GOP Congressman swims nude in Sea of Galilee, FBI investigates

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Photo credit: ITIF

U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder of Kansas apologized to his constituents Sunday night after a published report revealed the freshman lawmaker swam nude in the Sea of Galilee during a private fact-finding trip to the Mideast last August.

Politico reported the incident in a story on its website Sunday. The website said the FBI investigated the trip, which included other lawmakers and their spouses, as well as staff members.

“I feel incredibly remorseful that I have caused embarrassment to my constituents and I have caused folks who believe in me to be disappointed,” Yoder told The Star Sunday night.

“The gravity of the situation and the actions I’ve taken are not lost on me, and I feel certainly regret at what has occurred, and I just want to apologize to my constituents for a momentary lapse in judgment.”

It was not immediately clear what the FBI might have examined in relation to the trip. Yoder and his chief of staff, Travis Smith, said neither the Republican congressman nor any members of his staff had talked to the FBI.

Read more from this story HERE.

Border conspiracy: local law manipulates crime stats for feds (+hidden video)

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Photo credit: Marion Doss

Every year, the federal government doles out roughly a billion taxpayer dollars to local law enforcement agencies in the form of grants. These agencies — city police and constables, state agencies, county sheriffs — apply for the grants through the Department of Justice’s COPS (for Community Oriented Policing Services) program and use them to hire more personnel, purchase vehicles and equipment, and enhance their crime-fighting capabilities.  But do the federal grants actually help fight crime?

Local law enforcement agencies insist that the grant money is vital to fighting crime and even to their departments’ survival. But is there a dark side to federalizing local law enforcement funding? PJ Media has obtained exclusive hidden camera video that shows federal grant money creates an incentive for local law enforcement to falsify their crime statistics. The fake stats tell a story that ends up benefiting the local agencies that clamor for the grants, while helping Washington sell its story that the border is safer than it really is:

 

Case in point: Hidalgo County, Texas. This border county is home to McAllen, one of the fastest-growing cities in the entire United States. Hidalgo County boasts the most border crossings of any county along the Texas-Mexico border. Property values are rising here despite the stagnant U.S. economy. The county is home both to gang-infested barrios and to a posh neighborhood that boasts fountains, manicured lawns, beautiful new custom homes, and many cars bearing Mexican license plates.

Hidalgo County sits across the border from Reynosa, Mexico, one of the most violent and troubled cities in the Mexican drug wars. But according to some local officials, Mexico’s drug war has not spilled over into their bustling Texas community. They say this even though U.S. forces engaged drug cartel members in a firefight at Chimney Park in Hidalgo County in 2011.

Hidalgo County elected Democrat Guadalupe “Lupe” Treviño sheriff in 2004 and then re-elected him in 2008, and this spring he reportedly spent more than a half a million dollars to clinch the Democratic nomination for a third term as the county’s sheriff. In this heavily Democratic county, Treviño is a cinch to win that third term. The former Austin police officer claims that Hidalgo County has seen a dramatic reduction of violent crime during his tenure. Sheriff Treviño dismisses the presence and influence of drug cartels in his border county. To hear Sheriff Treviño talk, domestic violence may be a bigger issue in Hidalgo County. But as a local news story that was published August 10, 2012, shows, many residents of Hidalgo County do not feel safe and do not believe that crime is down at all. They also do not believe that Sheriff Treviño’s office is concerned about them.

Read more from this story HERE.

Murkowski wants to sneak through Law of the Sea Treaty in lame duck session this fall

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Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) says she’s hopeful that the Law of the Sea Treaty will pass Congress in the lame-duck session after the election, despite the fierce opposition of some conservatives.

Murkowski told The Associated Press the sea treaty will have better prospects in the Senate when the fall campaign is over. The global maritime pact would establish de facto rules for the nation’s oceans, and business interests say it will create opportunities for offshore drilling.

“This is a treaty that I believe very strongly will contribute not only to our national security, but will allow us a level of certainly in accessing our resources in the north,” Murkowski said.

Murkowski and Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) both support the treaty, and Murkowski has championed several other efforts to tap the state’s natural resources. The untapped deepwater oil and natural gas off Alaska’s coast could be a significant economic boon for The Last Frontier and the entire nation, she and many of her Republican colleagues argue.

“I don’t want us, as an Arctic nation, to abandon those opportunities, and we would be doing that if we fail to ratify the Law of the Sea treaty,” Murkowski said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Napolitano “pondering stepping down” as top aide is put on leave due to allegations of lewd behavior

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Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano’s embattled high-ranking immigration aide took a leave of absence following salacious new claims about the agency’s alleged sexually hostile environment toward men, while Napolitano herself indicated she is pondering stepping down.

