Photo Credit: AP Photo/Larry Downing
The gross average audience of 13 networks airing President Barack Obama’s speech puts viewership at 33,299,172. That’s down from the 33.5 million that tuned in for the 2013 speech for its lowest showing since 2000. (President Bill Clinton’s final address in office averaged 31,478,000.)
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In the new year, Americans would become “hooked on the subsidies, addicted to the sugar,” Cruz told a Tea Party gathering in his home state on August 19, according to the Texas Tribune. “If we get to January 1, this thing is here forever.” This belief was a main justification for the last-ditch campaign to fund the government if, and only if, Obamacare was defunded.
But on a conference call Wednesday afternoon, a month after Obamacare subsidies began flowing, Cruz told reporters that he no longer believes that January 1 was the deadline to stop Obamacare. “I believe we will repeal Obamacare,” he said.
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Fake tickets good enough to gain entry to MetLife Stadium, knock-off jerseys and even sex workers descending on the biggest event in American sports are all on the radar of the Department of Homeland Security. The agency has set up a 24-hour operation at JFK airport, where they are confiscating loads of unlicensed Super Bowl paraphernalia in advance of Sunday’s game, FoxNews.com has learned.
“We have seized upwards of $20 million worth of counterfeit merchandise, most of which is related to the Super Bowl,” said Special Agent in Charge James T. Hayes of Homeland Security in New York. “We’ve executed 11 arrests so far and expect to make more in the coming days.”
Hayes said investigators have confiscated “thousands of pieces” of illegal merchandise, sent mostly from Asian countries like China. The fraudulent items include hats, jerseys and T-shirts made to look like they are officially endorsed by the National Football League for this year’s Super Bowl game between the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos as MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.
“If it’s produced, it’s being counterfeited,” Hayes said. “This is the perfect environment for counterfeiters because of street vendors,” he said of New York City and areas surrounding the northern New Jersey stadium.
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In the first run, two school buses were sent to transport as many as 100 people to local shelters, said Rusty Lowe of the Hoover fire department.
The buses will make several runs.
About 50 Atlanta school children were still stuck on buses early Wednesday morning.
The students had gotten on buses to get home shortly after noon Tuesday, but treacherous road conditions coupled with gridlocked traffic has made it impossible.
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The president’s taste for unilateral action to circumvent Congress should concern every citizen, regardless of party or ideology. The great 18th-century political philosopher Montesquieu observed: “There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates.” America’s Founding Fathers took this warning to heart, and we should too.
Rule of law doesn’t simply mean that society has laws; dictatorships are often characterized by an abundance of laws. Rather, rule of law means that we are a nation ruled by laws, not men. That no one—and especially not the president—is above the law. For that reason, the U.S. Constitution imposes on every president the express duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
Yet rather than honor this duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws he is charged to enforce. When Mr. Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
On many of those policy issues, reasonable minds can disagree. Mr. Obama may be right that some of those laws should be changed. But the typical way to voice that policy disagreement, for the preceding 43 presidents, has been to work with Congress to change the law. If the president cannot persuade Congress, then the next step is to take the case to the American people. As President Reagan put it: “If you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat” of electoral accountability.
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President Barack Obama outlined plans Tuesday to make 2014 his year of action — using his executive authorities wherever possible while encouraging Congress to go even further.
Obama took on a more pragmatic tone than in previous State of the Union addresses, acknowledging that getting his agenda past House Republicans was unlikely and therefore he would use his power to do what he can on his own.
While most of the language was not partisan, the implication was clear — the president is tired of engaging in futile battles with the GOP. Striking a contrast to congressional inaction, Obama highlighted a dozen executive actions, including an executive order announced earlier Tuesday to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for federal contract workers and plans to speed up ConnectEd, which aims to bring high-speed Internet access to 99 percent of schools within five years.
Obama didn’t entirely ignore Congress — the White House believes immigration reform is a real possibility this year and the president reached out to the GOP on that front. He discussed immigration reform in broad terms, in hopes of leaving space for House Republicans to continue their work on legislation, while still calling for action.
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State of the Union 2014: Obama embraces Obamacare
By DAVID NATHER.
President Barack Obama left no doubt Tuesday night what his Obamacare sales technique will be: loud voice, lots of confidence and no apologies.
Don’t dwell on the scratches on the hood. Just tell the customer how good it will feel to rev the engine and drive the car off the lot.
Obamacare didn’t show up in the State of the Union address until over halfway through, and it encompassed all of nine paragraphs in an hour-plus stemwinder. But this was very much a hard sell by the president for Americans to sign up for his signature health care law, the biggest sales pitch Obama has made in a State of the Union address since the law passed. His pitch was a lengthy tour of all the success stories he could find: the Arizona woman with a health condition who got health coverage just in time, the Kentucky governor who built one of the best working enrollment websites in the country and the millions of Americans who have already signed up for coverage.
