Justice Department to Challenge North Carolina Voter ID Law

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Justice Department will file suit against North Carolina on Monday, charging that the Tar Heel State’s new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls violates the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against African Americans, according to a person familiar with the planned litigation.

Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the lawsuit at 11 a.m. Monday at Justice Department headquarters, flanked by the three U.S. Attorneys from North Carolina.

The suit, set to be filed in Greensboro, N.C., will ask that the state be barred from enforcing the new voter ID law, the source said. However, the case will also go further, demanding that the entire state of North Carolina be placed under a requirement to have all changes to voting laws, procedures and polling places “precleared” by either the Justice Department or a federal court, the source added.

Until this year, 40 North Carolina counties were under such a requirement. However, in June, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the formula Congress used to subject parts or all of 15 states to preclearance in recent decades.

The justices’ 5-4 ruling outraged civil rights advocates, but did not disturb a rarely-used “bail in” provision in the law that allows judges to put states or localities under the preclearance requirement. Civil rights groups and the Justice Department have since seized on that provision to try to recreate part of the regime that existed prior to the Supreme Court decision.

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Obama, Holder to Place Good Guys with Guns in Schools

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obama-hugs-kids-wh-photoCNN reports that President Obama is “putting millions of dollars into funding armed police officers in schools around the country, an idea not far removed from a National Rifle Association proposal.”

According to CNN, on September 27 the DOJ announced $45 million in funding meant to “create 356 new school resource officer positions.”

The $45 million will be distributed in the form of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants. One of the earliest grants will be to Newtown, Connecticut, to create two new officers for Newtown schools.

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In U.S., Political Trust in “American People” at New Low

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pictures - Gallup trust in people lowPRINCETON, NJ — Americans’ trust in “the American people” to make judgments about political issues facing the country has declined each year since 2009 and, at 61%, is down nearly 20 percentage points from its recent peak in 2005. Still, that exceeds the 46% of Americans who trust the “men and women … who either hold or are running for public office,” which is one point above the historical low from 2011.

The results are based on Gallup’s annual Governance survey, conducted Sept. 5-8. The same poll found that Americans’ trust in the federal government to handle domestic and international problems, their trust in the news media, and their trust in the three branches of the federal government, and in state and local governments are all at or near historical lows.

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FBI’s Rogue L.A. Field Office has Muslim Mole

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The FBI field office that defied clear and direct orders from Washington headquarters to “cease contact” with a terrorist front group at the same time allowed a Muslim agent investigated for compromising a major terrorism case to remain on the squad, WND has learned.

After the FBI banned the Council on American-Islamic Relations from its counterterror outreach programs in response to evidence the group fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood and its Palestinian terrorist branch Hamas, the FBI’s Los Angeles field office liaisoned with CAIR in violation of official policy, according to a just-released report by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

Several directives sent from FBI headquarters required all of the bureau’s field offices to “cease contact with CAIR as an organization,” yet the L.A. office refused to comply with the command and even sent out an internal email advising personnel to ignore it.

GOP Rep. Frank Wolf, whose House judiciary subcommittee oversees the FBI’s budget, wants officials there fired.

“This is insubordinate behavior,” Wolf wrote the FBI director. “The findings in this report suggest the FBI may have a systemic problem.”

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Ex-Soldier ‘Rambo’ Charged in Plot to Kill Federal Agent

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Photo Credit: Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters

Photo Credit: Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters

A former US solder nicknamed Rambo pleaded not guilty Saturday to charges he plotted with phony Colombian drug traffickers to kill a federal agent for $800,000.

Joseph Hunter, stocky and wearing a wrinkled gray prison jumpsuit, was held after the brief appearance in federal court in Manhattan. His lawyer declined to comment.

An indictment unsealed Friday described the 48-year-old Hunter as a contract killer and leader of a trio of former soldiers who were trained snipers. Hunter, a resident of Thailand, was flown Friday evening to New York after he was expelled from Thailand, US Attorney Preet Bharara said.

