California’s Great Gun Grab: State’s Sweeping Gun Control Bills Target Firearms, Ammo — and Hunting

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Breaking new ground in the state-level battle over firearms, the Democratic-dominated California state legislature has taken gun control into uncharted territory with a flurry of new bills that target not just firearms and ammunition, but also recreational hunting.

Among the dozen gun-control bills sitting on California Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk are measures that would outlaw lead ammunition for hunting as well as common types of hunting rifles under the umbrella of an assault-weapons ban. Taken together, the measures go far beyond the efforts that have inspired a sharp backlash and political battles in states such as Connecticut and Colorado.

To put the lead bill in context, about 95 percent of all ammunition sold in California contains lead. The alternative is metal bullets, some of which can pierce police armor and are banned by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Critics say the bill would effectively end hunting as a sport in California.

“If California outlaws lead bullets, the federal government already outlaws everything else, so there’s nothing left for hunters to use,” said California Assemblyman Brian Jones, a Republican from Santee. “It basically outlaws hunting.”

Mr. Brown has yet to say whether he will sign any or all of the gun bills, but the effort has already sparked a backlash against the Democratic-sponsored bills by one of the party’s chief constituencies: labor unions. A half-dozen California labor leaders have formed a coalition urging the governor to veto Assembly Bill 711, the lead-ammunition ban, citing the loss of manufacturing and supply-chain jobs as well as recreational opportunities.

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Oregon State Geologist Warns Residents that Massive Earthquake is Overdue

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Photo Credit: DBerry2006

Photo Credit: DBerry2006

Sitting on a major fault line, Oregon is “like an eight-and-a-half-month pregnancy, due any time now” for a major earthquake, a geologist with the Oregon Office of Emergency Management told an overflow crowd Friday in Medford…

[The geologist] said there’s a 37 percent chance the Big One will happen in the next 50 years…

A big quake will cause liquefaction, in which the ground, if saturated with water, will “turn to pudding,” causing hardware, such as sewer systems, septic lines and gas tanks, to rise up out of the earth…

Electrical power would be down from one to three months until transformers and the electrical grid get going again, she says…

Partial quakes happen on an average of every 240 years. The last one was in 1700, so it’s been 213 years. Quakes of the entire length of the zone come every 500 to 600 years and governments should expect those to be 9.0 or more on the Richter scale — tremendously devastating.

Read more from this story HERE.

Former Special Forces Commander: Now It’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell for Christians (+audio)

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Lt_Gen_William_G_BoykinMany commanders in the Department of Defense are violating the religious rights of service members, forcing them to be quiet about their moral opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage, for instance, and, in effect, imposing a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on Christians, said Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William “Jerry” Boykin, the former commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command.

In an interview, CNSNews.com asked Gen. Boykin, now the executive vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC), “Given the violation of religious liberties that have been going on, do you think that, ironically, Christians are being forced into the closet? Being forced to basically Don’t Talk, Don’t Tell, if they’re a Christian?” (at 7:43 into audio clip)

Boykin said, “Yes, it’s a real turnabout where you, at one time, had to come out of the closet to admit you’re homosexual, and now you have to come out of the closet to admit that you’re a Christian.”

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Paul: We Probably Can’t Get Rid of ‘Obamacare’

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Rand Paul ThinkingRepublican Sen. Rand Paul says President Barack Obama’s health care law probably can’t be defeated or gotten rid of. And he’s suggesting there are few ways and little time for him and other congressional Republicans to stop it.

Speaking to reporters Saturday at a gathering of Michigan Republicans, the presidential prospect said Republicans in Congress could use votes on measures in the House and in the Senate to come up with compromise legislation that could make the law more palatable. Some provisions, Paul said, include removing caps on health savings account contributions or deductibles for health policies.

But the Kentucky Republican said time for that is running out before Oct. 1, the start of the 2014 fiscal year and the date that state insurance exchanges begin.

Read more from this story HERE.

Doctors: Anti-Psychotic Meds Overused for Dementia, Kids

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Photo Credit: Leslie Smith Jr.

Photo Credit: Leslie Smith Jr.

Anti-psychotic medications should not be the first treatments doctors or patients think of when dealing with dementia in an elderly person, behavior problems in a child or insomnia in an adult, a leading group of psychiatrists says in a new statement.

The American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) new list of questionable uses of anti-psychotic medications is part of a broader campaign to educate patients and doctors about unneeded and possibly harmful medical treatments and tests. The campaign is called Choosing Wisely, and so far more than 50 medical groups have chimed in with lists of common practices that patients and doctors should question — everything from ordering too-frequent colonoscopies to using antibiotics for colds.

The latest list focuses on an area that has been especially controversial: the potential misuse of anti-psychotic medications. These medications include older drugs traditionally used for conditions such as schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. But newer types, called atypical anti-psychotics, have been more widely used for patients ranging from unruly nursing home residents to children with aggressive behaviors or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. That’s despite growing concerns about misuse and side effects.

