‘Disgusting!’ Ranger Reveals Shutdown Orders

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Even some media outlets supportive of Barack Obama’s presidency are starting to acknowledge his manipulation of the partial government shutdown is going too far.

Some federal government funding ran out earlier this week when Senate Democrats, and Obama himself, refused to negotiate with majority Republicans in the House over a spending bill that defunds Obamacare

Tasked with selecting which functions of government should be shut down, the Obama administration created a firestorm of negative publicity this week when it ordered rangers to barricade otherwise fully accessible public areas in Washington, including war memorials.

An angry Park Service ranger indicated to Washington Times columnist Wesley Pruden that there is a political motive behind the closure of the open-air memorials.

“We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can,” he said. “It’s disgusting.”

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Republicans Press Obama to Back FEMA Funding Bill as Storm Nears

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Photo Credit: Fox News Screenshot

Photo Credit: Fox News Screenshot

The budget showdown is about to collide with a major weather event.

The House voted Friday to fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as Republicans cast the bill as an emergency measure to help Americans threatened by the approaching tropical storm.

“This is about people’s lives, people’s businesses,” Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, said.

The bill was one of several House Republicans have pushed in recent days to fund chunks of the government amid the partial government shutdown.

They’ve been pressuring Democrats, with little success, to support these mini-spending measures while the budget impasse drags on. Republicans upped that pressure on Friday, saying disaster response is critical as Tropical Storm Karen tracks toward the Gulf Coast and is poised to hit this weekend.

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Reid Apologizes for Nasty Tone on Senate Floor

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delivered a striking mea culpa on the Senate floor Friday as he opened the chamber, saying he and his colleagues have simply gotten too personal and nasty in their floor debates.

A day earlier Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, had scolded Mr. Reid for attacking Sen. Ted Cruz, another Texas Republican, by name as they debated the government shutdown. Mr. Cornyn read directly from the Senate Rules that prohibit members from impugning each other’s motives or conduct.

Mr. Reid on Friday said it was a lesson all senators, including himself, should learn.

“I’ll work harder and I hope my senators will work to their best to maintain these habits of civility and decorum,” he said.

The Nevada Democrat said the chamber has “lost the aura” of Sen. Robert C. Byrd, the long-time lawmaker from West Virginia who was seen as a keeper of the chamber’s traditions.

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Obama’s Media Lapdogs Ban ‘Dirty’ Word…

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Two of America’s largest mainstream media outlets have decided reporters should cut down on the use of the term “Obamacare,” fearing it’s gotten too negative of a connotation.

Tom Kent, the deputy managing editor and standards editor of The Associated Press who is responsible for “accuracy and balance” across the stories carried on AP’s newswire, wrote a column Tuesday telling reporters to back off using the term “Obamacare” when referring to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“‘Obamacare’ was coined by opponents of the law and is still used by them in a derogatory manner,” Kent argued. “It’s true that the White House, and even Obama himself, have used the term on occasion. But the administration hasn’t totally embraced ‘Obamacare’ and still uses the Affordable Care Act much of the time. We’re sticking with our previous approach to ‘Obamacare’: AP writers should use it in quotes, or in formulations like ‘the law, sometimes known as Obamacare.’”

At at NPR, Stuart Seidel, managing editor for standards and practices, announced in a memo ruling earlier this week that reporters should cut back on use of the term.

“‘Obamacare’ seems to be straddling somewhere between being a politically-charged term and an accepted part of the vernacular. And it seems to be on our air and in our copy a great deal,” Seidel said. “[W]ord choices do leave an impression. Please avoid overusing ‘Obamacare.’

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Obamacare Enrollee in Media Spotlight Hasn’t Completed Signup Process

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Photo Credit: POLITICO Screen grab

Photo Credit: POLITICO Screen grab

The Georgia college student who basked in national media attention after claiming he and his dad were among the first to enroll in Obamacare is changing his story.

“I never said that I had actually purchased a plan,” said Chad Henderson, 21, who was thrust into the national spotlight after announcing Tuesday on Twitter that he had “enrolled in Obamacare.” He told POLITICO Friday he had been online to shop in the federal exchange, but had never completed the final steps of getting in the health plan.

Henderson, an Organizing for Action volunteer and supporter of President Barack Obama, said he was “sorry for this confusion” and never intended to mislead the numerous media outlets, including POLITICO, that contacted him to hear his story. “I’ve received so much flak for something that has been misinterpreted,” he said.