His message to Obamacare’s supporters and critics: Enough with the repeal votes. Time to sign up — especially the young adults.
“That’s why, tonight, I ask every American who knows someone without health insurance to help them get covered by March 31st,” Obama said. “Moms, get on your kids to sign up. Kids, call your mom and walk her through the application. It will give her some peace of mind — plus, she’ll appreciate hearing from you.”
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The toughest stumbling block to a comprehensive immigration reform agreement in the House of Representatives, The Hill reports, may well be a quiet group – a handful of Tea Party conservatives who aren’t the kind of fixtures in front of the camera that other immigration hardliners, such as Rep. Steve King of Iowa and Rep. Louie Gomert of Texas, have been on the emotionally-charged issue.
Those quiet critical few, The Hill said, include Reps. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), Trey Gowdy (S.C.), Justin Amash (Mich.), Renee Ellmers (N.C.) and Steve Scalise (La.).
These lawmakers are likely to look to conservative peers – not lobby groups or the GOP establishment – for cues on how to move on the immigration issue, the publication said.
House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has said he will push a measure if it gets a majority – or 117 – of the 233 members of the Republican conference.
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The Oklahoma senator, who has been suffering from a recurrence of prostate cancer and plans to retire at the end of the current session, briefly discussed his personal situation in an interview Tuesday morning.
“I’m doing well from a health standpoint, got great docs and fortunately, even though my new coverage won’t cover my specialists, I’m going to have great care and I have a great prognosis,” he said.
Politico reported that Coburn’s office confirmed his coverage was cut and he lost coverage for his oncologist. However, Coburn reportedly will pay out of pocket in order to keep seeing the specialist. Coburn spoke earlier on MSNBC.
Like other congressional lawmakers, Coburn, 65, was required to go on the ObamaCare exchanges. Coburn’s case is one of many that will hang over the president as he delivers the State of the Union address Tuesday evening. While Obama plans to focus on economic issues — and especially agenda items like the minimum wage — lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are not letting him forget about the widespread and bipartisan concerns with the health care law.
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What began as a wild west-style cattle-stealing case may have ushered in a brave new world of law enforcement officials using drones to gather evidence to put Americans behind bars.
In the first-ever case of a U.S. citizen being convicted and sentenced to prison based in part on evidence gathered by a drone, Lakota, N.D., farmer Rodney Brossart got a three-year sentence for his role in an armed standoff with police that began after he was accused of stealing his neighbors’ stray cattle in 2011.
Brossart was arrested on June 23, 2011, but his family refused at gun
point to let authorities armed with a search warrant onto their 3,600-acre property to investigate the neighbors’ complaint. Brossart was later released on bail, and warrants issued for his three sons, but the family refused for months to respond to orders to appear in court, prompting Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke to have the U.S. Border Patrol deploy a Predator drone conduct live video surveillance of the farm.
The drone monitored the family’s movements on the farm following the armed standoff. It was not clear how long the drone was deployed or whether it gathered evidence of the alleged cattle theft.
But the eye in the sky gathered enough evidence to prompt Janke’s men to finally move in in November 2011, arresting five family members on terrorizing charges.
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Lakota, N.D., farmer sentenced to 6 months in terrorizing case
By Steve Lee.
Lakota, N.D., farmer Rodney Brossart was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison, with all but six months suspended during 2.5 years of supervised probation for terrorizing law enforcement officers who arrested him over a neighbor’s stray cattle in June 2011.
The unusual case attracted wide attention because Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke took up the U.S. Border Patrol’s offer of live video surveillance from a large drone of Brossart’s three sons before arresting them at their farm southeast of Lakota the day after he was arrested.
“This case should have never happened,” state District Judge Joel Medd said. “Chalk it up to stubbornness, to stupidity, to being at odds with your neighbors or any combination of those. We should never have been here if the cows would have just been returned.”
Brossart was convicted in November of terrorizing two law enforcement officers who arrested him June 23, 2011, over a neighbor’s three cows and their calves that strayed on to his farm. It’s a felony with a top sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Also Tuesday, Brossart’s three sons — Thomas, Alex and Jacob, all in their 20s — pleaded guilty each to a misdemeanor charge of menacing law enforcement officers, reduced from the felony terrorizing charge, in an agreement with prosecutors.
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Photo Credit: Brennan Linsley
G2R, the Windsor, Ga., company that created the Radically Invasive Projectile, or R.I.P., says the bullet is like a full metal jacket when it strikes and is designed “to take out all your vital organs.”
“I wanted to create a round that would work well against a home intruder,” company president Cliff Brown told the Blaze. “There were so many stories out there about a woman trying to defend her home and having to shoot someone five or six times and they’d still come after her. We wanted to create an effective one-shot man-stopper.”
The bullet is made with trocar angles — edges with three angles that lead into a single point — which enable it cut through an object’s layers with greater speed and efficiency than other forms of ammunition, according to the company’s website.
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