Photo Credit: TownHallGabby Giffords has unleashed a few anti-gun ads that some are calling downright “mean.” After her attempted assassination by the mentally unbalanced Jared Lee Loughner, the former Arizona congresswoman has become one of the leaders in this renewed effort to promote gun control through her Americans for Responsible Solutions (via Politico):
Gabby Giffords, irreproachable figure of sympathy, has fashioned an improbable new role for herself this election year: ruthless attack dog.
The former Democratic congresswoman, whose recovery from a gunshot wound to the head captivated the country, has unleashed some of the nastiest ads of the campaign season, going after GOP candidates in Arizona and New Hampshire with attacks even some longtime supporters say go too far.
Some of the toughest spots from Giffords’ newly formed pro-gun-control super PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, hammer Republican Martha McSally, a retired Air Force pilot who is running for the Arizona seat Giffords once held. One features a wrenching testimonial from a woman named Vicki who weeps and stumbles over her words as she recounts how her 19-year-old daughter was hunted down and murdered by an enraged ex-boyfriend.
“He had threatened her before. I knew. I just knew,” Vicki says. A narrator then declares that McSally “opposes making it harder for stalkers to get a gun.”
Photo Credit: AP / The Oklahoman, Steve SisneyThe fired employee who beheaded a woman with a knife and stabbed another person at an Oklahoma food processing plant on Friday likely would have hurt more people if it weren’t for the company’s heroic — and armed — chief operating officer, who shot and neutralized the suspect before police arrived.
Moore Police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis said police are waiting until Alton Nolen, 30, is conscious to arrest him in Thursday’s attack and have asked the FBI to help investigate after co-workers at Vaughan Foods in the south Oklahoma City suburb told authorities that he recently started trying to convert several employees to Islam. Nolen had recently converted to Islam, according to the co-workers.
Immediately after being fired, Nolen reportedly drove to the entrance of the business and started attacking co-workers at random. He allegedly beheaded 54-year-old Colleen Hufford and stabbed Traci Johnson, 43, several times before he was shot and stopped by Mark Vaughan, a reserve sheriff’s deputy and the company’s chief operating officer.
“This was not going to stop if he didn’t stop it. It could have gotten a lot worse,” Lewis said. “The threat had already stopped once we arrived.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2014-09-27 03:19:022016-04-11 11:05:58It Wasn’t the Police Who Neutralized Alleged Muslim Convert With Bullets After Beheading of Woman in Oklahoma
Photo Credit: Daily CallerHolder resigning as attorney general after tumultuous term
By Fox News.
Attorney General Eric Holder is resigning from the Obama administration, capping a tumultuous six-year term marked by several high-profile clashes with Congress.
President Obama formally announced the decision, made public earlier in the day, at the White House late Thursday afternoon. Calling Holder’s resignation “bittersweet,” Obama touted Holder’s record on civil rights, as well as terror and corruption prosecutions.
“Eric has done a superb job,” Obama said.
Holder is one of the few Cabinet officials to have stayed on since the beginning of the Obama presidency, and Obama said Holder has agreed to stay on until a successor is confirmed.
Holder, choking up several times during brief remarks at the White House, said: “I will leave the Department of Justice, but … I will never leave the work.”
Photo Credit: WNDGOHMERT: HOLDER ENABLED BOSTON MARATHON BOMBINGS
By GREG COROMBOS.
Attorney General Eric Holder says he will resign as soon as his successor is confirmed, but U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, argues Holder needed to go a long time ago for politicizing every issue from Fast and Furious to the fight against radical Islam and even failing to prevent the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured 264 others.
Holder is one of the longest-serving attorneys general in U.S. history and has hinted at retirement several times in recent years. His tenure is one of the most controversial in history, with Holder drawing fire on issues ranging from civil rights to treatment of reporters and the level of cooperation with Congress to the intensity with which he investigated issues embarrassing to the Obama administration.
For most conservatives, there are no tears at Holder’s departure.
