Judge Rules Colorado Sheriffs Can’t Sue Over State Gun Laws

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Photo Credit: APA federal judge ruled Wednesday that Colorado sheriffs suing the state over new firearm restrictions don’t have standing to proceed with the case as a group, but the legal battle is far from over.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger in Denver doesn’t stop the lawsuit because 21 other plaintiffs who are suing do have standing. The court will still consider whether universal background checks and a ban on ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds are constitutional, the judge said.

“At this juncture, the court is not even considering whether the challenged portions of the laws are constitutional,” Krieger said.

Sheriffs in most of Colorado’s 64 counties filed the lawsuit in May, saying the new regulations violate the Second Amendment. The sheriffs are elected and represent rural, gun-friendly parts of the state.

In her ruling, Krieger said sheriffs can still choose to join the suit in an individual capacity, and they’ll have 14 days to make that decision. But they cannot, as a group, sue the state in their official capacities.

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Poverty Under Obama Rises to Alarming Level

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Photo Credit: WND As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, it is important to remember that despite establishment-media reporting of an Obama “economic recovery,” the number of Americans on welfare today is higher than the number that have full-time jobs, says Michael Snyder, creator of TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com.

Snyder outlined the economic reality in a recent editorial that points out the fragility of the U.S. economy.

“The gap between the wealthy and the poor is at a level that America has never seen before, and this is beginning to create a ‘Robin Hood mentality’ that could cause a tremendous amount of social chaos in the years ahead,” Snyder writes.

“Anger at the ‘haves’ in America continues to rise at a very alarming pace, and the ‘have nots’ are becoming increasingly desperate. At some point all of this anger is going to boil over, and you won’t want to be anywhere around major population centers when that happens.”

Documentation for Snyder’s claim that there are more Americans on welfare than the number of Americans working full-time comes from Census Bureau statistics that show there were 108.6 million people in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more means-tested government benefit programs. That’s compared to the 101.7 million people who worked full-time year round in 2011, including both private sector and government workers.

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Alleged Obama Letter to Texas School Teacher Calls Critics ‘Tea-Baggers’

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller President Barack Obama allegedly used the term “tea-baggers” to describe members of the Tea Party movement in a handwritten response to a fifth-grade school teacher’s letter criticizing Obamacare.

The crude and derogatory term, which is brimming with sexual innuendo, appears in a note penned on stationery bearing the words “The White House” at the top. The man who says he received the missive is Thomas Ritter of Irving, Texas, reports the Daily Mail.

Ritter, 49, had written a letter to Obama before Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, and well before the law’s embarrassingly disastrous launch.

“This bill has caused such a divisive, derisive and toxic environment,” he wrote. “The reality is that any citizen that disagrees with your administration is targeted and ridiculed.”

“I watched you make fun of tea baggers and your press secretary make fun of Ms. Palin which was especially beneath the dignity of the White House,” wrote the Texas teacher. “Do the right thing not the political thing. Suggest a bill that Americans can support.”

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Navajo Code Talker Says Redskins Name Not Derogatory

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Photo Credit: APA leader of the Navajo Code Talkers who appeared at a Washington Redskins home football game said Wednesday the team name is a symbol of loyalty and courage — not a slur as asserted by critics who want it changed.

Roy Hawthorne, 87, of Lupton, Ariz., was one of four Code Talkers honored for their service in World War II during the Monday night game against the San Francisco 49ers.

Hawthorne, vice president of the Navajo Code Talkers Association, said the group’s trip was paid for by the Redskins. The four men met briefly with team owner Dan Snyder but did not discuss the name, Hawthorne said.

Still, he said he would endorse the name if asked, and the televised appearance in which three of the Indians wore Redskins jackets spoke for itself.

“We didn’t have that in mind but that is undoubtedly what we did do,” Hawthorne said when asked if he was intending to send a statement with the appearance. “My opinion is that’s a name that not only the team should keep, but that’s a name that’s American.”

