A Black Box in Your Car? Some See a Source of Tax Revenue

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Photo Credit: Mark Boster/LA Times As America’s road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America’s major roads.

The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense debate and colorful alliances. Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill.

The tea party is aghast. The American Civil Liberties Union is deeply concerned, too, raising a variety of privacy issues.

And while Congress can’t agree on whether to proceed, several states are not waiting. They are exploring how, over the next decade, they can move to a system in which drivers pay per mile of road they roll over. Thousands of motorists have already taken the black boxes, some of which have GPS monitoring, for a test drive.

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House Intelligence Panel Chair — Europe Probably Spying on Obama Too

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Photo Credit: APThe top lawmaker on the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday defended the secret data collection tactics of the United States, including the phone tapping of foreign allies, suggesting Europeans are probably doing the same type of monitoring of President Obama.

“They don’t have necessarily the same type of oversight of their intelligence services that we do and their compartmentalization is much smaller than ours,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Rogers pointed out that Obama’s BlackBerry is encrypted, suggesting it’s a defense against other countries that may be trying to monitoring his communications.

“I think they need to have a better oversight structure in Europe,” Rogers said. “I think they would be enlightened to find out what their intelligence services may or may not be doing in the interests of their own national security.”

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Rep. Darrell Issa: Kathleen Sebelius Should Be Fired

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Photo Credit: Examiner File/Graeme JenningsAdding his voice to the growing chorus of lawmakers calling for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to step down in the wake of Obamacare’s clunky rollout, Rep. Darrell Issa on Sunday questioned why she continues to stay on.

“The president has been poorly served in the implementation of his own legislation,” Issa, R-Calif., said in an interview on CBS. “If somebody doesn’t leave … then he’s missing the point of Management 101, which is these people are there to serve him well, and they haven’t.”

Issa called on Sebelius to step down voluntarily.

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Neighbor Gunned Down Family of Four and their Dogs Because he was Furious Over Loud Barking

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Photo Credit: KNXV-TV An Arizona man has murdered his four neighbors and killed their two dogs because the canines wouldn’t stop barking loudly, police have revealed.

Michael Dante Guzzo, 56, became enraged over the noise from the pets at a neighboring townhouse in a Phoenix apartment complex on Saturday, detectives say.

They believe he used a pump-action shotgun to shoot dead Bruce Moore, 66; his daughter, Renee Moore, 36; her husband Michael Moore, 42; and their son, Shannon Moore, 17. He also slaughtered their dogs.

Guzzo then fired several rounds into the door of another neighbor.

He returned home and killed himself.

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Eighth-Grade Student Arrested for Setting Teacher’s Hijab on Fire

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller An eighth-grade student at Westdale Middle School in Baton Rouge, La. has been expelled for allegedly setting a substitute teacher’s hijab on fire using a cigarette lighter.

The incident occurred on the morning of Oct. 4, reports New Orleans Fox affiliate WVUE.

The local school drug task force (apparently an arm of the sheriff’s office) was summoned to the Westdale at 9:50 a.m. to investigate, notes ABC affiliate WBRZ.

Parents say they were never informed about the incident. Many were unhappy about this lack of notification. Some have alleged a cover-up.

The reasons that the incident has only come to light some three weeks later remain unclear.

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Mother, Four Children Killed with Meat Cleaver in New York

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Photo Credit: rakkhi/flickrA New York woman and her four young children were hacked to death with a meat cleaver in their Brooklyn home, and the father’s cousin was charged with their murders on Sunday, the New York Police Department said.

Responding to an emergency call on Saturday night, police found two boys, two girls and their mother with multiple wounds at their home in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.

Ming Dong Chen, the 25-year-old cousin of the children’s father, was at the home and was taken into custody. He was charged with five counts of murder, criminal possession of a weapon and assaulting a police officer, a police spokesman said.

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Get Ready to Talk About your Meds, Guns and Lifestyle

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Photo Credit: WND Americans are increasing their calls for lawmakers to fight Obamacare because of worries over an abundance of personal information that soon will be in the government’s hands.

The Healthcare.gov website calls for information such as name, address, Social Security number and income, while Obamacare will implement online medical records that include details about ailments, conditions, mental state, drug use, gun ownership and other personal details.

That has people worried that the sum total of information could be mishandled by the government, or worse yet, be let loose. There were more than 12.6 million victims of identity theft in the U.S. last year, and the federal government’s collection of Americans’ personal health and financial data offers a treasure trove of possibilities for criminals.

This week, the Los Angeles Times reported an Alahambra, Calif., medical clinic admitted that two laptops that contained more than 700,000 patient medical records were stolen during an office break-in.

The thieves have not been caught.

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Ted Cruz to Iowa Republicans: This Fight is ‘Path to Victory’

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreRepublican Senator Ted Cruz, who incited a standoff over Obamacare culminating in a 16-day U.S. government shutdown, told party activists in Iowa that fighting the health law will pay dividends in the 2014 midterm elections.

The junior senator from Texas, just nine months in office, won a warm reception during a 45-minute speech last night in which he said that his attempt to defund President Barack Obama’s signature health-care program has made a difference, even if it has cost his party in the polls.

“Collectively, we accomplished a great deal,” Cruz told about 600 Republican activists at a downtown convention hall in Des Moines. “We elevated the national debate over what a disaster, what a train-wreck, how much Obamacare is hurting millions of Americans.”

He told the party faithful the prescription for unifying the GOP in the wake of the bitter congressional battle that triggered the shutdown was to ignore both the media and Washington strategists.

“This fight is worth it,” he said. “It is the path to victory.”

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Biden’s ‘Crass Plea’: Don’t Let Women’s Rights, ‘Collective Agenda’ Fall to Tea Party

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Photo Credit: Cliff OwenPleading for money to help his party win back the House, Vice President Joseph Biden on Friday night took direct aim at tea party conservatives, calling them the biggest impediment to progress in America.

“Everything you worked for and the progress we have made is literally in jeopardy if we lose seats in the Senate and if we don’t gain seats in the House,” Mr. Biden told the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum, according to a pool reporter traveling with the vice president. “Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t win the House back … That’s the single most important thing, in my view, we can do for our collective agenda, is win back the House.”

He added that his one “crass plea” to the group is to raise more money for the upcoming 2014 congressional elections.

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Michelle Obama’s Princeton Classmate is Executive at Company that Built Obamacare Website

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller First Lady Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.

Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.

Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

Toni Townes ’85 is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. Her decision to return to work, as an African-American woman, after six years of raising kids was applauded by a Princeton alumni publication in 1998.

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