Rep. Peter King on Spread of Radical Islam: ‘We can’t be Politically Correct’

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

By Jeff Poor. New York Republican Rep. Peter King said Friday that the potential radicalization of members of the Muslim Chechen community should be investigated after the Boston Marathon bombing.

“We can’t be politically correct,” he said on CNN’s “The Lead.” “I think we have to see, has radicalization has extended into the Chechen community?”

Host Jake Tapper asked King about one of the suspect’s apparent YouTube pages, where a video had been posted featuring Feiz Mohammad.

Tapper asked if King knew anything about Mohammad, who is described as a “fundamentalist Australian Muslim preacher.”

“I’m not aware of that radical cleric, but I do know that the idea of radical clerics in the Muslim community — again, it’s a small percentage — but they have had a disproportionate influence,” King said. “And I think that is something that has to be looked at. We can’t be politically correct. Read more from this story HERE.

Allen West: ‘We have domestic radical Islamic terror problem in America’

By Caroline May. Former Florida Rep. Allen West issued a harsh attack on political correctness Friday, as authorities continued to pursue second Boston attack suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

“Let me be very clear, the terrorist attack in Boston and evolving events indicate we have a domestic radical Islamic terror problem in America,” the Republican wrote on his Facebook page.

According to the former congressman, America must reject “political correctness” and advocacy groups like the Council on American–Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Muslim American Society, which he linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Read more from this story HERE.

GOP lawmaker calls for ‘increased surveillance’ of Muslims after attack

By Julian Pecquet. Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) called for “increased surveillance” of Muslims on Friday, saying the Boston Marathon bombing suspects’ links to Chechnya represented a “new front” in the war on terror.

“Police have to be in the community, they have to build up as many sources as they can, and they have to realize that the threat is coming from the Muslim community and increase surveillance there,” the chairman of the House subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence told National Review. “We can’t be bound by political correctness. I think we need more police and more surveillance in the communities where the threat is coming from.”

He went on to suggest that the two suspects’ Chechen background and Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s visit to Russia last year suggested increased radicalization of the Chechen community. The two brothers immigrated to the United States in 2001 from Kyrgyzstan, and the FBI has so far not released any evidence that they did not act alone.
“There’s never been any history of any threats emanating in this country from the Chechen community,” King told the Review. “So in a way this opens up a new front in the war.” Read more from this story HERE.

Chechen Bombing Suspects Bring Fire on Rubio's Immigration Bill

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

A powerful senator warned Friday that this week’s Boston marathon bombings should give Congress pause as it attempts to overhaul the nation’s immigration system.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, emphasized that it’s too early to know whether the perpetrators of the bombings exploited gaps in immigration law to help stage their attacks. But with the chief suspects said to be ethnic Chechens raised in Kyrgyzstan who have lived in the United States for roughly a decade, he suggested their story could serve as a cautionary tale as lawmakers attempt to revamp the system.

“Given the events of this week, it’s important for us to understand the gaps and loopholes in our immigration system,” Grassley said in his opening statement of a Judiciary hearing on reform. “While we don’t yet know the immigration status of the people who have terrorized the communities in Massachusetts, when we find out, it will help shed light on the weaknesses of our system.

“How can individuals evade authorities and plan such attacks on our soil?” Grassley asked. “How can we beef up security checks on people who wish to enter the U.S.? How do we ensure that people who wish to do us harm are not eligible for benefits under the immigration laws, including this new bill before us?”

Friday’s Judiciary hearing — the first this year on the immigration reform issue that is one of President Obama’s top second-term priorities — came as law enforcers had shut down much of Boston in an unprecedented search for one of the suspects in Monday’s twin marathon bombings. The improvised devices killed three people and injured more than 170 when they detonated near the finish line more than four hours into the storied race.

Read more from this story HERE.

Buchanan: Will the GOP Embrace Amnesty?

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Photo Credit: Human Events

During President Eisenhower’s first term, 60 years ago, the United States faced an invasion across its southern border.

Illegal aliens had been coming since World War II. But, suddenly, the number was over 1 million. Crime was rising in Texas. The illegals were taking the jobs of U.S. farm workers.

