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Pollster YouGov found that 42 percent would feel safer with a gun in the home. Just 20 percent would feel “less safe.”
But the findings were divided politically. Most Republicans, 59 percent, would feel safer with a gun nearby, but only 24 percent of Democrats agree.
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All 17 Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are demanding that Chairman Darrell Issa end his year-and-a-half-long probe into the Benghazi attacks, which left four Americans dead and have become a catchphrase signifying conservative suspicion of the Obama administration.
Led by ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the move to end what Democrats dismiss as a “partisan investigation” is part of a broader effort by party leaders on Capitol Hill to finally move past the political furor surrounding the incident.
Democrats and Obama administration officials complain that the probe has cost millions of dollars while forcing the Pentagon and other federal agencies to respond to seemingly endless congressional demands for more information, all without yielding any coverup or conspiracy. They argue that the investigation has not produced any information related to allegations that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to “stand down” military units that could have been sent to Benghazi in a bid to save U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and the other besieged Americans.
Democrats privately believe that Issa is using Benghazi to try to hurt Clinton’s possible presidential ambitions in 2016. “This is all about putting up points against Hillary,” complained a Democrat close to the issue. “It’s clear what they’re trying to do.”
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By Donald Lambro.
The end of Barack Obama’s presidency effectively began after the 2010 congressional elections when Republicans took control of the House.
Obama and the Democrats have been tumbling into a political abyss ever since, hurtling toward major Senate losses this fall, if not a decisive Republican takeover of the Democratic-run chamber.
He has been robotically going through the motions of being the president, but he no longer steers the nation’s agenda or is seen as a catalyst for change or as a leader who gets things done — as his job approval polls sink into the low 40s and the lethargic U.S. economy shows no sign of serious improvement.
His grand plan to further push our country in a sharply leftward direction has turned into a disaster for his party. Democrats have been thrown on the defensive as a result of his unpopular healthcare law that is coming apart at the seams, driving up medical insurance costs, and most likely facing some dismantlement in the courts.
Vulnerable, frightened Democrats running for re-election talk now of “fixing” Obamacare rather than preserving it as it is presently shaped — while Obama orders one year long delay after another in its full implementation in the face of devastating losses in November.
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The DMV location will serve as a regional center, taking applications from a broad geographic area, including San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties.
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Paul’s move, which comes nearly two years before the primaries, also signals an effort to win the confidence of skeptical members of the Republican establishment, many of whom doubt that his appeal will translate beyond the libertarian base that was attracted to Ron Paul, a former Texas congressman.
The younger Paul’s nationwide organization, which counts more than 200 people, includes new supporters who have previously funded more traditional Republicans, along with longtime libertarian activists. Paul, 51, of Kentucky, has been courting Wall Street titans and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who donated to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, attending elite conclaves in Utah and elsewhere along with other GOP hopefuls.
For the rest of this year, his national team’s chief duties will be to take the lead in their respective states in planning fundraisers and meet-ups and helping Paul’s Washington-based advisers get a sense of where support is solid and where it’s not. This is essential in key early primary battlegrounds, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, and in areas rich in GOP donors, such as Dallas and Chicago.
“A national leadership team is an important step, and it’s a critical one for the movement going forward,” said Fritz Wenzel, Paul’s pollster. “Rand has tremendous momentum, and the formation of this team will guide him as he gets closer to a decision and [will] serve as a foundation for a campaign.”
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But it wouldn’t take a full-scale nuclear war to make Earth uninhabitable, reports Live Science.
Even a relatively small regional nuclear war, like a conflict between India and Pakistan, could spark a global environmental catastrophe, says a new study.
“Most people would be surprised to know that even a very small regional nuclear war on the other side of the planet could disrupt global climate for at least a decade and wipe out the ozone layer for a decade,” said lead author Michael Mills, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.
Researchers developed a computer model of the Earth’s atmosphere and ran simulations to find out what would happen if there was a nuclear war with just a fraction of the world’s arsenal.
