Tony Perkins Urges Conservatives To Halt GOP Contributions, Consider Third Party

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Angered by back-to-back presidential candidates who were squishy on social issues, some conservatives are warming to the idea of a third party while urging activists to stop funding GOP groups.

“I would not give my money to the national party, to the national Republican Party,” said Tony Perkins, president of the influential Family Research Council. “I would not give it to the RNC, I would not give it to the Republican Senatorial Committee nor to the Republican Congressional Committee,” he added on his new radio show, “Washington Watch.”

Rick Santorum, the 2012 conservative presidential candidate considering another run in 2016, called the GOP establishment “detached from the grass roots of America.”

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Rubio Hires Democrat Immigration Lawyer Who Imports Workers For Companies

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Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s top lawyer in the closed-door effort to draft a new immigration bill is a Democratic donor who earns his living by bringing foreign workers into the country on behalf of corporations and universities.

The lawyer, Enrique Gonzalez, is a partner at the nation’s largest immigration firm, whose future depends on the outcome of Gonzalez’s closed-door work.

Rubio hired Gonzalez in January, when he was a partner at the Coral Gables, Fla., office of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy.

Gonzales’ LinkedIn profile describes his “skills & expertise” as “immigration law, H-1B, naturalization, citizenship appeals … [and] international law visas.”

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Arizona Could Soon Approve Gold, Silver As Legal Tender

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Arizona could soon become the second U.S. state to recognize gold and silver as legal tender if the Arizona House approves SB 1439.

The bill has already won the approval of Arizona’s State Senate and the Arizona House Financial Institutions Committee which voted the legislation out of committee on a 4-2 vote Monday. The measure now goes to a vote of the Arizona House.

Thus far, only the State of Utah has officially recognized gold and silver as legal tender, (See: Gold, silver coins now officially legal tender in Utah) although the issue has been under consideration this year in four states including Arizona. The Arizona bill defines legal tender as a mode of paying debts and taxes.

The measure also states that any coin or bullion that has gold or silver content and is issued by the United States Government can be defined as legal tender. However, no one can be compelled to accept coin or bullion containing gold or silver. The measure would also mandate that coin or bullion containing gold or silver issued by the U.S. Government cannot be taxed as property since it is to be considered money.

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Batman Theater Shooter Converts To Islam

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The man who shot up an Aurora, Colo., movie theater during a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” last summer has reportedly converted to Islam and prays up to five times a day.

A prison source say the beard James Holmes sported in court last months represents his new-found faith. The source said Mr. Holmes has turned Muslim as a way of justifying his horrific crimes on July 20 which left 12 people dead and 58 people wounded, the Daily Mail reports.

“He has brainwashed himself into believing he was on his own personal jihad and that his victims were infidels,” the source told the National Enquirer.

Mr. Holmes now prays five times a day, sticks to a strict Muslim diet and spends hours each day studying the Koran, the source told the Enquirer.

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Obama Refusing to Explain DHS’s 1.6 Billion-Round Ammo Buildup

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Members of Congress are demanding the Obama administration explain why it is stockpiling a huge arsenal of ammunition and weapons.

The Department of Homeland Security bought more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the last year, as well as thousands of armored vehicles. Rep. Timothy Huelscamp, R-Kan., wants to know what DHS plans to do with all that firepower, but he can’t get an answer.

A reporter for We Are Change asked Huelscamp at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week why DHS needs weapons of war. “They have no answer for that question. They refuse to answer to answer that,” Huelscamp said.

“I’ve got a list of questions of various agencies about multiple things. Far from being the most transparent administration in the world, they are the most closed-nature, opaque and they refuse to let us know what is going on, so I don’t have an answer for that. And multiple members of Congress are asking those questions,” he added.

Huelscamp said he plans to apply pressure to get an answer: “It comes down to during the budget process, during the appropriations process, are we willing to hold DHS’s feet to the fire? We’re going to find out. I say we don’t fund them ’til we get an answer.”

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Obama Promised To Personally Use Obamacare, But Don’t Hold Your Breath

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If President Barack Obama wants to make good on a promise to become one of Obamacare’s first customers, he’ll have to take a route most Americans are unlikely to choose.

He’ll have to enroll in a health plan that lacks a taxpayer subsidy, even though he has access to generous coverage through his day job.

In the days following the passage of the health law in March 2010, the White House confirmed that Obama planned to walk the walk by enrolling in one of the health insurance exchanges his law created, assuming his reelection

“The president will participate in the exchange,” an administration spokesman told USA Today at the time, rejecting Republican efforts to compel the president to do so by law.

It would be a purely symbolic gesture — much like his decision to cast the first early ballot by a sitting president last year — in part because he’ll still have access to the White House Medical Unit and the official physician to the president, an office that has served every executive since the Revolution. According to a White House description of the medical unit, the office “provides worldwide emergency action response and comprehensive medical care to the president, the vice president and their families.”

