‘Everyone Is a Pedestrian’: Gov’t Spending $2M to Increase Communities’ ‘Walkability’

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Photo Credit: NHTSAConcerned about a rise in pedestrian fatalities at a time when walking is strongly encouraged (“Let’s Move!”), the Obama administration is spending $2 million to give local communities the “resources and the tools they need” to prevent pedestrian deaths.

The effort — dubbed “Everyone Is a Pedestrian” — goes beyond public awareness campaigns that tell you to look both ways before crossing the street.

The new safety grants “will allow communities to take actions to make their city safer and better places to walk,” said David Strickland, director of the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA), who spoke at a news conference on Monday.

Some of the “resources to increase walkability” mentioned at Monday’s news conference include “better infrastructure for pedestrians,” such as highway medians, pavement markings and new traffic signals.

And NHTSA’s “Everyone Is a Pedestrian” website offers a “Walkability Checklist,” which reads like a “how-to” guide for budding community activists.

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Secret Service: Contact Us to ‘Report a Tweet’

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By Susan Jones

On a day when terror threats continued to dominate the U.S. headlines, the Secret Service — a division of the Homeland Security Department since 2003 — tweeted the following message:

“Contact your nearest field office with time-sensitive or critical info or to report a tweet,” said one message.

That tweet from the Secret Service links to telephone numbers for every Secret Service office in the U.S. or its territories (there are 117 of them) and all 20 Secret Service offices overseas.

In a separate tweet on Tuesday morning, the Secret Service asked, “Have you seen any of our Most Wanted?” This tweet links to a list of suspects, most wanted for theft or fraud. None are listed as suspected terrorists.

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Photo Credit: APSecret Service Will Use ‘Social Media Monitoring’ Software for Intelligence

By Elizabeth Harrington

The Secret Service is looking to monitor social media for intelligence purposes, according to a solicitation posted by the Department of Homeland Security.

“This solicitation is primarily for social media monitoring/open source portal software licenses,” the document stated.

“The Government is seeking licenses for software solutions involving, but not limited to, real-time open source intelligence monitoring.”

Details of the solicitation have not been revealed as the full Statement of Work (SOW) is only being made available to contractors that respond to the notice.

Read more from this story HERE.

Judicial Watch Obtains Documents Revealing AG Holder Travel Expenses Exceeded $4 Million in Four Years

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Photo Credit: USDAgovJudicial Watch announced today that it has obtained documents from the Department of Justice (DOJ) revealing that between March 27, 2009, and August 24, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder accrued $4,263,704.01 in total travel expenses. This included $697,525.20 in taxpayer-funded personal travel expenses. The documents were released to Judicial Watch in June in response to an August 2012 Freedom of Information Act request.

Altogether, Holder took 213 out-of-Washington trips during the 42 months for which Judicial Watch obtained records. His 31 personal trips during the time period included two trips to Martha’s Vineyard with a flight-only price tag of $95,184.50, as well as eight trips to Farmingdale, New York, at a flight cost of $118,553.71. On September 9, 2010, Holder took a one-day personal jaunt to Atlantic City that cost the taxpayers $7,408 in flight expenses alone.

Holder’s first taxpayer-funded trip noted in the documents was to an April 2009 “US/Mexico Arms Trafficking Strategy Meeting” (government cost “unavailable”) concerning gun-running between the US and Mexico, an issue in which the attorney general subsequently said he had no involvement. Among other controversial Holder travel expenditures:

In April, 2011, Holder charged taxpayers $15,452.50 for a speaking engagement at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in New York City.

In June, 2012, Holder charged $38,108.18 in “business and personal” expenses to address LULAC, a liberal group that strongly supports amnesty for illegal aliens, in Orlando and New Orleans.

In July, 2012, Holder charged an additional $38,108.18, this time fully billed to the taxpayers, to speak before La Raza, another controversial pro-amnesty group, in Las Vegas.

