Policing Policies Increasingly Put the Public at Risk

Photo Credit: katesheetsA news photograph from Friday taken in the normally placid suburban community of Roseville, east of Sacramento, was shocking. A California Highway Patrol officer was pointing a rifle at a motorist stopped at a checkpoint, as police searched for an armed parolee who had injured some of their colleagues. It seemed reminiscent of an occupying army.

News stories focused on the suspect and the details of the manhunt, but the police approach – evacuating houses, using military-style vehicles and helicopters – raises a question rarely asked about policing policies today: Do they unnecessarily endanger the public’s safety?

When agencies combed Southern California for former Los Angeles Police Department officer Christopher Dorner in February, some officers fired upon innocent bystanders who didn’t come close to the right profile. Dorner, a large black man, was driving a gray Nissan truck, but an officer shot two Latina women driving a blue Toyota truck. An officer also fired on another bystander 20 minutes later.

Police behaved similarly as they sought a Boston Marathon bomber. As Conor Friedersdorf asked recently in the Atlantic, “Does anyone else find it disturbing that Boston area police, confronted with an unarmed suspect in a backyard boat, fired so many bullets so wildly that multiple adjacent houses were strafed … ?”

This approach is not uncommon even in day-to-day policing. On October 22, in the middle of the afternoon, 13-year-old Andy Lopez Cruz was walking down the street in Santa Rosa with a plastic pellet rifle. Officers hid behind the door of their patrol car and called to him. As the boy turned, they shot him to death.

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Limbaugh: Nixon Resigned Over a Lie that Was Much Less Damaging in Scope (+video)

Photo Credit: WND On Friday’s program, radio host Rush Limbaugh put the Obamacare rollout fiasco into historical perspective, declaring that in many ways, the current scandal is worse than Watergate.

“Folks,” Limbaugh told his audience, “Richard Nixon resigned over a lie that was much less damaging in scope than this one.”

“The bottom line,” he said, “is that Obama, the regime, knew that 93 million Americans would be unable to keep their health care plans under Obamacare. … I mean, this is an abject, purposeful lie to the American people for the express purpose of passing legislation.”

The other aim of Obamacare, Limbaugh insisted, was to undermine the private insurance business itself.

He pointed to an “obscure report buried in a June 2010 edition of the Federal Register,” in which White House officials matter-of-factly predicted that Obamacare would create “massive disruption of the private insurance market because that’s what was intended.”

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Clinton: Obama Luckier than a Dog With Two…

Photo Credit: Reuters/APBill Clinton trotted out a crude anatomical joke about President Obama, saying “he’s luckier than a dog with two d—-” to describe his comeback in last year’s presidential election, according to a new book.

Clinton made the dirty canine quip “again and again” to friends, according to “Double Down,” the latest campaign book by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.

The book, which like its predecessor “Game Change” about the 2008 election, appears to have heavy sourcing from within the Clinton camp, describes lingering tensions between Obama and Clinton.

After a 2011 golf game with Bill Clinton, according to the book, Obama told an aide: “I like him … in doses.”

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TSA Agent Killed During LAX Shooting (+video)

Photo Credit: Grant Wickes/Flickr A gunman armed with an assault rifle entered a terminal at Los Angeles International Airport today, killed a TSA agent, and penetrated deep into the terminal before he was captured by police.

Five other people, including three other TSA officers, were injured in the incident.

The shooting sent hundreds of passengers streaming out of the terminal with many fleeing onto the airport runway. Dozens of flights to and from the airport were delayed or cancelled. It also triggered a “tactical alert” for the Los Angeles Police Department.

The shooting began around 9:20 a.m. in the usually crowded terminal.

The shooter, initially identified as Paul Ciancia, pulled an assault rifle from a bag and blasted his way past airport screeners, said Los Angeles World Airports Police Chief Patrick Gannon.

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Silent Holidays – NJ School District Bans All Religious Christmas Music

Photo Credit: Reuters The angels will not be allowed to hark their herald nor will the little Lord Jesus sleep on the hay after a New Jersey school district announced a ban on all religious Christmas music.

Constance Bauer, the superintendent of the Bordentown Regional School District, posted a message online stating someone had been questioning recent musical selections for the elementary school Christmas concerts.

Pardon me, the school district calls them “winter” concerts.

My guess is that a perpetually offended left-winger became unglued when they heard that little boys and girls might be pa rum pum pum pum.

“Religious music should not be part of the elementary program(s),” Supt. Scrooge wrote in her anti-Christmas screed.

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Sheriff Nick Finch Cleared of All Charges

By Richard Mack.

Liberty in Liberty County!

On October 31, 2013, Sheriff Nick Finch won his case at trial in Liberty County, Florida. The charges were complete nonsense to begin with, and the laughter in the courtroom was difficult to suppress as the prosecution presented its flimsy, farcical case.

Sheriff Finch was charged and arrested and booked into his own jail last June. Sheriff Finch had done something nearly unheard of, yet noble and courageous. He nullified the arrest of a law abiding citizen who had the audacity of carrying a gun in his pocket. Sheriff Finch said “not on my watch.” So the State moved in, arrested the Sheriff and re-arrested the citizen, Mr. Parish.

