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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Major Changes to U.S. Census Will Make It Nearly Impossible to Track How Obamacare Is Doing

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. Census Bureau will change its annual survey to include a “total revision to health insurance questions,” essentially making it all but impossible to track Obamacare’s successes and failures in its next report, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

Widely regarded as the most authoritative source on health insurance data in the country, the bureau’s shakeup was met by sharp criticism from analysts who hoped to follow Obamacare’s progress.

“I’m speechless. Completely inexcusable. The administration deserves all of the criticism it will get, and then some,” Bloomberg View’s Megan McArdle said in a tweet.

Vox senior editor Sarah Kliff added in a tweet of her own: “Getting worked up into an increasingly heated health nerd rage about the Census changes. We’re losing our best data source on Obamacare.”

Bureau officials said in an internal memo that the new survey questions are intended to “improve the accuracy” of the census, according to the Times.

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Congressman: Let’s Scrap Income Tax

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The federal tax code is a complex, unintelligible mess, and America needs to embrace the simplicity of a national consumption tax known as the Fair Tax, according to Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., who is just one of many conservatives touting the idea as Americans rush to meet the federal income tax deadline.

“PROBLEM: folks sacrificing precious time, money and peace of mind on a broken complex tax code. SOLUTION: the #FairTax,” tweeted Price on Tuesday. Fellow Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., also tweeted support for the Fair Tax and the abolishing of the IRS.

Price said the first thing Americans need to recognize is that the current tax system is a disaster.

“Our current system actually punishes the things that we say that we want as a society,” he said. “We say we want hard work. We say we want success. We say we want entrepreneurs, risk taking, investment and all those kinds of things. Yet our tax system punishes every single one of them. So many of us believe that we need think more fundamentally and more creatively about it and come up with a tax system that doesn’t just massage what we currently have but puts in place a system that actually rewards those things.”

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga.:

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WATCH: Here’s What Defiant New York Gun Owners Decided to Do on the Day of State’s Gun Registration Deadline

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The state of New York gave gun owners who owned so-called “assault weapons” before the passage of the SAFE Act, a hastily-passed gun control law, until April 15, 2014, to register them with the state government.

On Tuesday, the deadline, New York gun owners and Second Amendment rights advocates gathered in downtown Buffalo, N.Y., and shredded gun registration forms in an act of protest.

New York lawmakers have “shredded” their constitutional rights, so it’s only fitting the gun registration forms get the same treatment, protesters reportedly said.

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Obama’s Pencil-Thin Presidency

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Photo Credit: American Thinker

Photo Credit: American Thinker

Peeking over the top of Obama’s shirt pocket is not the end of the pen that he threatened to use, along with his phone, if he didn’t get his way. It’s the tip of a pencil. An ordinary, wooden, No. 2 pencil, complete with eraser, both ends worn to the nub, in desperate need of sharpening.

Pens suggest importance and permanence. Great documents are composed with pens. Pivotal moments in history are recorded in ink, as are inspiring presidential legacies. The references to the current president inserted into those biographies, however, are sketched in the erasable strokes of a pencil — as is everything else Obama has ever produced or that his presidency has inspired.

Pencils’ output is flexible. Pencils design and transform and spin. Pencils redefine, divide, draw distractions and smudge and distort and erase: facts, events, and narratives. Penciled opinions can conveniently evolve. Penciled statistics, measurements and books are easily cooked. Red lines marked by pencils can be erased and redrawn. Laws become mere “suggestions” and imply a “vast amount of discretion” in enforcement.

Because Obama is a “master of words” — one with the ability to control their meaning — his pencil, aided by a vast media complex, is a tool that holds the potential for absolute power as executive, legislator and judge.

A prominent law professor once aided Obama in that mastery with this explanation: “[Obama] didn’t say what he meant…and having said that, in order to avoid misleading anyone, he had to clarify it.” Thomas Sowell put it a little clearer than Mr. Tribe when he observed about Obama: “One of the many ways of lying smoothly is to simply redefine words.”

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Obama Program Aims to Reduce ‘Births’ Among Blacks, Latinos

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

President Barack Obama is attempting to lower the rate of “births” — and separately, pregnancies — among blacks and Latinos.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists reducing “births” as one of the top goals of Obama’s “Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative.”

The language on the CDC’s website makes clear that the program seeks to reduce the rate of both pregnancies and “births” among minorities.

Specifically, the CDC says the “purpose of this program is to demonstrate the effectiveness of innovative,

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South Korea Says Hundreds Missing after Ferry Sinks Off Southern Coast

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Photo Credit: AP/YONHAP

Photo Credit: AP/YONHAP

South Korean officials said Wednesday that nearly 300 people were still missing several hours after a passenger ferry sank off that country’s southern coast, leaving at least two dead and seven injured.

A government official had said earlier Wednesday that around 100 people were unaccounted for, but the number was later revised upward due to a tallying error.

The ferry was carrying 477 people, most of them high school students, and was bound for the island of Jeju when it sent a distress call at around 9 a.m. local time Wednesday as it began leaning to one side, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Security and Public Administration.

The government said about 95 percent of the ship was submerged.

Two coast guard officers told the Associated Press that a 27-year-old woman named Park Ji-yeong and another unidentified person had died. Both spoke on condition of anonymity citing department rules.

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Babies With Club Feet, Cleft Palates are Aborted Up to the Day of Birth in Britain

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

Today, a baby with club foot or cleft palate can and is aborted up to the point of birth in England. The law permits an abortion to take place “up to birth” if tests indicate that the child may be disabled when born, while there is a legal limit of 24 weeks for abortions on other grounds.

Why is that the case? Jane Ellison, the public health minister, says the British parliament has not adequately defined the term “serious handicap” in its abortion laws, which has led to a loophole by which babies with very minor disabilities can be aborted after the 24-week legal limit.

Fortunately, Ellison says the government is looking into tightening the abortion guidelines to prevent this, though abortion on non-disabled babies would still continue unabated.

As the London Telegraph reports:

However, she said that the Government is reflecting on the issue and that “we do have some opportunities coming forward… to add clarification through guidelines”.

It comes amid warnings from MPs that the current law on late-term abortions is being applied in a “haphazard fashion” and that the current guidance to doctors is no longer adequate because of medical advances.

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