Snowden Asks Washington to Stop Treating Him Like a Traitor: “Speaking the Truth is Not a Crime”

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Photo Credit: The Guardian Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive American security contractor granted temporary asylum by Russia, has appealed to Washington to stop treating him like a traitor for revealing that the United States has been eavesdropping on its allies, a German politician who met with Mr. Snowden said on Friday.

Mr. Snowden made his appeal in a letter that was carried to Berlin by Hans-Christian Ströbele, a veteran member of the Green Party in the German Parliament. Mr. Ströbele said he and two journalists for German news outlets met with Mr. Snowden and a person described as his assistant — probably his British aide, Sarah Harrison — at an undisclosed location in or near Moscow on Thursday for almost three hours.

Mr. Ströbele had gone to Moscow to explore whether Mr. Snowden could or would testify before a planned parliamentary inquiry into the eavesdropping. Any arrangements for Mr. Snowden to testify would require significant legal maneuvering, as it seemed unlikely that he would travel to Germany for fear of extradition to the United States.

In his letter, Mr. Snowden, 30, also appealed for clemency. He said his disclosures about American intelligence activity at home and abroad, which he called “systematic violations of law by my government that created a moral duty to act,” have had positive effects.

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Food Stamp Funding Drops $5 Billion

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Photo Credit: Jay Pickthorn/The Argus Leader/APMillions of Americans will be expected to make do with less as of Friday, as $5 billion in cuts to the US food stamp program takes effect. The cuts to the program, formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), will pinch almost 48 million people and could be followed by an even bigger slash.

The cuts come as a four-year increase in funding to the food stamp program reaches its expiration date. Government support for the program had been increased in 2009, as part of the broad stimulus package designed to help strapped Americans piece back together what had been lost during the recession.

The food stamp cuts, scheduled to take effect on Nov. 1, are distinct from possible additional slashes to the program included in the farm bill – broad legislation covering America’s agriculture and nutrition policies, including the food stamp program. The House version of the bill calls for a reduction in spending on food stamps by $40 billion over the next decade. The Senate is proposing less-significant cuts of about $4 billion.

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US Auto Sales Extend Gains Despite Government Shutdown

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Photo Credit: AFP/Justin Sullivan The US auto industry extended its steady gains in October despite economic uncertainty caused by a government shutdown.

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler posted double digit rises from October 2012 sales while Japanese rival Toyota’s sales grew more modestly.

Automotive website Edmunds.com forecasts that total monthly industry sales will rise 12.7 percent over a year ago and reach an adjusted, annualized pace of 15.5 million vehicles once all automakers have reported.

Weekly data suggested that consumers “started to get jittery” towards the end of the 16-day political showdown, which saw hundreds of thousands of federal employees laid off with no certainty of being paid, said Edmunds analyst Jessica Caldwell.

But sales soon recovered when the government got back to work on October 17 and back pay was assured.

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Savage Warns Broken Obamacare Website Not the Real Story

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Photo Credit: WND Michael Savage

Dr. Savage warned listeners not to be distracted by the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare website.

“I have a little news for you,” he explained. “Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Axelrod and the others actually wanted the website and the system to fail. Why? So that the people who want free health care will demand a government-run, single-payer system” (Free audio).

Savage also reported on atheist-activist “Mikey” Weinstein’s latest coup: forcing the Air Force Academy to drop the words “So help me God” from its honor oath.

“This man is a public enemy and a deviant of the lowest order,” Savage declared. “Why does the American military now turn to a twisted sister like Mikey Weinstein and ask this piece of garbage whether or not they can say ‘God’ in a military chapel?

“This would stop if we had a truly God-fearing president. [Obama] doesn’t even fake it” (Free audio).

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Policing Policies Increasingly Put the Public at Risk

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Photo Credit: katesheetsA news photograph from Friday taken in the normally placid suburban community of Roseville, east of Sacramento, was shocking. A California Highway Patrol officer was pointing a rifle at a motorist stopped at a checkpoint, as police searched for an armed parolee who had injured some of their colleagues. It seemed reminiscent of an occupying army.

News stories focused on the suspect and the details of the manhunt, but the police approach – evacuating houses, using military-style vehicles and helicopters – raises a question rarely asked about policing policies today: Do they unnecessarily endanger the public’s safety?

When agencies combed Southern California for former Los Angeles Police Department officer Christopher Dorner in February, some officers fired upon innocent bystanders who didn’t come close to the right profile. Dorner, a large black man, was driving a gray Nissan truck, but an officer shot two Latina women driving a blue Toyota truck. An officer also fired on another bystander 20 minutes later.

Police behaved similarly as they sought a Boston Marathon bomber. As Conor Friedersdorf asked recently in the Atlantic, “Does anyone else find it disturbing that Boston area police, confronted with an unarmed suspect in a backyard boat, fired so many bullets so wildly that multiple adjacent houses were strafed … ?”