Questions arose after Reason’s Peter Suderman contacted Henderson’s father, Bill, who owns a shaved ice company in Chattanooga, Tenn. He posted a story outlining discrepancies.

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What a ‘Shutdown’ Means: $63B Spent, $26B Taxed; $1.6B Borrowed; $1B Paid in Salaries–in Just 2 Days

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

In general terms, politicians and the press may be referring to what has been happening in Washington, D.C., over the past few days as a government “shutdown” or a “partial government shutdown,” but the actual accounting sheets of the U.S. Treasury show that massive amounts of taxed and borrowed money were flowing in and out of the government during the first two days of fiscal 2014.

According to the Daily Treasury Statement for Oct. 2, which was released yesterday at 4:00 p.m., the Treasury spent a total of $63.262 billion in the first two days of fiscal 2014. At the same time, it took in $25.681 billion in tax revenue.

The Treasury also sold $1.648 billion in new Treasury securities–which is government debt.

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Priests Threatened with Arrest if they Minister to Military During Shutdown

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Photo Credit: U.S. Navy/Johnny Bivera/Getty

Photo Credit: U.S. Navy/Johnny Bivera/Getty

In a stunning development, some military priests are facing arrest if they celebrate mass or practice their faith on military bases during the federal government shutdown.

“With the government shutdown, many [government service] and contract priests who minister to Catholics on military bases worldwide are not permitted to work – not even to volunteer,” wrote John Schlageter, the general counsel for the Archdiocese for the Military Services USA, in an op-ed this week. “During the shutdown, it is illegal for them to minister on base and they risk being arrested if they attempt to do so.”

According to its website, the Archdiocese for the Military Services “provides the Catholic Church’s full range of pastoral ministries and spiritual services to those in the United States Armed Forces.”

In his piece, Schlageter worries about this restriction as Sunday nears. “If the government shutdown continues through the weekend, there will be no Catholic priest to celebrate Mass this Sunday in the chapels at some U.S. military installations where non-active-duty priests serve as government contractors,” he wrote.

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US Scientists Boycott Nasa Conference Over China Ban

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Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Photo Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Nasa is facing an extraordinary backlash from US researchers after it emerged that the space agency has banned Chinese scientists, including those working at US institutions, from a conference on grounds of national security.

Nasa officials rejected applications from Chinese nationals who hoped to attend the meeting at the agency’s Ames research centre in California next month citing a law, passed in March, which prohibits anyone from China setting foot in a Nasa building.

The law is part of a broad and aggressive move initiated by congressman Frank Wolf, chair of the House appropriations committee, which has jurisdiction over Nasa. It aims to restrict the foreign nationals’ access to Nasa facilities, ostensibly to counter espionage.

But the ban has angered many US scientists who say Chinese students and researchers in their labs are being discriminated against. A growing number of US scientists have now decided to boycott the meeting in protest, with senior academics withdrawing individually, or pulling out their entire research groups.

The conference is being held for US and international teams who work on Nasa’s Kepler space telescope programme, which has been searching the cosmos for signs of planets beyond our solar system. The meeting is the most important event in the academic calendar for scientists who specialise in the field.

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NSA and GCHQ Target Tor Network that Protects Anonymity of Web Users

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Photo Credit: Felix Clay

Photo Credit: Felix Clay

The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself.

Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency’s current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets’ computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled ‘Tor Stinks’, states: “We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time.” It continues: “With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users,” and says the agency has had “no success de-anonymizing a user in response” to a specific request.

Another top-secret presentation calls Tor “the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity”.

Tor – which stands for The Onion Router – is an open-source public project that bounces its users’ internet traffic through several other computers, which it calls “relays” or “nodes”, to keep it anonymous and avoid online censorship tools.

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‘We’re Winning’: Ted Cruz on the Latest in Washington Amid the ‘Government Shutdown’

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) told Glenn Beck during a radio interview Thursday that conservatives are “winning” the battle in Washington over Obamacare and the “government shutdown.”

“We’re winning the debate,” the senator remarked. “That’s why they are scared and they are attacking us. The more shrill it gets, the more scared they are.”

Cruz — one of the lawmakers who led the effort to defund Obamacare, and brought the issue to the forefront during a 21-hour speech on the Senate floor last week — referenced a Shakespeare quote that the lady “doth protest too much.”

“Why are they screaming so loudly? Why are they so personal? Why are they so filled with hate and fear? It’s because the American people are mobilized, are passionate and energized,” he said. “And even worse, [they] understand that Obamacare is hurting millions of Americans, and that has the left terrified out of their minds.”

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