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Benjamin Carson on 2016: If Called, He’d Run

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In one speech at the National Prayer Breakfast last month, pediatric neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson went from political unknown to conservative darling, and now he’s talking about a possible presidential bid in 2016. At least he’s not ruling it out, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times.

“Certainly if a year-and-a-half went by and there was no one on the scene and people are still clamoring, I would have to take that into consideration,” the 61-year-old, world-renowned physician told the newspaper, adding: “I would never turn my back on my fellow citizens.”

Report: Obamacare Pushes Premiums Up 200%
Carson’s speech at the Feb. 7 prayer breakfast, in which he denounced President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms along with moves to increase taxes on the rich, went viral on YouTube and led to TV appearances on Fox News. His instant celebrity status has helped sales of his latest book, “America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great,” to skyrocket.

Carson, director of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, revealed to the Times that he has long been told he could have a career in politics based on his personal story.

He was born into poverty in Detroit and raised by a single mother, who encouraged him to excel academically. Carson went on to graduate from Yale University and the University of Michigan Medical School before finding fame through his pioneering work separating conjoined twins.

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Chicago To Close 54 Schools To Address $1B Deficit

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Tens of thousands of Chicago students, parents and teachers learned Thursday their schools were on a long-feared list of 54 the city plans to close in an effort to stabilize an educational system facing a huge budget shortfall.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel says the closures are necessary because too many Chicago Public School buildings are half-empty, with 403,000 students in a system that has seats for more than 500,000. But opponents say the closures will further erode troubled neighborhoods and endanger students who may have to cross gang boundaries to attend school. The schools slated for closure are all elementary schools and are overwhelmingly black and in low-income neighborhoods.

CPS officials say money being spent to keep underutilized schools open could be better used to educate students elsewhere as the district deals with a $1 billion budget deficit. About 30,000 students will be affected by the plan, with about half that number moving into new schools.

“Every child in every neighborhood in Chicago deserves access to a high quality education that prepares them to succeed in life, but for too long children in certain parts of Chicago have been cheated out of the resources they need to succeed because they are in underutilized, under-resourced schools,” said district CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett. “As a former teacher and a principal, I’ve lived through school closings and I know that this will not be easy, but I also know that in the end this will benefit our children.”

As word of the closures trickled out, parents and teachers reacted with anger and shock, some even crying. Sandra Leon said she got a tearful call from her grandchildren’s kindergarten teacher saying the school was on the list to be closed. Her two grown children also attended the school, and Leon wiped her eyes as she waited outside for her grandchildren.

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Senate Gun Bill Would Expand Background Checks

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Gun control legislation the Senate debates next month will include an expansion of federal background checks for firearms buyers, Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday in a victory for advocates of gun restrictions.

The announcement underscores that Democrats intend to take an aggressive approach in the effort to broaden the checks, currently required for transactions involving federally licensed firearms dealers but not private sales at gun shows or online.

President Barack Obama and many supporters of curbing guns consider an expansion of the system to private gun sales to be the most effective response lawmakers could take in the wake of December’s elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. The system is designed to keep guns from criminals, people with serious mental problems and others considered potentially dangerous.

The overall gun measure will also include legislation boosting penalties for illegal gun trafficking and modestly expanding a grant program for school security, said Reid, D-Nev. Its fate remains uncertain, and it will all but certainly need Republican support to survive.

Reid said that during Congress’ upcoming two-week break, he hopes senators will strike a bipartisan compromise on broadening background checks. Without a deal, he indicated the gun bill would include a stricter version approved this month by the Senate Judiciary Committee and authored by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., expanding the system to virtually all private gun transactions with few exceptions.

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Americans ‘Will Rise Up’ Against Amnesty

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In the wake of President Obama’s re-election and other Democratic successes in 2012, more and more Republicans in elected office and party leadership are concluding that embracing comprehensive immigration reform is vital to winning elections and attracting a higher percentage of the nation’s fastest-growing demographic.

Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., joined the so-called Gang of Eight pushing the latest Senate version of reform. Rising GOP star Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has embraced ways to make illegal residents legal, while stopping short of endorsing a pathway to citizenship. Just days ago, an official Republican National Committee report on the party’s 2012 failures specifically urged support for comprehensive reform.

So with support from Democrats, the media and a growing number of Republicans, is it inevitable that this legislation will pass in the near term? “No it’s not, because they left out one major group of people that has to part of the equation. It’s called the American people,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., told WND. “The American people fully understand when you’re talking about comprehensive immigration reform, all you’re really talking about is legalizing the status of probably 15-20 million illegals that are in this country.”

Rohrabacher is one of the leading opponents of placing illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship or any legal status because he says it will only encourage more illegal behavior.

“The American people know that will do nothing but bring in millions more and all the problems of crime, of consuming very scarce education and health care dollars, etc., that this will be a disaster for them. So although there are a few Republican ‘leaders’ who are giving into this onslaught of propaganda trying to convince them that this is going to help the Republican Party, the average people out there are against it. Republicans will understand that when it starts coming to a vote because the people will rise up against it,” he said.

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