President Barack Obama sent no White House representative to the memorial Mass held yesterday in Rochester, New Hampshire, for James Foley, the American journalist beheaded by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) terrorists.

President Obama, however, did send three White House aides to Monday’s funeral for Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American fatally shot in an encounter with a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo.

The memorial mass for James Foley took place Sunday at Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Foley’s hometown. Connie Hammond, an administrative assistant at Holy Rosary, told CNSNews.com that no White House officials were in attendance.

“There was nobody that represented the White House,” Hammond said, adding that all of the dignitaries in attendance called ahead except for one and that all of them sat together.

Tom Bebbington, director of communications for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester, told CNSNews.com that the officials in attendance at the Mass included New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan (D.), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R.-N.H.) and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D.-N.H), and Rep. Ann Kuster (D.-N.H.).

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Today, a federal judge ruled that California’s 10-day waiting period is unconstitutional. Gun owners Jeffrey Silvester and Brandon Combs, along with Calguns Foundation and the Second Amendment Fondation, challenged the law, saying that the 10-day waiting period adds additional costs and disruptions preventing them from exercising their constitutional Second Amendment rights (via Calguns Foundation):

In the decision released this morning, Federal Eastern District of California Senior Judge Anthony W. Ishii, appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, found that “the 10-day waiting periods of Penal Code [sections 26815(a) and 27540(a)] violate the Second Amendment” as applied to members of certain classifications, like Silvester and Combs, and “burdens the Second Amendment rights of the Plaintiffs.”

“This is a great win for Second Amendment civil rights and common sense,” said Jeff Silvester, the named individual plaintiff. “I couldn’t be happier with how this case turned out.”

Under the court order, the California Department of Justice (DOJ) must change its systems to accommodate the unobstructed release of guns to gun buyers who pass a background check and possess a California license to carry a handgun, or who hold a “Certificate of Eligibility” issued by the DOJ and already possess at least one firearm known to the state.

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Illinois Republicans went way too far in their desperate attempt to keep the Illinois Libertarian Party off the November ballot. Imagine your doorbell rings and two giant, threatening thugs with guns tell you you’ve committed a crime by signing the Libertarian Party’s ballot access petition. They then force you against your will to sign a document recanting your original petition signature. It happened across Illinois and it’s a Class 4 felony. Illinois Republicans may go to prison. And they may just lose what was going to be a landslide General Election over it.

Is democracy dead in Illinois?

It’s bad enough that in Illinois, Republican and Democratic Party Congressional candidates need to submit only 300 and 500 petition signatures respectively to appear on the ballot. Independents, Libertarians, Greens and all others running for the same office must submit an average of 20,000 signatures. This election, opposition parties needed to submit 25,000 valid signatures to get their candidate slates on the November ballot.

The Libertarians, Greens and Constitution Party all did. The Republicans kicked the Constitution Party off the coming ballot. The Democrats, in the form of the elected Cook County Recorder of Deeds, kicked the Greens off. But having collected and submitted 42,986 signatures, the Illinois Libertarians made it nearly impossible for state Republicans to knock them off. That’s why they’ve been sending armed thugs with guns to the homes of those who signed the LP’s petitions, terrorizing them into signing additional documents recanting their original signature.

Over the past two weeks, election officials, Republican Party operatives, and Libertarian Party supporters have been engaged in an effort to analyze every one of the LP’s 43k signatures, with the GOP challenging every signature they could and the LP’s volunteers steadfastly defending their validity. By the end of the process last week, the Republicans officially challenged 23,667 Libertarian signatures. But BOE officials only agreed with 12,789 of those challenges, leaving the Illinois Libertarians with 30,197 – 5,197 more than the 25k needed. The Libertarians had won their right to participate in the coming 2014 General Election, or so they thought.

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