DHS Tells American Border Guards to Run Away from Illegal Immigrants Hurling Rocks at Them, Fleeing in Vehicles

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller Top administration officials have directed 21,000 border patrol officers to retreat whenever illegal immigrants throw rocks at them, and to avoid getting in front of foreign drug-smugglers’ vehicles as they head north with their drug cargoes.

“Agents shall not discharge firearms in response to thrown or hurled projectiles… agents should obtain a tactical advantage in these situations, such as seeking cover or distancing themselves,” said the instructions, issued Mar. 7, under the signature of Michael Fisher, chief of U.S. Border Patrol.

Agents were also directed to keep their weapons holstered when drug smugglers drive by.

Agents can’t use guns against “a moving vehicle merely fleeing from agents,” say the instructions.

The new instructions do allow agents to use guns to defend themselves from vehicles that drive at them. “Agents shall not discharge their firearms at a moving vehicle unless the agent has a reasonable belief that… deadly force is being used against an agent,” the new instructions say.

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China Draws ‘Red Line’ on North Korea, Says Won’t Allow War on Peninsula

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/STRINGERChina declared a “red line” on North Korea on Saturday, saying that China will not permit chaos or war on the Korean peninsula, and that peace can only come through denuclearization.

China is North Korea’s most important diplomatic and economic supporter, though Beijing’s patience with Pyongyang has been severely tested following three nuclear tests and numerous bouts of saber rattling, including missile launches.

“The Korean peninsula is right on China’s doorstep. We have a red line, that is, we will not allow war or instability on the Korean peninsula,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters on the sidelines of China’s annual largely rubber-stamp parliament.

Wang called upon all parties to “exercise restraint”, adding that “genuine and lasting peace” on the peninsula was only possible with denuclearization.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited China last month and said after talks in Beijing that China and the United States were discussing specific ways to press North Korea to give up its nuclear program.

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Obama Misspells Aretha Fanklin’s ‘Respect’ During Women of Soul Jam

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Photo Credit: Breitbart President Barack Obama made the kind of public flub Thursday night that would have dominated the news cycle had President George W. Bush said the very same thing.

Obama, taking part in the White House’s Women of Soul concert, announced music legend Aretha Franklin by misspelling the singer’s signature song.

Yes, RESPECT. Or, as Obama calls it, RSPECT.

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Central European Nations Appeal to Congress for Faster Exports of US Natural Gas

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Photo Credit: REUTERSCentral European nations are now appealing to Capitol Hill leaders to get the United States to increase its natural gas exports should Russia cut off its supply to Ukraine, amid the political turmoil in that country.

Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic sent a letter Friday to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. And a similar letter is expected to be sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada.

Ambassadors from the four countries — known as the Visegrad Group — want Congress to support faster approval of natural gas exports, arguing the supply is essential to the region’s economic stability.

“The presence of U.S. natural gas would be much welcome in Central and Eastern Europe,” they told Boehner. “And congressional action to expedite [liquefied natural gas] exports to America’s allies would come at a critically important time for the region.”

The concern has grown over the past few months amid the political upheaval in the Ukraine that resulted last month in residents ousting President Viktor Yanukovych and became a major concern several days ago when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into the country’s Crimea region.

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Watchdog Says Schultz Misrepresented its Reporting, Facts about Keystone XL Letter

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Photo Credit: APMSNBC’s Ed Schultz featured a Nebraska Watchdog.org story on his “Ed Show” on Friday about the Keystone XL oil pipeline but Schultz’s words didn’t match the reporting the group has done on the issue this week, the group said Saturday.

During the opening to his show, Schultz put on screen Wathdog’s May 2013 story about the $27.4 million lobbyists spent in Nebraska in 2011-2012. That figure includes $700,000 spent by TransCanada lobbying for the pipeline it wants to build across America. He then cut to former Sen. Abbie Cornett, a Republican, saying there was heavy lobbying on both sides, Watchdog reports.

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IRS: 89K Fewer Audits in 2013 Because of ‘Sequestration and Furloughs’

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Photo Credit: APBy Terence P. Jeffrey.

Because of “sequestration and furloughs” the number of individuals audited by the Internal Revenue Service fell by 80,000 in fiscal 2013 and the number of businesses audited fell by 9,000, according to the IRS’s Budget in Brief released this week.

