Rand Paul & Boehner Disagree on Whether to Delay Immigration Bill Due to Bombings

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Congressional advocates of comprehensive U.S. immigration legislation were diverted into a sometimes testy debate on Monday over whether the measure should be delayed because of questions arising from the Boston Marathon bombing allegedly carried out by two immigrant brothers.

The idea of holding up the legislation gained some ground with the support of U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a prominent Republican who in the past supported immigration reform. However, the highest-ranking Republican in Washington, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said he saw no reason for the bombings to delay the debate.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican sponsor whose continued support is crucial to the bill’s survival, took a middle-ground position, saying in a statement that he disagreed with “those who say that the terrorist attack in Boston has no bearing on the immigration debate” but he added that immigration reform could and should address any “flaws” exposed by the attack in Boston.

Rubio’s remarks came as some conservative commentators and lawmakers continued to seize on the Boston bombings as evidence that an immigration bill should move more slowly in Congress.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was captured Friday night and charged on Monday in the deadly marathon bombing, was a naturalized U.S. citizen. His brother, Tamerlan, 26, who died after a shootout with police early Friday, also was in the country legally and had applied for U.S. citizenship. The brothers had immigrated to the United States a decade ago with their family, which is from Chechnya.

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Hill’s Newest Earmarks: Sequester Exemptions

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Sequestration exemptions are shaping up to be Washington’s newest version of earmarks.

Agencies, companies and other groups are on the hunt for Capitol Hill allies with the juice to save their pet issues from the full force of the across-the-board cuts. Some have already been successful.

The campaigns are just one example of Washington slipping back into business-as-usual, where powerful players are open to satisfying special interests, even on sequester — which wasn’t supposed to play favorites.

“This parochial interest nature of Congress is re-emerging in, I think, an unseemly way,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

“We’re moving into some dangerous territory if we just allow every member to pick areas that they think ought to be changed,” added Sen. Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who made a name for himself in the House by ridiculing earmarks in appropriations bills.

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FBI Not Alerted to Suspected Boston Bomber's Russia Trip Because of Misspelling

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The FBI did not know that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older Boston Marathon bombing suspect, took a six-month trip to Russia because his name was misspelled, according to a key Republican senator on national-security issues.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said Monday that he had spoken to an assistant director at the FBI about the agency’s failure to monitor Tsarnaev after interviewing him in 2011 following a tip from the Russian government that he could be dangerous. Late Friday, the FBI said it found nothing “derogatory” after that initial questioning.

“He went over to Russia, but apparently when he got on the airplane, they misspelled his name, so it never went into the system that he actually went to Russia,” Mr. Graham said.

Tsarnaev, 26, died early Friday morning after a gunfight with police in Watertown, Mass. Younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was taken into custody Friday night and is in as hospital being treated for gunshot wounds.

The revelation that the FBI looked into Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s possible link to terrorist groups but gave him a clean bill of health, has drawn several days of criticism from lawmakers and now the promise of congressional probes.

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Boston Bomb Suspect Linked to Unsolved Triple Murder in 2011

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By Tim McLaughlin and Aaron Pressman. Authorities are investigating whether the Boston Marathon bombing suspect who died after a shootout with police had any connection to an unsolved triple homicide in suburban Boston in 2011, a spokeswoman for prosecutors said on Monday.

The 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, identified by the FBI as one of two brothers suspected in last Monday’s blasts, was a close friend of one of three men who were stabbed in the neck in an apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts in September, 2011.

At the time, the Middlesex County District Attorney’s office said it appeared that the victims knew their assailant or assailants and that the attacks were not random.

Tsarnaev’s potential connection to the case surfaced after the website Buzzfeed.com reported that some of his former associates suspect he may have been involved in the murder. Read more from this story HERE.

Did Boston bomber murder his ‘only American friend’ in horrific triple killing in 2011?

By SIMON TOMLINSON and JAMES NYE. Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have murdered his ‘only American friend’ in an unsolved triple killing two years ago, it emerged today.

Brendan Mess had his ‘throat slit’ alongside two other men in a Massachusetts apartment in 2011 in what police described as a ‘very graphic crime scene’.

Former associates of the Chechan immigrant didn’t initially suspect him of carrying out the gruesome attack, but thought it was strange he didn’t attend his friend’s funeral.

Now one man who knew Tamerlan through the gym where they trained said some of their social circle ‘without even speaking about it beforehand have all been thinking’ he could be involved.

The friend, who gave his name only as Ray, told BuzzFeed Politics: ‘At the time, none of us would have thought it was Tam. Read more from this story HERE.

Kerry Equates Deaths of Marathon Victims with Deaths Of Anti-Israel Terrorists

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Speaking on April 21 in an ongoing effort to get Turkey to cooperate with the U.S. and bridge relations with Israel, Secretary of State John Kerry said the Boston Marathon bombings reminded him of Turks who lost family during “the 2010 IDF raid on the Marmara.”

Kerry was referring to the 2010 boarding of the Mavi Marmara, one of the ships in the “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” that attempted to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip, by IDF commandos. The soldiers were attacked by militants recruited by The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), a Turkish charity accused of having ties to Islamic terrorist organizations, when they boarded the ship.