The end result was Finch was removed from office and went to trial. Mr. Parish once again had the charges dropped, but he was ordered to perform 50 hours of community service and pay $200.

Let’s be very clear here, neither man was guilty of anything! There were no victims and no evidence that a crime had ever occurred…

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: newsherald.comTrial begins for suspended Liberty County sheriff

By Gary Fineout.

A suspended Panhandle sheriff is headed to trial this week on misconduct charges in a case that has divided a small rural county and sparked yet another debate over Florida gun laws.

Nick Finch, the Liberty County sheriff, was arrested in June on felony charges of official misconduct and falsifying public records. Finch, who was removed from office by Gov. Rick Scott, is accused of personally intervening after one of his deputies arrested a resident accused of carrying a pistol without a concealed weapons permit.

Finch, who has pleaded not guilty, has repeatedly said that he let the man go because he is a believer in gun rights. He has drawn support from conservative media outlets and gun rights activists.

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CNN Anchor: Obama’s People Will Threaten Your Job If You Question Them (+video)

Photo Credit: YouTube On Wednesday morning, CNN anchor Carol Costello made a shocking statement on air.

She said that the Obama administration threatens the jobs of reporters who make the president look bad.

During a discussion about the firing of national security official Jofi Joseph, panelist Jason Johnson said, “The Obama administration is very thin-skinned.”

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Justice and State Departments Blocking Access to Survivors/Transcripts of Benghazi Attack

Photo Credit: Fox News The Justice and State departments are now citing a year-old FBI investigation and a future criminal prosecution to block access to survivors of last year’s Benghazi terror attack.

In an Oct. 28 letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, Julia Frifield, refers to “significant risks” and “serious concerns about having the survivors of the attack submit to additional interviews.”

Graham has been asking since last year for the FBI’s transcripts of interviews with State Department and CIA survivors who were evacuated to Germany after the Sep.11 attack on the U.S. consulate.

He and other Republicans believe the transcripts will show the survivors told the FBI it was a terrorist attack and made no mention of a video or anti-U.S. demonstration at the consulate.

This intelligence was likely available to the president, his national security team and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who five days after the assault blamed it on an anti-U.S. demonstration and inflammatory video.

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One Month Into ObamaCare Number Uninsured Americans Up

Photo Credit: Fox News Obamacare was sold to credulous “Progressives” on the grounds that it was the way to achieve universal health insurance coverage for all Americans. But the Congressional Budget Office scored the legislation as leaving 30 million uninsured 10 years after full implementation! That is more than half the nation’s uninsured pre-Obamacare.

But just one month after Obamacare went into effect, the number of uninsured Americans has gone up rather than down. Just last week, Florida Blue announced it was issuing termination notices for 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California cancelled 160,000 policies, about half of its individual policies in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh dropped 20 percent of its individual policies. In Philadelphia, Independence Blue Cross nixed 45% of its individual policies. CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield cancelled 76,000 individual plans in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC, over 40 percent of its individual policies in those states.

But didn’t President Obama tell us that if you liked your health plan, you could keep it? Current policies were supposed to be “grandfathered” in under Obamacare. But the HHS regulations implementing that provision are so restrictive that few current policies qualify under it. The Weekly Standard estimates that as a result 16 million current individual policies, in a nationwide market of 19 million, would be cancelled because they do not meet the new regulatory requirements of Obamacare. That is 85 percent of the individual health insurance market, which involves health coverage individuals buy outside of employer provided insurance.

This is just the beginning, however, of the Obamacare collapse in health insurance coverage. CBO estimates that as many as 20 million will lose their employer provided health insurance under Obamacare. Former CBO Director Douglas-Holtz-Eakin estimated in a study for the American Action Forum that the number will be 40 million.

The individual and employer mandates were supposed to force most Americans to buy the health insurance that the Obama Administration specifies they must buy. But in most cases, the penalty for failing to comply is only a small fraction of the cost of the required health insurance. Moreover, employers can give their workers a raise now by dropping costly Obamacare coverage, and most workers can get Obamacare subsidies on the Exchanges as well, which will further induce employers to drop their coverage. Workers on their own can evade the individual mandate, and rely on Obamacare’s guaranteed issue and community rating regulatory requirements to buy coverage at standard prices if they get sick with costly illnesses.

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Enrollment in Obamacare Very Small in First Days

Photo Credit: Brian Snyder, ReutersEnrollment in health insurance plans on the troubled Obamacare website was very small in the first couple of days of operation, with just 248 Americans signing up, according to documents released on Thursday by a U.S. House of Representatives committee.

The Obama administration has said it cannot provide enrollment figures from HealthCare.gov because it doesn’t have the numbers. The federal website, where residents of 36 states can buy new healthcare plans under President Barack Obama’s law, was launched on October 1.

“We do not have any reliable data around enrollment, which is why we haven’t given it to date,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told lawmakers on Wednesday.

But the documents, which are labeled “war room” notes and appear to be summaries of issues with the problematic website beginning on October 2, indicate a mere six enrollments had occurred by that morning – the day after the website was launched and almost immediately crashed.

“High capacity on the website, direct enrollment not working,” the October 2 notes said. By later that day, “approximately 100” enrollments had taken place.

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