Obama: Won’t Negotiate ‘With a Gun At My Head’

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Photo Credit: APBy Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan, Burgess Everett and Jonathan Allen.

President Barack Obama told House Democrats on Wednesday that he would negotiate with Republicans but “not with a gun at my head,” according to one lawmaker who attended a caucus-wide meeting at the White House.

As he has before, Obama said he was open to short-term agreements to open the government and raise the debt ceiling if that’s what it took to help Republicans out of what he described as a political box, the lawmaker said.

After the meeting, House Democratic leaders suggested that they would accept short-term deals on both matters.

“All we want is a short-term CR because we think the number is unacceptable,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, using shorthand for a continuing resolution that would fund the government for as little as a few weeks at current levels.

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Photo Credit: CHARLES DHARAPAK/APObama Apologizes for Shutdown – but Says it’s Other Guy’s Fault

By Anita Kumar and William Douglas.

President Barack Obama apologized to the American people Tuesday for the bitter fiscal impasse that’s shut down parts of the federal government, but he continued to blame Republicans for it.

“I know the American people are tired of it,” Obama said at a White House news conference. “I apologize that you have to go through this stuff every three months, it seems like. And Lord knows I’m tired of it.”

The president again urged Republicans in the House of Representatives to pass bills immediately to reopen the government and increase the nation’s borrowing limit, even while continuing to call them irresponsible hostage takers.

An hour later, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, scolded Obama for his remarks, saying the president must negotiate before they pass the bills.

Boehner said Congress and the White House had negotiated on government funding and the debt limit dozens of times over the years, resulting in “significant policy changes that would in fact reduce spending and put us on a saner fiscal path.”

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Obama Seen as Chicken Little on Default

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Photo Credit: IshronaA growing number of economists and politicians say President Obama is just factually wrong when he claims the United States is risking default by not raising the debt celing.

They also say Obama is mistaken in claiming that failure to raise the debt ceiling would be a disaster, or as he put it, “insane, catastrophic, chaos.”

One famous economist even goes so far as to portray the president’s dire warnings as outright dangerous and irresponsible. CNBC’s Lawrence Kudlow accused the president of threatening “to pull the whole system down for (his) own gain.”

No default

Obama has repeatedly insisted that not raising the debt ceiling would mean the United States could not pay the bills it has already accumulated – the payments Congress has already authorized – and would result in a default.

Not true, wrote Jeffrey Dorfman in Forbes. The University of Georgia economics professor explained, “Reaching the debt ceiling does not mean that the government will default on the outstanding government debt. In fact, the U.S. Constitution forbids defaulting on the debt (14th Amendment, Section 4), so the government is not allowed to default even if it wanted to.”

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Immigration Agents Rip House Lawmakers Push for Amnesty

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U.S. Immigration Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agents have expressed strong concerns over House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and other Representatives pushing for immigration legislation that would legalize the status of America’s at least 11 million illegal immigrants.

In a public statement that will be released Thursday morning but has been provided exclusively to Breitbart News ahead of its public release, USCIS Council president Kenneth Palinkas warned that Goodlatte (pictured), House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-VA), House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) seem to be following the same pathway that Senate “Gang of Eight” members did, regarding how they are working on immigration legislation.

“At every step, this administration places obstacles and roadblocks in front of our adjudication officers in their attempts to protect our nation’s security and the American taxpayer,” Palinkas said. “I documented these abuses on more than one occasion with the authors of Schumer-Rubio-Corker-Hoeven [S. 744] only to have them ignored.

“I worry the House may be following a similar path. Media reports reveal that Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Chairman Paul Ryan, Congressman Luis Gutierrez, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are working to advance proposals to open citizenship benefits to the majority of those here illegally, in combination with proposals to expand visa programs.”

Palinkas warned, too, that any group of “step-by-step” House immigration bills may be used as a tool by congressional leaders to get to a conference committee, at which point they would be combined with the Senate bill and sent to the president for his signature, and illegal immigrants would start getting amnesty. That is exactly what House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Gang of Eight members Sens. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and some Republicans have said they want to do.

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Obama’s Negative Polling Worse than Clinton’s in 1995 Shutdown

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Gallup released a poll last week showing President Barack Obama’s negative polling among Americans during the current government shutdown is substantially worse in comparison to the numbers the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had during his administration’s shutdown in 1995.

According to Gallup:

A majority of Americans, 57%, say they now view President Obama more negatively as a result of the shutdown, while 28% see him more positively. By contrast, during the December 1995 shutdown, 49% of Americans viewed Clinton more negatively and 35% more positively. Clinton’s overall approval rating would tumble to 42% by the end of the 1995-96 shutdown, but rebounded later in 1996.

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Roadside Inn Reopens After Feds Tried to Shut It Down Over Budget Impasse

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Photo Credit: PISGAH INN The owner of a privately run inn along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina is back in business five days after the federal government forced him to close as a byproduct of the D.C. slimdown.

Bruce O’Connell, owner of the Pisgah Inn, told FoxNews.com on Tuesday he was “hopeful” that his business would reopen — and by Wednesday, it had.

A posting on the company’s Facebook page said the inn was reopening at 5 p.m. Suggesting an agreement was reached with the feds, the post thanked the National Park Service “for working with us through all of this mess.” An employee also confirmed to FoxNews.com that the inn was re-opening.

