Obama Taking Executive Action on Guns after Senate Vote

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Blocked by Congress from expanding gun sale background checks, President Obama is turning to actions within his own power to keep people from buying a gun who are prohibited for mental health reasons.

Federal law bans certain mentally ill people from purchasing firearms, but not all states are providing data to stop the prohibited sales to the FBI’s background check system. A federal review last year found 17 states contributed fewer than 10 mental health records to the database, meaning many deemed by a judge to be a danger still could have access to guns.

The Obama administration was starting a process Friday aimed at removing barriers in health privacy laws that prevent some states from reporting information to the background check system. The action comes two days after the Senate rejected a measure that would have required buyers of firearms online and at gun shows to pass a background check. That’s already required for shoppers at licensed gun dealers.

Stung by the defeat, Obama vowed to keep up the fight for the background check expansion but also to do what he could through executive action.

“Even without Congress, my administration will keep doing everything it can to protect more of our communities,” Obama said from the Rose Garden shortly after the Senate voted. “We’re going to address the barriers that prevent states from participating in the existing background check system.”

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Police Chief: Surviving Boston Bombing Brother Ran Over, Killed Older Brother

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Watertown police chief Edward Deveau said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old suspected Boston Marathon bomber who was captured alive on Friday, killed his older brother Tamerlan by driving over him and dragging his body through the street with a carjacked SUV Thursday night.

Deveau, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Saturday, said police officers were handcuffing Tamerlan, who had run out of ammunition, when Dzhokhar came at them in a carjacked SUV. Watertown officers were able to get out of the way.
The brothers were armed with pipe bombs, firearms, and explosives and had been in a firefight with officers on Thursday night after they reportedly “assassinated” an MIT police officer. Deveau said a pressure cooker bomb also went off during the firefight, causing a major explosion. The brothers threw explosives at the officers.

Dzhokhar eventually abandoned the SUV, fleeing on foot. He hid in a land-docked boat in a Watertown neighborhood, where law enforcement found him Friday evening.

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Amnesty Bill to Include a 50 Percent Increase of Legal Immigrants

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Not only will 12 to 20 million illegal aliens enjoy new found legality and freedom to roam and work within America if the senate amnesty S744 bill passes; the senators added a whopping 50 percent additional legal immigration number to the bill.

They added those numbers in light of the fact that 47 million Americans exist on food stamps because they cannot secure jobs.

Nearly 40 percent of African-Americans cannot secure jobs. Our working poor stand in welfare lines, food kitchens and food banks. We import over one million legal immigrants annually more than all other countries combined. Our country cannot handle those numbers, but Congress expects to pass yet another amnesty and add even more millions of people to America.

Since 1965, the Immigration Reform Act started the flood of humanity into America at 1.1 million year after year and decade after decade. However, this new bill piles insult onto injury.

Washington Bureau journalist Brian Bennett said, “The U.S. admits about 1 million legal immigrants per year, more than any other country. That number could jump by more than 50% over the next decade under the terms of the immigration reform bill that a bipartisan group of senators expects to unveil as early as Tuesday. The impact would be felt nationwide, but areas that already have large immigrant communities would probably see much of the increase.”

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Congress 'Astonished' by Military Smear of Christians

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Members of Congress have expressed astonishment that the U.S. Army Reserve would use a training brief that slams Catholics, evangelical Christians and others and are demanding the practice come to a halt – now.

“Our nation needs to have an honest conversation about religious extremism and what we can do to avoid religious violence. However, labeling these major world religions as extremists is wrong and hurtful,” said a letter by Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., that was signed by dozens of other members.

It was addressed to Army Secretary John. M . McHugh at the Pentagon.

“We call on you to rescind this briefing and set the record straight on the Army’s view on these faith groups by providing a balanced briefing on religious extremism,” the letter said.

The letter was prompted by reports that soldiers were taught that evangelical Christians are an extremist threat to America along with groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, KKK, Nation of Islam, al-Qaida and Hamas.

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Boston Bombs: Obama Lulled America Into False Confidence Over Terror Threat

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In his State of the Union address to the American people earlier this year, Barack Obama declared that he was “confident” of achieving “our objective of defeating the core of al-Qaeda”.

Although he acknowledged the need to pursue the “remnants” of the terrorist group and its affiliates, the overall message was clear – al-Qaeda was badly degraded, the tides of war were receding and the US was winning this fight that was no longer even officially a war.

