Action Alert: Cantor Says House May Begin Work on Amnesty Bill this Month; Opponents Must Flood Congress with Calls

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Photo Credit: APHouse may start immigration review soon

By Seung Min Kim. The Republican-led House could start working on immigration bills focused on border security on the floor in July, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said in a memo to colleagues sent Friday.

“The House may begin consideration of the border security measures that have been passed by the Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees and begin reviewing other immigration proposals,” Cantor wrote to fellow House Republicans.

The missive from Cantor is among the first official indications that an immigration reform measure could come to the House floor this month. The Senate passed its comprehensive bill June 27, and the focus now turns to the House. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APGrassley could back House immigration bill

By Seth McLaughlin. Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley predicted Friday that he will be able to support the immigration bill that comes out of the GOP-controlled House because it will do more to secure the border than the proposal that passed out of the Senate last week.

Speaking on 1040 WHO radio in Iowa, Mr. Grassley said that he opposed the bill that passed out of the Democrat-controlled Senate because it “didn’t secure the border first.”

“I think the House of Representatives is more for border security than the Senate is, and I think we will get a bill out of the House that I think I can vote for — particularly if it does secure the border,” the Iowa lawmaker said. Read more from this story HERE.

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Sen. Cruz to Headline Americans For Prosperity Event in Florida

By Todd Beamon. Sen. Ted Cruz will be the main speaker at a major tea party gathering in Florida sponsored by Americans for Prosperity during Labor Day Weekend.

The Texas Republican will join GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and conservative commentator Michelle Malkin at the Orlando event, The Hill reports. Read more from this story HERE.

New York Times Profile Scrubs Valerie Jarrett’s Radical Ties

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Photo Credit: WNDA New York Times profile of Valerie Jarrett, President Obama’s top aide, glosses over her family’s radical history, including ties to a top communist activist and to former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

The profile, from September 2012, received newfound media attention earlier this week after BuzzFeed.com reported White House efforts to defend Jarrett behind the scenes by circulating glowing talking points about her to other administration officials who were candidates to be interviewed for the Times piece.

The talking points, titled “The Magic of Valerie,” were documented in an upcoming book by Times reporter Mark Leibovich.

“The magic of Valerie is her intellect and her heart,” read the document.

“She is an incredibly kind, caring and thoughtful person with a unique ability to pinpoint the voiceless and shine a light on them and the issues they and the President care about with the ultimate goal of making a difference in people’s lives,” memo said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ground Based Interceptor Test Failed, Raises Questions About Effectiveness of Fort Greely, Vandenberg ABM Force

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Photo Credit: APAn interceptor missile designed to blast nuclear missiles out of the sky failed to hit its target during a test of the weapon at a Southern California coastal base, officials said.

A ground-based interceptor missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base Friday and was supposed to hit its target — a missile launched 4,000 miles away from the Kwajalein Atoll, according to the Missile Defense Agency.

But the interceptor did not hit its target. Officials will try to determine the cause of any anomalies that may have prevented a successful intercept…

The interceptor is one of about 30 deployed in Alaska and at Vandenberg under a missile defense program begun in 2004. In March, the Pentagon announced it will spend $1 billion to place another 14 interceptors in Alaska. The military said it’s responding to North Korean progress on nuclear weapons.

Read more from this story HERE.

After Thinking “Long and Hard,” McCain Decides US Should Suspend Aid to Egypt (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsArizona Republican Sen. John McCain is calling on President Obama to suspend aid to Egypt after its military overthrew the country’s government.

McCain, a member of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, on Friday called for the United States to suspend its $1.5 billion in annual aid, based on long-standing federal law that prohibits the U.S. from giving aid to countries in which a military coup overthrows a democratically elected government.

“We cannot repeat the same mistakes that we made at other times in our history by supporting the removal of freely elected governments,” McCain said during a public event in Prescott, Ariz…

“The president was freely elected,” said McCain, who acknowledged that he thought “long and hard” about his request…

Read more from this story HERE.

Lessons not Learned: State Spending Out-of-Control as New Fiscal Year Begins

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Photo Credit: APA new fiscal year began on Monday in most states. To celebrate, capitals from Hartford to Sacramento are going on a spending spree, acting as if the recent fiscal crisis never happened…

Exhibit A is California’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who just signed a $96.3 billion budget, up from $87 billion two years ago, amid a festival atmosphere in Sacramento. This was the first real increase since the Golden State’s $60 billion deficit three years ago.

Oil-rich North Dakota is also celebrating Christmas early. The Republican legislature and Gov. Jack Dalrymple approved budgets this spring for the next two years that pump up spending by more than 50%. The budget finances a massive expansion of Medicaid and pork projects, such as the purchase of a marina at a state park. “It’s hard to imagine Democrats would have spent this much,” laments Rob Port, the state’s top taxpayer watchdog and creator of the popular political blog, Say Anything.

Texas approved a biennial budget that increases outlays to $106 billion from $84 billion. Florida was so flush with cash that lawmakers increased the state’s annual budget by more than 6%, to $74.5 billion. Spending was approved for ballet academies, historic courthouses, river ferries and even funds to help cities keep Major League Baseball teams for spring training. All this in a state governed by Republican Rick Scott with GOP majorities in both houses of the legislature.

