RNC Declares War on Conservative Grassroots

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

At a meeting of the Ripon Society held in Washington, D.C.’s exclusive Capitol Hill Club on Tuesday, new Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Mike Shields effectively declared war on the conservative grassroots. In a strong attack, Shields coined a new derogatory term, “the professional right,” to refer to groups that have publicly criticized the recent RNC “Autopsy” report.

“It’s a term I’ll be using often in the coming months,” he told the crowd of about 40 Ripon Society members, RNC insiders, and Capitol Hill staffers. But Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, who was not one of those in attendance at the meeting, was quick to note that Shields’s new term had already backfired. “As opposed to what, unprofessional Republicans?” he shot back.

“These attacks on conservatism by the Establishment GOP are reminiscent of those made against Reagan all through the 1960’s and 70’s and even into his presidency,” Shirley added.

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Democrats Now Hate Obamacare, Too

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

President Obama is eager to build public support for his health care overhaul in the few months remaining before its implementation, but waning enthusiasm from Democrats threatens his effort right out of the gate.

Two-thirds of Democrats now believe Obama’s health care reforms will either hurt them personally or have no effect on their daily lives, a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday shows. In comparison, just 27 percent of Democratic respondents said the reforms would help them.

The president has long struggled to convince independent and Republican-leaning voters that his health care blueprint would lower premiums and expand insurance coverage.

However, an inability to convince his own party that the reforms have merit suggests an even bigger problem for the president ahead of the 2014 implementation.

“Obama is trying to make the next election a referendum on Republicans,” said Democratic strategist Doug Schoen. “But Obamacare will still be a drag on the Democratic ticket. Democrats supported it because Obama was attached to it, but they still have great skepticism about the real impact of the law.”

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It’s Easier to Apply for Green Card than Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Keith Williamson

If you thought nothing could be more tedious than filling out your tax forms, just wait until you try to apply for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s new exchanges.

The draft of the paper application is 15 to 21 pages, depending on whether someone is applying individually or for their family. See the Application for Health Insurance

And the instructions for the application run no less than 61 pages. That’s nearly six times longer than the instructions for a green-card application. (There are also videos of the process.)

“If you like IRS forms, you’re going to love this one,” says Ken Hoagland, chairman of Restore America’s Voice, a conservative organization that advocates for the repeal of the health-care law. “These are the kinds of things that are going to drive people crazy.”

Adding to the confusion from this new bureaucracy is that experts say most Americans are still largely in the dark about what the health-insurance exchanges — the new marketplaces for individual insurance stipulated by the health-reform law — even are. Though government officials are hurrying to set them up before open enrollment for 2014 begins this fall, a survey released today by InsuranceQuotes.com found that 90% of U.S. consumers don’t know that the exchanges open Oct. 1, and 22% said they thought the exchanges were already open now.

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Saying "The Lord Made Homosexuals," Another US Senator Jumps on the Gay Marriage Bandwagon

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Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) announced his support for gay marriage Thursday, becoming the 51st senator to do so.

“If we are endowed by our Creator with rights, then why shouldn’t those be attainable by gays and lesbians?” Nelson told the Tampa Bay Times. “Simply put, if The Lord made homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, why should I discriminate against their civil marriage? I shouldn’t, and I won’t.”

Nelson’s support came after numerous Democratic senators backed gay marriage in advance of Supreme Court cases on the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s gay marriage ban, Proposition 8. Two Democratic senators, Bob Casey (Pa.) and Tom Carper (Del.), declared their support earlier this week. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) became the second Republican senator to back gay marriage, following Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio.

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Déjà Vu, Alaska: State Legislator Wore FBI Wire in NY Bribery Case

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Photo Credit: Chang W. Lee

Two days after a political corruption scandal rocked Albany, a new, unrelated bribery scheme emerged on Thursday, adorned with a can-you-top-this quality: For more than a year, a sitting state legislator wore a wire intended to catch at least one of his colleagues.

The secret recordings helped lead to the arrest of Eric A. Stevenson, a Democratic state assemblyman representing parts of the South Bronx, who was charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with accepting more than $22,000 in bribes to help developers open adult day care centers in his district. Mr. Stevenson was also accused of introducing legislation to block competing developers from building new centers for three years.

He seemed keenly aware of the risk of getting caught, as so many of his colleagues in Albany had been before, according to a criminal complaint released on Thursday.

“Be careful of those things, man, the recorders and all those things,” he was recorded saying. “A lot of guys,” he continued, were “working to put a lot of people away, man, believe that.”

