Photo Credit: Chris Pizzello/Invision/APAfter the National Rifle Association tweeted the news of Morgan’s departure on Twitter, he fired back a response.
“I wouldn’t get too excited @NRA – I’m not done with you yet,” he wrote using the hashtag #GunControlNow.
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Photo Credit: CNNTo hear some tell it, the 2008 South Carolina primary clash between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was a few steps away from a full-blown race riot.
“It was unbelievable down here in 2007 and 2008,” said Bridget Tripp, a Democratic organizer from Lexington who supported Obama in that year’s primary. “Bill Clinton was going through downtown Columbia calling Barack Obama a racist.”
It never got that bad, of course. But in the runup to the contest and in its aftermath, the Clinton campaign scrambled to explain away comments that rankled the black community: Hillary Clinton seeming to downplay Martin Luther King Jr.’s role in passing the Civil Rights Act, Bill Clinton’s biting characterization of Obama’s campaign as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen” and a range of remarks from Clinton allies that seemed to belittle Obama’s achievements.
Bill Clinton’s remarks in particular went over so poorly that South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, then the state’s highest-ranking African-American in Congress, went on national television and told the former president to “chill.” The morning after Obama’s crushing 28-point victory, Bill Clinton waved it off in glib terms, comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson, just another black candidate with black support.
The loss was a stinging defeat for the Clintons, a Southern power couple who viewed their longstanding friendships in the African-American community as crucial bulwark against any Democratic foe.
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Photo Credit: APIran has signed a deal to sell Iraq arms and ammunition worth $195 million, according to documents seen by Reuters – a move that would break a U.N. embargo on weapons sales by Tehran.
The agreement was reached at the end of November, the documents showed, just weeks after Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki returned from lobbying the Obama administration in Washington for extra weapons to fight al Qaeda-linked militants.
Some in Washington are nervous about providing sensitive U.S. military equipment to a country they worry is becoming too close to Iran. Several Iraqi lawmakers said Maliki had made the deal because he was fed up with delays in U.S. arms deliveries.
A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister would not confirm or deny the sale, but said such a deal would be understandable given Iraq’s current security troubles.
“We are launching a war against terrorism and we want to win this war. Nothing prevents us from buying arms and ammunition from any party and it’s only ammunition helping us to fight terrorists,” said the spokesman, Ali Mussawi.
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Photo Credit: Military TimesThe Pentagon on Monday proposed the deepest and most far-reaching cuts to military compensation in the 40-year history of the all-volunteer force, explaining that such cuts are necessary in order to pay for more modern gear and high-tech weaponry.
Some highlights of the Defense Department’s budget proposal for fiscal 2015 include the first-ever rollback in Basic Allowance for Housing; a military pay raise that would match last year’s 1 percent hike, the lowest in the volunteer era; massive cuts to commissary subsidies; and potentially increased health care fees for both active-duty families and retirees.
Together, the proposals signal an end to a decade-plus wartime era of rising pay and benefits for troops. Even after the proposed cuts, military compensation would remain comparatively more generous than it was in the 1980s and ’90s. But the Pentagon has never before sought to pare back existing benefits in the all-volunteer era.
Moreover, personnel costs would be slashed further by significant reductions to the size of the force, including the smallest Army since the before the Second World War.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the changes are part of an overarching decision to protect big-ticket programs and research projects by saving money on people.
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Photo Credit: William B. Plowman For thousands of career-military troops who endured combat and family separations during a dozen years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the end of hostilities brings a new directive from the government — your services are no longer needed.
Even as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Monday that future budget reductions cut “so deep, so quickly, that we cannot shrink the size of our military fast enough,” pinks slip were already on their way to soldiers.
In its first slice at reducing its force under budget pressure, the Army is letting 3,000 G.I.s go in order to thin ranks to 490,000 by the end of next year.
Ten Army officers — colonels and lieutenant colonels — learned while serving in Afghanistan in January that they would be forced to retire later this year.
