Gun Rights Groups Throwing their Weight Behind Efforts to Rein In NSA

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe National Rifle Association (NRA) is among a number of groups that have signed on to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against the secretive government agency.

The NRA has also endorsed bipartisan legislation proposed by House and Senate Judiciary committees that would end the NSA’s collection of bulk phone records.

Another Second Amendment advocate, the Gun Owners of America, expects to back NSA legislation as well.

“There are issues that, maybe at first blush, wouldn’t seem like a gun issue, but once you start looking closely at the issues, they really do affect our gun rights,” said Erich Pratt, the director of communications for Gun Owners of America.

Gun groups fear the NSA could have the authority under a section of the PATRIOT Act to collect information that could be used to create a federal gun database. They also fear the government could be spying on, or eventually targeting, gun owners.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senate Republicans Pushing for Federal Ban on 20-Week Abortions

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APSenate Republicans, led by South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, are pushing for a federal ban on abortions after the end of the 20th week of pregnancy.

Graham is expected to introduce the bill this upcoming week, reports The Washington Examiner, and the legislation will be a companion bill for the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, passed in the House earlier this year.

The planned legislation, though, will face many challenges, not only from the Democratic-controlled Senate, but from some Republicans like Sen. Mike Lee, Utah, who has concerns about Congress’ authority to regulate commerce as the law’s basis.

Back in 2003, a partial-birth abortion plan based on the Commerce Clause was upheld by the Supreme Court, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia emphasising that the “court’s abortion jurisprudence has no basis in the Constitution.”

Graham is up for re-election in South Carolina next year, so his push on the late-term abortion ban may help him fight challengers in the Republican primary. He holds the lead by 51 percent, according to current surveys, but several conservative groups, including the Senate Conservatives Fund, for one, have in an effort to oust the veteran senator.

Read more from this story HERE.

Scuba Divers to Monitor NYC Marathon

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Richard Drew/APSunday’s New York City Marathon will be the best-protected race that runners can enter as a result of enhanced security measures and police presence on land and by sea, according to New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Helicopters, scuba divers, police boats, K-9 dogs with explosive-detection capabilities and hundreds of cameras are among the precautionary measures that will be deployed along the marathon route and throughout the city’s five boroughs.

Kelly said that while security planning for the event typically takes several months, the New York Police Department began preparing for this year’s marathon the day after the Boston Marathon bombing in April, which killed three people and wounded more than 260 others.

“Planning for the marathon is always a major undertaking and I can assure you this year was no exception,” Kelly said Friday at a security briefing on the marathon, which is expected to draw more than 45,000 runners.

Hundreds of cameras will be monitored in real-time by the NYPD’s Domain Awareness System, he said. The department has also located more than 1, 400 privately owned cameras along the 26.2-mile route that can be tapped for additional security footage if necessary.

NYPD scuba divers began sweeping the shoreline and surrounding infrastructure on Thursday “to safeguard all five bridges that the runners will cross on their way ultimately to Manhattan,” Kelly said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Parents Jailed After Allegedly Confronting Bus Full of Children After Son Reported Bullying

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: MYFOXPHILLY.COMTwo parents were arrested and charged after police say they unlawfully entered a school bus and threatened children when their son told them he was being bullied.

Christina and Christopher Gring allegedly got on their bus after their son came to them crying, and began yelling and cursing at the other children, MyFoxPhilly.com.

“I was crying because I was worried and I was like I don’t know what happened. I didn’t do anything,” an 8-year-old student told MyFoxPhilly.com.

“They started yelling curse words at us and yelling to tell them what happened,” the student said.

A spokesperson for the North Penn School District said an investigation found no reports of bullying involving the accused couple’s child.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pro-Amnesty Organizations Campaigning Heavily for Democrat Terry McAuliffe

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: APPro-amnesty organizations are campaigning heavily for Democrat Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and a close ally of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in Virginia’s gubernatorial election on Tuesday.

“Latino groups are intensifying get-out-the-vote efforts in the Virginia governor’s race against a national backdrop of a congressional struggle over immigration reform,” NBC News Latino reports. “The groups said Thursday immigration reform is a critical issue on which candidates will be measured by Latino voters in the race.

As the groups work to have a strong showing of Latino turnout in Tuesday’s race, pressure has intensified on House Republicans to move immigration reform legislation in the waning days of this congressional year. That has helped keep the issue in the forefront as the Virginia candidates head to Election Day and groups try to turn out Latino voters in the state, home to the 16th largest population of Hispanic-eligible voters.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Crews Clear Huge Alaska Landslide At Denali National Park Road

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Arthur Chapman/FlickrCrews at Denali National Park in Alaska have cleared a massive landslide from a road that is a popular tourist destination each summer.

The landslide discovered last week covered 200 feet of the Denali Park Road with tons of rock and soil.

Crews taking advantage of unseasonably mild weather finished clearing the road at day’s end Monday, and some snow has since fallen, park spokeswoman Maureen Gualtieri said Friday. It’s not clear if instability of the terrain will affect visitors next summer, park officials have said.

