Video: Feds Swarm Chicago Train After Detecting Nuclear Threat

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Photo Credit: CBS

It was stunning for those who watched Thursday night as federal agents investigated a possible nuclear threat at Chicago’s Ogilvie Transportation Center.

CBS 2′s photojournalist Lana Hinshaw-Klann happened to be at the scene and used a cell-phone camera to record agents in action. Reporter Dave Savini looks into what agents were looking for and what they found.

Sources say the agents were members of the elite TSA VIPR team on the 5:04pm Union Pacific West line. They were carrying hand-held nuclear-detection devices that picked up a reading.

VIPR teams were created after the 2004 bombing of a train in Madrid, Spain, to protect U.S. transportation. At the Ogilvie station, officers held the train and searched for a person or bag that posed a potential nuclear threat.

Jerry Jones, a Chicago lawyer, was heading home on that train. He says the federal officers narrowed the trouble to the area where he was sitting.

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+$30.5B: Federal Spending Up, Not Down, In First 5 Months of FY13

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Federal spending was up $30.5 billion in the first five months of fiscal 2013 compared to the first five months of fiscal 2012, according to newly released data from the U.S. Treasury.

The federal fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 and runs through Sept. 30. In the first five months of fiscal 2012 (October through February), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement, total federal spending was approximately $1,473,999,000,000.00. In the first five months of fiscal 2013, total federal spending was $1,504,547,000,000.00.

Thus, federal spending was $30,548,000,000.00 more in the first five months of fiscal 2013 than it was during the first five months of fiscal 2012.

The federal government is also spending at a much faster pace this year than it did before President Barack Obama took office.

In the first five months of fiscal 2008 (the last full fiscal year before Obama took office), the federal government spent $1,230,412,000,000.00. That is $274,315,000,000.00 less than the $1,504,547,000,000.00 that the federal government spent in the first five months of this fiscal year.

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U.S. Cancels Part Of Missile Defense That Russia Opposed

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Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB

The United States has effectively canceled the final phase of a Europe-based missile defense system that was fiercely opposed by Russia and cited repeatedly by the Kremlin as a major obstacle to cooperation on nuclear arms reductions and other issues.

Russian officials here have so far declined to comment on the announcement, which was made in Washington on Friday by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel as part of a plan to deploy additional ballistic missile interceptors to counter North Korea. The cancellation of some European-based defenses will allow resources to be shifted to protect against North Korea.

Aides to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said there would be no reaction until early next week, when they expect to be briefed by American officials. But Russian news accounts quickly raised the possibility that the decision could portend a breakthrough in what for years has been a largely intractable dispute between Russia and the United States. A headline by the Itar-Tass news agency declared, “U.S. abandons fourth phase of European missile defense system that causes the greatest objections from Russia.”

Pentagon officials said that those longstanding objections by Russia played no role in the decision to reconfigure the missile interceptor program, which they said was based on the increased threat from North Korea and on technological difficulties and budget considerations related to the Europe-based program.

“The missile defense decisions Secretary Hagel announced were in no way about Russia,” George Little, a Pentagon spokesman, said Saturday.

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Portman’s Gay Marriage Stance Sparks Conservative Backlash

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Photo Credit: US Mission Geneva

Sen. Rob Portman on Friday became the first Republican in the Senate to support gay marriage — and his switch set off harsh words from many conservatives.

“Sen. Portman is a great friend and ally, and the speaker respects his position,” Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, told Politico. “But the speaker continues to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that it was Portman’s “prerogative” to change his views on same-sex marriage, but that the traditional definition of marriage won’t change “no matter what politicians decide.”

“I don’t think they have the power to change what is a religiously inspired definition,” the Georgia GOP leader told CNN.

And Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said to cheers at the Conservative Political Action Caucus in Washington: “Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot.” In an essay published on Friday in the Columbus Dispatch, the Ohio senator said that his reversal was based on him and his wife, Jane, learning two years ago that their son, Will, 21, was gay.

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Google Glass: The Opposition Grows

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Photo Credit: Chris Matyszczyk

The opposition will congregate in dark corners. They will whisper with their mouths, while their eyes will scan the room for spies wearing strange spectacles.

The spies will likely be men. How many women would really like to waft down the street wearing Google Glass? It won’t be easy. Once you’ve been cybernated, there’s no turning back. Which is why the refuseniks are already meeting in shaded corners of the Web. One site is called “Stop The Cyborgs.” It claims to be “fighting the algorithmic future one bit at a time.”

It’s going to take a lot of bitty fighting, but the people behind this site — they’re naturally anonymous, in an attempt to stop Google spying on them — say they’re fighting Google Glass in particular.

They say that it will herald a world in which “privacy is impossible and corporate control total.”

Some would say that, thanks to Googlies and other bright, deluded sparks, we’re there already. The Lord and Master Zuckerberg explained to us a long time ago that he knows us better than we do and that we don’t actually want privacy at all.