“As a result of the impacts of sequestration and furloughs, the IRS delivered key enforcement programs below 2012 levels,” said the budget document. “Total individual audits fell 5 percent from 1.48 million to 1.40 million, while audits of high income individuals declined from 179,000 to 172,000. Business return audits dropped 13 percent from 70,000 to 61,000”

Because of the decline, says the IRS, the federal government pulled in only $9.83 billion in revenue from audits in fiscal 2013, the lowest in ten years.

However, the IRS’s overall revenue from enforcement actions increased by $3.1 billion, climbing from $50.2 billion in fiscal 2012 to $53.3 billion in fiscal 2013.

Read more this story HERE.

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The IRS’s behavior taxes credulity

By George F. Will.

What’s been said of confession — that it is good for one’s soul but bad for one’s reputation — can also be true of testifying to Congress, so Lois Lerner has chosen to stay silent. Hers, however, is an eloquent silence.

The most intrusive and potentially most punitive federal agency has been politicized; the IRS has become an appendage of Barack Obama’s party. Furthermore, congruent with exhortations from some congressional Democrats, it is intensifying its efforts to suffocate groups critical of progressives, by delaying what once was the swift, routine granting of tax-exempt status.

So, the IRS, far from repenting of its abusive behavior, is trying to codify the abuses. It hopes to nullify with new rules the existing legal right of 501(c)(4) groups, many of which are conservative, to participate in politics. The proposed rules have drawn more than 140,000 comments, most of them complaints, some from liberals wary of IRS attempts to broadly define “candidate-related political activity” and to narrow the permissible amount of this.

Lerner is, so far, the face of this use of government to punish political adversaries. She knows what her IRS unit did and how it intersects with the law, and for a second time she has exercised her constitutional right to remain silent rather than risk self-incrimination. The public has a right to make reasonable inferences from her behavior.

And from Obama’s. After calling the IRS behavior “outrageous,” he now says there is not a “smidgen” of evidence of anything to be outraged about. He knows this even though the supposed investigation of the IRS behavior has not been completed, or perhaps even begun. The person he chose to investigate his administration is an administration employee and a generous donor to his campaigns.

Read more this story HERE.

Philadelphia Judge Issues Ruling That Could Give Anonymous Online Commenters Second Thoughts

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Photo Credit: GREG WOOD/AFP/Getty ImagesA Philadelphia judge has ordered philly.com to reveal the name of an anonymous commenter, in a defamation suit brought by electricians’ union leader John Dougherty.

An attorney in the case says it could have a broad impact on incendiary online comments and those users, sometimes called “trolls,” who post them anonymously.

The anonymous defendant in the suit, disguised by the nonsense name “fbpdplt,” called Dougherty a name in the comments section of an article on the website, one of the properties in the media group that also owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News.

The website is not a party to the suit but it received a subpoena, more than a year ago, for information on the commenter. Its attorney, Eli Segal, says, “the company went to Court to make sure that the defendant received notice and an opportunity to be heard.”

The commenter remained anonymous but was represented in court by Phil Blackman, who argued that identifying his client would violate his, or her, First Ammendment right to speak anonymously.

Read more this story HERE.

Obama’s Favorite Union Just Raised The White Flag Of Surrender…

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Photo Credit: Western Journalism When the UAW (United Automobile Workers) union failed miserably in Chattanooga and was not able to unionize the Volkswagen plant, even with a staked deck, it started a chain reaction; and the next domino has fallen. The news that the AFL-CIO has decided to keep its money and not even try to save three Southern Democrat Senators comes as no real shock.

The powerful union reviewed the polls and the political climate in North Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and decided that backing the Democrats in these states would be throwing good money after bad. The decision left Democratic Senators Mark Pryor in Arkansas, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, and Kay Hagan in North Carolina on their own, with little major union help as they try to hold on to their seats in a region that is increasingly hostile to Democrats (especially those who are backed by unions.)

Despite an AFL-CIO spokesman’s attempt to put the best face on the news, his words ring hollow. He said, “Those states are states where we have relatively low union density. I think you’ll see in other battleground Senate states like Michigan, Alaska, [and] Iowa a really vigorous union program.”

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Stolen Passports Add Questions to Missing Flight Search

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Photo Credit: BJÖRN WYLEZICH
By CBS News.

Foreign ministry officials in Rome and Vienna confirmed Saturday that names of two nationals listed on the manifest of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight match passports reported stolen in Thailand.

Also Saturday, Vietnamese air force planes spotted two large oil slicks close to where the Boeing 777 went missing earlier in the day, the first sign that the aircraft carrying 239 people had crashed.

