Ted Cruz Questions Whether Obama 'Launched An Economic Boycott Of Israel'

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Photo Credit: Business Insider

Photo Credit: Business Insider

Freshman firebrand Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) questioned on Wednesday whether President Barack Obama has effectively “launched an economic boycott of Israel,” after the Federal Aviation Agency’s decision to bar all flights into and out of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport for the past two days.

The Obama administration forcefully shot back at the charge, with State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf calling it “ridiculous and offensive.” She rejected any assertion the FAA’s move was at all politically motivated, saying it was only done to protect American citizens and carriers.

For its part, Cruz’s office released a lengthy statement on his behalf, blasting it out to reporters with the subject line, “Did President Obama Just Launch an Economic Boycott of Israel?” He claimed, as some in the Israeli government have over the past two days, that it effectively hands the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas a victory.

“Aiding Hamas while simultaneously isolating Israel does two things. One, it helps our enemy. Two, it hurts our ally,” Cruz said in the statement.

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FEC Chair Warns of Chilling Regulations, Book Ban On Conservative Publishers

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The chairman of the Federal Election Commission today blasted Democratic colleagues opposed to his effort to protect conservative media after they imposed rules on the publisher of Rep. Paul Ryan’s new book, opening the door to future book regulations — or even a ban.

“By failing to affirm this publisher’s constitutional right, statutory right, to disseminate a political book free from FEC conditions and regulations, we have effectively asserted regulatory jurisdiction over a book publisher,” warned Chairman Lee E. Goodman, one of three Republicans on the six-person FEC.

“That failure reveals a festering legal uncertainty and chill for the free press rights of books and book publishers to publish and disseminate political books free from government regulation,” he added.

His comments after the FEC OK’d Republican Ryan’s request to promote his new book, The Way Forward, were immediately and sharply rebuked by Democratic Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub. “No one is banning books,” she said.

Weintraub also hit Goodman for suggesting “that we are motivated by partisan bias, which is really not appreciated and untrue. I want to categorically deny that.”

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Brandeis Professors Manifest Rampant Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism

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Photo Credit: btrandolph / Flickr

Photo Credit: btrandolph / Flickr

Paul Miller, writing for Algemeiner.com, reveals that Brandeis University has professors on its staff who are overtly anti-American and anti-Semitic. Examining writings gleaned from a faculty listserv and reported by Daniel Mael, a student at the university, Miller notes that not only were there offensive posts on the listserv, but the university itself has stifled free speech.

The listserv, called “Concerned,” was created in 2002 “out of concern about possible war with Iraq.” The political stance it took was intransigent; co-creator Gordon Fellman wrote in a 2009 email, “It is rude to post a recipe for pork roast on a vegetarian listserv or an orthodox Jewish one, or right wing harangues on the concerned list.”

In a Breitbart News exclusive, Mael wrote, “It contains 92 subscribers, including professors from outside of the university. Participants express their fear and disdain on issues ranging from United States foreign and domestic policy, the ‘American system’ and ‘the Israelists,’ to ‘President Obomber,’ and ‘Hillary Obliterate Iran! Clinton.’ ”

East Asian Studies Professor Donald Hindley is the most obvious case of rampant anti-Semitism; in 2007 he compared Israel to Nazi Germany in a 2007 listserv email with the subject line, “Plant a Tree, Bury a Palestinian,” commenting in the email, “Zionist olive trees grow wondrously on Palestinian corpses. In that way, we combine great trees with our own holocaustic ethnic cleansing.”

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Kaufman County: No Illegal Immigrant Children Here

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Photo Credit: Ross D. Franklin-Pool / Getty

Photo Credit: Ross D. Franklin-Pool / Getty

Kaufman County Commissioners approved a resolution on Monday telling the federal government that they don’t want to house any illegal immigrants in their communities.

It came about after Kaufman County Tea Party Chairman Ray Myers and others appealed to the commissioners court.

“It basically says that we are opposed to the dropping of the illegals in Kaufman county, regardless of if they’re kids or whatever they are,” said Myers. “We’re just opposed to those people coming in because of the possibility of disease, the possibility of drug cartels or things of that nature. There’s already indications of disease; there’s already indications that they’re covering up disease at Lackland Air Force Base… and we know that the government is covering up those things at Lackland and other places.”

Myers goes onto say that they’re opposed to how the federal government is handling the crisis on the border. “We’re not interested in having illegal immigration in Kaufman County; we don’t believe that it’s constitutional.”

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White House To Ignore Court Ruling, Keep Handing Out Obamacare Subsidies

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

The Obama administration will continue handing out Obamacare subsidies to federal exchange customers despite a federal court’s ruling Tuesday that the subsidies are illegal.

A D.C. Court of Appeals panel ruled Tuesday morning that customers in the 36 states that didn’t establish their own exchange and use HealthCare.gov instead cannot be given premium tax credits, according to the text of the Affordable Care Act itself.

But the White House said in response that it will continue handing out the billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies…

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House Investigators: IRS Tech Experts Say Lerner’s Hard Drive Only 'Scratched,' Not Destroyed

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Fox News.

House investigators said Tuesday that the computer hard drive of ex-agency official Lois Lerner — a key figure in the IRS targeting scandal — was only “scratched,” not irreparably damaged, as Americans have been led to believe.

