Germany: We Have Good Cause to Abhor the Surveillance State

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Photo Credit: Jw WuOur grandparents’ generation feared the early-morning knock of the Gestapo. During the cold war, West and East Germans alike were aware that their divided country was crawling with spooks of all denominations. We recognised that mutually assured espionage helped prop up the bipolar balance of power. (It also made for some superb spy thrillers.) Still, no one misses the sombre paranoia, reinforced in and after the 1970s by the ramping up of West Germany’s domestic intelligence services in response to homegrown terrorism.

Germans who were born east of the Berlin Wall were careful to give the organs of the Staatssicherheit a wide berth. But it was only after the fall of the Wall in 1989, when the citizens who had brought down their government stormed the secret police’s headquarters and realised the full horror of the web woven by the Stasi: neighbours spying on neighbours; husbands spying on wives. Joachim Gauck, our current president, was the first head of the Stasi Archives, the government agency that, 20 years on, continues to painstakingly piece together a full record of East Germany’s surveillance of its citizens.

Yes, we Germans have better cause than many of our allies to abhor the secret state. It’s why we don’t like closed-circuit television cameras. It’s also why our constitutional court enshrined a fundamental right of data privacy, and declared it illegal for Germany to implement an EU directive on preventive data storage.

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NRA: Holder Exploiting Trayvon Martin Death to Push Gun Control Agenda

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The National Rifle Association (NRA) on Wednesday accused Attorney General Eric Holder of exploiting the death of Trayvon Martin to push the Obama administration’s gun control agenda.

NRA Executive Director Chris Cox blasted Holder’s calls for states to review “stand your ground” laws, which allow the use of deadly force for self-defense. Those statutes received scrutiny during the Florida trial of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who was acquitted Saturday on charges of murder and manslaughter in the shooting of Martin, an unarmed black teenager.

“The attorney general fails to understand that self-defense is not a concept, it’s a fundamental human right,” Cox said in a statement. “To send a message that legitimate self-defense is to blame is unconscionable and demonstrates once again that this administration will exploit tragedies to push their political agenda.”

In a speech Tuesday, Holder said “stand your ground” laws in states like Florida encouraged “violent situations to escalate.”

“Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation’s attention, it’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods,” Holder said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Enzi Slated for Tea Party Meeting

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Photo Credit: APBy Tarini Parti. Sen. Marco Rubio will face several of his supporters-turned-critics in a closed door meeting of the Tea Party Caucus next Tuesday.

The Florida Republican has been criticized by tea party and conservative groups for his work with the Gang of Eight, and will be one of the senators, House members and tea party-affiliated groups attending the meeting.

The meeting will be co-chaired by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) — two of the most vocal conservatives in the upper chamber.

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), who is now facing a primary challenge from Liz Cheney, is also expected to attend the caucus meeting, which could serve as an opportunity for him to solidify support among conservatives.

The meeting is organized by the TheTeaParty.Net, but several other conservative groups including Americans for Tax Reform, Tea Party Express, 60 Plus, Republican Jewish Coalition and National Tax Payers Union are expected to have a presence at the caucus meeting. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APRand Paul to Mike Enzi: ‘I’ll do anything I can’

By Hadas Gold. Rand Paul is formally endorsing Sen. Mike Enzi as he faces Liz Cheney in a Wyoming GOP primary next year, Paul told POLITICO in an interview Wednesday.

“I’ve told him I’ll do anything I can to help him,” the Kentucky GOP senator said. “In fact, somebody asked me today if they could use my name, and I said I’d be happy to sign on and do a fundraiser for him.”

Paul said he isn’t sure why Cheney decided to challenge Enzi, but said she might end up picking up some grudges for doing so.

“I don’t think it probably will be helpful in the long run. I’m pretty sure Senator Enzi will be able to hold off against any primary challenge,” Paul said. “In doing so there will be some people that won’t be so happy with the primary challenge, that might bear grudges.”

Cheney, 46, is the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney and launched her campaign Tuesday with a video calling for a “new generation of leaders to step up to the plate.” Read more from this story HERE.

$27,500 Gun Hits Targets at 1,000 Yards, and Further (+video)

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Photo Credit: CNNA new company in Texas is selling a precision rifle with a unique technology that allows even an inexperienced shooter to hit a target 10 football fields away. The price tag is a staggering $27,500.