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The Secret Service has a drinking problem. It’s much worse than any other cultural deficit the elite agency has. It’s more widespread than sexism, certainly, and the other isms that have been attached to the agency since the prostitution scandal in Cartagena, Colombia. It’s something that every journalist who covers the White House kind of knows, intuitively, if they’ve ever traveled with the president. Pick your favorite White House correspondent and ask him or her whether agents on President George W. Bush’s detail created problems at the Wild West saloon in Waco. One former White House scribe told me that although reporters regularly witnessed agents drinking heavily before shifts, “we just assumed they could control themselves. After all, they were the ones who were the most responsible of all of us.”
For the most part, the agents are fine the next day. The job is stressful. But looking back at a string of incidents, many of them not well-publicized, over-consumption of alcohol is the common denominator. Sometimes, agents drinking alone make bad choices. But often, agents drinking with each other don’t have the foresight, or the ability, frankly, to tell their colleagues to stop drinking without losing face. In the Netherlands, not only was a member of the Counter-Assault Team drunk, he was falling-down drunk. He was sleeping on the floor of a hallway drunk. And several of his team members were drunk, too. And no one thought to say, at some point during the evening, “Hey guys, maybe we should call it a night. You know, the reputation of the Service and all. Let’s all go home and sleep.” No one, apparently, had the capacity to be that necessary buzzkill. The lack of internal governors on behavior is one thing. The lack of peer pressure NOT to overdrink is THE problem that the Service will try to find a way to rectify.
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“To each group we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life,” wrote Sanger.
Planned Parenthood, which is now the leading abortion provider in America, will this week give House Minority Nancy Pelosi, its Margaret Sanger Award. Planned Parenthood says Pelosi has earned the honor through her “leadership, excellence, and outstanding contributions to the reproductive health and rights movement over the course of her career.”
According to its website, Planned Parenthood traces its origins to 1916 when Sanger opened a birth control office in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1922, she incorporated the American Birth Control League to address issues such as “world population growth, disarmament, and world famine,” and in 1923, Sanger opened the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in Manhattan to provide contraceptives to women.
The American Birth Control League subsequently merged with the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau and later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942.
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“This is really one of the most audacious changes so far because several committees in Congress have been looking at all these delays and all these changes. Secretary Sebelius was asked point blank, ‘Will you extend the deadline past the March 31 enrollment date?’ And she said, ‘No, we will not,’” said Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner.
“In a separate hearing she said, ‘We don’t believe we have legal authority to do that.’ But that’s what they’ve done anyway. So they’re basically going before Congress that people have until March 31. Clearly, they’re not getting the enrollment they wanted. Therefore, they’re going to ask people, ‘Well, did you try to enroll? Did you have any trouble? If so, then we’ll extend the deadline for you. Rules mean nothing to this administration,” Turner said.
After initially stating that seven million sign-ups were needed, the administration has lowered the target goal to six million and stated that more than five million have signed up. However, neither Sebelius nor any other administration official will confirm how many Americans have actually paid their first month’s premiums. Sebelius said she doesn’t know because private insurance firms have that data. Turner isn’t buying it.
“I don’t believe that she doesn’t know. She hides behind the fact that they don’t have any way of knowing that. Part of it is because the website is still not built, as far as being able to allow people to pay. But I think if they knew and that were a big number, we would hear about it,” said Turner, who noted that House Republicans are now going directly to the insurance companies to determine how many enrollees have actually paid their premiums.
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The poll also finds most voters think President Obama has not been tough enough on Russia, although a majority still says the U.S. should stay out of the situation in Ukraine.
Some 52 percent of voters think the country is weaker and less powerful today than it was six years ago. That’s three times the 17 percent who say the country is stronger and more powerful. About 3 in 10 think it is unchanged (29 percent).
Last year, 48 percent said weaker, 24 percent stronger and 27 percent unchanged (Feb. 2013).
The number of Democrats saying the country is stronger now has dropped 11 percentage points: it’s 32 percent today, down from 43 percent in 2013. Twenty-two percent of Democrats say the country is weaker and 44 percent say it is the same.
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“The only thing Putin respects is strength … At this point the Russians are openly laughing at the president,” Cruz, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner.
Cruz added that Putin’s aggressiveness was “a direct consequence” of the absence of American leadership in the world.
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