Neither European was on the plane, which disappeared less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, officials said. The Italian was traveling in Thailand and the Austrian was located in his native country.

In Washington, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports that U.S. officials were aware of reports about the stolen passports but so far haven’t determined any nexus to terrorism.

The officials said it’s still very early in the investigation and at this point they were not aware of any threat streams connected to the event, Orr reports.

Read more this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: CNNSearch intensifies for Malaysian airliner and 239 people, rescue ships head to sea

By Tom Watkins and Chelsea J. Carter.

Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared Saturday after air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane, the airline said.

“At the moment we have no idea where this aircraft is right now,” Malaysia Airlines Vice President of Operations Control Fuad Sharuji said on CNN’s “AC360.”

Subang Air Traffic Control lost contact with Flight MH370 at about 2:40 a.m. local time (1:40 p.m. ET Friday), Sharuji said.

“We tried to call this aircraft through various means,” he said. The airline checked reports that the jet had landed in several places, but determined that none of the reports was true, he said.

The Boeing 777-200 departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:41 a.m. and was expected to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m., a 2,300-mile (3,700 kilometer) trip. It was carrying 227 passengers, two of them infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said.

Read more this story HERE.

Rand Paul at CPAC: ‘What You Do on Your Cell Phone is None of their D_ _ _ _ed Business!’

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Photo Credit: Getty Images By David Martosko.

A sustained noise that could best be called a hoot and holler greeted Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at the mention of his name, before he took the stage at Friday’s Conservative Political Action Conference and declared that cell phone records sought by government agencies were ‘none of their damned business!’

By the time he launched into his blue streak against the National Security Agency and quoted Pink Floyd to criticize President Barack Obama, the overflow crowd of thousands sounded like Beyonce concertgoers who had stumbled into the wrong ballroom.

The crowd simultaneously drank it in and shouted it out, making Paul the star of the Conservative Political Action Conference’s second day and giving him – by far – the event’s loudest applause.

‘If you have a cell phone, you are under surveillance’ from the federal government, Paul warned in his biggest moment. ‘I believe what you do on your cell phone is none of their damned business!’

One group of partisans shouted ‘President Paul! President Paul!’ as he spoke.

Read more this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesRand Paul Is the King of CPAC

By Sarah Mimms.

A year after his 13-hour filibuster won the hearts of young conservatives just a week ahead of the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference, the fandom for Sen. Rand Paul here has only grown.

Paul gave a speech Friday before the first standing-room-only crowd at the conference so far, asking a cheering audience, “Will you, America’s next generation of liberty-lovers, will you stand and be heard?”

Following his typical style, Paul’s speech focused largely on personal freedom, the Fourth Amendment, and rights he alleged are being usurped by the Obama administration, while avoiding the tricky topic of foreign policy, where his libertarian views are not as widely accepted by conservatives here.

Paul’s biggest applause line of the afternoon—the biggest applause line at CPAC so far—came during his discussion of what he perceived as President Obama’s failures, particularly at the National Security Agency. “As our voices rise in protest, the NSA monitors your every phone call. if you have a cell phone, you are under surveillance. I believe what you do on your cell phone is none of their damn business,” he said to loud cheers.

Paul continued an assault on Obama’s record, getting laughs when he asked how history will remember the president, and later quoting Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters in asking whether former supporters of the president now believed they had “trade[d] your heroes for your ghosts? … Did they get you to exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?”

Read more this story HERE.

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‘Reunited’ Tea Party activists mount battle against IRS at CPAC

By Barnini Chakraborty.

The IRS targeting scandal may have faded from the headlines of major newspapers, but Tea Party groups renewed their battle cry against the tax agency on Thursday as the Conservative Political Action Conference got underway.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, kicked off CPAC — the annual conservative pilgrimage just outside the nation’s capital — by telling a crowd of the GOP faithful, “We need to abolish the IRS.”

“By virtue of your being here today, tomorrow each and every one of you is going to be audited by the IRS,” he said.

Following his speech, a six-person panel discussion, titled “IRS Targeting Scandal: Protecting the Voice of the People,” served as a refresher course for the standing-room-only crowd packed into the Maryland meeting room.

The purpose, panelists told FoxNews.com, was to come together and share stories about what they say are abusive targeting practices of conservative groups at the hands of the tax-collecting agency.

Read more this story HERE.