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Tea Party Still Standing Tall in Fight to Reform GOP

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Photo Credit: APThe Republican civil war erupted into full view this fall, and the establishment looked like it was about to shove the movement back in line.

But the early skirmishes ended with the tea party no weaker than it was.

And while the party’s internal fight will rage on, the opening battles suggest the establishment is just starting to see how much it will take to reclaim the power it has ceded to the movement in recent years.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s first big play: threaten to blacklist any consultant who does business with a key group taking on sitting Republicans.

The result: pretty much business as usual.

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Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Cases on Contraceptive Mandate – Hobby Lobby

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Photo Credit: AP By Jennifer Haberkorn

The Supreme Court has agreed to revisit Obamacare, this time to review the requirement that most employers provide contraceptive coverage in their employee health insurance plans.

On Tuesday, the court accepted two cases centered on the issue of business owners’ religious expression.

It’s another test for the embattled health care law, which is already struggling under the weight of a botched website and a political backlash after millions of Americans saw their current insurance plans cancelled for 2014.

The case could also rekindle the same clash that unfolded during the 2012 presidential campaign, when Republicans attempted to make the contraception rule an important issue. A ruling against the contraception coverage rule wouldn’t knock down the whole health law, but it would give more fuel to its opponents.

This is not Obamacare’s first trip to the high court. In 2012, the court ruled in favor of another controversial piece of the law — the individual mandate, which requires most Americans to have health insurance. Chief John Roberts sided with the liberal wing of the court to uphold the mandate, a surprise move that kept a key piece of the law intact.

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Photo Credit: LifeNews By Steven Ertelt

Hobby Lobby’s battle against the HHS mandate is headed to the Supreme Court, as the high court today agreed to hear its lawsuit against the controversial provision in Obamacare. The Obama administration is attempting to make it comply with the HHS mandate that compels religious companies to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs for their employees.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to take up Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a landmark case addressing the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of business owners to operate their family companies without violating their deeply held religious convictions. This is good news to the Green family, who own the store.

“This is a major step for the Greens and their family businesses in an important fight for Americans’ religious liberty,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead lawyer for Hobby Lobby. “We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will clarify once and for all that religious freedom in our country should be protected for family business owners like the Greens.”

The Obama administration says it is confident it will prevail, saying, “We believe this requirement is lawful…and are confident the Supreme Court will agree.”

“My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case,” said Mr. Green, Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO. “This legal challenge has always remained about one thing and one thing only: the right of our family businesses to live out our sincere and deeply held religious convictions as guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law.”

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Pres. Obama Proposes Strict New Rules for Tea Party and Other Non-Profits

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Photo Credit: APIn an aggressive move designed to crack down on free-spending outside political groups, the Obama administration is proposing strict new rules curtailing nonprofits like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS and the pro-Obama Priorities USA.

The draft proposal, released Tuesday by the Treasury Department, would keep so-called social welfare 501(c)(4) nonprofits from getting a tax exemption if they engage in too much “candidate related” political activity.

The groups were at the heart of this summer’s scandal over Internal Revenue Service targeting of tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax exemptions.

The proposal is the first major response to a Treasury inspector general report in May blasting the IRS for added scrutiny of tea party conservative groups seeking tax exemption — a major scandal that led President Barack Obama to fire the acting IRS commissioner and other officials to exit the agency.

The inspector general report recommended the IRS tighten its rules.

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Map Shows the NSA’s Massive Worldwide Malware Operations

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Photo Credit: APA new map details how many companies across the world have been infected by malware by the National Security Agency’s team of hackers, and where the companies are located.

Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports the NSA uses malware to infect, infiltrate and steal information from over 50,000 computer networks around the globe. This new, previously unreported scope of the NSA’s hacking operation comes from another PowerPoint slide showing a detailed map of every infection leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden.

