Holder Living High on the Hog, Too: Spent Almost $1.5 Million on Travel in 2011

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Photo Credit: ReutersU.S. Attorney General Eric Holder took 62 out-of-town trips in fiscal year 2011 at a cost of at least $1.45 million, according to a set of disclosures sent to Bloomberg News.

Holder’s travel during the period included an April 2011 trip to Las Vegas, marked business and personal, that cost $46,358. Nine other trips, including visits to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Miami, were labeled “personal,” and cost a combined $169,502. He took an $83,002 flight to Krakow, Poland, to attend the G-6 summit.

Flight costs for seven trips, including journeys to China, Hawaii and Brussels, weren’t provided.

As attorney general, Holder is a “required use” official who is compelled by executive order to use government aircraft for all travel while in office due to “security and communications needs,” according to a February 2013 U.S. Government Accountability Office report.

For personal trips, Holder is required to reimburse the government for the equivalent commercial coach fare, which is often much less than the total trip costs, the GAO said.

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A Whopping 85% of Americans Believe Businesses Should Be Able to Turn Away Homosexual Customers

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Photo Credit: PargonThis is no idle hypothetical from Rasmussen. A photography studio in New Mexico was fined years ago under the state’s Human Rights Act for refusing to accept a lesbian couple’s request to photograph their commitment ceremony because it was contrary to the owners’ Christian beliefs. The studio lost several rounds of appeals because the state’s antidiscrimination law forbids “public accommodations” from discriminating on the basis of orientation. As Gabe Malor said a few weeks ago after the big SCOTUS DOMA decision, this is the next flashpoint in political skirmishing over gay rights. Does free exercise of religion extend to how you run your business?

A heavy, heavy majority says yep, sure does:

If a Christian wedding photographer who has deeply held religious beliefs opposing same-sex marriage is asked to work a same-sex wedding ceremony, 85% of American Adults believe he has the right to say no. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only eight percent (8%) disagree even as the courts are hearing such challenges.

You can, if you like, agree with the majority here without bringing free exercise into it. A strong-form libertarian would say that the photographer has a right to refuse for whatever reason he chooses, religious or not. It’s a matter of private property, not free exercise.

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Paul Ryan Has Been Working Behind the Scenes on Bipartisan Amnesty Deal Since Last Year

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Photo Credit: GARY CAMERONTwo weeks after the end of his failed vice-presidential bid, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was already thinking ahead to another big fight: immigration reform. And he was thinking about it in a bipartisan way.

Ryan ran into his old friend, Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), and urged him to restart his effort to get a comprehensive immigration package through Congress. Ryan’s arguments stemmed from a religious and economic foundation, not from the huge political liability the issue had become for the Republican Party during the 2012 presidential campaign.

“You’re a Catholic; I’m a Catholic; we cannot have a permanent underclass of Americans exploited in America,” Ryan told Gutierrez, according to the Democrat’s recollection of the November discussion.

Given those sentiments, and the drubbing the GOP ticket took among Latino voters, supporters of an immigration overhaul expected Ryan to emerge as the House’s most prominent public voice on the issue.

Instead, as the issue has grown more contentious with the recent passage of a sprawling 1,200-page Senate bill, Ryan has worked quietly behind the scenes, declining to become the public face of the issue and leaving the effort without any prominent sponsors among the House GOP leadership.

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White House Holds Obamacare Briefing With Left Wing Bloggers

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Photo Credit: myglesiasThe White House held a background briefing Friday to discuss Obamacare implementation with a handful of journalists from liberal and progressive outlets.

Slate blogger Matthew Yglesias posted a photograph to Instagram Friday featuring himself and other liberal journalists at the White House, with the caption “#thistown.”

Yglesias’ photograph features American Prospect staff writer Jamelle Bouie and MSNBC’s Benjy Sarlin attending the briefing.

Yglesias, who publicly cheered the death of conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, is known as a member of a tight-knit circle of progressive bloggers that includes Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein and low-rated MSNBC host Chris Hayes.

Read more from this story HERE.

Study: Obama Could Care Less About the Poor, Hardly Ever Mentions Them

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Photo Credit: APStanding before an audience of 80,000 rapturous supporters and framed by a pair of giant Greek columns, Barack Obama partly used his 2008 nomination acceptance speech in Denver to showcase a subject he has mostly seen fit, ever since, to avoid. “We are more compassionate,” he said back then, “than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty.”

But since then, the poverty rate has increased: from 13.1 percent in 2008 to 15.1 percent in the most recent measurements released by the U.S. Census Bureau. And while he is widely seen as an ally of those Democratic constituencies most apt to focus on the plight of the underclass, Obama has actually mentioned the poor less frequently than any of his modern predecessors in the Oval Office.

A new study by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a non-profit center whose social scientists study issues of concern to Catholics, tabulated all references to an economic class that have appeared in the public papers of each president dating back to John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first — and to date only — Catholic president.

The study found that Lyndon B. Johnson, architect of the 1960s “War on Poverty,” was most apt, among the modern presidents, to mention the poor in some form or fashion: 84 percent of the time he made reference to any economic class. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter came next, with both mentioning the underclass approximately three-quarters of the time. Presidents Ford, Reagan, and George W. Bush all rated in the mid-to-high 60s, with Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton not far behind. George Herbert Walker Bush, the study found, was apt to speak about the poor fully half the time.

Only then — dead last in the Georgetown rankings — comes Barack Obama, who mentions the nation’s least well-off only 26 percent of the time.

Read more from this story HERE.

Microsoft Giving NSA Access to All Encrypted Files from Skype, SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Outlook

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Photo Credit: Patrick Sinkel/APMicrosoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users’ communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company’s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.

