Ted Cruz: Iran Move Is ‘Slap In The Face,’ Raises Question Of Obama Administration ‘Naivete’

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Photo Credit: AP Photo / Houston Chronicle, Michael Paulsen

Photo Credit: AP Photo / Houston Chronicle, Michael Paulsen

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Iran’s selection of Hamid Aboutalebi as its ambassador at the United Nations is a “slap in the face.”

During a Thursday appearance on Fox News, Cruz called the appointment “dismaying” and said it’s “another indication of how radical, how extreme, how anti-American Iran is.”

“This is not an accident, that they nominate and name, an admitted terrorist, someone who participated in holding Americans hostage for 444 days, and they propose to send him as their ambassador to the U.N., to live in New York City, in Manhattan,” Cruz said. “It’s designed to be a slap in the face.”


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What Happened to Chicago’s Murder Rate After Illinois Upheld Concealed Carry and Why it Matters

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Photo Credit: IJ Review

Photo Credit: IJ Review

In July of 2013, Illinois became the last state in the union to enact a concealed carry law. In January of this year, the state began accepting applications for permits. This week, Chicago police announced that the city’s first quarter murder rate was the lowest since 1958.

Via ABC-affiliate Eye Witness News in the Windy City:

– The first three months of the year saw 6 fewer murders than the same time frame in 2013–a 9 percent drop–and 55 fewer murders than 2012, according to a statement from Chicago Police.

– There were 90 fewer shootings and 119 fewer shooting victims, drops of 26 and 29 percent respectively, according to police statistics.

– Compared to the first quarter of 2012, there have been 222 fewer shootings and 292 fewer shooting victims. Overall crime is down 25 percent from last year, and police said more than 1,300 illegal guns were recovered in the last three months.

Coincidence? Hard to say. And too early to tell. Although, I doubt that the anti-gun crowd is celebrating the good news.

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Palin on Budget: Rep. Paul Ryan Has ‘More Faith in Politicians Than I Do’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is standing firm in her objection to Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget proposal, which she told Sean Hannity will raise spending over 10 years nearly $1.2 trillion.

“That’s trillion with a T, and that stands for trouble. Trouble for our nation because it still is involving deficit spending, increasing debt and we can’t afford that,” Palin told Hannity.

Hannity told Palin that he’d had Rep. Paul Ryan on his radio show, and Ryan was adamant that Palin would come around to his budget if he could only explain it to her.

“Bless his heart. He probably has more faith in politicians than I do, because I’ve been in this political arena on the local, state and now national level for a long time,” Palin said.

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Woman, 73, Accused of Operating Drug Tunnel Uncovered Under Mexican Border

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Tucked inside one of a string of warehouses, hidden behind boxes of televisions and plastic three-wheel toys, under a concrete slab and down a 70-foot shaft, is a tunnel Mexican drug dealers hoped to use to move hundreds of pounds of marijuana and cocaine into the U.S.

But on Friday, agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Tuesday’s discovery of the tunnel and arrested the woman accused of overseeing its construction, 73-year-old Glennys “Gladys” Rodriguez, of Chula Vista, Calif. Authorities had been watching the warehouse for months.

“Here we are again, foiling cartel plans to sneak millions of dollars of illegal drugs through secret passageways that cost millions of dollars to build,” said U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy. “Going underground is not a good business plan. We have promised to locate these super tunnels and keep powerful drug cartels from taking their business underground and out of sight, and once again, we have delivered on that promise.”

This was the sixth cross-border passageway discovered in the San Diego area in less than four years. A seventh was found Thursday nearby. If laid end-to-end, the seven tunnels would extend a distance of nearly two miles.

Agents from the San Diego Tunnel Task Force uncovered the two sophisticated smuggling tunnels in an area known as Otay Mesa, an industrial park surrounded by rolling hills, desert and several major freeways connecting the U.S. to Tijuana and large manufacturing plants south of the border.

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Bill Maher: “There Is A Gay Mafia — If You Cross Them, You Do Get Whacked”

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Real Clear Politics.

In the online-only “Overtime” portion of his HBO show Real Time, host Bill Maher weighed in on the Mozilla controversy, and did not react in a way that you would think. Maher seemed to disagree with gay rights activists for targeting Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich because of a 2008 donation to support a ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in California.

“Well, and he gave it when President Obama was still against gay marriage. So, I don’t think it’s very fair,” guest panelist fmr. Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) said.

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Photo Credit: Sammy James Dodds / Flickr

Photo Credit: Sammy James Dodds / Flickr

It’s Complicated: When A CEO’s Personal Position Becomes Public

By Elise Hu.

The Mozilla controversy that played out over the past two weeks bursts with ironies. And this one is perhaps the most prominent: The free speech that Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich spent his life’s work defending and enabling — and an open-Web revolution Eich helped lead — drove his unseating. It raises questions about how a company leader’s personal convictions should be judged.

After a public, pitched debate over whether Eich was fit to lead given his 2008 donation to California’s Proposition 8, which defined marriage as only between a man and a woman, Eich decided for himself that he wasn’t. He resigned Thursday despite many Mozillians who came to his defense, in response to other Mozillians who called for his ouster.