This approach is not uncommon even in day-to-day policing. On October 22, in the middle of the afternoon, 13-year-old Andy Lopez Cruz was walking down the street in Santa Rosa with a plastic pellet rifle. Officers hid behind the door of their patrol car and called to him. As the boy turned, they shot him to death.

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Limbaugh: Nixon Resigned Over a Lie that Was Much Less Damaging in Scope (+video)

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Photo Credit: WND On Friday’s program, radio host Rush Limbaugh put the Obamacare rollout fiasco into historical perspective, declaring that in many ways, the current scandal is worse than Watergate.

“Folks,” Limbaugh told his audience, “Richard Nixon resigned over a lie that was much less damaging in scope than this one.”

“The bottom line,” he said, “is that Obama, the regime, knew that 93 million Americans would be unable to keep their health care plans under Obamacare. … I mean, this is an abject, purposeful lie to the American people for the express purpose of passing legislation.”

The other aim of Obamacare, Limbaugh insisted, was to undermine the private insurance business itself.

He pointed to an “obscure report buried in a June 2010 edition of the Federal Register,” in which White House officials matter-of-factly predicted that Obamacare would create “massive disruption of the private insurance market because that’s what was intended.”

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Clinton: Obama Luckier than a Dog With Two…

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Photo Credit: Reuters/APBill Clinton trotted out a crude anatomical joke about President Obama, saying “he’s luckier than a dog with two d—-” to describe his comeback in last year’s presidential election, according to a new book.

Clinton made the dirty canine quip “again and again” to friends, according to “Double Down,” the latest campaign book by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.

The book, which like its predecessor “Game Change” about the 2008 election, appears to have heavy sourcing from within the Clinton camp, describes lingering tensions between Obama and Clinton.

After a 2011 golf game with Bill Clinton, according to the book, Obama told an aide: “I like him … in doses.”

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Silent Holidays – NJ School District Bans All Religious Christmas Music

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Photo Credit: Reuters The angels will not be allowed to hark their herald nor will the little Lord Jesus sleep on the hay after a New Jersey school district announced a ban on all religious Christmas music.

Constance Bauer, the superintendent of the Bordentown Regional School District, posted a message online stating someone had been questioning recent musical selections for the elementary school Christmas concerts.

Pardon me, the school district calls them “winter” concerts.

My guess is that a perpetually offended left-winger became unglued when they heard that little boys and girls might be pa rum pum pum pum.

“Religious music should not be part of the elementary program(s),” Supt. Scrooge wrote in her anti-Christmas screed.

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Sheriff Nick Finch Cleared of All Charges

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By Richard Mack.

Liberty in Liberty County!

On October 31, 2013, Sheriff Nick Finch won his case at trial in Liberty County, Florida. The charges were complete nonsense to begin with, and the laughter in the courtroom was difficult to suppress as the prosecution presented its flimsy, farcical case.

Sheriff Finch was charged and arrested and booked into his own jail last June. Sheriff Finch had done something nearly unheard of, yet noble and courageous. He nullified the arrest of a law abiding citizen who had the audacity of carrying a gun in his pocket. Sheriff Finch said “not on my watch.” So the State moved in, arrested the Sheriff and re-arrested the citizen, Mr. Parish.

The end result was Finch was removed from office and went to trial. Mr. Parish once again had the charges dropped, but he was ordered to perform 50 hours of community service and pay $200.

Let’s be very clear here, neither man was guilty of anything! There were no victims and no evidence that a crime had ever occurred…

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: newsherald.comTrial begins for suspended Liberty County sheriff

By Gary Fineout.

A suspended Panhandle sheriff is headed to trial this week on misconduct charges in a case that has divided a small rural county and sparked yet another debate over Florida gun laws.

Nick Finch, the Liberty County sheriff, was arrested in June on felony charges of official misconduct and falsifying public records. Finch, who was removed from office by Gov. Rick Scott, is accused of personally intervening after one of his deputies arrested a resident accused of carrying a pistol without a concealed weapons permit.

Finch, who has pleaded not guilty, has repeatedly said that he let the man go because he is a believer in gun rights. He has drawn support from conservative media outlets and gun rights activists.

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Justice and State Departments Blocking Access to Survivors/Transcripts of Benghazi Attack

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Photo Credit: Fox News The Justice and State departments are now citing a year-old FBI investigation and a future criminal prosecution to block access to survivors of last year’s Benghazi terror attack.

In an Oct. 28 letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, Julia Frifield, refers to “significant risks” and “serious concerns about having the survivors of the attack submit to additional interviews.”

Graham has been asking since last year for the FBI’s transcripts of interviews with State Department and CIA survivors who were evacuated to Germany after the Sep.11 attack on the U.S. consulate.

He and other Republicans believe the transcripts will show the survivors told the FBI it was a terrorist attack and made no mention of a video or anti-U.S. demonstration at the consulate.

This intelligence was likely available to the president, his national security team and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who five days after the assault blamed it on an anti-U.S. demonstration and inflammatory video.

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