The medications in question include brands such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel and Abilify.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lawmaker to Obama: ‘You’re Not a Dictator’ (+audio)

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Congressional Republicans should absolutely fight to defund Obamacare in a fight over funding the federal government and President Obama has no right to demand a debt ceiling extension without Republicans demanding spending restraint in return, according to Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C.

Current government funding expires at the end of September. The GOP is divided over whether to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government at current spending rates across the board or to fund everything at current rates while completely defunding Obamacare. Many conservative members of the House and Senate are pushing to cut off funds, while leadership has been very cool to the idea.

Now, with Obama weakened by stumbles over Syria, at least 43 Republican lawmakers claim it’s time to wage all-out war on the president’s signature legislation.

Mulvaney said starving Obamacare makes perfect sense, and there are enough members committed to this course of action to force the issue.

“I don’t think the support exists within the Republican Party now to not fight. We have to fight,” Mulvaney said. “It’s not just folks you might think of ordinarily, the extreme right wing of the party. It’s a lot of the guys more in the center who are hearing from their districts back home that folks don’t want to fund Obamacare. I can’t imagine us not dealing with Obamacare in some fashion as part of this discussion.”

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Major US Security Company Warns Customers Not To Use NSA Encryption Formula

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Photo Credit: EPA

Photo Credit: EPA

A major American computer security company has told thousands of customers to stop using an encryption system that relies on a mathematical formula developed by the National Security Agency (NSA).

RSA, the security arm of the storage company EMC, sent an email to customers telling them that the default random number generator in a toolkit for developers used a weak formula, and they should switch to one of the other formulas in the product.

The abrupt warning is the latest fallout from the huge intelligence disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden about the extent of surveillance and the debasement of encryption by the NSA.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Snowden’s cache of documents from his time working for an NSA contractor showed that the agency used its public participation in the process for setting voluntary cryptography standards, run by the government’s National Institute of Standards (NIST) and Technology, to push for a formula it knew it could break. Soon after that revelation, the NIST began advising against the use of one of its cryptographic standards and, having accepted the NSA proposal in 2006 as one of four systems acceptable for government use, said it would reconsider that inclusion in the wake of questions about its security.

RSA’s warning underscores how the slow-moving standards process and industry practices could leave many users exposed to hacking by the NSA or others who could exploit the same flaw for years to come.

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Source Reveals What Happened to Body of Missing DA in Penn State Sex Scandal Case

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Photo Credit: Associated Press

Photo Credit: Associated Press

One of the most shocking things about the Penn State sex abuse scandal when it came to light in 2011, was the fact that the local District Attorney who knew about the case back in the 1990s disappeared.

The mother of one of the children abused by football coach Jerry Sandusky, reported the crime to DA Ray Gricar in 1998 but he decided not to bring up charges.

Gricar, 59, was never able to explain why he let Sandusky slip away, since Gricar himself vanished in 2005.

After the sex scandal revelation, some hypothesized that Gricar’s disappearance was somehow tied to Penn State.

But now a former person of interest in his disappearance has told the Altoona Mirror that it was a former Hell’s Angel that carried out the killing and had nothing to do with Penn State.

Read more from this story HERE.

17,679 Things the Federal Government Has Done Since Sequestration

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Opponents of the sequester say budget cuts are ruining America and that austerity kills. Reason offers a look at what the feds have been up to since the cuts kicked in.

Over at Politico, they’re quasi-blaming the Navy Yard shooting on cuts.

The president of MIT says sequestration is “choking the innovation
economy.”

The Center for American Progress frets that “austerity kills.”

The Atlantic says cuts are “undermining what makes America great.”

The FBI is threatening a 10-day shutdown.

And President Barack Obama said in a speech this week that the sequester cuts “have cost jobs, harmed growth, are hurting our military readiness. And top independent economists say this has been a big drag on our recovery this year. Our economy is not growing as fast as it should and we’re not creating as many jobs as we should, because the sequester is in place. That’s not my opinion. That’s the opinion of independent economists.”

See what the feds have been up to since sequestration and read more from this story HERE.

Democrat Official to Ted Cruz Aide: I hope your kids ‘die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases’

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picture - Democrat to Ted Cruz AideWhen a speechwriter for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, took to Twitter to tout her boss’ recent work, a California Democrat Party official blasted back, wishing death and “debilitating diseases” upon her children.

Amanda Carpenter, a speechwriter and senior communications adviser to Cruz, tweeted out Friday morning, “GOP beat gun control, changed Obama’s mind on Syria, is holding the line on amnesty. We can defund Obamacare, too!”

But Allan Brauer, who works as the communications chair for the Democratic Party of Sacramento County in California, fired back a shocking reply, “@amandacarpenter May your children all die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases…”

And after catching heat online over his comments toward Carpenter and her children, Brauer initially defended himself with equally personal attacks.

He posted a status update on Twitter about the criticism he’d received, stating, “Busy blocking the tapeworms that have slithered out of hellspawn @amandacarptenter’s a–hole. How’s your day?”…

Eventually, even Brauer apologized, tweeting, “I am truly sorry for my tweet. I was very upset and lashed out. Your kids are not fair game either. My apologies.” Carpenter accepted the apology.

Read more from this story HERE.