The Web as it is today might not exist without the brilliant technologist Eich. He invented JavaScript, was an early architect of the Web and co-founded Mozilla, the company and foundation behind the popular Internet browser Firefox. His passion for the Web and its users has always been clear. In a late 2013 interview, he described his charge as “working on the Web and working on making sure the user is king or queen of their experience.”

At Mozilla, putting users first, openness and inclusiveness are core to the organization’s beliefs — and operations. Mozilla’s technology is created in public — in stark contrast to its competitors like Microsoft and Google — and as it became clear when Eich was named CEO, its internal debates are quite public, too.

“This is an organization that is extremely transparent, where a number of employees had said, I don’t feel comfortable being led by this person,” says Anil Dash, a technology startup founder and a longtime Mozilla community member. “It’s been polarizing because this seemed in contradiction to a lot of the values of openness that the organization helped create has espoused.”

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Congressman’s Lament: $174,000 Isn’t Enough To Make Ends Meet

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / AP

In what world does an annual salary of $174,000 meet the definition of underpaid?

That would be in the nation’s capital, where soon-to-be-retired Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., said Americans should know that their members of Congress — as the board of directors for the “largest economic entity in the world” — are underpaid.

The longtime congressman made his comments Thursday after the House voted for the sixth straight year to deny members an automatic cost-of-living raise they’re entitled to under law.

Not surprisingly, reaction to Moran’s assertion was swift and derisive.

“Tone deaf,” wrote Daniel Doherty at the conservative Town Hall website.

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Watchdog: State Department Can’t Fully Account for $6B Worth of Contracts

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The State Department has a “serious” problem accounting for how it has spent billions of dollars on contracts all over the world, according to the official watchdog that oversees the sprawling department.

The Office of Inspector General, in a March 20 “management alert” to department leaders, said the department has failed to provide all or some of the files for $6 billion worth of contracts in the last six years.

“The failure to maintain contract files adequately creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions,” the memo said.

This apparently is not a new or isolated problem. The memo said investigators and auditors have found “repeated examples of poor contract file administration” and have called this one of the department’s “major management challenges” for several years.

The alert cited one example where contracting officials could not provide dozens of files for contracts supporting the U.S. Mission in Iraq. The value of the contracts in the missing files? $2.1 billion.

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DHS Official: US Not ‘Routinely’ Notified When Sex Offenders Enter the Country (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP / Elaine Thompson

Photo Credit: AP / Elaine Thompson

A Homeland Security Department official testified Friday before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security that U.S. authorities are not “routinely” notified when foreign sex offenders enter the United States.

“We can receive information on foreign criminal records, and in fact the NCB (National Central Bureau) is the vehicle through which 190 countries can communicate, and there are … registered sex offenders, but routinely, that information actually would not come unless there’s a specific case or a specific law enforcement inquiry,” Alan Bersin, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary of International Affairs and Chief Diplomatic Officer, told the subcommittee.

The hearing was called to examine the issue of passport security in light of the recent revelation that two Iranians boarded missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 using stolen passports.

Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) asked whether INTERPOL would be alerted if a sex offender from Germany, for instance, flew into the U.S.

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9-Month Old Pakistani Boy Arrested for Attempted Murder, Threatening Police

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Photo Credit: nerissa's ring / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: nerissa’s ring / Creative Commons

A nine-month-old Pakistani boy sat on his father’s lap, sucking on a bottle during a court appearance where he and at least 30 others were charged with attempted murder.

Little Muhammad Mosa Khan was also charged with threatening police and interfering in state affairs at a Pakistan court Thursday. Khan and others in the group were booked following a police raid to catch suspected gas thieves in the city of Lahore, The Times of India reported.

Police say the suspects tried to kill security officers by throwing stones at them. But Khan’s father, Ahmed—who is also accused– says the crowd was protesting an electricity shortage.

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Inmates Getting Coverage Under ObamaCare, as States Shift Cost to Feds

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Photo Credit: REUTERS

Photo Credit: REUTERS

The Obama administration often touts that people with pre-existing conditions and countless others can now get covered under ObamaCare. But there’s another group that’s starting to benefit from the law — prison inmates.

Cash-strapped state and local prisons increasingly are using the Affordable Care Act to pay for their inmates’ medical costs, taking advantage of a little-known provision that lets them shift some of those expenses to the federal government.

Ohio, Illinois and Iowa are among the states trying to offload the rising costs of health care – which include mental health programs – by enrolling inmates into a new expanded Medicaid program when they get sick.

But it doesn’t stop there. The states also are working to enroll them even before they’re released from prison, so they have coverage when they get out.

Currently, 26 states and the District of Columbia are proceeding with a Medicaid expansion which allows them to extend medical coverage to single and childless adults. Jail operators in at least a half-dozen of those states are then, using that criteria, extending coverage to inmates. The shift means the federal government would pay some emergency costs that used to be entirely covered by the states and counties — plus, inmates are starting to get coverage for when they leave.

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