Pentagon and Hill Officials Say They’re Still in the Dark On Obama’s New War Powers

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Photo Credit: DoD by D. Myles Cullen

Photo Credit: DoD by D. Myles Cullen

President Barack Obama said drafting new war powers for the fight against the Islamic State is one of his top priorities for working with Congress before the fast-approaching end of the year.

“I’m going to begin engaging Congress over a new Authorization to Use Military Force against ISIL. The world needs to know we are united behind this effort, and the men and women of our military deserve our clear and unified support,” he said the day after the midterm elections. “The idea is to right-size and update whatever authorization Congress provides to suit the current fight, rather than previous fights,” he continued. “So it makes sense for us to make sure that the authorization from Congress reflects what we perceive to be not just our strategy over the next two or three months, but our strategy going forward.”

But senior officials at the Pentagon and on the Hill say they don’t know what the administration will propose for a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), or when the White House will propose it — if at all.
In the absence of a blueprint from the White House, several lawmakers have drafted their own versions of a new AUMF.

On the Hill, a handful of mostly Democratic lawmakers are pushing for the AUMF to be considered in the lame duck, arguing that votes more than a decade ago cannot authorize the current military operation and that waiting months to debate the ongoing military operation constitutes an abdication of Congress’ responsibility. On the other side, mostly Republican lawmakers are arguing that outgoing members should not be weighing in on a war expected to continue for years.

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Documents Show Obama Ran up $1,539,402.10 in Flight Expenses Alone for Labor Day Trips

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Judicial Watch announced today it has obtained records from the United States Air Force revealing the flight cost for President Obama’s Labor Day 2014 weekend trips for fundraising, personal business, and politicking came to a total of $1,539,402.10 in taxpayer-paid transportation expenses. The documents regarding the transportation expenses came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on September 2, 2014.

According to the newly released records obtained by Judicial Watch:

• Flights for Obama’s 2014 Labor Day weekend fundraising trips to Westchester, New York, and Providence, Rhode Island, cost taxpayers $527,192.50

• Transportation for Obama’s round-trip flight from D.C. to Westchester, New York, to attend a wedding cost taxpayers $358,490.90

• The flight for Obama’s trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to speak at “Laborfest 2014” cost taxpayers $653,718.70

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Texas Judge Allows Felony Case Against Governor Perry To Proceed

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

A state district judge refused to throw out the criminal charges against Gov. Rick Perry, ruling Tuesday that special prosecutor Michael McCrum had been properly appointed to the case.

Perry’s legal team argued that the charges must be voided because special prosecutor Michael McCrum did not properly take his oath of office when he began working on the governor’s case, negating every act performed over the past 15 months — including the indictment accusing Perry of abusing the powers of his office.

Senior District Judge Bert Richardson disagreed.

“This court concludes that Mr. McCrum’s authority was not voided by procedural irregularities in how and when the oath of office … was administered,” Richardson’s order said. . .

A Travis County grand jury indicted Perry in August on felony charges of abuse of official capacity and coercion of a public servant. The indictment resulted from his threat last year to Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg to resign after her April 2013 drunken driving conviction or lose $7.5 million for the Public Integrity Unit housed in her office.

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Study: American Personal Freedom Now Ranks Below 20 Other Nations

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Photo Credit: iStock

Photo Credit: iStock

Americans’ assessments of their personal freedom have significantly declined under President Obama, according to a new study from the Legatum Institute in London, and the United States now ranks below 20 other countries on this measure.

The research shows that citizens of countries including France, Uruguay, and Costa Rica now feel that they enjoy more personal freedom than Americans.

As the Washington Examiner reported this morning, representatives of the Legatum Institute are in the U.S. this week to promote the sixth edition of their Prosperity Index. The index aims to measure aspects of prosperity that typical gross domestic product measurements don’t include, such as entrepreneurship and opportunity, education, and social capital.

The freedom scores are based on polling data from 2013 indicating citizens’ satisfaction with their nation’s handling of civil liberties, freedom of choice, tolerance of ethnic minorities, and tolerance of immigrants. Polling data were provided by Gallup World Poll Service. The index is notable for the way it measures how free people feel, unlike other freedom indices that measure freedom by comparing government policies.