Nine militants were killed during attempts to rescue Israeli commandos who had been severely wounded and captured by activists abord the vessel; seven Israelis were wounded during the operation.

Without mentioning the alleged terrorist ties of the Turkish members of the flotilla, Kerry said the Boston Marathon bombing made him “acutely aware of the emotions felt by the families of the nine Turks who died” during the raid.

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Did US-Russia Deal in 2011 Lead to Boston Bombings?

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Among the more unusual aspects of what has been learned thus far about the Brothers Tsarnaev is that in January 2011 Russian officials encouraged their U.S. counterparts to take notice of Tamerlan, the older of the two, for possible Chechen terrorist links.

The only known result of the interviews that followed was to delay processing of Tamerlan’s U.S. citizenship application. (His younger brother, Dzhokhar, became a citizen on Sept. 11, 2012.) But the Russian tip was part of the process that led to a subsequent agreement between that country and the U.S. concerning Chechen terrorists.

The May 26, 2011, agreement — the Joint Statement of the Presidents of the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Counter-terrorism Cooperation — can be found on the White House website.

The key passage from that agreement with respect to the events in Boston is this: “We reaffirmed our common view of the threat to global security posed by Al Qaeda and advocated continued cooperation to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda. Identifying and isolating terrorists is integral to our efforts. We welcomed Russia’s efforts to update and enhance the implementation of the sanctions regime under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1822, and the decision by the United States to list Doku Umarov of the so-called ‘Caucasus Emirate’ as a specially designated global terrorist under U.S. Executive Order 13244.”

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Rubio Spokesman Compares Illegal Immigrants to . . . Slaves?

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A spokesman for Senator Marco Rubio yesterday compared the status of illegal immigrants in the United States under current law to that of slaves prior to emancipation.

In a Twitter exchange with Washington Examiner columnist Conn Carroll, Rubio press secretary Alex Conant said, “We haven’t had a cohort of people living permanently in US without full rights of citizenship since slavery.”

@conncarroll We haven’t had a cohort of people living permanently in US without full rights of citizenship since slavery.
— Alex Conant (@AlexConant) April 21, 2013

Conant’s remark elicited an immediate response . . .

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Americans 'Snapping' by the Millions (+audio)

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Terrorism. Chaos. Fear of the future. In the age of Obama, America is undergoing a “fundamental transformation” – that much everyone knows.

But what few seem to realize about this transformation is that the sheer stress of living in today’s America is driving tens of millions to the point of illness, depression and self-destruction. Consider the following trends:

•Suicide has surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of injury death for Americans. Even more disturbing, in the world’s greatest military, more U.S. soldiers died last year by suicide than in combat;

•Fully one-third of the nation’s employees suffer chronic debilitating stress, and more than half of all “millennials” (18 to 33 year olds) experience a level of stress that keeps them awake at night, including large numbers diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorder.

•Shocking new research from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that one in five of all high-school-aged children in the United States has been diagnosed with ADHD, and likewise a large new study of New York City residents shows, sadly, that one in five preteens – children aged six to 12 – have been medically diagnosed with either ADHD, anxiety, depression or bipolar disorder;

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DeMint: Taxpayers Would Pay for Amnesty

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Now that the “Gang of Eight” has introduced a comprehensive immigration bill in the U.S. Senate, the cost to taxpayers of implementing amnesty for an estimated 11 million unlawful immigrants has come into focus.

The core problem with amnesty is clear: It encourages more unlawful immigration in hopes of future amnesties, and it treats unlawful immigrants more favorably than more than 4 million law-abiding people who wait outside our borders, following the rules, for their chance to come to contribute to the economic and social well-being of America.

A properly structured lawful immigration system would help our economy. This is why Heritage and conservatives have long argued for reforming the legal immigration system to make the process more efficient, more merit-based. We need an immigration process that attracts high-skilled workers and encourages patriotic assimilation to unite new immigrants with America’s vibrant civil society.

Amnesty for unlawful immigrants is totally different. Amnesty would impose significant tax burdens on Americans that are completely unnecessary to capture the positive economics that would be associated with a properly reformed lawful immigration system.

The Heritage Foundation is one of the only organizations looking at this cost to taxpayers. Our expert, Robert Rector, is one of the nation’s leading authorities on government social programs, and he is currently calculating what amnesty will cost taxpayers over the long term. It is based on a methodology also used by the National Academy of Sciences.

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Manipulating Growth: Data Shift to Lift US Economy 3%

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The US economy will officially become 3 per cent bigger in July as part of a shake-up that will see government statistics take into account 21st century components such as film royalties and spending on research and development.

Billions of dollars of intangible assets will enter the gross domestic product of the world’s largest economy in a revision aimed at capturing the changing nature of US output.

Brent Moulton, who manages the national accounts at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, told the Financial Times that the update was the biggest since computer software was added to the accounts in 1999.

“We are carrying these major changes all the way back in time – which for us means to 1929 – so we are essentially rewriting economic history,” said Mr Moulton.

The changes will affect everything from the measured GDP of different US states to the stability of the inflation measure targeted by the Federal Reserve. They will force economists to revisit policy debates about everything from corporate profits to the causes of economic growth.

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