The Boston bombings would appear to present a fundamental challenge to that assessment and once again bring the nagging uncertainty of terrorism back on to the American main street.

It is too soon to be absolutely sure the attacks were motivated by jihadist ideology, but the Islamic videos on the website of the older of the two Tsarnaev brothers point very firmly in that direction.

They bring home the complexity of the global Islamist threat and the fact that it cannot be confined to wars in distant lands, or fought at arm’s length using drones, as the Obama administration has quietly yet insistently led America to believe.

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Controversial CISPA Passed in Congress

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The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) passed the House of Representatives on Friday and will now head to the upper Senate for further deliberation. This has happened before, but opponents of the controversial CISPA state that it poses a major threat to Fourth Amendment rights. After two days of debate and discussion, the bill was passed 288-127 in favor. Seventeen members of the House abstained from voting.

Proponents of the bill believe it will allow the U.S. government to stop cyber-attacks in their tracks. The bill will also amend the National Security Act. This change would allow U.S. intelligence services to give classified data to those who do not have clearance.

CISPA will allow companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other private sector technology or telecoms companies, including your cell phone service provider, to search personal and sensitive data of average U.S. residents to identify “threat information”.

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Obama on Bomb Suspect Arrest: Don't 'Rush' to Judge 'Entire Groups of People'

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Following Friday’s capture of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, President Obama warned against rushing to judgment about “entire groups of people,” the Associated Press reported.

“In this age of instant reporting, tweets, and blogs, there’s a temptations to latch on to any bit of information sometimes to jump to conclusions. When a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it’s important that we do this right. That’s why we have investigations. That’s why we relentlessly gather the facts, that’s why we have courts. That’s why we take care not to rush to judgement, not about the motivations of these individuals and certainly not about entire groups of people,” he said.

“Translation: don’t look behind the curtain at the Islamic radical connection,” said a post at Weasel Zippers.

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Senate to Open Debate on Charging National Sales tax on Online Purchases

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Fresh off last week’s bitter battle over gun control legislation, the U.S. Senate is slated to delve into another divisive issue: legislation to tax Internet sales.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is expected to begin debate on the Marketplace Fairness Act as early as Monday with a possible vote on the measure by the end of the week.

The bill would allow states to require online retailers of a certain size to collect sales tax, even when the seller is from a different state. States now lose about $11 billion in tax revenue because online sales are not taxed, according to a 2011 report by Fitch Ratings.

Under current law, online retailers must collect taxes only in states where they have a physical presence. The legislation would compel those retailers to collect in all states, with an exception for retailers with annual sales of less than $1 million.

Support for the legislation crosses party lines but so does the opposition in the Senate.

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Bill Maher: Comparing Violence of Islam to Christianity ‘Liberal Bulls**t’ (+video)

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On HBO’s “Real Time” on Friday night, host Bill Maher entertained CSU-San Bernardino professor Brian Levin, director of the Center for Study of Hate and Extremism, who maintained that despite the events in recent days, religious extremism isn’t only a product of Islam.

But Maher took issue with that claim, calling it “liberal bullshit” and said there was no comparison.

“You know what, yeah, yeah,” Maher said. “You know what — that’s liberal bullshit right there … they’re not as dangerous. I mean there’s only one faith, for example, that kills you or wants to kill you if you draw a bad cartoon of the prophet. There’s only one faith that kills you or wants to kill you if you renounce the faith. An ex-Muslim is a very dangerous thing. Talk to Salman Rushdie after the show about Christian versus Islam. So you know, I’m just saying let’s keep it real.”

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Home-Grown Terrorist Attack Threatens to Disrupt Obama Agenda

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The Boston Marathon terrorist attack allegedly hatched by two brothers from Chechnya is threatening to disrupt President Obama’s second-term agenda.

Opponents of immigration reform — the most promising priority of Obama’s second term remaining after the defeat of gun control — are already using the attack to try to slow progress on a bipartisan Senate bill.

More broadly, the attack is raising questions about how the administration should deal with 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured Friday after an exhaustive manhunt in Boston, and concerns over whether the FBI was too complacent in letting his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev out of its sight after interviewing him in 2011.

The issues are expected to create political problems and distractions for Obama, whose fight against terrorism has largely been a political success highlighted by the killing of Osama bin Laden.

It is unclear how much oxygen the issue will consume in the coming weeks, but it seems certain it will shift the political debates in Washington.

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