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West, a favorite of conservatives who lost his House seat in 2012, said he’d draw on his faith to make a decision on a future political contest.
“We’ll see what happens down the pike,” West said on WMAL’s “Morning at the Mall” radio show. “God will set my feet on the right path.”
Read more from this story HERE.
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Murkowski told POLITICO that it was no overnight epiphany.
“I didn’t just wake up and say: ‘Oh my gosh I’m going to do this. No, it’s something that I’ve been giving a lot of thought to over a long period of time,” Murkowski said…
[See Murkowski’s Gay Marriage Views ‘Evolving’ HERE from March 28, 2013]
Murkowski portrayed support for gay marriage as support for smaller government and less federal intrusion and said it was in line with long-held Republican values.
“Like Reagan, Alaskans believe that government works best when it gets out of the way. Countless Alaskans and Americans want to give themselves to one another and create a home together. I support marriage equality and support the government getting out of the way to let that happen,” Murkowski wrote.
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The ex-cons work for or with the Criminal Justice Initiative (CJI), co-founded in 2009 by former Weather Underground operative and Columbia adjunct professor Kathy Boudin, who pleaded guilty to felony murder for her role in an infamous 1981 armed robbery that left two police officers and a security guard dead. And while that case was well-publicized, the group is hardly upfront about the “practical experience” of Boudin and others associated with the CJI.
A description on the program’s website says it is “situated inside” Columbia, and a part of the school’s “Social Intervention Group,” a research center within the Columbia University School of Social Work. It lists among its goals helping to forge a solution for “a central social crisis of our time, mass incarceration.” The program holds events and conducts research as part of “an interdisciplinary project built around a model of community collaboration” that “seeks to increase the number of skilled practitioners, policy-makers and researchers who can advance the fields of re-entry and incarceration across all disciplines.”
But students and parents who shell out more than $43,000 in annual tuition and fees might be hard-pressed to uncover the fact that former inmates are running the CJI. Outside of a vague reference to Boudin and Cheryl Wilkins being “part of a community of people who have returned from prison,” there is no information about their criminal pasts. Boudin’s school directory bio, for example, makes no mention of her time in prison. Several other CJI faculty, program members and associates have similarly disturbing backgrounds.
Read more from this story HERE.
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He pointed to testimony that Director of National IntelligenceJames Clapper gave during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March when asked if the National Security Agency gathers “any type of data at all” on Americans.”
“No, sir,” Mr. Clapper said. “Not wittingly.”
“I guess the problem is ever since Clapper lied in March to us and said they weren’t collecting any data on Americans, there’s a credibility gap now, and it’s hard for us to really trust the intelligence community because the head of the intelligence community directly lied to the Senate and said they were collecting no data from Americans,” Mr. Paul said on “Fox and Friends.” “So I’m not sure when I’m being lied to and when they’re being honest.”
Mr. Clapper later said in an interview on NBC that the question didn’t have a simple yes or no answer, and that he answered “in what I thought was the most truthful or least untruthful manner by saying no.” Read more from this story HERE.
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California Rep. Duncan Hunter wants audit of U.S. secrecy in wake of NSA leak
By Shaun Waterman. A Republican congressman called Wednesday for an audit of all U.S. government secrecy standards, saying “classification inflation” is forcing federal agencies to issue more and more clearances, increasing the chances for leaks about vital programs.
“Overclassification,” or labeling things secret that don’t really need it, “stands to dangerously expand access to material that should ordinarily be limited,” wrote Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, a Marine combat veteran who sits on the House Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Hunter said he was calling for the audit because of the recent leak about the National Security Agency’s top secret data-gathering on telephone and Internet communications.
The leak calls for “a thorough assessment of the current classification system,” Mr. Hunter said in a letter asking the Government Accountability Office, Congress‘ investigative branch, to perform the audit.
Five million people in the United States have security clearances, the majority of them contractors. More than 1.5 million have top secret clearances, like the one possessed by self-proclaimed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Read more from this story HERE.
Americans’ confidence in newspapers fell slightly to 23% this year, from 25% in 2012 and 28% in 2011.
The percentage of Americans saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers has been generally trending downward since 1979, when it reached a high of 51%.