And those are just the first firings. Tens of thousands more must be cut in the years ahead, and the services readily admit those separations won’t all be voluntary.
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Photo Credit: APNew “Tonight” show host Jimmy Fallon is a “complete tool” for President Barack Obama and the Democrats, says Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the Media Research Center.
Fallon took over from former “Tonight” host Jay Leno, and former “Saturday Night Live” star Seth Meyers has now replaced Fallon as the “Late Night” host. Fallon’s and Meyers’ political leanings have been evident right from the start, Graham said on “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.
Noting that Fallon is a big gain for Democrats, Graham said, “He’s a funny guy, people love him, but he is a complete tool for the Obamas. Obama can invite himself onto the Jimmy Fallon show and, of course, the Seth Meyers show starts tonight. One of his first guests, Joe Biden. Jimmy Fallon gets Michelle Obama, but Seth Meyers can only get Joe Biden,” Graham said Monday.
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Photo Credit: AFP/Getty ImagesSeven Egyptian Christians were found shot dead on a beach in eastern Libya Monday, security officials and local residents told Reuters.
“They were killed by headshots in execution style,” a police officer said. “We don’t know who killed them.”
The Egyptians were living in Benghazi and, according to a local Egyptian worker who asked not to be identified, were kidnapped and dragged away from their homes Sunday night.
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Photo Credit: Newsmax With some Republican House members under fire from tea party-backed insurgents, one of the more intriguing primary contests is between freshman Rep. Paul Cook of California and Rodney Lee Conover, a writer and longtime conservative activist in the entertainment community.
Cook was elected in California’s Eighth Congressional District in 2012 with the backing of outgoing Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis. A former state assemblyman, Cook has generally voted a conservative line. His district encompasses much of California’s Inland Empire, the area east of Los Angeles that has been a Republican stronghold despite California’s trending blue.
By voting for the continuing House resolution that funded Obamacare, Cook, 70, opened himself up to dissatisfaction from the right and a challenge in the June primary.
“Along with the funding of Obamacare and voting to cut military pensions, the congressman also opposed [California Republican] Rep. Tom McClintock’s bill to rein in the excesses of the National Security Agency,” Conover, 54, told Newsmax.
“These are critical issues, and he’s on the wrong side of all of them,” Conover said.
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Photo Credit: euthman/flickrFederal health regulators will consider this week whether to green light a provocative new fertilization technique that could eventually create babies from the DNA of three people, with the goal of preventing mothers from passing on debilitating genetic diseases to their children.
The Food and Drug Administration has framed its two-day meeting as a “scientific, technologic and clinical” discussion about how to test the approach in humans. But the technique itself raises a number of ethical questions, including whether the government should sanction the creation of genetically modified humans.
The FDA panel will hear from several prominent critics who oppose any human testing of the approach, arguing that it could be a slippery slope toward “designer babies,” – in which parents customize traits like eye color, height and intelligence.
But the field’s leading U.S. researcher will be on hand to explain and defend his work, which he describes as “gene correction,” rather than “gene modification.”
“We want to replace these mutated genes, which by nature have become pathogenic to humans,” says Dr. Shoukhrat Mitalipov, who will present on Tuesday. “We’re reversing them back to normal, so I don’t understand why you would be opposing that.”
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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreU.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert says a new PAC he has created will raise funds to help tea party candidates unfairly under siege from the Republican rank-and-file — and insists it is not there to spark a GOP civil war.
“Some in the establishment of the Republican Party are saying, gee, this is wrong, but this is not declaring a war against Republican candidates. In fact, it is defensive,” the Texas Republican told “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.
“There are people, including our speaker [John Boehner] who wanted to declare war on tea parties. These are conservatives who simply want elected officials to do what they promised when they got elected.
“[But] if you don’t go along with what the leadership says, they’re going to see that you don’t get any financial help, they’re not going to help you raise money.”
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