Lawmaker Predicts Marijuana Will Be Legal Within 5 Years

Photo Credit: Ed Andrieski

Photo Credit: Ed Andrieski

Two states with legal recreational use. Twenty more that allow medical use. Record-high support at the national level for more permissive policies. It seems fair to say that the United States’ official stance on marijuana is shifting quickly. In fact, one congressman is predicting that U.S. pot prohibition will be a thing of the past before the end of the decade.

“I think it’s game over in less than five years,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said Monday during an interview with The Huffington Post.

“There’s no question that we’re likely to see another state or two this year legalizing [recreational] use,” Blumenauer said. “We’re going to see more medical marijuana progress. The crazy prohibitions on bank services and probably the tax disparities — these are all eroding.”

As of now, 20 states have legalized marijuana for medical purposes, and voters in Colorado and Washington have approved marijuana for recreational use. About a dozen more states are expected to legalize marijuana in some form over the next several years. One recent study has projected a $10 billion legal marijuana industry by 2018.

Despite a growing and profitable legal marijuana industry, the federal government continues to ban the plant, classifying it as a Schedule I substance alongside drugs like heroin and LSD, and maintaining that it has “no currently accepted medical use.”


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Just When You Thought Obama Had Damaged The Economy Enough…

Photo Credit: Western Journalism

Photo Credit: Western Journalism

In an op-ed for the Las Vegas Sun, President Obama gave his argument for supporting the proposed minimum wage increase, which would increase the federal minimum wage rate by nearly 40% from the current rate of $7.25/hr to $10.10/hr.

In the article, the President made claims that are false. According to him, a full-time employee making $7.25/hr would be living in poverty. By the federal government’s own poverty threshold, a single person household working 40 hours a week at minimum wage is making nearly 20% more than the poverty threshold.

Second is the effects that this would have on education. A teacher in Mississippi who graduated with a bachelor’s degree will be earning an insignificant 15% more than an unskilled employee working as a drive-thru clerk or Quik Stop cashier. With this law, there will be convicted rapists and even murderers (there are thousands of convicted rapists and murderers released from prison each year), many of whom have no skill at all, earning nearly as much as the people who educate our children. While it is true that most minimum-wage workers are not convicted felons, it is a fact, however unpleasant it may be, that a vast majority of them are unskilled workers.

What incentive is there for someone to go to college? The average bachelor’s degree costs a student over $30,000 and four years of their lives. The only way people are going to get out of poverty is to become a skilled worker rather than an unskilled one, and that is done through education, not minimum wage increases. This legislation removes the incentive to go to college. If all someone had to do to raise a family is flip burgers or wash dishes, those jobs would be in much higher demand. But there’s a reason employers don’t want to pay unskilled workers wages as high as skilled workers.

Read more from this story HERE.

Feds Curtail Major Counterterror Exercise in Washington

Photo Credit: Free Beacon

Photo Credit: Free Beacon

The White House sharply curbed a major counterterrorism drill scheduled for Tuesday in Washington that was designed to test the federal government response to threats of car bombs attacks and a chemical weapons strike on the Metro subway system.

The exercise, code named Eagle Horizon 2014, was cut back instead to small-scale communications checks within federal agencies.

The transfer of government functions through groups of emergency personnel located at remote secure locations as part of so-called “continuity of government” operations was scrapped, according to Obama administration security officials.

Disclosure of the curtailed exercise comes as al Qaeda recently issued new threats to conduct car bomb attacks in Washington. Details of the car bombing campaign were contained in the latest issue of the English-language magazine “Inspire,” published by the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The magazine urged Muslim youth to attack Americans with car bombs and provided detailed instructions for making the devices from easily available components, such as groups of small propane tanks used in cooking grills.

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Judicial Watch Warns Iowa, Colorado, DC of Potential Election Integrity Lawsuits

Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Judicial Watch announced today that on March 24, 2014, it sent letters to top election officials in Iowa, Colorado, and the District of Columbia warning that it will file federal lawsuits against each state within 90 days if they fail to take immediate actions to comply with Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requiring them to maintain accurate lists of eligible voters. The organization also sent inquiries on March 6 to officials in California, New Mexico, Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois notifying them of potential “apparent problems” and asking these states to provide records of steps taken to assure the accuracy of voter lists.