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Video: Trump Bashes Rove’s $400M ‘Failure’

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Donald Trump on Friday appeared to bash Karl Rove’s super PAC activity for its track record in the last election.

”When you watch someone who spends $400 million on campaigns with perhaps the worst ads I’ve ever seen — they did ads on Obama I thought were being paid for by the Obama campaign,” Trump said in his address to CPAC. Rove’s groups, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, spent more than $300 million on the 2012 cycle.

Trump continued, “When you spend $400 million and it’s a failure and you don’t have one victory, you know something is seriously, seriously wrong.”

The real estate mogul gave an opening address at CPAC’s Friday morning session as the conservative crowd trickled in.

Trump also cast doubt on GOP efforts concerning immigration reform.

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Sen. Graham Claims Benghazi Survivors ‘Told To Be Quiet’ By Administration (+video)

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Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, in an extensive interview with Fox News, alleged that the injured survivors of the Benghazi terror attack have been “told to be quiet” and feel they can’t come forward to tell their stories — as he urged the House to subpoena the administration for details if necessary.

The South Carolina senator said he’s “had contact” with some of the survivors, calling their story “chilling.” He told Fox News that “the bottom line is they feel that they can’t come forth, they’ve been told to be quiet.”

The White House is denying any attempt to exert pressure on the surviving victims. “I’m sure that the White House is not preventing anyone from speaking,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, when asked about the survivors.

But Graham said he thinks the administration is “trying to cover it up,” citing the valuable information the survivors hold.

“The best evidence of what happened in Benghazi is not a bunch of politicians in Washington trying to cover their political ass,” Graham said. “This is the people who lived through the debacle, and I’m going to do all I can to get them before the Congress and American people.”

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https://youtu.be/1KPU-_uS5k8

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Mark Burnett Says ‘Weird Things Happened’ On ‘The Bible’ Set

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Photo Credit: Lightworkers Media/Hearst Productions

Last Sunday, the first installment of History’s five-part miniseries The Bible beat everything on television with a massive 13.1 million viewers, making it cable’s most-watched entertainment telecast this year.

For producer Mark Burnett, who worked on the ten-hour special with wife Roma Downey, the success of The Bible isn’t all that surprising. “It will be, over the next 40 or 50 years, the most watched thing that Roma and I have ever made,” he told EW, quite confidently, back in January.

At the time, Burnett gushed about shooting the series. “I really believe what I’m going to tell you right now,” he said. “The hand of God was on this…. the edit came together perfectly, the actors came together perfectly, it just comes to life.” But Burnett wasn’t just speaking about how well the practicalities of production had gone. “Weird things happened during filming,” he said. “Everybody would look at each other like, “Whoa.”

Here are a few of the “weird things” he was talking about:

A mighty desert wind

“There’s a scene with Jesus and Nicodemus, when Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the night. It’s a very still night, not a breath of wind, and we’re on the edge of the Sahara desert in a palm grove in an oasis… Jesus says, ‘The Holy Spirit is like the wind.’ At that moment, a wind, like as if a 747 was taking off, blew his hair, almost blew the set over and sustained for 20 seconds across the desert, and the actors didn’t break — they kept going. And everything stopped. Everyone just looked at everyone like, ‘What just happened?’”

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Video: Dem Staffer- Democrat Budget Will Produce ‘Zero’ Deficit Reduction In 2014

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

A staffer for Democratic Sen. Patty Murray told Republican Sen. Mike Crapo Thursday that the newly proposed Democratic budget will essentially not reduce the deficit at all in its first year.

“You’re talking about a $1.85 trillion deficit reduction over ten [years],” Crapo said during a Senate panel about the budget proposal. “How much of that happens in year one?” he asked.

“There are spending savings in year one, but in total, it’s about no — in the first year,” responded John Righter, Democratic deputy staff director on the Senate budget committee.

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https://youtu.be/zaRwr5N-23k

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Pope Francis Reaches Out To Jews

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Oded Balilty

Like his predecessor, Pope Francis reached out to Rome’s Jewish community at the very start of his pontificate, pledging to continue to strengthen the increasingly close ties between Catholics and Jews.

Just hours after he was elected the first Latin American pope in history, Francis sent a letter to Rome’s chief Rabbi Riccardo di Segni, saying he hoped to “contribute to the progress that relations between Jews and Catholics” have seen since the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council.

In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, di Segni said the dialogue between Catholicism and Judaism was “complicated” but added that the new pope’s background “gives me trust and hope” that relations will continue to improve.

Other Jewish leaders welcomed the election of a pontiff seen as an ally when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires. Israeli President Shimon Peres said Francis would be a “welcome guest in the Holy Land” while Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, said the new pope “always had an open ear for our concerns.”

“By choosing such an experienced man, someone who is known for his open-mindedness, the cardinals have sent an important signal to the world,” Lauder said. “I am sure that Pope Francis I will continue to be a man of dialogue, a man who is able to build bridges with other faiths.”

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