Boehner Faces Backlash On Immigration Overture

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photo credit: Fibonacci blue House Speaker John A. Boehner’s overture to Democrats and President Obama on immigration reform is already drawing fire from within the GOP, where lawmakers say he’s writing checks that his fellow House Republicans won’t cash for him.

“I’m concerned that Speaker Boehner is getting ahead of House Republicans when he commits to getting a ‘comprehensive approach’ to immigration taken care of ‘once and for all,’” Rep. John Fleming, Louisiana Republican, said in a statement late Thursday, telling Mr. Boehner to “pull back” on his comments.

In an interview with ABC on Thursday, two days after his party saw Hispanics vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, Mr. Boehner said the time had come to address immigration.

“This issue has been around far too long and while I believe it’s important for us to secure our borders and to enforce our laws, I think a comprehensive approach is long overdue, and I’m confident that the president, myself, others, can find the common ground to take care of this issue once and for all,” he said.

His use of the word “comprehensive” set off alarm bells within the GOP, since that is the term immigrant-rights advocates use for legislation that would legalize most of the 11 million illegal immigrants now in the U.S., as well as rewrite the legal immigration system.

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Eric Holder Failed to Disclose Wife’s Abortion Clinic

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photo credit: donkeyhoteyThe revelations about Attorney General Eric Holder and his connection to an abortion clinic are becoming worse as new information has come to light showing he failed to disclose his wife’s co-owning of an abortion business.

Just before the election, Human Events broke the news that Holder’s wife and sister-in-law co-own, through a family trust, own the building where a controversial abortion practitioner operates. The Holder family transferred ownership to a family trust in 2009, eight months after President Barack Obama’s inauguration and a deed names Holder’s wife and sister-in-law as trustees.

Fulton County tax records show Holder’s wife and sister-in-law own the building, located at 6210 Old National Highway, College Park, Ga. A statement from the Georgia Department of Law shows the building was home to Old National Gynecology, the practice of abortion practitioner Tyrone Cecil Malloy.

Now, Human Events has an update, revealing that Holder failed to disclose his wife’s ownership of the building. The attorney general’s financial disclosure reports for 2008 through 2011 show Holder neglected to report his wife’s co-ownership.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch in Washington, D.C., said he was “surprised there is this trust out there and (Holder) hasn’t reported it.”

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Communist Party Leader: Obama Victory “Dawn of a New Era”

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photo credit: anosmiaCommunist Party USA leader Sam Webb, has hailed the election of Party “friend” Barack Obama, as the “dawn of a new era.”

The Party is cock-a-hoop over Obama’s victory, seeing it as both a repudiation of the conservative agenda and an opportunity to move the United States further towards socialism.

From the People’s World: “After a long and bitterly contested battle, the forces of inclusive democracy came out on top yesterday…

An African-American president was re-elected to the office of the Presidency, the Democrats unexpectedly strengthened their hand in the Senate and House, and victories, including big ones for marriage equality, were registered at the state level.

Moreover, the balance of forces – that is, the ground on which people fight going forward – has shifted in a progressive direction. And thanks in large measure goes to what might be the most notable development in this election – the emergence of a multi-racial, male-female, working-class-based electoral coalition that has the potential to transform America in the years and decades ahead.

Read more from this story HERE.

Did the Obama “Genuises” Steal the Data?

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photo credit: RichardThere was an interesting article out of Time Magazine (https://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world-of-quants-and-data-crunchers-who-helped-obama-win/) in which they interviewed the tech geniuses behind the Obama victory. Like so much of the exposure of anything pertaining to the President, this piece only raises more questions than the answers it purports to deliver.

For one, if you were in fact the man who successfully elected and then re-elected the leader of the Free World, why would you preferred to remain anonymous?

The narrative of both elections is that Obama twice used the smartest technological campaign teams on his ride from community organizer to leader of the free world. We all know that there were a myriad of campaign irregularities from Black Panthers turning people away to foreign donations using untraceable single use credit cards, and George Soros paying un unprecedented FEC fine for illegally funneling cash to the Obama campaign. Yet we are told, to just stand in awe that the smartest self-professed lazy student with grades he will not share, is so smart and so tech savvy that he just out thunk us.

In his book Megatrends, John Naisbitt discusses how people can accomplish extraordinary outcomes and success by aligning with these trends. Certainly, among the biggest megatrends of this generation is the rise of social media and search engines. While a few privacy advocates have beaten the drum of warning that we were giving away all our most personal data to Facebook and Google, we were so enthralled with the technology and the capabilities that we unwittingly became part of this story line as we were lured to the kill by the notion we could have all that technology for “free.”

Of course we all know that nothing comes for free. We were betting on free stuff, and now we know what we bartered away in the deal—our liberty.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s America? Ripped Apart by Financial Crisis, Greek Society in Free-fall

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photo credit: endiaferonATHENS, Greece – A sign taped to a wall in an Athens hospital appealed for civility from patients. “The doctors on duty have been unpaid since May,” it read, “Please respect their work.”

