Ted Cruz Is Beating Rand Paul in the Tea Party Primary

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Rand Paul has been methodically planning his run for president. Now Ted Cruz could come along and spoil the whole thing.

Both senators have a path to the Republican nomination that rests on the support of the Tea Party. And when forced to choose, that segment appears to prefer Cruz, whose speech to an activists’ gathering here over the weekend was the more enthusiastically received of the two.

Saturday’s Freedom Summit, billed as an early audition for potential 2016 candidates, provided a rare opportunity for right-wing activists to directly compare the Texan and the Kentuckian. The senators spoke practically back to back, and the crowd clearly loved them both. But Cruz’s theatrical delivery wowed them more than Paul’s comparatively cerebral appeal, and his rhetorical focus on conservative red meat found more favor than Paul’s detours into libertarian concerns.

“I like Rand Paul, I agree with a lot of what he says, but as far as charismatic leadership, I’ve got to go with Ted Cruz,” Robin Parkhurst, a state-government worker from Newbury, New Hampshire, said after hearing both men speak at the event. “Ted Cruz has the ability to deliver a message that resonates with people.”

Parkhurst was one of several at the summit to echo that sentiment. It was a dramatic demonstration of a dynamic political watchers have speculated about—Cruz’s ability to steal Paul’s thunder if both seek the 2016 GOP nomination.

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Food Stamp Recipients Outnumber Women Who Work Full-Time

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

People participating in the food stamp program outnumbered the women who worked full-time, year-round in the United States in 2012, according to data from the Department of Agriculture and the Census Bureau.

In the average month of 2012, according to the Department of Agriculture, there were 46,609,000 people participating in the food stamp program (formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). That contrasts with the 44,059,000 women who worked full-time, year-round in 2012, according to the Census Bureau’s report on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States.

For each woman who worked full-time, year-round in 2012, there was slightly more than 1 other person collecting food stamps.

FOOD STAMP BENEFICIARIES AND FULL-TIME FEMALE WORKERS-CHART 1

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McConnell’s Tea Party Opponent Raises $1.12 Million In First Quarter

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Photo Credit: AP / Timothy D. Easley

Photo Credit: AP / Timothy D. Easley

Though he’s trailing the Senate minority leader by more than 30 points, Matt Bevin’s influx of cash could force McConnell to spend vital funds to defend himself.

Updated 4/14/14 at 3:33pm to include McConnell’s first quarter fundraising numbers.

Matt Bevin, the Tea Party candidate challenging Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, announced Monday that he raised $1.12 million from 30,000 donors in the first quarter of 2014.

“As Kentuckians learn the truth about Sen. McConnell’s record of repeatedly caving to President Obama and his long history of votes for bailouts, amnesty, and funding for Obamacare, they have rallied to our campaign,” Bevin, a businessman and first time candidate, said in a statement. “With the help of these grassroots conservatives, we will make history when we win on May 20.”

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Ex-CBS Journalist Active in Covering Benghazi, Fast & Furious Describes ‘Chilling Effect’ Obama Admin. Has on Reporting

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Former CBS News investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson took a swing at her former employer Sunday and described the “chilling effect” she says the Obama administration has on reporting.

“I didn’t run into that same kind of sentiment (at CBS) as I did in the Obama administration when I covered the Bush administration very aggressively,” Attkisson told “Media Buzz” host Howard Kurtz.

“It never runs,” she continued. “Or it dies the death of a thousand cuts, as some of us say. If it’s something they don’t want it will be changed and revised and shortened and altered so much that it’s a shadow of its former self if it does air.”

Attkisson, who had been active in covering the aftermath of the Benghazi terror attacks and the Fast and Furious scandal, abruptly announced she had resigned from CBS News last month. According to Politico, sources said Attkisson had grown increasingly frustrated by what she perceived as a liberal bias at CBS News.

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Barack Obama Lets NSA Keep Some Internet Security Flaws Secret

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

Stepping into a heated debate within the nation’s intelligence agencies, President Barack Obama has decided that when the National Security Agency discovers major flaws in Internet security, it should – in most circumstances – reveal them to assure that they will be fixed, rather than keep mum so that the flaws can be used in espionage or cyberattacks, senior administration officials said Saturday.

But Obama carved a broad exception for “a clear national security or law enforcement need,” the officials said, a loophole that is likely to allow the NSA to continue to exploit security flaws both to crack encryption on the Internet and to design cyberweapons.

The White House has never publicly detailed Obama’s decision, which he made in January as he began a three-month review of recommendations by a presidential advisory committee on what to do in response to recent disclosures about the National Security Agency.

But elements of the decision became evident Friday, when the White House denied that it had any prior knowledge of the Heartbleed bug, a newly known hole in Internet security that sent Americans scrambling last week to change their online passwords. The White House statement said that when such flaws are discovered, there is now a “bias” in the government to share that knowledge with computer and software manufacturers so a remedy can be created and distributed to industry and consumers.

Caitlin Hayden, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said the review of the recommendations was now complete, and it had resulted in a “reinvigorated” process to weigh the value of disclosure when a security flaw is discovered, against the value of keeping the discovery secret for later use by the intelligence community.