The letters to the Secretaries of State in Iowa and Colorado and the Board of Elections Supervisors in the District of Columbia specifically warn:

We write to bring your attention to violations of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (“NVRA”) … This letter serves as statutory notice that Judicial Watch will bring a lawsuit against your office if you do not take specific actions to correct these violations of Section 8 within 90 days. In addition, by this letter we are asking you to produce certain records to us which you are required to make available under Section 8(i) of the NVRA. We hope that litigation will not be necessary to enforce either of these claims.

In each state and the District of Columbia, the letters advise the election officials of specific evidence gathered by the organization indicating that the jurisdiction is “failing to comply with the voter registration list requirements of Section 8 of the NVRA”:

• In Iowa:

[A] comparison of 2012 Census data and 2012 EAC data shows there were more people registered to vote than there were adults over the age of 18 living in each of the following 24 counties: Fremont, Johnson, Madison, Adams, Scott, Pocahontas, Kossuth, Poweshiek, Lyon, Cass, Dickinson, Clay, Chickasaw, Shelby, Boone, Worth, Hancock, Ida, Dallas, Audubon, Sac and Greene. A comparison with 2010 Census population estimates and 2010 EAC data shows that this trend has only worsened.

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NSA Performed Warrantless Searches on Americans’ Calls and Emails

Photo Credit: Shawn Thew/EPA

Photo Credit: Shawn Thew/EPA

Spencer Ackerman and James Ball.

US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a “back door” in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans’ communications.

The NSA’s collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans’ details within the databases.

Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed for the first time the use of this legal authority to search for data related to “US persons”.

“There have been queries, using US person identifiers, of communications lawfully acquired to obtain foreign intelligence targeting non-US persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States,” Clapper wrote in the letter, which has been obtained by the Guardian.

“These queries were performed pursuant to minimization procedures approved by the Fisa court and consistent with the statute and the fourth amendment.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: fedsocblog

Photo Credit: fedsocblog

Tools for Lawyers Worried That NSA Is Eavesdropping On Their Confidential Conversations

The ABA Journal reports:

Are you concerned that Big Brother (including the National Security Agency) is not only watching, but listening, recording and even transcribing your confidential client conversations?

The good news for lawyers worried about maintaining their duty of confidentiality is that there are tools and safeguards to help them. In a session entitled “N.S.A.y What? Firm and Client Data Security & Encryption in the Age of Monitoring” held at ABA Techshow on Friday, Sensei Enterprises vice president John Simek and Oracle Corporation’s Chris Ries provided tips on gadgets and best practices for lawyers to use if they wish to avoid the NSA’s massive net.

“Lawyers need to be very cognizant of their communications being intercepted by NSA,” said Simek. Even worse for lawyers is that they can’t even be certain what the law is, since the status of the NSA’s various programs and the data they collect seems to change every day. Plus, given the secretive nature of the NSA, as well as the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that oversees its surveillance warrants, lawyers can’t even be sure of what is and what is not legal.

As such, Ries and Simek said lawyers should assume all of their conversations are subject to NSA surveillance and take steps to protect confidential information. To begin with, they recommended that all emails, electronic messages and communications be encrypted. There’s no shortage of available encryption hardware and software, and they recommended lawyers use an encryption service such as Zix Corporation’s ZixCorp or the open-sourced TrueCrypt. Platform-specific devices are also available, such as Microsoft’s BitLocker to Go and Apple’s FileVault. Lawyers can also purchase encrypted hard drives, including Symantec Corporation’s PGP Whole Disk Encryption and Sophos Ltd.’s Safeguard, as well as encrypted flash drives such as IronKey from Imation Corp.

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Michael Moore: General Motors ‘Criminals’ Deserve Death

Photo Credit: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Photo Credit: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore believes that whoever was responsible at General Motors for failing to recall a faulty ignition switch deserves death.

