Goldwater Institute to Durbin: ‘Have you no decency?’

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Conservative groups lambasted Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) after the lawmaker sent a letter to hundreds of alleged donors to the American Legislative Exchange Committee (ALEC) asking if they still supported ALEC and so-called “stand your ground” laws.

Durbin sent a letter to hundreds of suspected ALEC donors asking “whether companies that have funded ALEC’s operations in the past currently support ALEC and the model ‘stand your ground’ legislation.”

“Have you no sense of decency?” the Goldwater Institute responded in a letter to Durbin echoing a famous question posed to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

“It is the same question we pose to your office today in response to your effort to intimidate us for daring to associate with the free market, limited government organization known as the American Legislative Exchange Council,” the Goldwater Institute continued.

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Obama Offers Up Surprise Benghazi Revelation During Presidential Press Conference (+video)

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President Barack Obama revealed for the first time the existence of a sealed indictment in the Benghazi terror attack, a move that would mean legal trouble for anyone other than the commander-in-chief.

During a presidential press conference on Friday, Obama was asked why justice has been slow in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack that left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

“[W]e have informed, I think, the public that there’s a sealed indictment,” the president said. “It’s sealed for a reason. But we are intent on capturing those who carried out this attack, and we’re going to stay on it until we get them.”

While it was widely reported that the first “charges” in the Benghazi investigation had been filed, Obama’s comments marked the only official confirmation on record of a sealed indictment. Administration and intelligence officials have repeatedly refused to confirm reports of a sealed indictment.

There’s a reason no one has been willing to talk. Under federal law, “no person may disclose [a sealed] indictment’s existence,” and a “knowing violation … may be punished as a contempt of court,” ABC News reports.

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‘We’re Ready for Battle’: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Arms Officers With AR-15-Style Rifles After Comrade Was Killed in Driveway (+video)

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PHOENIX (TheBlaze/AP) — A detention officer with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office died Thursday after being shot in the driveway of his Arizona home while he prepared to head to work. Now, all officers in the department are being armed with rifles by the direction of Sheriff Joe Arpaio for added protection.

Jorge Vargas, 27, was rushed to a hospital after the 4 a.m. attack and died a short time later, Phoenix police Sgt. Trent Crump said.

No one was in custody yet and there was no information on a motive.

“It’s really a whodunit,” Crump said, adding that investigators are looking into whether the shooting was connected to the victim’s job.

“Anytime we have a homicide and the suspect is unknown, we start with our victim,” Crump said. “But we can’t rule out a random act.”

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Tim Scott Denounces Harry Reid’s Remarks on Race

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Sen. Tim Scott, the U.S. Senate’s only black lawmaker, said Friday he is “disappointed” in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s “offensive” comments about race made during a call-in radio show in Nevada.

Reid, a Democrat, said Friday he “seriously” hopes that Republicans are not blocking President Obama’s initiatives because he is black.

Reid was was responding to a caller who asked him if he believes Republicans are working to make President Obama a failure, which some Republicans had signaled they would do when he was first elected . . .

Reid paused, then added, “I say this seriously. I hope it’s based on substance, and not the fact that he is African American.”

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Coal Country Begs Obama for Mercy as Hundreds of Coal Plants Ready for Closing

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Coal industry lobbyists and politicians have been urging the Obama administration to ease up on its regulatory agenda and craft carbon dioxide emission rules that would allow the coal industry to survive.

All the while, reports indicate that hundreds of coal plants are slated to be shut down in the coming years.

The unveiling of President Obama’s plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants earlier this summer stoked the fears of coal supporters who have already been hit hard by stricter environmental regulations.

However, the industry is not going down without a fight.

Coal lobbyists met with White House officials at the end of July, the Hill newspaper reports, to ask the administration to consider a plan that would allow new coal plants to be built.

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Bill to Allow Transgender Students to Choose Bathrooms Moves to California Governor’s Desk

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A bill that would let school kids use whatever bathroom or play on whichever sports team they believe matches their gender identity – and not necessarily their anatomy – is on the desk of California Gov. Jerry Brown.

Brown won’t say what he plans to do, but the measure passed easily in the two legislative chambers despite criticism from conservative groups who want biology to dictate bathroom use.

Supporters say transgendered kids feel alienated when they can’t use the bathroom of the sex with which they associate.

The law would end exclusion that “negatively impacts students’ ability to succeed in school and graduate with their class,” said Jesse Melgar, a spokesman for Equality California.

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Busted: AP Caught Covering for Obama’s Geography Fail

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After being widely criticized for editing out President Barack Obama’s geography gaffe made during his late-night TV interview with Jay Leno, the Associated Press has responded to public pressure and issued a thorough correction regarding its initial story.

“In an Aug. 7 story on President Barack Obama’s comments on the need to deepen U.S. harbors, The Associated Press wrongly inserted an interpretive phrase in parentheses into a quote by Obama,” the AP writes.

