Eric Holder Tells Press in Off-the Record Meeting: We Won’t Spy on You Anymore

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Photo Credit: AP

In a meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder, executives from several news organizations said the attorney general pledged to change the way the Justice Department conducts investigations that involve reporters.

Government officials said they would work to change guidelines on issuing subpoenas in criminal investigations involving reporters and ensure searches that have raised concerns recently about freedom of the press are not repeated, the editors said.

The news executives made the comments Thursday after meeting with Holder and some of his aides.

The discussion took place following an outcry from news organizations over the Justice Department’s secret gathering of some Associated Press reporters’ phone records and some emails of a Fox News journalist.

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Report: CO2 Not Responsible for Global Warming

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — not carbon emissions — are the real culprit behind global warming, claims a new study out of the University of Waterloo.

“Conventional thinking says that the emission of human-made non-CFC gases such as carbon dioxide has mainly contributed to global warming. But we have observed data going back to the Industrial Revolution that convincingly shows that conventional understanding is wrong,” said Qing-Bin Lu, a science professor at the University of Waterloo and author of the study.

“In fact, the data shows that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays caused both the polar ozone hole and global warming,” Lu said.

Lu’s findings were published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B and analyzed data from 1850 to the present.

Lu’s study runs counter to the long-standing argument that carbon dioxide emissions were the driving force behind global warming. Recently scientists warned that carbon concentrations were nearing the 400 parts per million level. Scientists say that carbon dioxide levels must be lowered to 350 ppm to avoid the severe impacts of global warming.

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Self-Funded Candidates Almost Always Lose

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With the cost of campaigns ballooning, political parties, and Republicans in particular, are increasingly turning to wealthy candidates who can fund their own bids. The only problem is that those self-funders generally lose.

The number of self-funded candidates rose from 78 in 1990 to highs of 223 in 2010 and 193 in 2012, according to an analysis by The Washington Times of candidates who financed the majority of their campaign costs. In previous decades, the partisan split was equal, but the recent rise has been fueled almost entirely by wealthy Republicans.

Yet the results aren’t encouraging.

Of 1,752 self-funded candidates in federal elections since 1990, only 42 have been elected — a success rate of just 2.4 percent.

“There are always some people that think they’ll beat those odds, and some will. But very, very few do,” said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics.

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Empire State DA: I Won’t Prosecute Cuomo’s New Gun Law

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Photo Credit: Human Events

An upstate New York prosecutor told Human Events he will not go after an individual for a misdemeanor violation of the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, signed into law on Jan. 15, in a extraordinary two-minute-drill session of the state’s legislature.

“As I do in all cases, I considered all of the circumstances surrounding the summons,” said Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka.

“I declined to prosecute one particular offense,” he said. If the DA had moved forward, it would be one of the first attempts to bring a violator of the new law to trial.

The incident in question took place May 12 at 9:45 p.m., two New York State police officers stopped 31-year-old Gregory Dean from Dutchess County on Route 22 in the town of New Lebanon after noticing that the license plate light on Dean’s car was broken, the DA said.

Thereafter, three summonses were issued, said the former Columbia County judge. “Dean was charged with driving with a suspended license; an inadequate license plate; and for unlawful possession of ammunition device, which is a Class B misdemeanor.”

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Activist Cancels Plans for Armed March on Washington

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Photo Credit: Washington Times

An activist has canceled a planned armed march into the District on July Fourth that drew a confrontational response from the city’s police chief.

“Please don’t come to Washington, D.C.,” Adam Kokesh said during an interview on the online “Pete Santilli Show,” saying he could not be certain he would be present for an event in the District and instead urging supporters to march in the 50 state capitals in favor of dissolving the federal government.

News of the cancellation was first reported by the website Media Matters.

The idea of the armed march, which would start at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia and proceed across the bridge into the District — where it is illegal to carry guns on the street — was proposed earlier this month and immediately met resistance from city officials.

“If you’re coming here to break the law, then we’re going to take action,” Chief Cathy L. Lanier said in an interview on News Channel 8. “There is a pretty good chance we’ll meet them on the D.C. side of the bridge.”

