed the conversation to TheBlaze on the condition that he not be named. The group did not run, but voluntarily turned themselves in to U.S. federal custody and claimed what is known as credible fear to apply for asylum in the U.S.

They all knew it was only a matter of time before they would be set free.

Border Patrol agents along the southwest border have been directed not to speak with journalists after the public became aware that more than 47,000 undocumented children have illegally entered into the country over the past eight months. Most of the undocumented children crossed through the Rio Grande Valley sector and many times, they traveled alone.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bloomberg’s Top Advocate Admits Gun Control Proposals Wouldn’t Stop Mass Shootings

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Photo Credit: TownHallMeet Mark Glaze, the former executive director and face of Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown For Gun Safety, a group that used to be called Mayors Against Illegal Guns [MAIG]. Whenever a mass shooting occurs (which despite popular belief and hysteria from the media, isn’t happening more frequently than it used to), Glaze takes to the airwaves to demand new gun control legislation, specifically expanded background checks.

As of Friday, Glaze left his post with MAIG Everytown and is admitting in an exit interview with the Wall Street Journal that the proposals outlined by the gun control group and sent to Congress, would not have prevented mass shootings in the past and won’t stop them in the future. (bolding is mine)

Mr. Glaze said the movement hasn’t solved one of its signature problems: Many mass shootings wouldn’t have been stopped by tighter regulations proposed by gun-control advocates, even if they might have prevented other gun crimes.

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Obama to Bar Gay Discrimination By Federal Contractors

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Photo Credit: APPresident Barack Obama plans to sign an executive order barring federal contractors from hiring or firing employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, senior administration officials said Monday, in a move that could energize Democratic voters in November’s midterm elections.

The White House announcement is a curtain raiser to Mr. Obama’s appearance Tuesday at a Democratic fundraising gala with gay-rights supporters in New York.

Mr. Obama isn’t expected to sign the executive order for weeks, as the White House finalizes details, including possible exemptions for religious nonprofit organizations. Administration officials said Mr. Obama decided to act unilaterally in the absence of momentum for legislation with broader protections, and said he intends to use the issue to draw a contrast with Republicans.

“An executive order along these lines would not be a substitute for robust congressional action,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. “Unfortunately this is yet another example of Republicans blocking Congress on the kind of issue that has pretty strong support all across the country.”

House Republicans have declined to allow a vote on legislation that would bar most employers, not just federal contractors, from discriminating against gay, lesbian and transgender workers, saying it could lead to frivolous lawsuits and affect the religious liberty of employers.

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House GOP Investigators Argue IRS Targeting Influenced by Obama

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Photo Credit: APHouse Republicans seeking a direct link between President Obama and the IRS targeting of conservative groups — a connection Democrats say is essential for a legitimate White House scandal — have released a report detailing dozens of examples that they say prove the president and fellow Democrats pressured the agency to act.

The influence campaign unofficially started during Obama’s January 2010 State of the Union Address in which he “delivered a stunning rebuke” of the Supreme Court decision in favor of the group Citizens United, among the IRS’s first and biggest targets, according to the 77-page report released Monday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

The decision in part allowed campaign donors to remain anonymous.

“The Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests,” Obama said in the address. “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse by foreign entities. … And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.”

The report attempts to show that Obama combined his master oratory skills with the “indisputably powerful” presidential bully pulpit to sound a clarion call that was heard by news outlets shaping the national agenda and that led IRS official Lois Learner to start targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status.

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‘Obama, Stop Playing Golf and Deal With Iraq’

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By Courtney Coren.

House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers pleaded with President Barack Obama on Monday to quit playing golf and lead the country with a better solution than working with Iran on the crisis in Iraq.

“‘Mr. President, please come back from the golf course,'” Rogers said on “America’s Forum” on Newsmax TV. “‘We need you. We need a decision now. We need to sit down. We ought to be spending very long days in situation rooms to try to get to a place that really does work for American national security interests.”

Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States is close to beginning talks with Iran over helping Iraq in the fight against the insurgency.

Rogers says the United States should be exhausting other options before turning to Iran for help.

“That would put us at odds with Iran’s position in Syria, and it certainly would put us at odds with a country that we believe has U.S. blood on its hands by supporting and financing operations in Iraq against U.S. soldiers in the past,” the Michigan Republican explained.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APObama Announces 275 US Troops Will Be Sent to Iraq to Protect American Embassy in Baghdad Days After Saying They Would Not Return

By DAVID MARTOSKO, U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR and JAMES NYE and ASSOCIATED PRESS.

President Obama announced on Monday evening that US ground troops ‘equipped for combat’ are being sent to Iraq – just days after claiming that no American soldiers would be deployed to the war-torn country.

In a letter to Congress, the president said American troops will be returning to Iraq only three years after they left and their deployment began on Sunday.

Obama said that their only purpose will be to protect U.S. personnel and the embassy in Baghdad – and not to join in the fierce fighting raging outside the Iraqi capital.

The president did tell Congress, however, that American military personnel in Baghdad will be ‘equipped for combat.’

The president did not give a deadline for the troops exit, only that the 275 soldiers will remain in Iraq for as long as they are needed to protect US interests.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pro-Bono Lawyers: Most Unaccompanied Border Children Eligible for Amnesty

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Photo Credit: Breitbart As more and more unaccompanied alien children (UACs) from Central America have poured into south Texas—and subsequently transferred to Border Patrol facilities elsewhere along the border—US government officials are scrambling to find places to put them. However, based on current immigration and asylum laws, the vast majority of those children could be legally staying right here in the United States before long.

Under the authority of the Homeland Security Act, the federal government transfers custody of illegal immigrant children who are apprehended alone at our borders to the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The ORR’s primary goal is to reunite them with a family member or legal guardian already here in the US (regardless of their legal status) while the child goes through removal proceedings. As Breitbart Texas recently reported, UACs receive a bevy of assistance while in ORR custody, including classroom education, health care, socialization/recreation, vocational training, mental health services, family reunification, access to legal services, and case management. In many cases, they are treated better than US citizen children currently in the foster care system.

The most valuable of all those benefits is the legal assistance. ORR has an outreach program to connect immigration attorneys willing to work on a pro-bono basis with UACs as they go through removal proceedings. For adult illegal immigrants facing deportation or applying for a status adjustment through avenues like asylum or cancellation of removal, finding a pro-bono attorney is next to impossible, and even lower-priced immigration attorneys are financially out of reach for cash-strapped applicants. But in the case of UACs, there is a program designed specifically to help just them, as well as unaccompanied refugee minors.

The pro-bono attorneys who volunteer to help these children aren’t bottom-of-the-barrel lawyers, either; some of them work for very prestigious firms in different parts of the country. One such organization that provides pro-bono legal services for UACs is The Safe Passage Project. Their “attorneys of the week” list highlighted on their main page included a litigator who has practiced multiple areas of law, including Immigration, Foreclosure, Personal Injury, and Real Estate, for seven years and established her own law firm on Wall Street.

Read more from this story HERE.