Here is the altered quote in question:

“If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf – (and in) places like Charleston, S.C., or Savannah, Ga., or Jacksonville, Fla. – if we don’t do that, these ships are going to go someplace else and we’ll lose jobs.”

Many sharp viewers were quick to point out that neither Charleston, S.C., nor Savannah, Ga., or even Jacksonville, Fla., are located along the Gulf. Clearly, adding the “(and in)” alters the statement in a fundamental way, making the statement seem like it wasn’t a gaffe at all.

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IRS Agent: Tax Agency is Still Targeting Tea Party Groups

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Photo Credit: Fibonacci BlueIn a remarkable admission that is likely to rock the Internal Revenue Service again, testimony released Thursday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp reveals that an agent involved in reviewing tax exempt applications from conservative groups told a committee investigator that the agency is still targeting Tea Party groups, three months after the IRS scandal erupted..

In closed door testimony before the House Ways & Means Committee, the unidentified IRS agent said requests for special tax status from Tea Party groups is being forced into a special “secondary screening” because the agency has yet to come up with new guidance on how to judge the tax status of the groups.

In a transcript from the committee provided to Secrets, a Ways & Means investigator asked: “If you saw — I am asking this currently, if today if a Tea Party case, a group — a case from a Tea Party group came in to your desk, you reviewed the file and there was no evidence of political activity, would you potentially approve that case? Is that something you would do?”

The agent said, “At this point I would send it to secondary screening, political advocacy.”

The committee staffer then said, “So you would treat a Tea Party group as a political advocacy case even if there was no evidence of political activity on the application. Is that right?” The agent admitted, “Based on my current manager’s direction, uh-huh.”

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Scandal Watch: Issa Expands IRS Targeting Investigation to FEC

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Photo Credit: TownHall Did officials at the Federal Election Commission collude with the IRS to unfairly target and abuse conservative groups? National Review drew attention to this potential angle last week, and now the House Oversight Committee is on the case. A “phony scandal” creeps closer to another federal agency, and CNN has the report:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa demanded Wednesday that the Federal Election Commission turn over records of more than five years of communications with the Internal Revenue Service — a move that significantly expands the California Republican’s ongoing probe of alleged federal targeting of conservative groups. In a letter to FEC Chairman Ellen Weintraub — a Democrat — Issa cited CNN reporting on Monday that raises “the prospect of inappropriate coordination between the IRS and the FEC about tax-exempt entities.” Among other things, Issa asked for records of all communications between the IRS and the FEC dating back to the start of 2008. He also requested records of any FEC discussions relating to tax-exempt applications or organizations since 2008.

[Issa’s] letter came after Don McGahn, the vice chairman of the FEC and a Republican, told CNN that he saw an e-mail from an FEC investigator to Lois Lerner, the former head of the IRS division responsible for reviewing applications from various groups for tax-exempt status. The investigator asked Lerner, herself a former FEC employee, to discuss the status of the American Future Fund, a conservative political advocacy group. McGahn noted that after Lerner was contacted, the IRS sent a questionnaire to the American Future Fund. Lerner, the figure at the center of the congressional investigation into alleged IRS targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when called to testify before Issa’s panel in May. “Dealing with Lois Lerner is probably out of the ordinary,” McGahn said, stressing that FEC commissioners had not given their staffers permission to reach out to the IRS on the matter, a step typically required for such inquiries.

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Ex-Border Patrol Agents Warn: Politicians Helping Cartels in U.S.

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Photo Credit: Reuters In an open letter to the public in late July, several retired Border Patrol agents wrote on behalf of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers to warn that Mexican drug cartels are actively operating inside the United States spending millions every year to try to build their networks here. They argued that American politicians are protecting their activities as well.

“Transnational criminal enterprises have annually invested millions of dollars to create and staff international drug and human smuggling networks inside the United States; thus it is no surprise that they continue to accelerate their efforts to get trusted representatives in place as a means to guarantee continued success,” the Border Patrol agents wrote.

“We must never lose sight of the fact that the United States is the market place for the bulk of transnational criminal businesses engaged in human trafficking and the smuggling, distribution and sale of illegal drugs. Organized crime on this scale we are speaking about cannot exist without political protection.”

Gene Wood, a retired Border Patrol agent who once ran the agency’s San Diego station; William Glenn, a retired Border Patrol southwest region Chief Intelligence Agent; and Claude Guyant, another retired Border Patrol agent who served in leadership positions throughout the agency in his time there, all signed the letter.

“Most heroin, cocaine, meth, and marijuana marketed in the United States is produced outside of our country, and then smuggled into the United States,” they wrote. “The placement of trusted foreign employees inside the United States is imperative to insure success in continuing to supply the demand, and returning the profits to the foreign organization. Members of these vicious transnational crime syndicates are already well established in more than 2,000 American cities and their numbers are increasing as networks expand and demands accelerate. These transnational criminals present a real and present danger to all Americans, and they live among us.”

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