Gun Control Proponent: Addressing Sexual Assault Shouldn’t Be Tied to Arming Women

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Photo Credit: APAs Safe Campus Colorado pushes for a November ballot initiative to ban concealed carry on college campuses in that state, its founder, Ken Toltz, says suggestions of arming more women to fight the growing epidemic of sexual assaults on campus is not the way to go.

According to Toltz, “The statistics are really worrisome about how prevalent sexual assault is on college campuses. We’re not doing enough, and handing out guns is not the solution.”

According to Boulder’s The Daily Camera, Toltz also said those who defend concealed carry as a way for women to fight sexual assault “politicize” and conflate two issues – sexual assault and concealed carry – which ought to be dealt with separately.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gallup: Only 25% Satisfied With Direction of Country

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Photo Credit: APA new poll shows that one-in-four Americans, 25%, are satisfied with the direction of the country at this time but 74% expressed dissatisfaction.

In the survey, which Gallup has done regularly since 1979, Americans were asked this question: “In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?”

Only 25% said “satisfied.” According to Gallup, “74% express dissatisfaction.”

“Americans’ satisfaction with the country’s direction has remained flat over the past year, with the major exception of a drop to a low of 16% in October 2013 during the U.S. federal government shutdown,” said Gallup…

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Poll Finds Wide Support for Voter ID Laws

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Photo Credit: TownHall Once again, registered voters have shown that they are overwhelmingly in favor of voter ID laws, a recent Fox News poll found.

“There is a debate about state laws that require voters to show a valid form of state-or federally-issued photo identification to prove U.S. citizenship before being allowed to vote,” the question stated. “Supporters of these laws say they are necessary to stop ineligible people from voting illegally. Opponents say these laws are unnecessary and mostly discourage legal voters from voting. What do you think?”

Seventy percent of respondents said voter ID laws are “needed to stop illegal voting,” while 27 percent said these laws are “unnecessary and discourage legal voting.”

The survey found majorities of every demographic support the law. Ninety-one percent of Republicans offer support, and 66 percent of independents feel the same.

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General Keith Alexander: ‘We’re at Greater Risk’

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Photo Credit: New Yorker Since Edward Snowden’s revelations about government surveillence, we know more about how the National Security Agency has been interpreting Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We’ve learned some new words —“bulk metadata,” “selector,” “reasonable articulable suspicion,” “emphatic-access restriction”—but we don’t really know how much of this works in practice.

The intelligence community isn’t used to explaining itself in public, but over the past few months, with much prodding by Congress and the press, it has taken some small, tentative steps. Last week, I spent an hour with General Keith B. Alexander, who retired in March after eight years as the director of the N.S.A. The forces pushing for omnivorous data collection are larger than any one person, but General Alexander’s role has been significant. We met on Wednesday morning, in the conference room of a public-relations firm in the Flatiron District. He is a tall man with a firm handshake and steady eyes who speaks rapidly and directly.

Here are excerpts from the interview.

In January, President Obama claimed that the N.S.A. bulk-metadata program has disrupted fifty-four terrorist plots. Senator Patrick Leahy said the real number is zero. There’s a big difference between fifty-four and zero.

Those [fifty-four events] were plots, funding, and giving money—like the Basaaly Moalin case, where the guy is giving money to someone to go and do an attack. [Note: Moalin’s case is awaiting appeal.] It’s fifty-four different events like that, where two programs—the metadata program and the 702 program—had some play.

I was trying to think of the best way to illustrate what the intelligence people are trying to do. You know “Wheel of Fortune”? Here’s the deal: I’m going to give you a set of big, long words to put on there. Then I’m going to give you some tools to guess the words. You get to pick a vowel or a consonant—one letter. There’s a hundred letters up there. You’ll say, I don’t have a clue. O.K., so you’ve used your first tool in analysis. What the intelligence analysts are doing is using those tools to build the letters, to help understand what the plot is. This is one of those tools. It’s not the only tool. And, at times, it may not be the best tool. It evolved from 9/11, when we didn’t have a tool that helped us connect the dots between foreign and domestic.

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10,000 Young Toddlers Are on Stimulant Drugs for ADHD

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Photo Credit: Joe Raedle / GettyHow crazy is it to drug babies?