“I’ve made no bones about it. I felt like he needed to be impeached. He lied to Congress. He’s just a guy that needed to be gone,” said Gohmert, a member of the House Judiciary Committee and a former judge in Texas.
“The attorney general is supposed to be the highest-ranking law enforcement officer, not the highest-ranking blocker and tackler for the president. It seems like his whole term as attorney general he has been covering for the White House and covering for his own department,” said Gohmert, who believes Holder’s legacy will be a dubious one.
Photo Credit: APJUDICIAL WATCH: HOLDER WENT DOWN AS WE FORCED DOJ’S HAND ON FAST AND FURIOUS IN COURT
by MATTHEW BOYLE.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement on Thursday that Attorney General Eric Holder is resigning as his group is close to nailing the Department of Justice on Operation Fast and Furious.
Judicial Watch just won a key battle in federal court against the administration on the Fast and Furious documents President Barack Obama asserted executive privilege over to hide them from the American people and Congress. Fitton said:
It is no coincidence that Holder’s resignation comes on the heels of another court ruling that the Justice Department must finally cough up documents about how Holder’s Justice Department lied to Congress and the American people about the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, for which Eric Holder was held in contempt by the House of Representatives. Over the past several months, Judicial Watch also exposed how Holder’s Justice Department was implicated in the IRS scandal and how Justice Department lawyers helped defend the illegal stonewall that kept secret key material related to Benghazi.
The court ruling to which Fitton is referring is an order by a federal judge that by Oct. 22 the DOJ must provide Judicial Watch with a listing of the Fast and Furious documents the administration is hiding under Obama’s executive privilege—called a “Vaughn index.”
Republican Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert said that Lois Lerner will miss departing-Attorney General Eric Holder’s presence in the Department of Justice.
Holder, who announced his resignation as attorney general Thursday, has been overseeing a federal criminal investigation into the IRS scandal that has been accused of protecting the key Obama administration officials involved.
“For many years now, I have been calling for Attorney General Holder’s resignation,” Gohmert said in a statement. “Not only has he lied before members of Congress and, ultimately, been held in contempt, he has obfuscated the truth and been the most partisan, partial, prejudiced, and self-pitying attorney general in my lifetime, including [Nixon Attorney General] John Mitchell who went to jail for his crime.”
Photo Credit: ReutersFBI Director James B. Comey sharply criticized Apple and Google on Thursday for developing forms of smartphone encryption so secure that law enforcement officials cannot easily gain access to information stored on the devices — even when they have valid search warrants.
His comments were the most forceful yet from a top government official but echo a chorus of denunciation from law enforcement officials nationwide. Police have said that the ability to search photos, messages and Web histories on smartphones is essential to solving a range of serious crimes, including murder, child pornography and attempted terrorist attacks.
“There will come a day when it will matter a great deal to the lives of people . . . that we will be able to gain access” to such devices, Comey told reporters in a briefing. “I want to have that conversation [with companies responsible] before that day comes.”
Comey added that FBI officials already have made initial contact with the two companies, which announced their new smartphone encryption initiatives last week. He said he could not understand why companies would “market something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law.”
Comey’s remarks followed news last week that Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 8, is so thoroughly encrypted that the company is unable to unlock iPhones or iPads for police. Google, meanwhile, is moving to an automatic form of encryption for its newest version of Android operating system that the company also will not be able to unlock, though it will take longer for that new feature to reach most consumers.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2014-09-26 00:18:162016-04-11 11:05:58FBI Director Whines That Feds Can't Snoop on New Apple and Android Operating Systems
More than 40,000 unskilled Central American migrants who were allowed to cross the border by President Barack Obama’s deputies have refused to appear for scheduled meetings with immigration officials.
The estimate was revealed to Latino lobbies in a meeting with an official at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the Associated Press.
The official said that 70 percent of the 66,000 people in so-called “family units” that crossed the border didn’t turn up for the appointments, according to an audio recording of the official’s briefing.
The missing migrants crossed into the country alongside the much-publicized arrival of 65,000 “unaccompanied alien children” since October.