“I am opposed to the death penalty, but to every rule there is usually an exception, and in this case I hope the criminals at General Motors will be arrested and made to pay for their pre-meditated decision to take human lives for a lousy ten bucks,” he wrote.

Moore blamed former President George W. Bush’s Transportation Department for ignoring the problem in 2007 and praised new GM CEO Mary Barra for telling the truth about the problem.

“Only now, under the newly-configured GM — owned, essentially, by you and me from 2009 through last year — has the truth come out,” he wrote. “And my guess is that it has to do with the fact that a mother now runs General Motors.”

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Obamacare Cuts Choices, Not Costs

Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin, AP

Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin, AP

By Tom Coburn.

Obamacare supporters are touting reports that 6 million Americans bought insurance on exchanges as evidence the plan is moving in the right direction. But these numbers are misleading. If anything, they show that Obamacare’s greatest challenges are yet to come.

Of these enrollees, as many as 89% were previously insured. Helping 5 million Americans re-enroll in insurance is no great achievement, particularly when many of those customers were forced to give up plans they liked.

For everyone else, costs continue to skyrocket. President Obama promised to lower health premiums by $2,500 per family, but premiums have increased by more than that since Obamacare passed. The costs of deductibles and premiums — big, out-of-pocket expenses — have soared more than 40% in only one year. Premiums will likely increase even more because young, healthy people aren’t enrolling fast enough to offset the costs of covering older, sicker patients.

Obamacare is proving, yet again, the axiom that the best way to make something expensive is for government to make it affordable.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: IJ Review

Photo Credit: IJ Review

Obama May Want To Put The Cork Back In The Champagne Bottle After He Sees These ObamaCare Numbers

By Mike Miller.

Now that Obama has taken a victory lap and popped the champagne cork over hitting the ObamaCare enrollment goal, it looks as if it might be time to put the cork back in the bottle.

Results of a RAND Corporation study suggest that barely 858,000 previously uninsured Americans – nowhere near 7.1 million, as claimed by Obama – had paid for new policies and joined the ranks of the insured by the Monday night deadline. The study also indicates that only one-third of exchange sign-ups were previously uninsured.

Yes, millions of enrollees were previously insured, including those who lost coverage when their existing policies were cancelled because they didn’t meet ObamaCare’s minimum requirements.

Still, Obama claimed that “millions of people who have health insurance would not have it”‘ without ObamaCare. The numbers simply do not support that claim.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: White House

Photo Credit: White House

5 ways Obamacare is ruining lives

By Bem Shapiro.

As the Obamacare enrollment period draws to a tentative close – and you never know when the period will close, given President Obama’s apparent willingness to manipulate the calendar repeatedly – horror stories about the Affordable Care Act mount.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) originally maintained, “All of [the horror stories] are untrue, but they’re being told all over America”; he now says that he never called such horror stories lies. It’s a smart backtrack, given the wide variety of Obamacare horror stories that continue to pile up day after day. Across the nation, premiums are blowing up; according to a December analysis by USA Today, more than half of the counties under the federal Obamacare exchange “lack even a bronze plan that’s affordable by the government’s own definition.”

And that is having an impact on individuals.

Getting Stuck In The System: Larry Basich of Nevada suffers from heart problems. He’s 62 and bought Obamacare through the Nevada Health Link insurance exchange. He paid his premium before January 1, which is when coverage was slated to begin. He then had a heart attack on December 31. He had a triple bypass on January 3, and now owes $407,000 thanks to a mix-up at the insurance level.

President Obama has continually put off the deadline for implementation of Obamacare thanks to hang-ups in the system.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Hawaii Obamacare Spent More Per Enrollee Than A New BMW

By Wynton Hall.

President Barack Obama’s home state of Hawaii’s Obamacare exchange spent $35,749 per enrollee, a sum greater than the price of a new 2014 BMW 320i sedan (MSRP $32,750).

“Just obscene amounts of money have disappeared into these state exchanges for very little actual performance,” said American Commitment President Phil Kerpen. “You just have this huge duplication and waste in places like Hawaii and Oregon.”