It was shocking enough to discover that 20 percent of teenage boys get labelled as having ADHD, and 10 percent are on stimulant medications for it; that 11 percent of all kids aged 4-18 get the diagnosis of ADHD and 6 percent the drugs; that stimulant prescriptions and Pharma profits are skyrocketing all around the world; and that ADHD guidelines encourage making the diagnosis and starting the drugs in kids as young as four.

Then it got worse. An adventurous group of cowboy child psychologists invented a new and untested diagnostic category (with the ridiculous name ‘Sluggish Cognitive Tempo’) that would be a wonderful target for additional inappropriate stimulant use.

It is also particularly outrageous that so many of the thought leaders promoting the excessive use of stimulants have such close ties with Pharma. Honor dies where conflict of interest lies. But the latest news tops all in raw shock value…

Read more from this story HERE.

Hot Sauce CEO: U.S. No Different Than Communist Vietnam

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan AlcornThe maker of a popular hot sauce whose company faces possible government regulation says the U.S. reminds him of communist Vietnam, a country he escaped more than 30 years ago.

“Today, I feel almost the same [as when I left Vietnam],” David Tran, president of Huy Fong Foods, told NPR. “Even now we live in the USA, but my feeling, the government, not a big difference.”

Tran named his company after the Panamanian freighter that brought him and 3,000 other refugees to the U.S. in 1978, according to United Liberty.

Huy Fong’s sriracha hot sauce is a popular condiment, used in many Asian dishes and by restaurants like Applebee’s, Subway and P.F. Changs.

But a strong odor emitted from the company’s factory in Irwindale, Cal. has drawn complaints from a few neighbors who say that it gives them headaches and causes allergic reactions.

Read more from this story HERE.

Judicial Watch Obtains New Documents Showing IRS Targeting Came Directly From Washington D.C.

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Photo Credit: Townhall By Katie Pavlich.

New documents obtained and released through a Judicial Watch lawsuit show the targeting of tea party and conservative groups came directly out of Washington D.C., not a rogue IRS office in Cincinnati.

On July 6, 2012, former Director of the IRS Rulings and Agreements Division and current Manager of Exempt Organizations Guidance Holly Paz sent an email to IRS Attorney Steven Grodnitzky asking for an explanation of how tea party group applications were being handled. Grodnitzky responded by confirming the cases were being handled in Washington.

“EOT is working the Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy. We are developing a few applications here in DC and providing copies of our development letters with the agent to use as examples in the development of their cases. Chip Hull [another lawyer in IRS headquarters] is working these cases in EOT and working with the agent in Cincy, so any communication should include him as well. Because the Tea party applications are the subject of an SCR [Sensitive Case Report], we cannot resolve any of the cases without coordinating with Rob,” Grodnitzky wrote.

When the IRS targeting scandal broke last year, officials in Washington immediately pinned the blame on the Cincinnati office. This documentation proves not only that direction was coming out of Washington, but that Washington instructed Cincinnati about how to handle tea party applications.

A new email from Lois Lerner also details how BOLO lists (be on the look out) were specifically created for tea party groups or groups with issues related to government spending, debt, taxes and “how the country is being run.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Gary CameronNew Emails: Democratic Senator Pressured IRS To Target Groups

By Patrick Howley.

The IRS’ Washington, D.C. headquarters targeted conservative groups in part due to pressure from Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, according to emails obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch and reviewed by The Daily Caller.

Levin, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ permanent subcommittee on investigations, wrote a March 30, 2012 letter to then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman discussing the “urgency” of the issue of possible political activity by nonprofit applicants. Levin asked if the IRS was sending out additional information requests to applicant groups and citing an IRS rejection letter to a conservative group as an example of how the IRS should be conducting its business.

A top IRS official replied that the agency could send out “individualized questions and requests.”

“Some entities claiming tax-exempt status as social welfare organizations under 26 U.S.C.&501(c)(4) appear to be engaged in political activities more appropriate for political organizations claiming tax-exempt status under 26 U.S.C.&527,” Sen. Levin wrote. “Because of the urgency of the issues involved in this matter, please provide the following information by April 20, 2012.”

