Police Break Up Eagle Party at Safeway (+video)

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: YouTubeA flock of eagles descended on the Safeway parking lot last week, prompting police intervention.

Public Safety Director Jamie Sunderland says several people called in short succession on Thursday afternoon to report the melee.

“One of our officers went over there and there were 40 eagles sitting on, in and around several vehicles in the area,” Sunderland said.

Sunderland says the eagles were feasting on garbage bags of fish product in the bed of a pickup truck. Public Safety contacted the truck owner:

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul Challenges Hillary Clinton in Key Iowa Speech (+video)

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Matthew Holst On Friday, Sen. Rand Paul put his stake in the ground for a possible run in 2016 by mocking the Obama administration and delivering a blistering critique of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. The administration has been criticized for failing to provide security during the attack and for its characterization of the incident afterward.

Speaking at the Iowa GOP’s annual Lincoln Dinner, Paul questioned the initial response to the attacks and asked, “First question to Hillary Clinton: Where in the hell were the Marines?”

“It was inexcusable, it was a dereliction of duty, and it should preclude her from holding higher office,” the Kentucky Republican added to loud applause.

Republicans’ search for a candidate to deliver their first victory in a presidential election since 2004 began as Paul used the plum speaking slot to plant the seeds for his own possible bid. And he won his biggest applause by taking on Clinton, who’s seen as the early front-runner for the Democratic nomination to succeed President Barack Obama.

Paul was just elected to the Senate in 2010 and is perhaps best known as the son of the former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, whose two campaigns for president attracted a fervent, grassroots following that might translate to his son.

Read more from this story HERE.

Explosives-Sniffing Dog Bites Woman at Airport (+video)

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: The National GuardA Rome woman said Friday an explosives-detection dog working the baggage claim area at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport bit her, unprovoked.

Susan Dubitsky said she and her husband were waiting for her sister to arrive around 4:15 p.m. May 2. As an Atlanta police officer and the dog walked past, the dog bit her on the stomach. A little later, when the officer came back to check on her, Dubitsky said, “the dog tried to come at me another time.

“The dog just didn’t like me,” she said. “It was scary. There was no reason to go after me.”

Dubitsky said EMT’s at the airport treated her hand-size bite wound.

While the dog was working with APD, it is owned by the Transportation Security Administration.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gallup Poll: 58% of Americans Oppose All or Most Abortions

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Life NewsWith the murder trial of abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell in full swing, a new Gallup poll of Americans nationwide find well over half oppose all or virtually all abortions.

Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted May 2-7, find 58 percent of Americans want either all or almost all abortions illegal — with 20% saying it should be illegal in all circumstances and 38% favoring it in only in a few circumstances.

Just 39 percent of Americans support all or most abortions remaining legal, with only 26% of Americans favoring legalized abortion under any circumstances (the position of Planned Parenthood and President Barack Obama) and 13% favoring legality under most circumstances.

The poll also showed varying groups of Americans also strongly oppose abortions and want it illegal in all or most circumstances. Some 59 percent of men and 57 percent of women want all or most abortions illegal as do 57 percent of young Americans under the age of 34. Republicans want all or most abortions illegal on a 78-21 percentage point margin while 59 percent of independents and even 43 percent of Democrats oppose all or most abortions.

Read more from this story HERE.

Janitors Claim Discrimination Due to Lack of Spanish Translations

/8 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller A group of Spanish-speaking custodial workers in Colorado have filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that the Auraria Higher Education Center in Denver discriminated against them by failing to provide Spanish translations.

The complaint, filed last week by a dozen custodial workers, contends that the employees suffered unfair working conditions because the AHEC failed to provide Spanish translations of policies and procedures.

“Other higher education facilities including CU and UNC provide information to their custodial employees in a number of different languages,” Tim Markham, attorney for Colorado WINS, the union representing the workers, said in a statement. “We’ve been discussing this with Auraria for a year with no movement on their part, and this is the final step.”

AHEC vice president Blaine Nickeson told The Daily Caller that AHEC — the state agency which oversees the operations of the campus for Metropolitan State University of Denver, the Community College of Denver and the University of Colorado Denver — has not yet seen the complaint but is aware of it from news reports.

“We’re not aware of any state statue that requires translation into a native language or any state policy that requires it either,” Nickeson said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Grassley: Democratic Senator Baucus Retiring Because of Obamacare Trainwreck

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreDemocratic senator Max Baucus is retiring because he is “fed up” with the Affordable Care Act, according to his Republican colleague Chuck Grassley. Speaking at Friday night’s Lincoln Day dinner in Iowa, Grassley told the audience the Montana senator is leaving office ”because he’s so fed up with the possibility of the implementation of Obamacare being a train wreck.”

Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, played a key role in writing the 2010 law.

Grassley said that dissatisfaction with the health-care bill exists across party lines, describing a “bipartisan coalition in Washington” that considers the implementation of the law a disaster.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Knew Tea Party Was Being Targeted In 2011: Report (+video)

/0 Comments/in , /by

Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011, according to a draft of an inspector general’s report obtained by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner.

The IRS apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.

But on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog’s report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with “Tea Party,” `’Patriot” or “9/12 Project” in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says.

The 9/12 Project is a group started by conservative TV personality Glenn Beck. In a statement to the AP, Beck suggested that the revelations were hardly news to him and other conservatives.

“In February 2012, TheBlaze first reported what the IRS now admits to – that they unfairly targeted conservative groups including the 9/12 project,” Beck said, citing his website and TV network. “It is nice to see everyone else playing catch-up and finally asking the same questions that TheBlaze started raising over a year ago.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Over 500 Pounds of Explosives Stolen from Montana Federal Storage Facility

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APAround the same time the nation was transfixed on the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers last month, thieves on the other side of the country pulled off a little-noticed heist — swiping 559 pounds of explosives from a federal storage facility in Montana.

As of Friday, not one ounce of it has been found.

The incident, federal officials believe, was not terrorism-related. But it’s the latest to raise security concerns in an age when authorities are warning about the desire of violence-bent terrorists to inflict mass casualties with bombs.

Rep. Steve Daines, Montana’s only congressman, told FoxNews.com he’s “deeply concerned” about the theft in his state and will be “closely monitoring” the investigation.

The explosives were stolen from a locked U.S. Forest Service bunker near Billings. Thieves took off with various emulsion-type explosives, cast boosters and detonating cord.

Read more from this story HERE.

Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: National Institutes of HealthThe immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

Read more from this story HERE.

ACLU Finally Figures Out What Restoring Liberty Has Been Saying for Months: All Emails, Facebook Messages are Under FBI Surveillance

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: IBTimesWarrants? We don’t need no stinking warrants.

According to new documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, government officials may not always obtain warrants when they snoop through our emails, Facebook messages, and other electronic communications — and the FBI apparently doesn’t even believe it’s legally required to do so.

The documents, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and posted on the ACLU website, suggest that the U.S. Department of Justice is flouting a 2010 federal appeals court ruling that declared warrantless access to email a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

That ruling, a criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, stated that the government must obtain a warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted at the time, “the court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their phone calls and postal mail.”

However, an FBI “Operations Guide” — made public for the first time by the ACLU — tells a more nuanced story. Revised in June of last year, the guide makes exemptions for email stored by a service provider for more than 180 days. That’s basically any message sitting in your Gmail or Facebook folder for longer than six months. Most email messages are stored on cloud servers, and with virtually unlimited storage space, many email users see no need to delete old messages.

Read more from this story HERE.