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Heroic Teen Resuscitates Baby in the Middle of a Walmart

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

A Missouri teenager was just doing some routine shopping at Walmart when a 11-month-old daughter suddenly stopped breathing in the store.

The woman was trying to revive her baby, but it wasn’t working. That’s when 17-year-old Abby Snodgrass jumped into action, using life-saving techniques she had learned recently in health class Hillsboro High School.

Snodgrass heard there was an emergency in the electronics department and immediately ran to the scene.

Snodgrass explained to [Fox News] that she knew the CPR method for a baby was different than for an adult.

“I put her on my forearm and held her head in my hand and started doing chest compressions with two fingers on her chest. Then I would flip her over onto her stomach, still in my arm, do the ones on the back, then flip her over again and do them again on her chest,” she recalled.

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Obstacle to O's Plan: His Own Statements…

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Breitbart News.

President Obama is poised to ignore stark warnings that executive action on immigration would amount to “violating our laws” and would be “very difficult to defend legally.”

Those warnings came not from Republican lawmakers but from Mr. Obama himself.

For years, the president has repeatedly waved aside the demands of Latino activists and Democratic allies who begged him to take action on his own, and he insisted publicly that a decision to shield millions of immigrants from deportation without an act of Congress would amount to nothing less than the dictates of a king, not a president.

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Obama’s Book Says Illegals Can Hurt Americans

By Greg Richter.

President Barack Obama may be days away from signing an executive order that would allow up to 5 million illegal immigrants to stay in the country, but he was singing a different tune eight years ago as he prepared for his first presidential campaign.

The Daily Caller reports that Obama sounded a lot like those criticizing his plans now when he wrote his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.”

“[T]here’s no denying that many blacks share the same anxieties as many whites about the wave of illegal immigration flooding our Southern border — a sense that what’s happening now is fundamentally different from what has gone on before,” Obama wrote. “Not all these fears are irrational.

“The number of immigrants added to the labor force every year is of a magnitude not seen in this country for over a century,” Obama said in the book.

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THROWBACK: How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico

By John Dillin.

George W. Bush isn’t the first Republican president to face a full-blown immigration crisis on the US-Mexican border.

Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America’s southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond.

President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents – less than one-tenth of today’s force. The operation is still highly praised among veterans of the Border Patrol.

Although there is little to no record of this operation in Ike’s official papers, one piece of historic evidence indicates how he felt. In 1951, Ike wrote a letter to Sen. William Fulbright (D) of Arkansas. The senator had just proposed that a special commission be created by Congress to examine unethical conduct by government officials who accepted gifts and favors in exchange for special treatment of private individuals.

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Photo Credit: Getty

Photo Credit: Getty

Republicans seek creative ways to avert a shutdown

By JAKE SHERMAN and MANU RAJU.

Republican leaders have intensified their planning to prevent a government funding showdown, weighing legislative options that would redirect GOP anger at Barack Obama’s expected action on immigration and stave off a political disaster, according to sources involved with the sessions.

Obama plans to use his executive authority to change the enforcement of immigration laws by the end of the year, a move that top Republicans warn could derail efforts to pass a long-term spending bill by a Dec. 11 deadline. Increasingly, some top Republicans believe that it will be difficult to pass the year-long spending package that they originally envisioned, and are refocusing on a shorter term bill.

Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and their top aides and deputies are mulling several options that would give Capitol Hill Republicans the opportunity to vent their frustration with what they view as an unconstitutional power grab by the White House — without jeopardizing the government financing bill.

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Islamic State Threatens Slaughter on Western Streets

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

Islamic State murderer and propagandist ‘Jihadi John’ has issued a graphic warning of coming slaughter on the streets of the West in the new YouTube video that features the beheading of at least nineteen men, including former American soldier Peter Kassig.