Levin asked ”if it is not provided on a routine basis, approximately what percentage of such applicants receive an IRS questionnaire seeking information about any political activities, and how the IRS determines whether and when to send that questionnaire; and approximately how many days after an application is filed that questionnaire is typically sent.”

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Dept of Agriculture Orders Submachine Guns with 30 Round Magazines

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Photo Credit: APA May 7th solicitation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks “the commercial acquisition of submachine guns [in] .40 Cal. S&W.”

According to the solicitation, the Dept. of Agriculture wants the guns to have an “ambidextrous safety, semiautomatic or 2 round [bursts] trigger group, Tritium night sights front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore group) and scope (top rear), stock collapsible or folding,” and a “30 rd. capacity” magazine.

Read more from this story HERE.

Leaked Photos Show NSA Hardware Interception And Bug-Planting Workstation

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A recent photo from classified National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden and released to coincide with Glenn Greenwald’s new book provides a glimpse at NSA’s Tailored Access Operations division — where the agency intercepts retail-grade networking equipment to secretly implant bugs and other tracking systems.

According to Greenwald’s latest NSA revelations, the signals intelligence agency routinely infected off-the-shelf networking technology with spyware, including hardware from popular network developer Cisco.

The photo depicts casually dressed techs carefully opening and unpacking boxes, plugging the machines into a workstation, and uploading…

Read more from this story HERE.

More Whistleblowers Detail VA Abuses, Suffer Retaliation

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Photo Credit: Fox News By Jennifer Griffin.

The allegations of wait times, delayed care for veterans and cooked books began in Phoenix, but new revelations by two more Veterans Affairs whistleblowers in two different states suggest the VA problems are endemic.

“What really bothered me was that this delay was a direct result of this extremely low sense of caring for the patient,” said Dr. Jose Mathews, the chief psychiatrist for the VA Medical Center in St. Louis starting in Nov 2012.

Mathews and another whistleblower in Texas detailed their concerns to Fox News.

According to Mathews, he noticed that the doctors he oversaw who were responsible for seeing veterans with post-traumatic stress and other acute mental health issues were working just a few hours a day. They were seeing about half the patients they could, Mathews alleged in a federal whistleblower complaint filed last year. Meanwhile, there were mounting suicides among veterans being treated at his facility — and officially, the St. Louis VA was reporting to its headquarters in Washington that its productivity was among the highest in the nation.

“They all got bonuses — that’s the sad part. Because in reality we were not really doing a good job, but it shows up on paper as if we are,” Mathews told Fox News.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: YouTube Watch Jay Carney Lie About the Department of Veterans Affairs Scandal

By Jim Treacher.

Most transparent administration ever. This is what you voted for, America. And this is what you’re getting. Congratulations.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst VA Calls Top Official’s Planned Retirement A ‘Resignation’ Amid Scandals

By Patrick Howley.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced its top health official’s “resignation” Friday despite the fact that he was already scheduled to retire in 2014 and has a replacement lined up, records reveal.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki accepted Friday the “resignation” of Under Secretary for Health Affairs Robert Petzel amid a growing scandal about VA secret waiting lists and deadly wait times for veterans.

“Today, I accepted the resignation of Dr. Robert Petzel, Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Shinseki said in a statement. ”As we know from the Veteran community, most Veterans are satisfied with the quality of their VA health care, but we must do more to improve timely access to that care.”

But Petzel was already scheduled to retire.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Top VA Healthcare Official Resigns Amid Scandal

By Cathy Burke and Todd Beamon.

The top health official at the beleaguered Veterans Affairs department abruptly quit Friday amid growing outrage over delays in care for ailing veterans at numerous VA facilities.

VA Undersecretary for Health Dr. Robert Petzel was supposed to retire this summer, but VA Secretary Eric Shinseki asked for his resignation early, Military Times reports.

“As we know from the veteran community, most veterans are satisfied with the quality of their VA healthcare, but we must do more to improve timely access to that care,” Shinseki said in a statement. “I am committed to strengthening veterans’ trust and confidence in their VA healthcare system.”

VA officials wouldn’t elaborate on any specifics on the forced resignation, according to the Times.

Petzel was on the hot seat Thursday along with Shinseki, testifying before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee about the scandal.

Read more from this story HERE.