Newspapers rank near the bottom on a list of 16 societal institutions Gallup measured in a June 1-4 survey. Television news is tied with newspapers on the list, with 23% of Americans also expressing confidence in it. That is up slightly from the all-time low of 21% found last year. The only institutions television news and newspapers beat out this year are big business, organized labor, Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), and Congress.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stockman’s communications director and agriculture policy advisor, Donny Ferguson, says he has been able to eat well on $27.58 for a week, less than the $31.50 House Democrats have limited themselves to for their “SNAP Challenge.”
“I wanted to personally experience the effects of the proposed cuts to food stamps. I didn’t plan ahead or buy strategically, I just saw the publicity stunt and made a snap decision to drive down the street and try it myself. I put my money where my mouth is, and the proposed food stamp cuts are still quite filling,” Ferguson said of the challenge.
Stockman’s office noted that Ferguson did not use coupons, discount programs, or a shopping list, and he shopped at locations accessible via public transportation.
“Not only did I buy a week’s worth of food on what Democrats claim is too little, I have money left over. Based on my personal experience with SNAP benefit limits we have room to cut about 12 percent more,” Ferguson said.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Lead researcher Dr. Cathy Reback of the Baltimore-based Friends Research Institute, Inc., told CNSNews.com how she and her team of health educators will spend the next four years and over half a million dollars encouraging gay meth addicts to cut down on unprotected sex by periodically sending them “gay-specific” text messages.
“We did a pilot about four, five years ago with 52 out-of-treatment MSM (males who have sex with males),” Dr. Reback explained. “And we sent them text messages that were gay specific – used gay lingo – and made references to the connection between high-risk sex and methamphetamine use among MSM.”
The current study, she added, will test the effectiveness of using text messages to alter gay meth addicts’ behavior.
“So what I wanted to do with this text messaging intervention was to optimize the opportunity to get these guys [to have safer sex] by sending text messages as opposed to ‘Come into my brick and mortar site that’s ten miles from your house, and come for a group [session].’ I mean – you know – okay maybe!” Dr. Reback explained.
Read more from this story HERE.
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The “Audit the IRS” rally, organized by the Tea Party Patriots organization in response to the agency’s improper scrutiny of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, drew members and leaders of tea party groups across the country, radio personality Glenn Beck and the Senate’s tea party trio: Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas.
“When Richard Nixon tried to use the IRS to target his political enemies, it was wrong,” Mr. Cruz said. “And when the Obama administration does it, it’s still wrong.”
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, Kansas Republican, said the two presidents have become so intertwined in his mind that he thinks of Mr. Obama as “President O’Nixon.”
Ken Hoagland, chairman of Restore America’s Voice PAC, accused former White House counsel Bob Bauer of sending “memo after memo to the Justice Department, to the IRS and other interested parties urging them to go after law-abiding citizens who wanted to end voter fraud [and] exercise their rights to stop an out-of-control government. This abuse of Americans was directed by Washington at the very highest levels of the Obama administration and campaign.”
Read more from this story HERE.
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Speaking in Berlin where John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan gave rousing Cold War speeches, Obama urged Russia to help build on the “New START” treaty that requires both countries to cut stockpiles of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550 each by 2018.
“After a comprehensive review I have determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one third,” he said.
“I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures,” Obama said at the Brandenburg Gate, which once stood alongside the Berlin Wall that divided the communist east and the capitalist west.
But Republicans quickly warned that the cuts Obama is contemplating would put the United States at greater risk as rogue nations like North Korea and Iran seek to build larger arsenals. Moreover, allies like Japan may move to build their own arsenals as they determine they can no longer depend on the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
Read more from this story HERE.
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…Maj. Gen. Bennet Sacolick, director of force management and development at SOCOM, told reporters at the Pentagon today that he’s making no guarantees.
“We have some genuine concerns that must be addressed prior to making an informed recommendation to the secretary of defense, a recommendation which complies with the chairman’s guiding principles of preserving unit readiness, cohesion, and morale,” Sacolick said.
“Of particular concern is our mission set, which predominantly requires our forces to operate in small, self-contained teams, many of which are in austere, geographically isolated, politically sensitive environments for extended periods of time. This complexity requires a unique assessment predicated upon detailed analysis, ultimately providing a single, clear, consistent procedure for execution throughout the SOCOM enterprise”…
“Their concerns are, you know, once again, that you got a 12-men ODA [the primary operational element of a Special Forces company] and an isolated case, how is that — what are the implications there?” he said of the reaction from men in the field. “There’s all those things that we’re concerned about, probably more so than the actual standards in our qualification courses…culture, social behavior. Those aspects of ultimate integration.”
Read more from this story HERE.