A CNBC analysis ranking taxpayer-funded federal expenditures on Obamacare found that Hawaii enrolled just 5,744 people through its Obamacare exchange at a cost to taxpayers of $205,342,270. The second-worst performer was the District of Columbia which spent $20,499.37 per enrollee. DC bagged $133,573,927 to sign up just 6,518 people.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senate Report Claims Caterpillar Avoided $2.4bn in US Taxes

Photo Credit: Eric Vidal /Reuters

Photo Credit: Eric Vidal /Reuters

One of the world’s biggest manufacturing companies diverted more than $8bn in profits to Switzerland in order to avoid US taxes, according to investigators working for the Senate.

Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of construction and mining equipment, allegedly avoided paying more than $2.4bn in US taxes over a decade by striking a deal with Swiss tax authorities to pay as little as 4% on the profits from its lucrative international spare parts business through a Geneva-based subsidiary.

Though the practice of basing such subsidiaries offshore is widespread among multinationals, and Senate investigators refused to say whether they believe the company broke US tax law, the elaborate accounting strategy appears to take so-called ‘transfer pricing’ practices to new extremes.

The report, which was produced by the Senate subcommittee on investigations under chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, claims that 85% of Caterpillar’s international profits from selling parts – its most profitable activity – were routed through its Swiss subsidiary, even though the vast majority of associated manufacturing, research and employment remained in the US.

“Caterpillar is an American success story that produces phenomenal industrial machines, but it is also a member of the corporate profit-shifting club that has shifted billions of dollars in profits offshore to avoid paying US taxes,” Levin told reporters in a briefing on Capitol Hill.

Read more from this story HERE.

NRA Board Member Criticizes Angry Rhetoric at Pro-Gun Rallies

Photo Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Photo Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The president of one of the National Rifle Association’s largest state affiliates has criticised the increasingly angry and inflammatory pro-gun advocates who “scream obscenities” and “pound their chest and tell the attendees to prepare for war” at large rallies.

In a letter, Tom King, the head of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, said that holding such rallies was like “preaching to the choir”, and that “rabidly” anti-gun types would never be converted. Advocates of gun rights must instead concentrate on “the soccer moms, the guys who say: ‘I’ve never shot a gun but would like to try it,’ and the people worried about their safety,” King said. King is also a national board member of the NRA.

King initially announced he would not attend a rally on Tuesday in the state capital, Albany, to protest the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (Safe) Act of 2013. He has since said he will attend, but not in any official capacity.

The New York gun control laws were passed in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in December 2012. The rally on Tuesday and others like it are aimed at persuading state lawmakers to repeal the restrictions.

In February, King revealed that the NYSRPA’s membership had grown from 22,000 to 41,000 since the Safe Act was passed a year ago. The act requires universal background checks on gun purchases and contains the toughest assault weapons ban in the US.

Read more from this story HERE.

Army Recruit Suspected of Plotting ‘Ft. Hood-Inspired Jihad Against US Soldiers’

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

The FBI is searching for a recent Army recruit believed to be planning a “Fort Hood-inspired jihad against U.S. soldiers,” FoxNews.com has learned.

The alert, whose legitimacy was confirmed by military and law enforcement officials, stated that a man identified as Booker had told friends of his “intention to commit jihad.” Booker, who is also known as Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, was recruited by the U.S. Army in Kansas City, Mo., in February 2014 and was scheduled to report for basic training on April 7. But he was discharged last week, apparently after law enforcement authorities learned of his alleged plan.

Both the FBI and the 902d Military Intelligence Group at Fort Leavenworth are involved in the hunt.

The alert, a copy of which was obtained by FoxNews.com, was sent out by the FBI’s Kansas City Division on Friday and distributed through the U.S. Marine Corps. The portion obtained by FoxNews.com did not include Hassan’s photo or age. It was also sent to the Kansas City Police Department, which could indicate authorities believe he may have remained in the area where he was recruited.

The alert is titled, “Planned Fort Hood-inspired Jihad against US Soldiers by Army Recruit” and was issued “to inform and protect officers who may encounter this individual or others exhibiting the same aspirations.” The source of the information contained in the alert was listed as “An FBI agent.”

Read more from this story HERE.