The documents show that:

• Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;
• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;
• The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;
• Microsoft also worked with the FBI’s Data Intercept Unit to “understand” potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;
• In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;

Read more from this story HERE.

Fort Hood Terrorist Trial: Court Denies Nidal Hasan’s Motion to Access NSA Surveillance Evidence

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Photo Credit: APBy Associated Press. The Army psychiatrist charged in the deadly mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, cannot access evidence obtained through secret electronic surveillance, a federal appeals court ruled.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans also denied Maj. Nidal Hasan’s motion to suppress the evidence the government plans to use against him. The court’s decision Wednesday upheld a lower court’s ruling issued before Hasan recently began serving as his own attorney.

Hasan faces execution or life without parole if convicted in the 2009 rampage that left 13 dead and nearly three dozen wounded on the Texas Army post. Jury selection in his court-martial started Tuesday at Fort Hood, and testimony in the trial is to start Aug. 3.

In his motion, Hasan’s attorneys had argued that without access to the evidence obtained through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, his legal rights would be violated. But the appeals court said “it cannot be said that this exclusion rises to the level of a constitutional violation.” The ruling said every appeals court that has considered a constitutional challenge to FISA has upheld the statute. Read more from this story HERE.

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Fort Hood massacre trial: Hasan goes on the defense

By Rick Jervis. Kimberly Munley has spent countless hours rehabilitating a shattered knee while trying to erase haunting images of a rampaging killer’s 10-minute onslaught here four years ago.

Now Munley faces another ominous challenge: the prospect of answering questions from her would-be murderer in a military courtroom.

Munley, 38, is one of several dozen survivors of the shooting assault by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist accused of opening fire on soldiers and civilians at Fort Hood in 2009. Hasan is charged with killing 13 people and injuring nearly three dozen more before police shot him, paralyzing him from the waist down. The American-born Muslim, who has acknowledged his role in the shootings, faces the death penalty in a case that spawned congressional hearings as well as an ongoing debate as to whether the shooting was a terrorist attack or “workplace violence,” as the Pentagon has classified it.

“It’s hard when the guy who tried to kill you is up there asking you questions,” said Munley, a federal police officer at Fort Hood at the time who was the first person to confront Hasan, exchanging gunfire with him. “That’s a whole different monster.” Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Rand Paul Stands by Aide Amid Reports Over Shock Jock ‘Southern Avenger’ Past

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Photo Credit: APIt could be a politically perilous affiliation but Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says he’s standing by longtime aide Jack Hunter following reports about the former radio shock jock’s past. Those reports have centered on Hunter’s pro-secessionist comments and his habit of wearing a Confederate flag ski mask in YouTube videos.

Moira Bagley, Paul’s communication director, told FoxNews.com there is no proof Hunter made any racist remarks and says the Republican senator will continue to support his friend and employee.

“Our office policy is that all employees treat individuals with the equal protection of the law. We find no evidence that this policy has been violated by any employee,” Bagley said.

The affiliation, though, could trail Paul as he considers jumping into the 2016 presidential race.

“If he remains a staffer, he’ll be an albatross around Senator Paul’s neck,” GOP strategist Ron Bonjean told FoxNews.com, speculating that it will be harder for Paul to distance himself from Hunter the longer he hangs around.

Read more from this story HERE.

Where’s the Shame? Scandals May No Longer End Political Careers

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Photo Credit: Alejandra VillaSex. Drugs. Cheating on a spouse. Those words used to add up to shame. Put them in the same sentence as a politician’s name, and they ended careers.

Not anymore. The latest batch of unlikely back-from-the-swamp hopefuls are Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer. Weiner resigned his New York City congressional seat two years ago after revelations that he’d tweeted a sexually suggestive picture of himself to a woman who was following him on Twitter. Spitzer left the state’s governorship in 2008 after reports surfaced that federal investigators had tagged him as “Client 9,” soliciting high-end prostitutes.

Each now has a decent shot at a big prize, Weiner New York’s Democratic mayoral nomination, Spitzer the city’s comptroller job. Spitzer led his closest rival by 9 percentage points in a Wall Street Journal-NBC 4-Marist poll released Thursday.

They join the growing roster of comebacks, or at least serious attempts, by scandal-tarred politicians:

Mark Sanford was elected to a South Carolina congressional seat in May, after admitting an affair in 2009 that resulted in the then-governor paying a large ethics fine and led state lawmakers to consider impeaching him.

Read about more scandals at this story HERE.

Gas Prices Expected to Surge Again Soon

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Photo Credit: Grant Hindsley APGas prices are heading up again.

Rising crude oil prices and a fall in U.S. supplies are driving wholesale gas prices up sharply. That has yet to be fully reflected at the retail level.

Prices at the pump — up 4 cents the past week to a national average of $3.52 a gallon — could climb another 15 cents or higher over the next two weeks. A year ago, the national average was $3.38.

“It’s getting ugly,” says Patrick DeHaan, senior analyst for GasBuddy.com. “First and foremost, the political problems in Egypt are driving crude oil prices, but there has also been a sharp drop in oil supplies the past two weeks. This is coming at a time when demand is at its annual July peak.”

Egypt is not a major oil supplier, but ongoing political woes threaten Middle Eastern shipments and were the catalyst behind crude oil prices rising to 15-month highs earlier this week. Benchmark West Texas crude oil eased 1.5% to $104.91 a barrel Thursday. Wholesale gas prices — up 30 cents to 50 cents a gallon on some markets since late June — rose 0.8% to $3.04 a gallon for mid-August delivery. Typically, pump prices are about 75 cents higher.

Read more from this story HERE.