Senator Cruz on Obama's Real 'Gun Control' Record

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

From yesterday’s Rush Limbaugh Show:

CRUZ: In 2010, roughly 48,000 felons and fugitives attempted to illegally purchase firearms. Out of those 48,000, the Obama Justice Department prosecuted only 44.

RUSH: Right.

CRUZ: Let me repeat those numbers because those numbers, in my opinion, are quite staggering. Out of 48,000 felons and fugitives who in a single year tried to illegally purchase firearms, the Justice Department prosecuted just 44 of them. In our judgment, that’s unacceptable.

RUSH: What Cruz is doing here is called push-back. He’s a freshman, won election. He’s Tea Party. He’s got a great future. People very much appreciate what Cruz is willing to stand up and say. But did you know the specifics here, the nut of what he said here? It proves the point. Forty-four prosecutions out of 48,000 felons and fugitives who tried to illegally purchase firearms. We’ve already got plenty of law. We only prosecuted 44 of ’em in 2010. Why? Because we don’t want to create the impression we have enough gun laws. In fact, let’s turn it around 180 degrees. The Democrats want the impression created we don’t have enough law.

So you have all of these fugitives, all of these felons committing these horrendous crimes, and we’re not pursuing and we’re not prosecuting ’em, and the reason, “We need more law, Mr. Limbaugh. We don’t have enough law to go after these people. The gun control laws are woefully inept, we need more.” That’s what they want everybody to conclude. Just like we don’t have the laws necessary to deal with immigration. Yes, we do. All we would have to do is enforce current law, and we could reform the immigration problem without anything new.

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Scam: Gang of Eight's Immigration Bill

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Photo Credit: Politico

[T]he part of the [Gang of Eight Immigration Bill] that dictates who owes taxes and how much they will have to pay raises several questions, the answers to which could mean millions of dollars in tax revenue and whether the government has a realistic shot at collecting taxes owed by undocumented workers.

“I think no one can go back and guess or surmise how much the unpaid taxes would be for the entire group,” said David Marzahl, the president and CEO of the Center for Economic Progress, a group that works on tax issues with low-income and immigrant groups.

Negotiators had to choose between a hard-line approach favored by Republicans, like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), that would have required immigrants and employers to painstakingly piece together a tax history so the government could collect what is owed and a less burdensome option of focusing on people who already have a past-due bill with the Internal Revenue Service.

They chose the milder approach and punted the details to the Treasury Department and IRS to hash out down the road.

“Getting back taxes is incredibly difficult, particularly when someone has paid into a fraudulent Social Security number,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a member of the gang, told POLITICO. “You might have a case where the government owes more back than it gets in. So I don’t know. We’ll leave that up to the IRS to figure how we do it.”

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Drone Battles over America a Possibility in the Future, Sen. Dianne Feinstein Says

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Photo Credit: AP

As the global drone boom unfolds in the next few years, one key lawmaker warns we could eventually see science-fiction style warfare in American skies.

“I can envision drone fights in the air, drones cracking into each other,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, during a Senate subcommittee hearing on the Federal Aviation Administration’s fiscal 2014 budget.

Although Mrs. Feinstein isn’t the only one with such concerns, FAA officials have on several occasions reassured the public that it would be illegal to operate an armed drone in U.S. airspace. It is illegal for civilians to arm the helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft they own or operate, though every military in the world already does this.

But with technology racing ahead, Mrs. Feinstein fears drone pilots could disregard the law and use the crafts to deliver weapons — and that the federal government will be ill-equipped to stop them.

“It doesn’t take much to put munitions on [a drone], once you’ve got the know-how,” she said.

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Feminist Mom Aghast at the Treatment her son Gets at College (From the Feminists)

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

I am a feminist. I have marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women’s rights. Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act.

But that was before my son, a senior at a small liberal-arts college in New England, was charged—by an ex-girlfriend—with alleged acts of “nonconsensual sex” that supposedly occurred during the course of their relationship a few years earlier.

What followed was a nightmare—a fall through Alice’s looking-glass into a world that I could not possibly have believed existed, least of all behind the ivy-covered walls thought to protect an ostensible dedication to enlightenment and intellectual betterment.

It began with a text of desperation. “CALL ME. URGENT. NOW.”

That was how my son informed me that not only had charges been brought against him but that he was ordered to appear to answer these allegations in a matter of days. There was no preliminary inquiry on the part of anyone at the school into these accusations about behavior alleged to have taken place a few years earlier, no consideration of the possibility that jealousy or revenge might be motivating a spurned young ex-lover to lash out. Worst of all, my son would not be afforded a presumption of innocence.

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Postmodern Prudes

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Photo Credit: National Review

More than 500 people were murdered in Chicago last year. Yet Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel still found time to berate the fast-food franchise Chick-fil-A for not sharing “Chicago values” — apparently, because its founder does not approve of gay marriage.

Two states have legalized marijuana, with more to come. Yet social taboos against tobacco smoking make it nearly impossible to light up a cigarette in public places. Marijuana, like alcohol, causes far greater short-term impairment than does nicotine. But legal cigarette smoking is now seen as a corporate-sponsored, uncool, and dirty habit that leads to long-term health costs for society at large — in a way homegrown, hip, and mostly illegal pot smoking apparently does not.

