N. Korea Jails US Citizen Matthew Miller to Six Years' Hard Labor

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Photo Credit: AFPNorth Korea’s Supreme Court on Sunday sentenced US citizen Matthew Miller to six years’ hard labour for “hostile” acts, two weeks after he and two other detained Americans had pleaded for help from Washington.

Miller becomes the second American serving a hard labour prison term in the North amid accusations that Pyongyang is using them to extract political concessions from Washington.

The 24-year-old was arrested in April after he allegedly ripped up his visa at immigration and demanded asylum.

“He committed acts hostile to the (North) while entering the territory of the (North) under the guise of a tourist last April,” the state-run KCNA news agency said in announcing Sunday’s court ruling.

Pictures published by KCNA showed a sombre-looking Miller, dressed in a black polo neck and black trousers, sitting and standing in the courtroom dock, flanked by two uniformed guards.

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Anti-Gun Groups No Longer Fighting For Assault Weapons Bans

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Photo Credit: TownHallAlas, gun control groups seem to have moved away from so-called assault weapons bans for reasons pro-Second Amendment groups have espoused for months; they’re ineffective and represent a very small fraction of firearm-related homicides. Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America now calls such policy initiatives “nonstarters.” Nonetheless, that does not mean that these people have abandoned their support for such bans on certain types of firearms (via ProPublica):

Nearly two years later, Watts works full-time as the head of the group, now named Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, is a significant player in a coalition financed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But while polls suggest a majority of Americans still support an assault weapons ban, it is no longer one of Watts’ top priorities.

“We’ve very much changed our strategy to focus on public safety measures that will save the most lives,” she told ProPublica.

It’s not just that the ban proved to be what Watts calls a “nonstarter” politically, gaining fewer votes in the Senate post-Sandy Hook than background check legislation. It was also that as Watts spoke to experts and learned more about gun violence in the United States, she realized that pushing for a ban isn’t the best way to prevent gun deaths.

A 2004 Justice Department-funded evaluation found no clear evidence that the decade-long ban saved any lives. The guns categorized as “assault weapons” had only been used in about 2 percent of gun crimes before the ban. “Should it be renewed,” the report concluded, “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

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$2.66T: Tax Revenues for FY14 Hit Record Through August; Gov’t Still Runs $589B Deficit

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Photo Credit: APInflation-adjusted federal tax revenues hit a record $2,663,426,000,000 for the first 11 months of the fiscal year this August, but the federal government still ran a $589,185,000,000 deficit during that time, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement.

Each month, the Treasury publishes the government’s “total receipts,” including all revenue from individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, social insurance and retirement taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), unemployment insurance taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, customs duties, and “miscellaneous receipts.”

The largest share of the tax revenue so far this year has come from individual income taxes, which totaled $1,233,274,000,000 in the first 11 months of fiscal 2014.

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Hillary Clinton in Iowa Stirs 2016 Speculation

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsHillary Clinton returned to Iowa on Sunday for the first time since her 2008 Democratic presidential primary loss in the state, telling the crowd at the 37th annual Harkin Steak Fry — “I’m back.”

Clinton, the clear Democratic frontrunner should she make a 2016 White House bid, was greeted with loud cheers at the fundraising event. The event was held in honor of Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who is retiring from Congress this year.

The former secretary of state told the crowd of several hundred that her immediate focus is helping fellow Democrats in the midterm elections but that she also thinks about “that other thing,” hinting at a 2016 run.

“It’s true, I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “People get excited about presidential campaigns, look I get excited about presidential campaigns, too.”

Missing in her speech were remarks on President Obama’s recent efforts to destroy the Islamic State militant group and on other pressing foreign policy issues.

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Shifting His Views, Rand Paul Seeks Broader Appeal — but May Risk His Outsider Image

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsSen. Rand Paul wanted to eliminate aid to Israel. Now he doesn’t. He wanted to scrap the Medicare system. Now he’s not sure.

He didn’t like the idea of a border fence — it was expensive, and it reminded him of the Berlin Wall. Now he wants two fences, one behind the other.

And what about same-sex marriage? Paul’s position — such marriages are morally wrong, but Republicans should stop obsessing about them — seems so muddled that an Iowa pastor recently confronted him in frustration.

“With all due respect, that sounds very retreatist of you,” minister Michael Demastus said he told Paul (R-Ky.) after the senator explained his position during a stop in Des Moines.

Paul has built a reputation as a libertarian ideologue, a Washington outsider guided by a rigid devotion to principle.

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School Tells Soldier Escorting Daughter to Leave Because of Offensive Uniform

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Photo Credit: IJ ReviewA Lieutenant Colonel was escorting his daughter to Rochester Adams high school in Michigan, when the man in uniform was rudely informed that he would not be permitted to enter the premises.

