GOP Writes Legislation to Deny Eric Holder his Salary (+video)

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Photo Credit: AFP PHOTO/Brendan SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty

Photo Credit: AFP PHOTO/Brendan SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty

A Republican congressman has introduced a bill that would stop government paychecks for officials who have been found in contempt of Congress — a move that seems designed in the short term to go after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

Mr. Holder has refused to cooperate with House Republicans’ probe into the Fast & Furious gun-walking operation, and the House has voted to find him in contempt. Mr. Holder is challenging that vote in court.

Rep. Blake Farenthold, a Texas Republican who publicly excoriated Mr. Holder at a hearing last week, introduced the legislation just before Congress went on vacation, and announced it Tuesday.

“The American people should not be footing the bill for federal employees who stonewall Congress or rewarding government officials’ bad behavior,” Mr. Farenthold said.

Mr. Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee last week and faced harsh barbs over his defense of Obama administration policies. He bristled at having been held in contempt.

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Obama Sets Record: Highest Number of Regs on the Books in a Year

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Anyone wondering why the U.S. economy can’t seem to grow at its usual pace should examine one product category where production is booming: federal regulation.

Washington set a new record in 2013 by issuing final rules consuming 26,417 pages in the Federal Register. While plenty of government employees deserve credit for this milestone, leadership matters. And by this measure President Obama has never been surpassed in the Oval Office.

The latest rule-making tally comes from the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Wayne Crews, who on April 29 will publish his annual review of federal regulation in “Ten Thousand Commandments.” This is important work because politicians and the media treat regulation as a largely cost-free public good. Mr. Crews knows better.

Congress may be mired in gridlock, but the federal bureaucracy is busier than ever. In 2013 the Federal Register contained 3,659 “final” rules, which means they now must be obeyed, and 2,594 proposed rules on their way to becoming orders from political headquarters.

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What a Cop Was Caught on Camera Doing After He ‘Threw Himself On Top’ of a Woman Has Sparked an Investigation

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Photo Credit: Screen grab WPVI-TV

Photo Credit: Screen grab WPVI-TV

Cellphone video captured a Pennsylvania cop straddle a woman and repeatedly strike her, before then pulling out a taser and shocking her numerous times.

“I feel like this man came to the scene with anger. He came at her with complete aggression. He did not give her no chance,” one unidentified witness told WPVI-TV.

The incident took place Sunday when Chester City police were called to the scene over reports of a woman with a knife.

“She was yelling, chasing the guy I guess who stole her pocket book and was saying, ‘You are going to give me my money back,’ with a knife. She never touched nobody with it. It was a lot of her yelling and running around,” the witness told WPVI.

According to the local ABC affiliate, police said they are investigating the incident, but would not comment on whether or not the woman had threatened the officer with the knife.

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Human Barricade in Works to Stop ‘Obamabot’ (+audio)

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

President Obama is asking the U.S. Senate to confirm Sylvia Mathews Burwell as the next leader of the Department of Health and Human Services, but at least one veterans organization is vowing to do everything it can to block her path to the president’s Cabinet – including blocking the Senate with a “human barricade.”

Burwell is currently director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, or OMB.

During October’s partial government shutdown, Burwell sent the memo for the National Park Service to shutter its public attractions, including open-air memorials in Washington such as the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Veterans Memorial.

That decision made the World War II Memorial a flash point of controversy during the shutdown, as elderly veterans coming to the nation’s capital on Honor Flights were turned away by barricades.

Members of Congress and veterans groups soon began removing the barricades to allow veterans access to their memorials. Eventually, the government allowed World War II veterans into their memorial, but the general public was left out. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Veterans Memorial were closed to everyone.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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‘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.

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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.