In a short speech delivered as he stands among a group of up to eighteen other terrorists, knives in hand and victims at their feet, the British killer known in the West as ‘Jihadi John’ but known locally as Abu Abdullah al-Britani called President Obama the “dog of Rome” and David Cameron his “puppet”. The video, which even for the Islamic State was unusually gruesome then showed al-Britani giving the kill order to his fellow jihadists, who then used serrated knives to saw off the heads of their captives, said to the Syrian army and air force pilots.

Speaking to the camera, al-Britani said: “To Obama, the dog of Rome, today we are slaughtering the soldiers of Bashar, and tomorrow we will slaughter your soldiers, and with Allah’s permission, we will break this final and last crusade, and the Islamic state will soon, like your puppet David Cameron said, will begin to slaughter your people on your streets”.

His words will not ring hollow to many in the West, who have recently witnessed the murder by Islamist agents on the streets of Western cities of Soldiers such as Drummer Lee Rigby and Corporal Nathan Cirillo.

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Hazards of Secondhand Marijuana Smoke

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Photo Credit: JASON REDMOND / REUTERS

Photo Credit: JASON REDMOND / REUTERS

That whiff of pot that drifts your way at a rock concert or outdoor event could damage your heart and blood vessels as much as secondhand cigarette smoke does, preliminary research suggests.

Blood vessel function in laboratory rats dropped by 70 percent after a half-hour of exposure to secondhand marijuana smoke — similar to results found with secondhand tobacco smoke, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco reported Sunday.

Reduced blood vessel function can increase a person’s risk of developing hardened arteries, which could lead to a heart attack.

“Smoke is smoke. Both tobacco and marijuana smoke impair blood vessel function similarly,” said study senior author Matthew Springer, a cardiovascular researcher and associate professor of medicine in the university’s cardiology division. “People should avoid both, and governments who are protecting people against secondhand smoke exposure should include marijuana in those rules.”

The safety of marijuana has become a growing public health concern as more states move toward legalization of the drug. Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., have approved cannabis for medical use. And voters in four states — Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, along with the District of Columbia — have legalized the sale and possession of marijuana for recreational use.

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Harvard Sued for Being Racist Toward Whites, Asians

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Photo Credit: AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta

Photo Credit: AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta

Lawsuits filed Monday against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill argue that affirmative action policies should be banned at colleges across the nation.

The federal suits allege Harvard and UNC rely on race-based affirmative action policies that impact admissions of high-achieving white and Asian American students. The Harvard lawsuit also contends that the Ivy League university specifically limits the number of Asian Americans it admits each year.

The Project on Fair Representation, an Alexandria, Virginia-based legal defense fund, said Monday’s filings will be the first in a series of legal challenges against colleges across the country in an effort to ban race-based admission policies outright.

“Allowing this issue to be litigated in case after case will only perpetuate the hostilities that proper consideration of race is designed to avoid,” state the lawsuits, both of which cite “Students for Fair Admissions” as plaintiff, a nonprofit group based in Austin, Texas made up of recently rejected applicants, prospective students and parents. “Racial preferences are a dangerous tool and may only be used as a last resort.”

Both universities defended their admission policies Monday, noting that they are fully compliant with federal law.

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White House Taunts GOP on Climate Change: ‘I Don’t Believe They Can Stop Us’

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Photo Credit: AP / Mindaugas Kulbis

Photo Credit: AP / Mindaugas Kulbis

The White House forged ahead Monday with yet another piece of its climate change agenda and bragged that Republicans are powerless to stop it.

A presidential task force unveiled a report on how communities across the country can prepare for the effects of global warming. In all, the recommendations on “climate preparedness and resilience” could cost the federal government more than $100 billion to protect drinking water supplies, shore up coastlines against rising sea levels and take other preventive measures.

But legal analysts say the Republicans have little ammunition to fight back, short of shutting down the federal government to stop Environmental Protection Agency funding.

White House officials, keenly aware of the executive power Mr. Obama holds on the issue of climate change, openly mocked incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues.

“I believe the president will complete actions. It is a top priority of his and I don’t believe they can stop us,” White House counselor John Podesta told reporters on a conference call Monday. “Not withstanding Sen. McConnell making this a top priority to leave the status quo, to leave the air dirtier.”

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