Suzanne Barr, who has close Arizona ties to Napolitano, took a “voluntary leave,” according to Brian Hale, spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Barr’s leave, which began Tuesday, comes as two more male accusers claimed they personally witnessed Barr engage in lewd and hostile behavior with subordinates.

In a sworn affidavit obtained by The Post but with the accuser’s name redacted, an ICE employee described as an assistant attaché says at a party at the deputy chief of mission’s house in Colombia in 2009, “He said she got too close for comfort.Suzanne Barr approached me and offered to give me a b— job.”

ICE travel records obtained by The Post confirm Barr traveled to Colombia along with ICE director John Morton between Sept. 20 and Sept. 23, 2009, to meet with Colombian officials and ICE staffers.

An affidavit by another ICE employee states that just before Halloween in 2009, at a gathering in the ICE director’s office, Barr turned to another ICE employee and called him a “sexy mothaf–ker!” Barr also allegedly “looked at his crotch and asked, ‘How long is it anyway?’” prompting other employees to laugh nervously, according to the statement.

Read more from this story HERE.

Atlantic Magazine: Boy Scouts must be taken “out behind the barn” and put down with a “shotgun”

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Photo credit: RDECOM

The website of The Atlantic magazine [last week] carries an article shocking in its use of incendiary and hateful rhetoric laden with violent imagery, all aimed at the Boys Scouts of America.

The article, by James Hamblin, a medical doctor and an editor for the magazine, attacks the BSA for its policy of not admitting gays as members or leaders. Hamblin also proposes that organizations like the Boy Scouts – a private organization – be forced to bend to the demands of the Left on gay rights based on a dangerous concept that could mean the end of First Amendment freedoms like the freedom of religion, speech and assembly.

Hamblin writes:

Boy Scouts is an organization that was and is so close to being great. Remember when they had to put Old Yeller down because he got rabies? It’s not like he was a bad dog, but he got a brain infection and he tried to eat Travis. He looked the same and wasn’t about to die, but the good dog who used to save him from bears and boars just wasn’t there anymore. The policy is embarrassing and archaic, sure. … But the real value in speaking against it is that it’s dangerous. When a group as massive (2.7 million youth members) and respected as the Boy Scouts makes a move like this, it stands to exacerbate a public health hazard in such a way that we can’t just agree to disagree.

Perpetuating a culture where gay teenagers — who are already commonly battling notions of inferiority and self-hatred — can be openly and decidedly told they aren’t welcome among a preeminent organization that purports to represent and define a standard of behavioral ideals, is dangerous. It’s a decided step back in rejecting the culture of gay bullying. We will see more depression, and more suicide. We’ll see more discrimination of every sort, and more hatred.

If the BSA won’t change, then the burden falls on a just society to take them out behind the barn with whatever sort of shotgun revokes credibility.

Imagine the outrage – justifiable – if the BSA issued a statement demanding gays be taken “behind the barn with whatever sort of shotgun” would convince them to stop being gay.

Read more from this story HERE.

 

A fisherman sues the feds for acting like crooks

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Photo credit: NOAA

As raw December 1998 swept over the Atlantic off New Bedford, Mass., scallop fisherman Larry Yacubian brought around his boat, Independence, hailed by the Coast Guard. The officers who boarded his fishing vessel didn’t tell Yacubian it was a setup to coerce out of him a ruinous fine and to destroy his life so thoroughly he could never get it back.

Captain Yacubian lost his business, his boat, his license to fish — and literally the farm that had been in the family for generations — trying to exonerate himself of false accusations that he had been fishing in a prohibited area and free himself from a malicious prosecution for lies that he never told. His persecutor? The Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Two weeks ago, Captain Yacubian filed the lawsuit that may well restore his money and his life after nearly 15 years of gut-wrenching bludgeoning by the NOAA.

The Commerce Department’s inspector general reviewed the NOAA’s Asset Forfeiture Fund — where Yacubian’s $430,000 fine went — and found that “these funds were used to purchase ‘luxurious’ undercover vessels, buy 202 vehicles for a staff of 172 enforcement personnel, and take trips around the world.”

A special investigative judge concluded there is “credible evidence that money was NOAA’s motivating objective in this case.” There’s also knowledgeable belief that the NOAA’s purpose is to eradicate the fishing industry.

Read more from this story HERE.

Large majorities of Americans, even Democrats, want a smaller federal government

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A survey of 3,130 American adults conducted by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation between July 25 and August 5 discovered that large majorities of Americans favor a smaller federal government and believe the government controls too much of our daily lives.

The survey discovered these results even though only 25 percent of the people it polled were Republicans, while another 34 percent were Democrats and another 34 percent were Independents.