GOP-led Ways and Means Committee investigators, in their quest to recover missing Lerner emails, learned her hard drive was damaged but recoverable by talking to IRS information-technology experts, after the government originally refused to make them available, according to the committee.

“It is unbelievable that we cannot get a simple, straight answer from the IRS about this hard drive,” said committee Chairman Dave Camp.

The Michigan Republican said the new information also raises more questions about potential criminal wrongdoing at the IRS because the committee was told no data was recoverable and the physical hard drive was recycled and potentially shredded.

In addition, learning that the hard drive was only scratched also raises questions about why the IRS refused to use outside experts to recover the data.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst

Lois Lerner’s Hard Drive Was ‘Scratched’ Then ‘Shredded’

By Patrick Howley.

Ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer hard drive was “scratched” and the data on it was still recoverable. But the IRS did not try to recover the data from Lerner’s hard drive, despite recommendations from in-house IRS IT experts to outsource the recovery project.

The hard drive was then “shredded,” according to a court filing the IRS made to House Ways and Means Committee investigators.

The IRS claims that it lost Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011 including emails to and from the White House, when her computer crashed in the midst of the agency’s conservative targeting program. The IRS also claimed in a transcribed interview that many other IRS employees who worked under Lerner in her Washington, D.C. department and its Cincinnati-based affiliate also experienced computer crashes that deleted their emails, bringing the total number of crash victims to “less than 20.”

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Voters See A More Divided Nation; GOPers More Enthusiastic to Vote

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Voters strongly believe the United States is a more divided nation these days, and they think both sides are to blame. Most are also ready to do something about it at the ballot box in November.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Likely U.S. Voters say America is a more divided nation than it was four years ago. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just seven percent (7%) think the country is less divided now, while 21% rate the level of division as about the same.(To see survey question wording, click here.)

Among voters who see more division or about the same level of it, 35% believe President Obama is to blame. But 34% point the finger at Republicans in Congress instead. Twenty-three percent (23%) say they’re both to blame. Just five percent (5%) attribute the division to something else.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of all voters say they are more likely to vote this year than they have been in past elections. Only four percent (4%) say they are less likely to do so, while 38% rate their intention to vote as about the same as in past years.

Perhaps problematic for Democrats is that 65% of GOP voters and 55% of voters not affiliated with either major party are more likely to vote this year, compared to 53% of those in the president’s party. But that could change as the election gets nearer.

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Obama Sets Out On Dem Fundraising Sprint Amid Mounting Crises

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / KEVIN LAMARQUE

Photo Credit: REUTERS / KEVIN LAMARQUE

President Obama began his three-day West Coast fundraising tour in Seattle with an admission that mushrooming global crises were adding anxiety to an American public already concerned about the economy.

“Part of people’s concern is just the sense that around the world the old order isn’t holding and we’re not quite yet where we need to be based on the new order,” said Obama, who later cautioned against letting those anxieties lead to cynicism and a lack of interest in democracy.

“People who really need government to work for them on their behalf, they withdraw, they opt out, and that makes government even more dysfunctional,” he said.

The president already has taken heat for making time for a burger stop and fundraisers last week shortly after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed over Ukraine, killing hundreds. While the president repeatedly has addressed the tragedy in public, he also spent his Sunday playing golf at Fort Belvoir.

Later Tuesday, Obama will attend a Democratic Party fundraiser in Seattle, before catching Air Force One to San Francisco. He’ll end the three-day swing later this week in Los Angeles.

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A Policy So Bizzare, So Obama

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Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Obama has a new get-tough policy with Russia.

It’s called the War on the Billionaires.

The United States is using narrow sanctions against Russian billionaires—private persons presumably– some of whom Obama supposes supports Russia’s war in Ukraine. And the policy isn’t just bizarre; it’s Obama.

He’s seen our war on millionaires here at home, and raised them a war on billionaires in Russia.

“The U.S. and Europe are gearing up for a new round of sanctions expected to be announced this week that will impose travel bans and business sanctions against several Russian billionaires with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin,” reports CNBC. “In a phone call last night, British Prime Minister David Cameron told Putin that his ‘cronies’ will face sanctions unless Russia withdraws its support for the separatists in Ukraine.”

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Welfare Cash for Weed in Colorado

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Photo Credit: Dreamstime

Photo Credit: Dreamstime

For the past six months, welfare beneficiaries in Colorado have repeatedly withdrawn their cash benefits at marijuana retailers and dispensaries, according to a new analysis by National Review Online. Such apparent abuses have caught the eye of Colorado’s executive and legislative powers alike, and the state has launched an effort to curb them.

At least 259 times in the first six months of legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado, beneficiaries used their electronic-benefit transfer (EBT) cards to access public assistance at weed retailers and dispensaries, withdrawing a total of $23,608.53 in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash, NRO’s examination found.

In 2012, the latest fiscal year available, Colorado used $124 million in TANF money from the federal government, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Withdrawals at marijuana establishments represented only a tiny fraction of the more than 500,000 total EBT transactions that have occurred since recreational weed became legal in Colorado on January 1. And it’s impossible to determine how much of that welfare money actually was used to buy pot, given that cash benefits are fungible and some of these establishments also sell groceries.

Nevertheless, welfare withdrawals at weed stores are coming under increasing scrutiny, and Colorado’s legislators and bureaucrats are beginning an effort to restrict abuses.

Read more from this story HERE.