Also in July, 2012, Holder flew on a Department of Defense plane, at unknown cost, to speak before the NAACP convention in Houston.

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Gohmert: Obama Administration Acting Like ‘a Bunch of Cowards’ for Closing 19 U.S. Embassies in Response to Terror Threat

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThe Obama administration has been accused of behaving ‘like a bunch of cowards’ after 19 embassies were closed in the wake of the al-Qaeda terror alert.

Louie Gohmert, a Republican congressman from Texas, recalled the September 11, 2012 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Clinton famously suggested in a Senate hearing that it was largely irrelevant whether the attack was the result of a terrorist plot or – as the administration initially claimed – an outgrowth of a spontaneous anti-U.S. protest.

‘It brings us back to the question that Hillary Clinton asked: “What difference does it make at this point?”‘ Gohmert said.

‘The difference it makes,’ he said, ‘is that if you will bother to find out exactly what went wrong, why you didn’t have security where you needed it, where you need security to shore up, what you can do to make sure that doesn’t happen again, you don’t have to close your embassies like a bunch of cowards that go running away.’

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Spitzer Rival, Former Madam, Charged with Drug Dealing

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesFrom the no-this-race-could-not-get-weirder department: The former madam running for New York city comptroller against former call girl client Eliot Spitzer has been charged by federal authorities with selling prescription drugs.

Kristin Davis, 38, who in 2008 spent three months in jail for promoting prostitution, was arrested Monday and charged by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara with selling hundreds of prescription painkillers and sedatives. According to the federal complaint, Davis sold drugs on four occasions since January to a drug dealer turned informant who was wearing a wire.

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Time Magazine Promotes A Childless Lifestyle As The Path To The Good Life For U.S. Couples

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Photo Credit: End of the American DreamThere is a relentless assault on the family in America today unlike anything that we have ever seen before. For decades, the entertainment industry and the mainstream media have been portraying marriage as the time “when your fun is over” and they have been encouraging young adults to put off marriage for as long as possible. So now the marriage rate in the United States is at a record low and the average age for a first marriage is at a record high. Meanwhile, the entertainment industry and the mainstream media have been heavily promoting the philosophy that having fewer children is better, and they have been teaching our young people that abortion is a really good option if an unwanted pregnancy comes along. The whole idea is that children are going to keep you from enjoying the kind of life that you really deserve to have.

This philosophy is taken even further in a new Time Magazine article. The article is entitled “The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children“, and it openly promotes a “childless lifestyle” as the path to the good life for young U.S. couples. The following is how the article begins…

One evening when she was 14 years old, Laura Scott was washing dishes in the kitchen with her mother when she decided she didn’t want to have a child. At 26, Scott got married and waited for her mind to change. “It never happened,” she says. “And I realized I was going to be fine.” Now 50, Scott is more than fine: she’s fulfilled. And she’s not alone. The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest in recorded American history. From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which there’s data, the fertility rate declined 9%. A 2010 Pew Research report showed that childlessness has risen across all racial and ethnic groups, adding up to about 1 in 5 American women who end their childbearing years maternity-free, compared with 1 in 10 in the 1970s.

The article goes on to point out that the average cost of raising a child born in 2011 to adulthood will be approximately $234,900, and it suggests that women should think long and hard before making such a commitment.

Well, what is a woman to do if she gets pregnant and she decides that raising that child will ruin her life?

According to the entertainment industry and the mainstream media, abortion is a very simple answer to that problem.

Read more from this story HERE.

Southern Poverty Law Center: ‘Our Hate Map Doesn’t Cause Anybody to Attack’ (+audio)

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Photo Credit: APCo-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center Morris Dees said his group’s “Hate Map” “doesn’t cause anybody to attack,” despite Floyd Lee Corkins’ admission that he targeted the Family Research Council (FRC) after going to the center’s website.