O’Connell was among a growing group of business owners who argued that the federal government was needlessly choking off their ability to earn a living, and were fighting back. O’Connell had been vocal about looking into his legal options following the forced closing.

Congress’s inability to come to a compromise on bills that would have kept the government fully funded forced the inn, which is in a leased building on federal land, to shut down last Thursday.

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Jerry Brown Signs Bill Permitting Non-Physician Abortions in California

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Photo Credit: Rose Palmisano, Orange County RegisterCalifornia on Wednesday became the only state in the nation this year to increase access to abortions, as Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill allowing more medical professionals to perform abortions.

AB154 by Assemblywoman Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, would let nurse practitioners, certified nurse-midwives and physician assistants with special training perform abortion by aspiration — in which the uterus’ contents are suctioned out — which is the most common kind of first-trimester abortion. The Assembly passed the bill on a 50-25 vote in May, and the state Senate passed it on a 50-25 vote in August, with most Democrats and no Republicans voting for it.

“California is moving in a different direction than the rest of the country. So far this year we have seen 68 abortion restrictions become law, and California is the only state to make real progress to protect abortion rights,” said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-rights research group.

“This is just a common sense measure,” she said. “The state recognizes that abortion is not always available when needed and that advanced practice clinicians are well-placed to provide those services.”

But Brian Johnston, executive director of the California ProLife Council, said the bill “isn’t about helping women so much as about promoting abortion.”

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NSA Reforms Threatened by ‘Business-as-Usual Brigade’, Ron Wyden Warns

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Photo Credit: Win McNamee/GettyThe Democratic senator leading congressional efforts to rein in the National Security Agency warned on Wednesday that senior intelligence and administration officials will attempt to block any meaningful change while publicly speaking the language of reform.

Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, told a conference on the NSA and privacy at the Cato Institute in Washington that the reform campaign was at a pivotal moment, with the Senate and the House of Representatives to examine new surveillance legislation over the next few weeks.

But, Wyden said, the American public should not be fooled by what he called the “business-as-usual brigade” – made up of intelligence officials, their supporters in Congress, thinktanks and the media.

They will “try mightily to fog up the surveillance debate and convince Congress and the public that the real problem here is not overly intrusive, constitutionally flawed domestic surveillance, but sensationalistic media reporting”, Wyden said. “Their endgame is ensuring that any surveillance reforms are only skin deep.”

The Oregon senator is a part of a bipartisan Senate group who unveiled the first comprehensive surveillance reform bill two weeks ago. It would end the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records, first revealed by the Guardian in June, change the secret court that oversees the agency’s foreign intelligence programs and close the loophole that allows analysts to review Americans’ communications without a warrant.

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James Woods: ‘I Don’t Expect to Work Again’ in Hollywood

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe actor has been critical of Democrats and the president and presumes his political opinions will cost him jobs.

After repeatedly criticizing President Barack Obama, actor James Woods suggested in a tweet late Tuesday that his politics may cost him work in Hollywood.

Woods has been critical of Obama before but in the past few days seems particularly incensed at the president’s handling of the partial government shutdown. He tweeted, for example: “This President is a true abomination. To have barricaded the WW2 vets, but allow illegal aliens privilege…” The tweet linked to a USA Today article.

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Recent College Grad Claims Obamacare Has ‘Raped My Future’

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Photo Credit: NObamaNoMasA university graduate, 26 year old Ashley Dionne, posted an open letter on the Facebook page of conservative radio host, Dennis Praeger detailing the negative effects Obamacare has had on her life. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 2009 and went back to school to obtain a second degree but has not been able to get a job that offers more than 32 hours a week. Obamacare takes her monthly health costs from $75.00 to $319.00 with a $6,000.00 deductible. She feels her future has been “raped” and she qualifies as the very same “working poor” this law was supposed to help.

Whenever proponents of Obamacare are told of these anecdotal stories outlining the harm that the Affordable Care Act has inflicted on people, they respond with either a denial of it being true, that it only applies to a “small” percentage of people or that the “sacrifice” is worth it to supply health care to those who did not previously have it…

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Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) Confronts Obama About Failure to Support House Funding Bill

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Photo Credit: IntangibleArtsDel. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) had what some colleagues called “a heated exchange” and what she described as “a conversation” with President Obama during a White House meeting Wednesday afternoon regarding the District’s budget constraints as a result of the partial government shutdown.

Norton attended the meeting in the White House East Room with nearly 200 House Democrats and was one of a handful given the opportunity to ask the president a question. When she was called upon, Norton pressed Obama to support a House-passed bill that would permit the District to use its locally raised tax funds to maintain operations until Dec. 15.

Democrats, including Obama, have held fast in opposition to such piecemeal funding bills, saying Republicans must come to a deal to fund the entire government, not just favored segments.

Making her point, Norton spoke over the president and refused to yield the microphone, according to a lawmaker who attended the event. The lawmaker described Norton as “strident,” “self-absorbed” and “parochial” in her exchange with Obama.

But Obama held firm to his belief that Republicans should work to reopen the entire federal government and not pass stand-alone spending measures, said the lawmaker, who asked not to be identified in o

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