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Even After Boy Scouts Allow In Homosexuals, California Votes to Strip BSA of Nonprofit Status

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Photo Credit: Rich Pedroncelli

The California Senate on Wednesday passed a bill that would revoke the Boy Scouts’ nonprofit status because the group does not allow openly gay adults to join.

The Boy Scouts of America voted last week to allow gay youths to join the organization, but it reaffirmed its ban on gay adults serving as Scout leaders.

“They are out of line with the values of California and should be ineligible for a tax benefit paid for by all Californians,” state Sen. Ricardo Lara, a Democrat, said as he introduced his bill, The Sacramento Bee reports. “SB 323 brings our laws into line with our values.”

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Ann Romney: Government Breach of Trust ‘Deeply Troubling’

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

In her first solo interview since the 2012 presidential election, Ann Romney says the recent scandals have created a “breach of trust” in the country right now that is “deeply troubling.”

“There’s this breach of trust that we as all Americans feel right now with our government,” Romney said Thursday on “CBS This Morning.” “If we look at the three scandals that are going on right now — in particular I saw the polling numbers with how people are upset with the IRS scandal — we have to trust in our government. … When we feel like they’re breaking our trust, it’s deeply troubling.

“It’s hard for the American people to sort through [the negativity],” she said. “How do they know who’s telling the truth? And that’s what I’m talking about, this breach of trust that’s going on. Who do we trust?”

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Unprecedented: FBI Dealt Child Porn to Nab Criminals

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

The FBI seized and ran a child pornography service late last year as investigators worked to identify its customers, one Western Washington man allegedly among them.

Following a lengthy investigation, Nebraska-based agents raided the large child pornography service in November hoping to catch users who shared thousands of images showing children being raped, displayed and abused.

The Bureau ran the service for two weeks while attempting to identify more than 5,000 customers, according to a Seattle FBI agent’s statements to the court. Court records indicate the site continued to distribute child pornography online while under FBI control; the Seattle-based special agent, a specialist in online crimes against children, detailed the investigation earlier this month in a statement to the court.

The investigation appears to mark a departure for the Bureau and other federal law enforcement agencies aiming to root out child porn purveyors.

Historically, child pornography investigations stem from tips made to law enforcement, interactions with undercover officers posing as customers or reviews of documentation seized during searches of child porn clearinghouses like the one recently raided in Nebraska. While investigators are known to have posed as child porn dealers – a 2011 effort involved targeted emails to suspected pedophiles – it is not apparent that the FBI previously dealt child porn as part of a sting.

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Obama Lied: Obamacare Will Result in Insurance Plans Being Cancelled

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Photo Credit: NObamaNoMas

New health insurance rules under ObamaCare could lead to a host of personal insurance plans being canceled as early as this fall, a scenario expected to cause consumer confusion.

Under the federal overhaul, those policies that cannot meet new insurance plan standards may be discontinued. This means individuals, and some small businesses, that rely on those plans will have to find new ones.

The goal is to ensure that most insurance policies offer a basic set of coverage, as part of the Obama administration’s plan to cover most of the nation’s 50 million uninsured.

Yet it also seems to run afoul of one of the president’s best-known promises on the law: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.”

In fact, state insurance commissioners largely are giving insurers the option of canceling existing plans or changing them to comply with new federal requirements.

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IRS Lerner to Politician: ‘If You Don’t Ever Run Again, We’ll Drop our Case’

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In 1996 Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the harassment of Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status, was head of the enforcement division of the Federal Elections Commission(FEC). That year Al Salvi was the Republican nominee for the US Senate from Illinois, his Democrat opponent was then congressman Dick Durbin.

During the final weeks of the campaign Salvi loaned himself over a million dollars to buy ads in the Chicago media market. This in turn prompted the Democrat party’s campaign arms to file complaints with the FEC and in kind the FEC, specifically Lois Lerner, filed charges against Al Salvi.

That is when Mr. Salvi contends Lois Lerner made him the following offer, “Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.”

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