Tracking Point describes the weapon as a smartgun, with a trigger wired to the scope so that the gun won’t fire until it’s locked on the target that’s been tagged.

“There are a number of people who say the gun shoots itself,” said Chief Executive Officer Jason Schauble, a former Marine captain who was wounded in Iraq. “It doesn’t. The shooter is always in the loop.”

The TrackingPoint rifles, which are Wi-Fi enabled and have a color display so users can post videos of their shots on Facebook or YouTube, started shipping in May. Schauble said his company is on track to sell as many as 500 of them this year, to clients that he describes as “high net worth hunters” who want to kill big game at long range.

TrackingPoint claims that the gun took down a South African wildebeest at 1,103 yards, a company record.

Read more from this story HERE.

Families of Newtown Shooting Victims to Receive $281,000 Each

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Photo Credit: APFamilies of the 26 children and educators killed in the Connecticut school shooting last year will receive $281,000 each under a final plan, released Wednesday, for dividing up $7.7 million in donations.

The families of 12 surviving children who witnessed the Dec. 14 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School will each get $20,000. Two staff members who were injured will get $75,000 each.

The Newtown-Sandy Hook Community Foundation released the final plan after the draft proposal by a distribution committee of the foundation was recommended last week. The foundation’s board approved the plan Monday.

“The board wishes to express its appreciation for the thorough and thoughtful efforts of the distribution committee,” foundation Chairman Charles Herrick said.

Retired U.S. District Court Judge Alan Nevas, the committee chairman, thanked Kenneth Feinberg for his advice on how to allocate the $7.7 million to the 40 families.

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The Decline in Male Fertility (+video)

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Photo Credit: 10 sec. RuleAre today’s young men less fertile than their fathers were? It’s a controversy in the fertility field, with some experts raising the alarm over what some are calling a “sperm crisis” because they believe men’s sperm counts have been decreasing for a decade or more.

Experts here for the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual conference last week debated the issue for an entire day.

One recent analysis found that in France, the sperm concentration of men decreased by nearly one-third between 1989 and 2005. Most but not all studies from several European nations with large databases and the ability to track health records have found that over the past 15 years or so, the counts of healthy men ages 18 to 25 have significantly decreased. This comes after a prominent study from the 1990s suggested that sperm count has decreased by half over the last half-century.

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Down’s Syndrome Cells ‘Fixed’ in First Step Towards Chromosome Therapy

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesScientists have corrected the genetic fault that causes Down’s syndrome – albeit in isolated cells – raising the prospect of a radical therapy for the disorder.

In an elegant series of experiments, US researchers took cells from people with DS and silenced the extra chromosome that causes the condition. A treatment based on the work remains a distant hope, but scientists in the field said the feat was the first major step towards a “chromosome therapy” for Down’s syndrome.

“This is a real technical breakthrough. It opens up whole new avenues of research,” said Elizabeth Fisher, professor of neurogenetics at UCL, who was not involved in the study. “This is really the first sniff we’ve had of anything to do with gene therapy for Down’s syndrome.”

Around 750 babies are born with DS in Britain each year while globally between one in a 1000 and one in 1100 births are DS babies. Most experience learning difficulties.

Despite advances in medical care that allow most to live well into middle age, those who inherit the disorder are at risk of heart defects, bowel and blood disorders, and thyroid problems.

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Pregnant Former Olympian Suddenly Collapses and Dies in Connecticut Restaurant – but Doctors Save Her Baby

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Photo Credit: wfsb.comA pregnant former Olympic runner three weeks from her due date died after collapsing at a Connecticut restaurant on Monday, but doctors were able to save her baby.

Ethiopian runner Meskerem Legesse, 26, of Westport, Connecticut was with her two-year-old son at a Chinese restaurant on the 900 block of Dixwell Ave in Hamden eating lunch when she collapsed on Monday.

The eight-months pregnant Legesse was given CPR at the restaurant before an ambulance rushed her to Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Hamden Fire Chief David Berardesca says CPR efforts in the restaurant and ambulance allowed doctors to save the baby.

It is unclear what caused Legesse’s death, but a friend, Fatima Sene, said the athlete had heart problems which were the cause of her retirement from sport.

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Murkowski and Other RINO’s Lose Filibuster Fight – Badly

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Photo Credit: APBy Wall Street Journal. Senate Majority Leader Rich Trumka, er, Harry Reid held a gun to the head of Republicans on the filibuster, Republicans blinked, and President Obama and the AFL-CIO will now get their nominees confirmed for the cabinet and especially a legal quorum for the National Labor Relations Board.