Hunter was charged with conspiracy, attempting to import cocaine and plotting to kill a law enforcement agent. When asked by US Magistrate Judge Frank Haas about his plea, Hunter responded: “Not guilty, sir.”

According to the indictment, Hunter served in the US Army from 1983 to 2004 before becoming a contract killer who successfully arranged several slayings outside the United States. Authorities didn’t give details.

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Sheriff Gunned Down in his Cruiser as He Ate Lunch Raped his Killer Says Suspect’s Family

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A sheriff who was murdered earlier this year was allegedly shot dead by a male gunman that he raped as a teenager.

Eugene Crum, 59, was shot dead in his police cruiser as he sat eating lunch in April, three months after taking up his post in Mingo County, Virginia.

Tennis Maynard, 37, is suspected of killing the sheriff. However his family have claimed that the shooting was motivated by the fact that Maynard was raped by Crum when he was a teenager.

Court documents also revealed that another rape allegation was brought against the late sheriff.

It is alleged that Crum raped a 19-year-old woman in 2002 in the back of a police cruiser while two officers sat in the front, turning up the radio to cover up the attack.

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Insanity: Seventh-Grader Suspended Three Days for Gun Keychain the Size of a Quarter

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Photo Credit: YouTube screenshot

Photo Credit: YouTube screenshot

Yet another student has landed in trouble for having something that represents a gun, but isn’t actually anything like a real gun.

This time, the student is 12-year-old Joseph Lyssikatos, a student in advanced math who had perfect attendance last year. The seventh-grader made the mistake of bringing a ridiculously small, silver keychain shaped like a gun to Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School in Coventry, R.I, reports local NBC affiliate WJAR.

The two-inch keychain fell out of Lyssikatos’s backpack while he was at school.

After another kid picked it up and displayed it to other students, a teacher intervened and impounded the keychain.

Apparently fearing that the roughly quarter-sized hunk of cheap metal was somehow a danger to life and limb, school officials sprang into action. They suspended Lyssikatos for three days. He has also been banned from an upcoming class field trip.

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House Votes to Fund Govt, Delay Obamacare for Year – Reid Defiant

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

The House of Representatives approved a controversial Republican measure early Sunday that avoids a looming US government shutdown but delays President Barack Obama’s health care law for one year.

The bill assures a stalemate with the Senate, whose Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would not pass legislation that defunded or delayed so-called “Obamacare,” and brings the federal government dramatically closer to its first shutdown in 17 years.

The White House also insisted the president would veto the bill if it reaches his desk.

A divided House held hours of raucous debate during a rare Saturday session, when lawmakers often pointed blame at one another for a likely shutdown.

The measure, which now heads back to the Senate, is comprised of two amendments: a one-year delay of Obamacare’s implementation, notably the “individual mandate” requiring US residents to have health insurance by January 1 or pay a fine; and repeal of a medical device tax.

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The NSA Has Been Creating Maps of American Citizens’ Social Networks Similar to How the FBI Links Organized Crime Families Together

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Photo Credit: Daily Mail

Photo Credit: Daily Mail

The NSA has been graphing American’s social networks and plotting them as they do organized crime since at least 2010, according to the latest published Edward Snowden leak.

The highly secretive intelligence agency has been mapping out American citizens’ social connections – identifying associates, determining locations, and logging who they talk to – by taking advantage of loosened rules previously meant to restrict surveillance actions.

As far back as November, 2010, the agency authorized spies to conduct ‘large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness,’ the New York Times revealed Saturday.

The agency augmented that information with bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls, property records and tax data, the Times further divulged.

There does not appear to be any restriction on the types of data culled, or who it is gather on, the Times noted.

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Nancy Pelosi Absent for CR Vote

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Days ahead of a government shutdown, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary outside Washington, D.C.

“Speaker Boehner has told me he has the votes for his proposals on his side of the aisle and that he will not need our help,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote in a letter to colleagues. “I have been in contact with our leadership team and Members, and we appreciate the united front from Members as we proceed.”

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