The poll asked: “Would you say you favor a smaller federal government with fewer services, or larger federal government with many services?”

Among all those polled, 55 percent said they wanted a smaller federal government and 40 percent said they wanted a larger federal government.

Among just the registered voters in the poll, 58 percent said they wanted a smaller federal government and 37 percent said they wanted a larger federal government.

Read more from this story HERE.

Busted! Leaked emails snag NASA’s global warming alarmists

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Photo credit: Rob Shenk

While NASA climate alarmist James Hansen insists record summer heat and drought are caused by man-made global warming, leaked internal emails from just three summers ago reveal that he and his colleagues expressed alarm that the planet was inexplicably … cooling.

Hansen, often called the “godfather of global warming,” announced earlier this month that blistering heat across the United States is so rare that it can’t be anything but the man-made global warming he has been warning about for decades.

“This is not some scientific theory,” he told the Associated Press. “We are now experiencing scientific fact.”

But in 2009, as the thermometer hit record lows in America, he and other climate scientists panicked in a flurry of emails: “Skeptics will be all over us – the world is really cooling, the models are no good.”

They lamented that Mother Nature was not cooperating with their predictions that global temperatures would smash heat records last decade. They blamed their miscalculation on sulfate emission trajectories and revised their forecast to show a cooling trend lasting until 2020.

Industry Protests Obama’s Plan for Alaskan Oil Reserves

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Photo credit: roger4336

A new proposal by the Obama administration to expand drilling to half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A) has attracted criticism from the oil industry, as the plan still leaves a broad area off limits to new oil development. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said new development will be permitted in an 11.8 million-acre geographical area, which purportedly holds about 549 million barrels of oil, while coastal regions such as Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay — where there is a higher concentration of seals and polar bears — will receive “special protection.”

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the entire reserve harbors about 900 million barrels of oil, a region west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge approximately the size of Indiana. Opening up only half of this area to leasing is disappointing, says Erik Milito, a director at the American Petroleum Institute (API). “This falls short of where we need to be.”

In a conference call on Tuesday, API president and CEO Jack Gerard disputed President Obama’s so-called “all of the above” energy policy. “Today, we’re sending a letter to the White House to urge the president and his agencies to do more than merely talk about ‘all-of-the-above’ while they pursue policies that include ‘none-of- the-below,’” Gerard charged.

Gerard protested that the Obama administration’s plan to restrict this vast opportunity for oil development is unacceptable, and that it will further depress the nation’s capabilities to become more energy independent. “One half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, it was announced just yesterday [August 13], has been taken off limits,” Gerard affirmed. “This is an area by law dating back to the 1920s, [which] was specifically set aside in Alaska for oil and natural gas development. The announcement yesterday by Secretary [Ken] Salazar was essentially an announcement that we’re going to take everything that was legislatively set aside and we’re placing them off-limits.”

President Warren Harding established the NPR-A in 1923 as a resource for the U.S. Navy during a period when its ships were transferring over from coal to oil power. In 1976, the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act handed 23.5 million acres over to the Department of the Interior. Then in 1980, the Interior Department Appropriations Act appointed the agency’s Bureau of Land Management to administer oil leasing on the Alaskan land.

Read more from this story HERE.

Arrested Marine Vet: Patriot or Nutcase Revolutionary? See the Facebook posts here

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On Thursday, Marine veteran Brandon Raub was apparently taken into custody by local law enforcement in conjunction with several federal agencies. Mr. Raub’s mother maintains that her son was arrested because of his “patriotic Facebook postings.”

As of the writing of this column, the agencies responsible for his arrest have still not publicized a charging document explaining why Mr. Raub was arrested. Consequently, much of what we know about this case is from a radio interview with Mr. Raub’s mother as well as an apparent video taken of the actual arrest itself.

So what exactly happened with Mr. Raub? Because the FBI and Secret Service were allegedly involved in his arrest, it’s my guess that the feds will allege that he (1) threatened the President and/or Vice-President, and/or (2) advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government.

The two federal laws at issue include 18 United States Code Section 871 and 18 United States Code Section 2385. The first, 18 USC 871, criminalizes “any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States, the President-elect, the Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President of the United States, or the Vice President-elect.” So, in layman’s terms, if you threaten to hurt the President or his successor, you may get to spend some time in the federal pen.

The second, 18 USC 2385, makes a federal felon out of anyone who advocates the “propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government.” In other words, never threaten to overthrow the government through any violent act.  Using a ballot box revolution, however, is perfectly acceptable.

Did the Marine vet cross the line with respect to these laws? Let’s take a look at the only information currently available outside of his mother’s interview and video, Brandon Raub’s Facebook page.  Continue to Part II, Raub Facebook posts HERE.