The reason that the military officer was given? His uniform ‘might offend people.’

The security personnel hired by the school told the 24-year veteran Lt. Col. Sherwood Baker that if he wanted to take his daughter inside the building, he would have to go home and change clothes.

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WATCH: A “Deformed” Baby’s Parents Wanted to Euthanize Him, But Then This Happened

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Baby Adam was born in a Christian missionary hospital in India. He had healthy lungs, brain, and heart, but was severely deformed. He had no eyelids, no nose, no hands, and his legs were fused together. His biological family refused to take him home and even threatened to poison him.

That’s when two employees at the hospital, Jessica and Raja Paulraj, decided to adopt him.

The adopted parents quickly looked for people in America that could help their son. One of the first to reach out was Dr. John Van Aalst, a plastic surgeon at North Carolina Children’s Hospital…

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David Haines Beheading: Recap of Updates after ISIS Release Video Showing Execution of British Hostage

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Photo Credit: Mirror.co.ukIslamic State militants have released footage claiming to show the beheading of British hostage David Haines.

The aid worker, 44, was captured by ISIS in Syria in March 2013.

The plight of the dad-of-two was revealed when he appeared at the end of a video showing the beheading of US journalist Steven Sotloff earlier this month.

ISIS had threatened to kill Mr Haines if world leaders do not bow to their demands.

Tonight, the extremists posted a new video lasting 2minutes and 30 seconds which appears to show the beheading of David Haines.

At the end of the video, ISIS parade another hostage.

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US Air Force Confronts Atheists: Must Swear to God or Leave Service

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Photo Credit: AFP / Chris SchneiderThe US Air Force has told a sergeant he will have to leave the military unless he agrees to take an oath with the phrase “so help me God,” officials said Tuesday.

In the latest religious controversy to roil the air force, the atheist airman last month was denied his request to re-enlist because of his refusal to swear to God — and he is now poised to take the military to court, his lawyer said.

“We have not received word from the Air Force regarding our letter. It has not indicated a willingness to settle out of court,” said Monica Miller, an attorney for the American Humanist Association, which has taken up the service member’s case.

With the deadline for re-enlisting expiring in November, the technical sergeant at Creech Air Force base in Nevada — whose name has not been released — will be forced to sue the government in a federal court, Miller told AFP.

In the past, an airman could opt for an alternative phrase and omit the words “so help me God,” but the US Air Force changed its policy in October 2013.

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'DREAMER' Charged with Strangling 5-Year-Old Girl to Death in Texas

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Photo Credit: Dallas County Sheriff’s OfficeBy Dave Gibson.

On Sunday, police in Dallas arrested Angel Sanches, 17, after he reportedly strangled his 5-year-old cousin to death and left her tiny body hanging inside a closet inside an abandoned unit at the Sontera Palms Apartments in Lake Highlands. The victim “was found hanging in a closet by a shirt around her neck,” according to court documents.

The victim, Katherine Gonzalez, was staying with her uncle at the apartment complex, while her parents were at work. The uncle called police when he could not find the girl. Officers searched the complex and soon made the grisly discovery.

A witness, Freddie Washington, saw Sanches lure the little girl into the apartment.

Washington told WFAA:

He kept telling her to ‘Come on, come on,’ like come home or something. I think he waited for me to leave around the corner and then took her into the vacant apartment.

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BUCHANAN: ‘ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION POSES GREATER THREAT THAN ISIS’

By Leo Hohmann.

President Obama’s vow to unilaterally create amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants poses more of a threat to the future of the country than the brutal ISIS radicals marching across Iraq and Syria, according to a leading voice in the conservative movement.

Pat Buchanan, author of numerous books on American politics and a former Republican presidential candidate, said on the Laura Ingraham show Monday that the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq is not as big of a long-term threat as the failure to secure the border and uphold the rule of law on the homefront.

“Look, we better realize the United States itself is in tremendous long-term danger, I think, in the bleeding border along our southern border, and the mass movement of peoples all over the world into this country,” Buchanan said. “The decomposition of the country socially and culturally and politically – all of these things it seems to me are far greater long-term threats to the United States than even those dreadful characters over there in Syria or Iraq beheading people.”

To view it otherwise is to miss a historical tipping point, he said.

“I don’t think that (ISIS) is the threat. I think it’s basically the country breaking up internally and failing as the great nation that it was, and I think there is an awful lot of things that need to be done right here in the United States, and not simply in the economy, to bring us all together and make us one people again, that have nothing to do with what’s going on in Iraq,” Buchanan said.

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