The practice is called “Computer Network Exploitation,” or CNE for short, and it’s carried out by the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations team. A yellow dot on the map signifies a CNE infection. The NSA plants malware within a network that can flipped on or off at any time. Once a network is infected, the malware gives the NSA unfiltered access to the network’s information whenever it’s most convenient. The Washington Post previously profiled the team of “elite hackers” who make up the NSA’s TAO division.

The British intelligence service liked this strategy too, NRC Handelsblad reports, because they successfully duped a Belgium telecom company with a fake LinkedIn account. A strip at the bottom says the map is relative to relative to the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, the “Five Eyes” nations that share intelligence.

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ObamaCare’s Arrogance, Corruption and Abuse is Just Beginning

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsBy Peter Morici.

It took paramount arrogance for President Obama and congressional Democrats to believe they could write an Affordable Care Act that would replace free markets across a health care sector as large as the economy of France.

Among the results include five million Americans with private insurance who are getting cancellation letters for policies the president promised they could keep. As Obama claims, some had “substandard” coverage, but many had perfectly good policies.

Stories are surfacing of cancer patients — now facing the loss of insurance policies that paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in life-saving treatments — who cannot access the government run exchange. Or, if they are successful, their premiums are now dramatically higher, and they can no longer access the clinics and doctors that kept them alive.

Businesses around the country are replacing full-time employees with part-time hires to avoid paying rising, burdensome premiums for qualifying workers.

Others are simply dropping coverage altogether and electing to pay fines when those apply in 2014.

Read more from this story HERE.

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No grounds for claim that ObamaCare lowers healthcare costs

By Charles Blahous.

Public support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has plummeted now that the oft-repeated claim that “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” is widely understood to be untrue. Despite previous assurances, millions of Americans are now grappling with ACA-triggered cancellations of their health insurance policies. Faced with public anger, ACA supporters are now turning to another argument to promote the law: that the ACA is already working to hold down health care cost growth. Unfortunately, some of these claims are just as groundless as the ones that misled so many Americans to believe they would be able to keep their previous coverage.

One particularly egregious example is White House advisor David Cutler’s op-ed published November 8 in the Washington Post, entitled, “The health care law’s success story: slowing down medical costs.” This piece contains the following paragraph:

“Before he was criticized for his statements about insurance continuity, President Obama was lambasted for his forecasts of cost savings. In 2007, Obama asserted that his health-care reform plan would save $2,500 per family relative to the trends at the time. The criticism was harsh; I know because I helped the then-senator make this forecast. Yet events have shown him to be right. Between early 2009 and now, the Office of the Actuaries at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has lowered its forecast of medical spending in 2016 by 1 percentage point of GDP. In dollar terms, this is $2,500 for a family of four.”

To see why this is wrong, it is useful to break down this paragraph’s thesis into its component parts. Specifically, it claims that:

The President’s previous assertions that his “health-care reform plan” would “save $2,500 per family” have been “shown” “to be right,” and that;

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Telling the Truth About ObamaCare Can Get You Fired

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Are you afraid of the Obama White House? If you challenge the president’s beloved health care plan, maybe you should be. Consider the fate of William White, the Washington, D.C. Insurance Commissioner, who voiced skepticism about President Obama’s hastily assembled “fix” for the millions losing their insurance policies.

A day after suggesting that the new demands on insurers could destabilize the marketplace and lead to even higher premiums, White was canned.

Telling the truth about ObamaCare is risky.

Remember the manhandling of Congressional Budget Office head Douglas Elmendorf? When the supposedly neutral bean counters undertook the first analysis of ObamaCare ’s fiscal impact, their preliminary findings threatened to undermine the happy talk flowing from the White House. Elmendorf was summoned to a parlay with the president, who doubtless explained how the budget gurus might amend their analysis, as a patriotic duty…

Any surprise that the cost estimates from the CBO have made generous assumption — underestimating the number of Americans to receive subsidies and who will be added to Medicaid roles? I will guarantee that as this bill takes hold, costs will exceed those projected by the CBO.

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