Graphic language, nudity, and sex are now commonplace in movies and on cable television. At the same time, there is now almost no tolerance for casual and slangy banter in the media or the workplace. A boss who calls an employee “honey” might face accusations of fostering a hostile work environment, yet a television producer whose program shows an 18-year-old having sex does not. Many colleges offer courses on lurid themes from masturbation to prostitution, even as campus sexual-harassment suits over hurtful language are at an all-time high.

A federal judge in New York recently ruled that the so-called morning-after birth-control pill must be made available to all “women” regardless of age or parental consent, and without a prescription. The judge determined that it was unfair for those under 16 to be denied access to such emergency contraceptives. But if vast numbers of girls younger than 16 need after-sex options to prevent unwanted pregnancies, why isn’t there a flood of statutory-rape charges being lodged against older teenagers for having consensual relations with younger girls?

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See, I Told You So …

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Photo Credit: RichardBowen

I remember when the debate over same-sex marriage first began.

I debated homosexual activists in the media and explained that it really wasn’t a matter of “marriage equality” as they claimed. After all, if marriage is no longer limited to unions between men and women, why should the institution be limited to couples?

“Ridiculous,” I would be told. “There’s just no demand for polygamy and group marriage.”

I remember laughing and explaining to homosexuals activists, who represent, at most, 1 percent of the population, that polygamy is supported by perhaps 20 percent of the population worldwide, including one of the three major religions.

It was inevitable, I explained, that you could not change the definition of marriage without opening up a Pandora’s box of other taboos like polygamy.

That box has now been blown open – and not just by Muslims, who have been strangely quiet about the same-sex marriage debate, in part, I suspect, because they know where it will lead. It has also been blown open by liberal, secular women, including Jillian Keenan in an article in Slate.

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Oregon Juror Jailed for Texting During Trial

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Photo Credit: Joi

A judge in Oregon noticed an unexpected glow on a juror’s chest while the courtroom lights were dimmed during video evidence in an armed-robbery trial.

The juror, it seemed, was texting.

Marion County Circuit Judge Dennis Graves cleared the courtroom and excused all jurors except 26-year-old Benjamin Kohler…

Graves held Kohler in contempt, and Kohler spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday in the county jail. He was released Wednesday night.

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Obama: 'Damned if He Does, Damned if He Doesn't' (+video)

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey

There are two very different President Obamas.

There’s the confident, uncompromising Obama who sought to shame and bully Republicans into submitting to his agenda of tax increases and sweeping gun reform. This version of Obama was dominant until one month ago.

Then there’s the calmer, more compromising Obama — the one who has courted Republicans and taken on his own party with a call for (modest) reductions in entitlement spending. This version of Obama took command last month. Both are flailing.

Obama, regardless of the personality and political approach he displays on any given day, keeps running into the same wall of insurmountable opposition. The cold, hard reality is that the president is trapped in a very frustrating box: He realizes that the vast majority of Congress is as impervious to his pressure as it is his charm. He is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t — and he knows it, several of his friends tell us.

He will most likely get nothing on guns despite his vow after Wednesday’s Senate defeat that “this effort is not over.” He will most likely get nothing more on a grand bargain to lift the economy.

Watch video here:

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When will Republicans Understand Free Market Healthcare?

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Healthcare is one of the most complex policy issues. The lack of free market healthcare, engendered by endless government interventions (and secondary interventions to fix the original interventions), has made policy solutions even more cumbersome. But the overarching principle of any reform must begin with the understanding that federal intervention in the healthcare industry has inexorably driven up the cost of healthcare and health insurance. As such, no healthcare policy panacea can begin with growing government and further distorting the already grossly-altered healthcare market.

Instead of proposing more free market solutions, Republicans are offering pale-pastel versions of Democrat government intervention as solutions. Here are two examples.

Last week, Congressman Larry Bucshon (R-IN) introduced the Orwellian-named “Truth in Healthcare Marketing Act of 2013” (HR 1427) – a bill that forces optometrists to disclose all their licensing and qualifications in all advertising. It grants wide latitude to the Federal Trade Commission to regulate and penalize offenders. The bill is heavily backed by special interest hustlers like the AMA and American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). The ophthalmologist lobby doesn’t want competition from cheaper healthcare providers (optometrists), and they want to use the boot of the federal government to ensnare them in red tape.

It is this sort of anti-free market special interest legislating that has crowded out choice and competition from the marketplace. The reality is that there are already strict laws in most states to punish those optometrists who step outside of their scope of service beyond their qualifications. There is no reason, beyond special interest politicking, for the federal government to get involved. The bill was introduced on April 9, a day before the AAOs national meetings in DC commenced.

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Snubbing Thatcher's Funeral? No, Obama Is Consistent!

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Is President Obama snubbing Lady Thatcher’s funeral in London? No, he’s simply being consistent. Mrs. Thatcher was a great defender of democracy. Mr. Obama is not.

Mr. Obama went to London in 2009. There, he bowed to that desert despot, Saudi King Abdullah. It was Abdullah who refused in 1998 to give the U.S. access to Madani al Tayyib, the financial kingpin of al-Qaeda. So, of course, Mr. Obama would bow to Abdullah.

Back home, the new president tossed a bust of Winston Churchill out into the snow. The brave champion of freedom who resisted Hitler’s “Nozzies” triumphed over tyranny.

Mr. Obama extends his hand to tyrants.

And, after all, he did give an iPod with recordings of all his speeches to Britain’s Queen. It was a most thoughtful gift — just in case Her Majesty was having trouble with insomnia.

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