Cut through all the procedural blather and that’s the essence of the Senate’s “deal” Tuesday over the 60-vote filibuster rule. While Democrats didn’t formally pull the trigger of the “nuclear option” to allow a mere majority vote to confirm nominees, they have now established a de facto majority-vote rule. Any time Democrats want to do so, they can threaten to pull the majority trigger.

Republicans might as well acknowledge this new reality, even if it means admitting defeat in this round. GOP Senators should state clearly for the record that the next time there is a GOP President and a Democratic Senate minority wants to block an appointment with a filibuster, fuhgedaboutit. Majority rule will prevail.

Otherwise Republicans will be conceding that the filibuster remains the rule—except when Democrats say it isn’t. Democrats would be able to use the filibuster to block confirmation of GOP nominees the way they did John Bolton for U.N. Ambassador during the Bush Presidency, but Republicans couldn’t return the favor. Bottom line: This week Democrats killed the filibuster against executive-branch appointees when the same party holds the White House and Senate.

They did so, moreover, to serve AFL-CIO chief Trumka, who all but ordered Mr. Reid to threaten the nuclear option. Big Labor desperately wants a quorum of at least three National Labor Relations Board nominees to keep issuing pro-union orders that have become the NLRB’s standard operating procedure in the Obama years. Today there are only three board members and Chairman Mark Pearce is set to resign on August 27. Read more from this story HERE.

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Compromise, Senate GOP Style

By Daniel Horowitz. Who could have predicted the outcome of the latest filibuster imbroglio in the Senate? Republicans paid the full ransom. What else is new?

Once again, Mitch McConnell outsourced his leadership position to the McCain-Graham duo. He tapped them, along with Bob Corker and Roger Wicker – all from solid red states – to negotiate a compromise with Reid and Schumer over the filibuster and executive nominations. What could go wrong?

The outcome produced a compromise similar to the deals the Israelis cut with the Palestinians. In other words, it was all one-sided. Republicans agreed to allow Richard Cordray to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Board, even though he was originally appointed illegally. The following senators voted for cloture:

Ayotte (NH)
Blunt (MO)
Chambliss (GA)
Coats (IN)
Collins, S. (ME)
Corker (TN)
Flake (AZ)
Graham, L. (SC)
Hatch (UT)
Hoeven (ND)
Isakson (GA)
Johanns (NE)
Kirk (IL)
McCain (AZ)
Murkowski, L. (AK)
Portman (OH)
Wicker (MS)

Read more from this story HERE.

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Richard Cordray vote a leaves GOP at a loss

By MJ Lee, Kate Davidson and Kevin Cirilli. For almost two years, Senate Republicans have insisted they would block anyone from being confirmed as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without major changes in how the agency conducts its business.

On Tuesday, Republicans relented and agreed to allow Richard Cordray to be confirmed as the bureau’s leader. The vote was 66-34.

And in the end, what do Republicans have to show for their two-year fight? Pretty close to nothing — which raises questions about why it took so long to strike a deal and highlighting how poisonous the debates over presidential nominations had become in the Senate leading up to this week.

“This shows the danger of overplaying your hand,” said Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with Guggenheim Partners who has followed the debate closely. “By not dealing when they had a hand to play, the Republicans get nothing out of this.”

Republicans defended their strategy, insisting their effort was not futile because they were able to raise important questions about whether the CFPB, a pillar of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, has too much power. Read more from this story HERE.

“Do I regret doing it? Hell no!” Marine who urinated on Taliban dead says he’d do it again (+video)

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Photo Credit: AnonymousA Marine who was fined and demoted for urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan in 2011 says he would do it again.

“I regret maybe any repercussions it might have had on the Marines. But do I regret doing it? Hell no,” Sgt. Joseph Chamblin told WSOC-TV in Charlotte, N.C., adding that he would do it again.

The infamous incident was videotaped and uploaded to YouTube last year, becoming international news and raising fears of retaliation by Afghan troops against their coalition trainers.

“These were the same guys that were killing our family, killing our brothers,” said Sgt. Chamblin, who was on a mission to stop Taliban insurgents from making roadside bombs.

One of his sniper team members, Sgt. Mark Bradley, was killed by a buried bomb days before the incident.

Read more from this story HERE.