HOPE AND CHANGE: Obama Employs Usual Zig-Zag Strategy to Exert More Control Over Americans, Uses Racial Politics to Justify Marijuana Legalization

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

President Barack Obama says he backs limited marijuana legalization because it could help reduce the number of African American and Hispanic men who are jailed for drug offenses.

“African American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties,” Obama told the New Yorker’s top editor during a series of interviews published on Friday.

The legalization efforts in Washington state and Colorado should be accepted and measured, Obama said.

“It’s important for it to go forward because it’s important for society not to have a situation in which a large portion of people have at one time or another broken the law and only a select few get punished,” he said.

In 2012 state ballots, Colorado and Washington voters made marijuana consumption legal.

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Obama on Pot: ‘I Don’t Think It Is More Dangerous Than Alcohol’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Barack Obama said he doesn’t think marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol, “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”

“As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol,” the president said an interview with “The New Yorker” magazine.

Smoking marijuana is “not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy,” Obama said.

Obama’s administration has given states permission to experiment with marijuana regulation, and laws recently passed in Colorado and Washington legalizing marijuana recently went into effect. The president said it was important for the legalization of marijuana to go forward in those states to avoid a situation in which only a few are punished while a large portion of people have broken the law at one time or another.

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Top Hill Lawmakers Concerned About Olympic Security, Amid New Terror Threats and Attacks

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Top Capitol Hill lawmakers on Sunday expressed concerns about terror attacks at the upcoming Olympic games in Sochi, Russia, amid nearby terror attacks and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assurances that his country will “do whatever it takes” to protect athletes and visitors.

“The threats are real,” Texas GOP Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told ABC’s “This Week.”

McCaul is among those who think an attack during the games next month will most likely occur outside of the Olympic city and that terrorists will go after “soft targets” such as roads and transportation systems.

McCaul, who is in Moscow this weekend, declined to directly answer the question of whether he would tell Americans they would be safe to travel to the games, saying only that he will “do everything I can” to make sure the games are safe for everybody, including the estimated 15,000 Americans who will attend.

His comments were preceded on the show by an interview with Putin, who said the job of the Olympic host is to provide security and “we will do whatever it takes.”

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Krauthammer: Obama’s NSA Speech ’90 Percent Smoke and Mirrors’

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Screen Shot 2014-01-18 at 11.22.23 PMConservative columnist Charles Krauthammer had a rare moment of praise for President Barack Obama’s speech on NSA surveillance — even if it was a bit backhanded. “It was 90 percent smoke and mirrors and very little substantive change, which is what we need,” he said Friday, calling it “a terrific speech.”

Krauthammer spoke to Fox News’ Bret Baier on Friday about the president’s speech on the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program, where he promised largely superficial changes to the contentious mass collection of Americans’ metadata. Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul said “it doesn’t sound to me like he’s really going to change,” while the American Civil Liberties Union said “the president should end — not mend — the government’s collection and retention of all law-abiding American’s data.

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Zogby Report Card – Grade D+: Nation ‘Terribly Split’ Under Obama

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

Pollster John Zogby reports in our White House report card that President Obama’s bid to rule by executive order shows that the nation is torn.

“A new congressional study details the laxity in security in Benghazi prior to the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. There was plenty of blame to go around…

Grade: D+

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NJ Mayor: Christie Withheld Sandy Funds as Political Payback

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The mayor of Hoboken, N.J., is accusing Gov. Chris Christie’s administration of withholding Superstorm Sandy relief money from her city after she refused to approve a redevelopment project he favored.

Mayor Dawn Zimmer, appearing Saturday on MSNBC’s “Up With Steve Kornacki,” said Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Richard Constable, Christie’s community affairs commissioner, delivered messages from the governor early last year to warn her that the relief money would be blocked if the project wasn’t approved.

Zimmer, a Democrat who has been supportive of Republican Christie, did not approve the project.

And when she requested $127 million in hurricane relief to help in Hoboken’s rebuilding efforts in the wake of Sandy, which left the city 80 percent under water in October 2012, the city got a mere $142,000 to cover a backup generator and $200,000 in recovery grants.

“The bottom line is, it’s not fair for the governor to hold Sandy funds hostage for the city of Hoboken because he wants me to give back to one private developer,” Zimmer said Saturday.

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Claim: Boehner Calls Steve King ‘A**hole’ for Fighting Amnesty for Illegals

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

According to Democrat congressman Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), House Speaker John Boehner called conservative Rep. Steve King (R-IA) an “asshole” for opposing amnesty.

Castro made the revelation in a lengthy article he wrote about his short time in Congress for Texas Monthly. Castro said it came after he thanked Boehner for denouncing King for his comments on illegal alien youth working to smuggle drugs into the United States. Castro added that he agrees with Boehner’s assessment.

“The Democratic caricature of the speaker is that he’s an overly tan, overly emotional cat-herder who has lost control of his flock, but in person, he comes across as approachable and down-to-earth, and you can see how he earned the trust of his colleagues and became their leader,” Castro wrote.

On a day not too long after Boehner’s political body check of Steve King for his immigration comments, the speaker was milling around the aisle walkway in the middle section of the House floor where the Democratic and Republican territories meet. Another Texas Democrat and I were standing a few feet away, and as the speaker passed us we thanked him for denouncing King’s offensive comments. He slowed his stride and then paused to turn toward us. “What an asshole,” he said. My thoughts exactly, Mr. Speaker.

This past summer, in an interview with NewsMax published in July, Rep. King made a comment about young illegal aliens that was criticized by the left-wing media, House GOP leadership, and the Obama administration.

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Seahawks Players and Staff: ‘Jesus is Better Than The Super Bowl’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Matt Slocum

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Matt Slocum

“Jesus is better than the Super Bowl,” says Seahawks Defensive Passing Game Coordinator Rocky Seto, and some Seahawks players are clearly in agreement.

Before their playoff run a group of Seattle Seahawks players sat down with the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle for a videotaped discussion called, “Who is Jesus?”

“It’s no question he gave us everything,” Seto says during the group interview.

“Literally, one plus one equals two, it’s just that simple. Jesus is better than anything we could ever hope for, even better than the Super Bowl, better than an NFL career.”

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Scientists Warn the Sun Has ‘Gone to Sleep’

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Photo Credit: NASA

Photo Credit: NASA

The Sun’s activity is at its lowest for 100 years, scientists have warned.

They say the conditions are eerily similar to those before the Maunder Minimum, a time in 1645 when a mini ice age hit, Freezing London’s River Thames.

Researcher believe the solar lull could cause major changes, and say there is a 20% chance it could lead to ‘major changes’ in temperatures.

‘Whatever measure you use, solar peaks are coming down,’ Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire told the BBC.

‘I’ve been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this.’

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Boehner Sets Immigration Debate, but Polls Show Growing Public Opposition

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Photo Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

GOP leaders are finalizing plans for an open debate on immigration to be held by legislators at their late January closed-door strategy session in Cambridge, Md.

The debate will include a panel of legislators, an outside expert, and an open mic, allowing members to comment on a one-page set of “principles” that likely will be released at the event, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

The format will put Speaker of the House John Boehner and immigration advocate Rep. Paul Ryan in the driver’s seat. But a new poll that shows increased voter hostility to an amnesty is highlighting the difficulty that they face in trying to satisfy both their November voters and their business donors.

The new Quinnipiac University poll shows that both independent and GOP voters have swung sharply against an immigration amnesty since last May.

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