The “children” were highlighted by the administration to reduce the public’s hostile reaction to Obama’s lax border policies.
Photo Credit: APReport: Immigrant Population in U.S. Reaches Record 41.3M; Middle East, Asia, Africa Lead Growth
By Penny Starr.
A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released on Thursday shows that the number of immigrants living in the United States – legal and illegal — reached a record 41.3 million as of July 2013, and the fasting growing immigrant population are from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
According to the report, the regions with the largest increases of immigrants to the U.S. from 2010 to 2013 were South Asia (up 373,000, 16 percent growth); East Asia (up 365,000, 5 percent growth); the Caribbean (up 223,000, 6 percent growth), the Middle East (up 208,000, 13 percent growth); and sub-Saharan Africa (up 177,000, 13 percent growth).
“The new data makes clear that while Latin America and the Caribbean are still a significant source of immigration, the growth is being driven in large part by immigration from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa,” Steven Camarota, director of research at CIS and lead author of the report, said.
The report, using newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau, reveals the nation’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) grew by 1.4 million from July 2010 to July 2013. The immigrant population, referred to as the foreign-born by the Census Bureau, includes all those who were not U.S. citizens at birth, including illegal immigrants.
Photo Credit: CATOAccording to the datasets used last year, October 1st will mark the 18th year of “no significant warming trend in surface average temperature,” says Patrick Michaels, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for the Study of Science.
And even if the current 18-year trend were to end, it would still take nearly 25 years for average global temperature figures to reflect the change, said Michaels, who has a Ph.D. in ecological climatology and spent three decades as a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.
Sooner or later, even Al Gore and the numerous scientists, academics and politicians who agree with him that “Earth has a fever” will have to admit that their climate models predicting catastrophic global warming were off by a long shot, said Michaels, who was also a contributing editor to the United Nations’ second Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
“It has to be admitted eventually that too much warming was forecast too fast. That just has to happen. You can’t go on and on and on,” he told CNSNews.com.
“If the surface temperature resumed the warming rate that we observed from, say 1977 through 1998, we would still go close to a quarter of a century without significant net warming because there’s such a long flat period built into the record now. “
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2014-09-26 00:15:002016-04-11 11:05:59Upcoming Anniversary: October 1st Will Mark 18 Years of No Global Warming
Photo Credit: Daily CallerOklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn said Thursday that Congress lied to the American people about the amount of spending placed in the recent continuing resolution passed by Congress and signed by President Obama last week.
Coburn said that lawmakers from both parties, including Republican House Speaker John Boehner, lied about the amount of spending in the resolution because it far exceeds the amount promised in the two-year federal budget bill passed at the end of 2013.
Coburn, who is retiring when his term is up after the 2016 elections, cut loose in an interview with conservative radio host Laura Ingraham.
“The reason Americans have such poor view of Washington is because we’re dishonest with the American public in what we do,” Coburn told Ingraham. “In the continuing resolution […] we’re $47 billion above what we said we would be [in the Ryan-Murray bill].”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2014-09-26 00:12:152016-04-11 11:05:59Retiring Senator Tom Coburn: Congress Lied To America About Spending
A woman who was punched repeatedly by a California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer in an incident caught on film earlier this year will receive $1.5M as part of a settlement reached Wednesday.
CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow announced the settlement in an emailed statement and an attorney for 51-year-old Marlene Pinnock confirmed the deal to the Associated Press. The agreement was reached after nine hours of mediation in Los Angeles.
As part of the agreement, the officer who struck Pinnock, Daniel Andrew, will resign. Andrew, who joined the CHP in 2012 and had been on paid administrative leave, could still be charged criminally in the case. The CHP forwarded the results of its investigation of the incident to Los Angeles County prosecutors last month, saying he could face serious charges but none have been filed yet.
“When this incident occurred, I promised that I would look into it and vowed a swift resolution,” Farrow’s statement said. “Today, we have worked constructively to reach a settlement agreement that is satisfactory to all parties involved.”