Virginia and Maryland passed massive transportation bills, aggregating more than $1 billion, to pay for highways, transit, trains and bike paths. The crown jewel of Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley’s Maryland budget, up 8.5%, was a $1 billion “investment” for the construction of wind farms, financed with new utility surcharges.

Read more from this story HERE.

Train Carrying Crude Derails, Destroys Large Part of Canadian Town (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsA large swath of a town in eastern Quebec was destroyed Saturday after a train carrying crude oil derailed, sparking several explosions forcing the evacuation of up to 1,000 people, killing at least one.

Several people were reported missing and officials reported one death in the town of Lac-Megantic (Lack-MAH-Gan-Tic), about 155 miles east of Montreal.

The explosions ignited a blaze that sent flames shooting into the sky, and billowing smoke could be seen from several miles (kilometers) away hours after the derailment. Some of the train’s 73 cars exploded and the fire spread to a number of homes in the town of 6,000 people.

Read more from this story HERE.

Grieving Parents Sue Air Force for Answers in Daughter’s Death

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Photo Credit: APThe grieving parents of a 19-year-old Idaho woman who died serving her country thousands of miles from home say the U.S. Air Force won’t give them information about the circumstances of her death.

Airman 1st Class Kelsey Sue Anderson of Orofino died June 9, 2011, at Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean 3,300 miles west of Hawaii. The military has reported she committed suicide.

But Chris and Adelia Sue Anderson, her parents, filed a lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court to force the Air Force to respond to their Freedom of Information Act request seeking more information about how their daughter died.

The Andersons say their daughter, an avid soccer player and horseback rider who worked in her hometown’s flower shop before joining the military, was unhappy with her job as a security guard on Guam but neither distraught nor depressed in their final contacts days before her death. The arrival of an Air Force colonel at their home, accompanied by local sheriff’s officers from Clearwater County, to relay the terrible news was a bolt from the blue, they say.

“We just want to know what happened,” said Chris Anderson, who with his wife runs a hunting outfitting business in northcentral Idaho’s forests, in an interview Wednesday. “We don’t care if it’s good or bad, we just want closure so we can get on with our lives. It’s been two years with no answers.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Congratulations! You’re Having a Lesbian (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeA brand-new ad campaign that’s sure to raise some eyebrows features a young Australian couple being informed their unborn baby is going to be a lesbian.

In the YouTube video, a pregnant woman and her mate are at an ultrasound examination, viewing their baby in the womb on an electronic screen.

“Well, everything seems to be coming along fine,” the ultrasound technician tells the couple. “Now, would you like to know what you’re having?”

“We would,” the woman says.

“You’re having a lesbian,” the technician tells the couple.

Read more from this story HERE.

With Bullets Scarce, More Shooters Make Their Own

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Photo Credit: Justin SullivanGun stores around the country have had difficulty keeping up with demand for ammunition in recent months. Fears of government tightening of gun and ammunition controls have meant that retailers, from Wal-Mart to mom-and-pop gun shops, haven’t been able to keep bullets on the shelves.

Cliff Poser’s gun shop, Cliff’s Guns, Safes and Reloading in Boise, Idaho, is one of them. Business has been so crazy lately that he has to keep a special stash of ammunition, just so customers who buy guns from him can also buy bullets.

Poser says the current ammunition shortage is the worst that he’s seen. “I’ve been doing the business for 33 years, and, I mean, as big as we’ve gotten, we still can’t take care of all the people that are coming in.”

Shopper Robert Nicholson says buying cheap ammunition for target practice on the Internet used to be easy. “You know, buy a thousand-round steel case, .223 [caliber] for 150 bucks,” he says. “Now, you can’t touch it for less than $400.”

So Nicholson, like thousands of other shooters, is going a different route. He’s making more of the bullets he shoots. Shop owner Poser says the scarcity of ready-made bullets has frustrated shooters to the point they’re spending between $200 and $1,000 to get into the hobby known as “reloading.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Facebook Usage May be Able to Predict Risk of Suicide

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Photo Credit: Shutterstock If you’ve been thinking about killing yourself, your social media might give you away. An initiative called the Durkheim Project will use artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to identify common words and phrases among those who might be contemplating suicide.

The program, which launched on July 2, currently targets only veterans, who have disproportionately high suicide rates. Veterans opt into the Durkheim Project, which installs an app on computers, iOS and Android devices. These apps keep track of what users post and upload it to a medical database. A medical AI monitors the data in real-time, picking out patterns that might lead to self-harm.

The Durkheim Project app monitors content from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, in addition to storing information from a user’s mobile device. A database at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth University will keep track of users’ locations and text messages, and will not share any information with third parties. Additionally, the system will be guarded by a firewall to ward off would-be hackers.

“The study we’ve begun with our research partners will build a rich knowledge base that eventually could enable timely interventions by mental health professionals,” said Chris Poulin, principal investigator on the project, in a statement. “Facebook’s capability for outreach is unparalleled.”

Read more from this story HERE.