As Corkins told the FBI after his arrest, he learned of the FRC online, “It was a, uh, Southern Poverty Law, lists, anti-gay groups. I found them online. I did a little bit of research, went to the website, stuff like that.”

Corkins attempted a mass shooting on Aug. 15, 2012, opening fire at the Family Research Council and wounding Security Guard Leo Johnson.

Armed with more than 95 rounds of ammunition and 15 Chick-fil-a sandwiches, Corkins told the FBI that he chose the FRC as his first target after looking at a list of “anti-gay” groups on the SPLC’s website.

The Family Research Council is still listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map” as “anti-gay.”

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Obamacare Months Behind in Testing IT Data Security

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Photo Credit: TownhallThe federal government is months behind in testing data security for the main pillar of Obamacare: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1.

The missed deadlines have pushed the government’s decision on whether information technology security is up to snuff to exactly one day before that crucial date, the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general said in a report.

As a result, experts say, the exchanges might open with security flaws or, possibly but less likely, be delayed.

“They’ve removed their margin for error,” said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. “There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint.”

The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft, in which a hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance.

Read more from this story HERE.

Marathon Bombing Suspects Met Conspiracy Theorist

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Photo Credit: Getty Images Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev befriended a brain-damaged anti-U.S. government conspiracy theorist through their mother’s health care aide job years before the deadly attack, a lawyer said Tuesday.

Attorney Jason Rosenberg, who represents the family of Donald Larking, said Larking shared publications with the brothers, especially Tamerlan, and discussed theories including that the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and the Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting didn’t happen or the U.S. government was behind them.

The attorney said the Tsarnaev family had a relationship with the Larkings that started years ago when the brothers’ mother began working as a personal care assistant for Larking’s wife, a quadriplegic since birth.

Rosenberg said Larking, who lives in West Newton, just west of Boston, was shot in the head in 1974 in an attempted robbery while working in a convenience store. He said Larking suffered brain damage that led to problems with his decision-making and judgment.

Authorities say the Tsarnaev brothers orchestrated the April 15 marathon bombing, in which two pressure cookers loaded with shrapnel exploded near the race’s finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty last month to charges including using a weapon of mass destruction to kill. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a shootout with police a few days after the bombing.

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Senator Lee Says Young Americans Think They Are ‘More Likely to See Elvis Alive in This Lifetime Than Get a Dime From Social Security’

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(CNSNews.com) — While speaking about Social Security, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked the audience at the Young Americans for Liberty Conference on July 31, “Most of you probably believe you are more likely to see Elvis alive in this lifetime than to get a dime from Social Security, am I right?”

Judging from the applause and cheers, it seemed that a large majority of the audience agreed with the senator. At the event, Lee was asked, “You mentioned Social Security and I would say probably most of the room on the way to the airport had to go through TSA and probably opted-out of TSA. So we were all trying to opt-out of TSA security, but what about Social Security? Would you allow our generation to opt-out of Social Security and say, ‘Look, we won’t take a dime from Social Security, we’ll take care of ourselves, let us keep our money.’ Is that a viable option, is that something that can be proposed?”

Lee responded, “Let’s talk about Social Security opt-out. The reason that that is so appealing probably to every single person in this room — and tell me if I’m right — is because most of you probably believe you are more likely to see Elvis alive in this lifetime than to get a dime from Social Security, am I right?”

After the audience applause, Lee said, “That’s about what I thought. So, the reason for that it’s not arbitrary, it’s not irrational that you feel that way. You have good reason to feel that way. You’ve seen the government set up this program, set it up in the 1930s. It was set up as an investment program, an income security program.”

“It was kind of like insurance, it was kind of like a savings plan,” said Lee. “The government told the people — even though none of us were born when this happened — the government told the people this can never be taken away. You’ll pay into it, the government will safeguard it, we’ll put it into a really safe box, and then we will give it to you when you retire.”

Read more from this story and see video HERE.