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Muslim Brotherhood Launches Own U.S. Political Party

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Photo Credit: Anuradha Sengupta

Photo Credit: Anuradha Sengupta

With an eye toward the 2016 election, the radical Muslim Brotherhood has built the framework for a political party in America that seeks to turn Muslims into an Islamist voting bloc.

‘Muslim voters have the potential to be swing voters in 2016,” said Nihad Awad in launching the benign-sounding U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, whose membership reads like a Who’s Who of Brotherhood front groups.

“We are aiming to bring more participation from the Muslim community.”

USCMO also aims to elect Islamists in Washington, with the ultimate objective of “institutionalizing policies” favorable to Islamists — that is, Shariah law.

This development bears careful monitoring in light of the U.S. Brotherhood’s recently exposed goal to wage a “civilization jihad” against America that explicitly calls for infiltrating the U.S. political system and “destroying (it) from within.”

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Judges: ‘Law Provides Executive No Authority’ to Cut Drug Sentences As Holder Did

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Photo Credit: AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite

Photo Credit: AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite

Two federal judges on the U.S. Sentencing Commission said Thursday that Attorney General Eric Holder stepped “outside the legal system” and exceeded the authority of the executive branch by sending “improper instruction” to federal prosecutors to reduce drug sentences before they were officially approved by either the commission or Congress.

“I have been surprised at the attorney general’s steps taken to proceed with this reduction outside of the legal system set up and established by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984,” Judge Ricardo Hinojosa, the commission’s vice chair, said during a public hearing in the Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building in Washington.

“As you all know, the commission in the act is given the authority to promulgate and amend guidelines on a yearly basis. And in the act itself, Congress has preserved its right to reject any potential promulgation of, or amendment to, any guidelines made by the commission itself after the commission has acted.

“Meaning that if Congress does not reject a guideline amendment, it will not go into effect until November 1st of this year if we vote in favor of this amendment.,” said Hinojosa, who is also the chief judge of the Southern District of Texas.

“When the attorney general testified before us, he failed to mention that the night before, at around 11 pm, the department had ordered all of the assistant U.S. attorneys across the country to (and it’s not clear to me whether it was supposed to be not oppose or to argue for, in fact the U.S. attorneys in front of my court have said they’ve been asked to argue for) the two-level reduction in all drug trafficking cases before the commission has acted and before Congress has had the opportunity to vote its disapproval of the commission’s actions, if Congress is so inclined, which is certainly the right that they have preserved for themselves in the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984,” Hinojosa said.

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MSNBC’s Harris-Perry: ‘Is Eric Holder The Obama We Had Been Hoping For?’

By Mike Miller.

During her MSNBC show on Saturday, after Melissa Harris-Perry said that Barack Obama’s “accomplishments” might not be recognized “for a decade or so,” she rattled off a string of “accomplishments” by Attorney General Eric Holder:

Shortening prison sentences for non-violent drug offenders, suing Texas and North Carolina over their respective voter ID laws, issuing a directive expanding government recognition of same sex marriage.

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Trump: Politicians ‘All Bull—-, All Talk’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Billionaire Donald Trump framed himself as a job-creating anti-politician in a preview of his potential 2016 presidential pitch to a crowd of conservatives in New Hampshire Saturday.

Speaking at the New Hampshire Freedom Summit, a gathering of conservative activists and figures organized by Americans for Prosperity and Citizens United, Trump told the crowd that “we need somebody who’s gonna get things done, and politicians are all talk and no action.”

“All talk, it’s all bull—-,” he added. “It’s all talk, and it’s no action.”

In contrast, he touted his work improving an ice-skating rink in New York City’s Central Park and defended himself against what he said were erroneous reports that he had filed for bankruptcy. He also told the crowd that America needs “somebody that’s going to make the great deals for this country.”

“We need to make our country rich again,” Trump said.

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White House: Nah, We Don’t Want to Meet With Victims of Fort Hood

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford was shot 7 times by Nidal Hasan in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood. He and other survivors wanted to have a conversation with President Obama presumably to let him know firsthand of their experience with violence at the military base.

Speaking to a victim of a tragedy in order to better understand how it could have been prevented with some more common sense solutions seems like something the president would be interested in, right?

Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough wrote: “We forwarded your letter to the Departments of Justice and Defense, who are leading the government’s efforts to ensure the victims of the 2009 shooting receive the justice and benefits they deserve. Unfortunately, we were unable to meet your specific request for a meeting with the president.”


ABC US News | ABC Business News

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Comrade Carney And The Case Of The Disembodied Digit

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Photos from the home of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney that accompany a Washingtonian magazine puff piece this week have caused a bit of a stir online after enterprising reporters and bloggers had a closer look. Take a look at the first one:

jaycarne1

First of all, what kind of family are they feeding there? That’s enough food for a small platoon. I see three people in that picture. Three people evidently preparing to go into hibernation.

But secondly, and more interestingly, check out the posters in the background.

posters

Yes, as reported by Business Insider, those are old Soviet propaganda posters. One of the posters encourages men to join the Soviet army, and the other encourages women to take the jobs vacated by the men who have joined the Soviet army…

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