Gualtieri said the affected section of road, 37 miles from the park entrance, appears intact. That part of the road already was closed and there were no reported casualties from the slide, which officials believe occurred recently.

Read more from this story HERE.

More Lipstick on the ObamaCare Pig

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.comThe White House PR machine keeps trying to put lipstick on the ObamaCare pig. According to Whitehouse.gov, “there’s some great news from a Department of Health and Human Services report… Thanks to Obamacare, half of young adults between age 18 and 34 who are single and uninsured can get health coverage for $50/month or less.”

There are two problems with the claim. First, the actual percentage, according to HHS figures, of 18-34 year olds who qualify for the $50/month rate is not “half” but 2.9%. The numbers are 1.3 million out of 44.2 million.

Secondly, the $50/month rate is not a market price but one that is subsidized by an expanded government entitlement.

The White House statement is not technically another ObamaCare lie, but it requires reading the fine print for interpretation. The full “caveated” statement in the report from the Office of The Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at HHS reads as follows:

Nearly 5 in 10 (46 percent, or 1.3 million) uninsured young adults in single-person households who may be eligible for the Health Insurance Marketplace may be able to purchase a bronze plan for $50 per month or less after tax credits, based on analysis of data in 34 states.

Read more from this story HERE.

West Point Hosts First Marriage Ceremony for Homosexual Men

/16 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Mike Groll, APTwo West Point graduates were married Saturday in the military academy’s first wedding between two men.

Larry Choate III, class of 2009, married Daniel Lennox, class of 2007, before about 20 guests.

Choate, 27, taught Sunday school at the U.S. Military Academy’s Cadet Chapel and said he always thought of it as the place he would get married if he could.

West Point hosted two same-sex weddings of women in late 2012, more than a year after New York state legalized gay marriage. But Saturday’s wedding was the first time two men wed at West Point.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Adds Climate Change Initiatives to List of Executive Branch Power Grabs

/9 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: NOAAThrough the stroke of a pen, President Obama on Friday used his executive powers to elevate and take control of climate change policies in an attempt to streamline sustainability initiatives – and potentially skirt legislative oversight and push a federal agenda on states.

The executive order establishes a task force of state and local officials to advise the administration on how to respond to severe storms, wildfires, droughts and other potential impacts of climate change. The task force includes governors of seven states — all Democrats — and the Republican governor of Guam, a U.S. territory. Fourteen mayors and two other local leaders also will serve on the task force.

All but three of those appointed are Democrats. The task force will look at federal money spent on roads, bridges, flood control and other projects. It ultimately will recommend how structures can be made more resilient to the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and warming temperatures.

“We’re going to need to get prepared. And that’s why this plan will also protect critical sectors of our economy and prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change that we cannot avoid,” Obama said last June, when he first launched a Climate Action Plan.

“States and cities across the country are already taking it upon themselves to get ready… And we’ll partner with communities seeking help to prepare for droughts and floods, reduce the risk of wildfires, protect the dunes and wetlands that pull double duty as green space and as natural storm barriers.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Goldberg: The Myth of Obama the Master Strategist

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo credit: National Review Often in error but never in doubt, Barack Obama could walk into the Rose Garden and step on a half-dozen rakes like Foghorn Leghorn in an old Looney Tunes cartoon, and the official line would be, “He meant to do that.”

And the amazing thing is that so many people believe it. “Mr. Obama is like a championship chess player, always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike. He’s smart, deft, elegant and subtle,” proclaimed then–New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in 2009. It’s an image of the president that his biggest fans, in and out of the press, have been terribly reluctant to relinquish — because it confirms the faith they invested in him. Nobody ever likes to admit they were suckered.

But the fiction of Obama as a man three steps ahead has taken a terrible beating if you have eyes to see it. The budget cuts under the so-called sequester are the law of the land because Obama thought he was outthinking his opponents when he gave budget-cutters budget cuts. Now he’s stuck railing against his own idea. His allegedly revolutionary decision to turn his presidential campaign into a personal political organization independent from the Democratic party has turned out to be the most expensive way ever to generate smarmy and ineffectual e-mail spam. And, if you want to believe that Obama’s goal in Syria all along was to elevate Vladimir Putin and alienate all of our Middle East allies, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, and to make Bashar Assad our strategic partner while he finds more politically correct ways to slaughter his own people, well, that’s nice.

Or consider Obama’s only clear-cut political victory since his reelection. Republican demands were a bit of a moving target, but basically the GOP wanted either an all-out repeal of Obamacare or, as a fallback, a one-year delay of the individual mandate. By the end, they would have taken even less.

But Obama wouldn’t consider it. Instead, he played hardball with everything from national-park closures to, temporarily at least, denying death benefits to military families. As the debt ceiling loomed, the GOP relented. Conventional wisdom says Obama won, and I basically agree with the conventional wisdom.

Read more from this story HERE.