Patients and their relatives glanced up briefly and moved on, hardened to such messages of gloom. In a country where about 1,000 people lose their jobs each day, legions more are still employed but haven’t seen a paycheck in months. What used to be an anomaly has become commonplace, and those who have jobs that pay on time consider themselves the exception to the rule.

To the casual observer, all might appear well in Athens. Traffic still hums by, restaurants and bars are open, people sip iced coffees at sunny sidewalk cafes. But scratch the surface and you find a society in free-fall, ripped apart by the most vicious financial crisis the country has seen in half a century.

It has been three years since Greece’s government informed its fellow members in the 17-country group that uses the euro that its deficit was far higher than originally reported. It was the fuse that sparked financial turmoil still weighing heavily on eurozone countries. Countless rounds of negotiations ensued as European countries and the International Monetary Fund struggled to determine how best to put a lid on the crisis and stop it spreading.

The result: Greece had to introduce stringent austerity measures in return for two international rescue loan packages worth a total of €240 billion ($313 billion), slashing salaries and pensions and hiking taxes.

Read more from this story HERE.

Supreme Court Weighing Genetic Privacy

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Supreme Court justices are to [met] privately Friday to weigh whether they will hear a major genetic-privacy case testing whether authorities may take DNA samples from anybody arrested for a serious crime.

The case has wide-ranging implications, as at least 21 states and the federal government have regulations requiring suspects to give a DNA sample upon arrest. In all the states with such laws, DNA saliva samples are cataloged in state and federal crime-fighting databases.

The issue confronts the government’s interest in solving crime, balanced against the constitutional rights of those arrested to be free from government intrusion.

The case before the justices concerns a decision in April of Maryland’s top court, which said it was a breach of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure to take DNA samples from suspects who have not been convicted.

The Maryland Court of Appeals, that state’s highest court, said that arrestees have a “weighty and reasonable expectation of privacy against warrantless, suspicionless searches” and that expectation is not outweighed by the state’s “purported interest in assuring proper identification” of a suspect.

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CIA Chief Resigns Over Affair

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WASHINGTON—Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus resigned after a probe into whether someone else was using his email led to the discovery that he was having an extramarital affair, according to several people briefed on the matter.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry into use of one of Mr. Petraeus’s personal email accounts led agents to believe the woman or someone close to her had accessed them, the people said.

Multiple officials familiar with the investigation identified the woman with whom Mr. Petraeus had the affair as Paula Broadwell, who wrote a biography of him called “All In: The Education of Gen. David Petraeus.” Efforts to reach Ms. Broadwell on Friday weren’t successful. A spokeswoman for her publisher didn’t immediately comment.

The resignation, which surprised the nation’s capital on Friday afternoon, represented an abrupt fall in the career of a man who had been one of the most celebrated military leaders of his time, a four-star general credited with turning the tide in Iraq and reversing the momentum of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The computer-security investigation points to one reason Mr. Petraeus and the White House believed the popular official couldn’t remain in the senior intelligence position: The affair raised the possibility his improper relationship could have compromised national security.

Read more from this story HERE.

Dead Pig In Mitt Romney T-Shirt Dumped At California GOP Office (+video)

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In a shocking display of hatred and contempt, a dead pig dressed in a Mitt Romney tee shirt and wrapped in barbed wire was dumped at a California Republican Party office yesterday. Witnesses who saw the carcass, initially thought the gruesome sight was a human body.

Law enforcement is still looking for clues as to a motive. It is unclear whether it was just a distasteful prank, an act of intimidation, or perhaps something more sinister.

See the news report from local ABC affiliate KABC below.

Obama’s Interior Department Releases Plan to Close 1.6 Million Acres to Shale Oil Development

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photo credit: farther along
The Interior Department on Friday issued a final plan to close 1.6 million acres of federal land in the West originally slated for oil shale development.

The proposed plan would fence off a majority of the initial blueprint laid out in the final days of the George W. Bush administration. It faces a 30-day protest period and a 60-day process to ensure it is consistent with local and state policies. After that, the department would render a decision for implementation.

The move is sure to rankle Republicans, who say President Obama’s grip on fossil fuel drilling in federal lands is too tight.

Interior’s Bureau of Land Management cited environmental concerns for the proposed changes. Among other things, it excised lands with “wilderness characteristics” and areas that conflicted with sage grouse habitats.

Read more from this story HERE.

Huckabee Leads Iowa Poll for 2016 GOP Presidential Race

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photo credit: gage skidmoreFormer Arkansas Gov. and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee leads the field of possible contenders for the 2016 GOP presidential race in Iowa, according to a new survey of Republican voters from Public Policy Polling.

Huckabee, now a radio talk show host, garnered 15 percent support in the poll, taken Nov. 3-4. He was followed by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 12 percent.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush placed fifth with 11 percent support, former presidential candidate Rick Santorum was sixth with 10 percent, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scored seventh with 9 percent.

Trailing them was Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul with 5 percent and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with 4 percent.

Read more from this story HERE.