Mr. Stevenson’s wariness was well founded: conversations were being recorded by two cooperating witnesses, including Assemblyman Nelson L. Castro, who had agreed to work with investigators as part of a deal to avoid prosecution on state perjury charges. Mr. Castro agreed to resign once his cooperation led to an arrest; he announced his departure on Thursday afternoon.

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President Obama Would Get 3 Terms Under Pending House Resolution

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Americans around the nation were shocked Friday as they heard about H.J.Res. 15. H.J.Res 15 proposes an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the Twenty-second Amendment. This would remove the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President. Rep. José Serrano (D- NY15) introduced the controversial joint resolution on Friday, the second day of the 2013 legislative session…

The last President to serve more than two terms was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt served three full terms as President and was elected to a fourth term. Roosevelt died 83 days into his fourth term in office.

Congress passed the Twenty-second Amendment on March 21, 1947. The required number of states ratified it in 1951.

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DOE Awarding More Than $1.2 Billion in Energy Subsidies Despite Sequester

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More than $1.2 billion in cash payments has been awarded to renewable energy projects by the Department of Energy and the Treasury Department since the beginning of the year, with the majority of them going to solar electricity.

While other agencies grapple with furloughs and service cuts, the DOE continues to hand out 30 percent of the cost basis for renewable projects under its 1603 program, part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Between January 1 and February 14,$1,254,769,726 was awarded to 435 renewable energy projects, 381 of which were to solar, according to the Heritage Foundation.

The 1603 program had awarded more than $9.2 billion to 748 wind projects and $2.7 billion to more than 44,000 solar projects through July 2012, according to a separate Heritage report.

The program won’t escape the sequester completely unscathed. Projects awarded between March 1 and September 30 will be reduced by 8.7 percent.

But the DOE is pressing ahead with awards to green technology. The department also announced last month it will award $150 million left over from a separate stimulus program, 48C manufacture tax credits.

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'Fast and Furious' Called False Flag Op Against Gun Dealers

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Photo Credit: WND

The U.S. government running guns to Mexican cartels is “comparable to the United States funding al-Qaida to make someone in the United States look bad,” according to the author of a new best-seller.

Katie Pavlich is the author of “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up,” news editor of Townhall.com and an expert on the Fast and Furious scandal.

In an interview with WND, she asserted that the Obama administration intentionally orchestrated a “false flag” against lawful gun dealers, the U.S. Border Patrol and Mexican citizens to give cause for more gun regulation.

“This is a situation where the government was creating a situation where they could blame law-abiding citizens, turn them into criminals and creat[e] this false problem that they could solve through gun regulation,” Pavlich said.

Pavlich compares drug cartels to terrorist groups like Hezbollah, and new reports say the groups actually are linked. “This is a situation where [the Obama administration was] willing to put public safety in danger, get thousands of people killed south of the border. The only reason we know about this is because (Border Patrol agent) Brian Terry was killed,” she said.

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Secret House Intelligence Meetings: Internet Freedom Under Attack Again?

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Members of the media and the public will not be able to watch the House Intelligence Committee’s markup next week of a controversial cybersecurity bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

Lawmakers will be allowed to discuss what happened in the meeting afterward, and the committee plans to release information about what amendments were offered and how lawmakers voted. But the public will not be allowed in the room, and the meeting will not be streamed online.

Susan Phalen, a spokeswoman for the committee, explained that the Intelligence Committee often restricts access to hearings and that it is possible that lawmakers will need to discuss classified information.

“Sometimes they’ll need to bounce into classified information and go closed for a period of time to talk,” she said. “In order to keep the flow of the mark-up continuing forward, you can’t stop in the middle of an open hearing, move everyone to another location for a portion of it, and then move back.”

She noted that the committee used the same procedure when it marked up CISPA last year. The committee has yet to formally schedule the markup, but it is expected to happen next Wednesday.

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ICE Union Hammers Gang of 8: Their Plan is ‘Amnesty First, then Enforcement’

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During a Wednesday afternoon conference call, ICE agents union head Chris Crane hammered the so-called Gang of Eight and the Obama administration for supposedly failing to focus on enforcing immigration laws.

“The plan of the Gang of Eight appears to be legalization, or amnesty first, and then enforcement. That is a big problem for us,” Crane told reporters, noting that none of the immigration plans laid out so far has offered a framework for “stronger interior enforcement.”

He charged that those currently considering immigration reform are more focused on legalization than addressing illegal immigration.

The National ICE Council, Crane’s union of more than 7,000 ICE officers and staff, has been calling on the White House and the Gang of Eight to hear their concerns about immigration reform and the need for a focus on enforcement first.

Their requests for a meeting from both players have gone unanswered.

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