Pinnock’s attorney, Caree Harper, says they wanted to make sure the woman could have financial stability for the rest of her life and wanted to make sure that Andrew would not be an officer any longer.
Photo Credit: ShutterstockNYPD Slams Pregnant Woman Onto the Street in Latest Rough Arrest Video
By Joe Coscarelli.
The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating the 72nd Precinct in Brooklyn for the second time in two weeks — the first was for this uncalled-for kick — after a tough-to-watch video surfaced on Facebook of an officer throwing a pregnant woman onto the ground and holding her stomach-down. Sandra Amezquita, five-foot-four and visibly five months pregnant, attempted to intervene in the arrest of her 17-year-old son for possession of a knife when she was manhandled. A friend who ran up to check on her was sent flying down the street with a two-handed shove.
“The first thing I thought was they killed my baby and they’re going to kill my wife,” Ronel Lemos, the baby’s father, told the Daily News.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2014-09-26 00:07:202016-04-11 11:06:00Woman Punched on Film by California Highway Patrol Officer Reaches $1.5M Settlement
Photo Credit: APThree retired New York firefighters who worked at Ground Zero in the days after the World Trade Center attack died on the same day this week of illnesses possibly connected to toxic dust released on 9/11, fire officials said.
Lieutenant Howard Bischoff and firefighters Robert Leaver and Daniel Heglund died on Monday.
“Losing three firefighters on the same day to WTC-related illnesses is a painful reminder that, 13 years later, we continue to pay a terrible price for the Department’s heroic efforts,” FDNY commissioner Daniel Nigro said in a statement.
Leaver, a 20-year veteran, and Bischoff, a 19-year veteran, grew up in Brooklyn and were childhood friends. Heglund served 21 years with the department and died just a day before his 59th birthday.
One of the firefighters died of leukemia, another of esophageal cancer and the third of colon cancer.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2014-09-26 00:05:572016-04-11 11:06:00Three New York Firefighters Die of 9/11-Related Illnesses, FDNY Says
Photo Credit: Bettman / Corbis America was riding high in June 1951, and so was John T. Downey, a 21-year-old English major and football star, as he stood in the courtyard of Yale’s old campus one Monday morning beside his beaming mother. Downey had graduated from one of America’s most elite institutions, just as the Korean War turned 1 year old, with U.S. forces then pushing back a Communist offensive by the North Koreans and the Chinese. Armistice talks would begin as a result. The United States might soon be bringing its boys home.
But such hopes were premature. Two long, bloody years would pass before the war ended, and by that time John Downey would find himself shackled in a Chinese prison cell, confessing his status as an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, which, along with the rest of the U.S. government, now presumed him dead. He would remain there for more than 20 years, making him the longest held captive of war in American history.
John Downey’s story has been told in bits and pieces since his release. In December 1978, five years after returning to the U.S. and then 48 years old, Downey gave his first major interview, to People, but relinquished only a few brief facts about his time in prison. Thirty years later, he entrusted more details to CIA historians for an internal CIA documentary on the mission that led to his imprisonment. Otherwise, Downey has largely kept his story to himself, abiding by his “self-imposed silence,” as the reporter for People described it in 1978, refusing in-depth interviews, book offers, and other chances at the limelight.
I first met Downey in the spring of 2013, in the chambers of a New Haven, Connecticut, courthouse. Having just finished my second year of law school, I had heard about the man who spent more than two decades in a Chinese prison; had been a CIA spy in the early days of the agency’s existence; and was now, improbably, working as a judge. At first, I just wanted to meet the man. But as I got to know him better, and began meeting with him more frequently, discussing, among other topics, my experience as a law student and my own professional ambitions, I asked him if he might share the details of his life and career with me, and allow me to recount his story for publication. It took some persuading, but Downey eventually agreed.
What follows is based on a year and a half of interviews between John Downey and myself, much of it recounted from the living room of his home. It marks the first time he’s sat down with a reporter to tell his story in full.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2014-09-25 03:28:432016-04-11 11:06:00“Your Future Is Very Dark”