Under Gen. Joseph May Swing, the Immigration and Naturalization Service launched “Operation Wetback” and began rounding up and deporting Mexican border-crossers by ship and bus. By the end of Ike’s second term, illegal entries had fallen by 90 percent.

Eisenhower, who had tapped his nuclear hole card twice — first, to force the Chinese to agree to a truce in Korea, then to halt their shelling of the offshore islands in 1958 — was a no-nonsense president.

Measured by population and gross national product, Eisenhower’s America was but half the size of today’s America. Yet, in the 1950s, we were in many ways a stronger and more self-confident country.

Read more from this story HERE.

14 Bodies Recovered after Texas Blast

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Photo Credit: gnislew

By Faith Karimi and Emanuella Grinberg. Two days after a massive fertilizer plant explosion leveled parts of a central Texas town and killed 14 people, residents moved into recovery mode Friday after investigators announced they had nearly finished search and rescue efforts.

The fiery explosion ripped through the heart of the close-knit town of West.

“It’s going to be a long recovery for this community,” Gov. Rick Perry said.

The death toll included the secretary, who was also a member of the volunteer fire department, said Mayor Tommy Muska.

In total, five West firefighters died battling the blaze, along with one Dallas firefighter and four emergency responders, the State Firemen’s and Fire Marshals’ Association of Texas said Thursday. Read more from this story HERE.

Texas town grieves for dead first-responders

BY Associated Press. Buck Uptmor didn’t have to go to West Fertilizer Co. when the fire started. He wasn’t a firefighter like his brother and cousin, who raced toward the plant. But a ranch of horses next to the flames needed to be moved to safety.

“He went to help a friend,” said Joyce Marek, Uptmor’s aunt. “And then it blew.”

Two days after the fertilizer facility exploded in a blinding fireball, authorities announced Friday that they had recovered 14 bodies, confirming for the first time an exact number of people killed. Grieving relatives filed into a church offering comfort for families, as volunteers nearby handed out food to those still unable to return to homes damaged by the massive blast.

Ten of the dead were first-responders — including five from the West Volunteer Fire Department and four emergency medics, West Mayor Tommy Muska said.

The dead included Uptmor and Joey Pustejovsky, the city secretary who doubled as a member of the West Volunteer Fire Department. A captain of the Dallas Fire Department who was off-duty at the time but responded to the fire to help also died. Read more from this story HERE.

Homosexual Marriage Amendment Could Harm Immigration Bill

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Gay-rights activists are concerned the Senate’s immigration reform proposal does not provide a path to citizenship for foreign-born partners of gay Americans, but changing the bill could jeopardize its future.

Same-sex marriages and civil unions are not recognized by the federal government, so the unions of an estimated 36,000 couples will not be considered legal under bill unless U.S. laws are changed – or the Supreme Court strikes down the Defense of Marriage Act, Politico reported Friday.

Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has made gay marriage rights a top priority in recent years, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists expect him or Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin to introduce an amendment to the bill to address the issue.

But that could cause a split among the so-called Gang of Eight senators who wrote the bipartisan measure.

Read more from this story HERE.

Postmaster General: Postal Service Bailout Would Cost $58 Billion

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Photo Credit: Newsmax

A taxpayer bailout of the U.S. Postal Service would cost about $58 billion through 2017, which Congress could avoid by changing the agency’s business model, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said.

The service, which lost $15.9 billion last year, doesn’t want a bailout, and it would be “unnecessary,” Donahoe said today in prepared remarks for a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.

“It may shock you to learn that the Postal Service could be profitable today and for the long-term future; it just needs to operate differently,” he said. “I’m optimistic that Congress will pass a bill this year.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Dozens Infected With Hepatitis, AIDS from Oklahoma Dental Practice

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Blood tests conducted on patients treated at an Oklahoma oral surgery practice that has been closed over health concerns show that 57 have hepatitis C, three have hepatitis B and as many as three have HIV, the virus than can lead to AIDS, officials said on Thursday.

Health officials said it will take more investigation – including interviews with each patient and blood tests of the remaining patients – before they can determine whether the viruses were contracted at the dental offices, an extremely rare occurrence.

“Now the real disease detective work goes into effect,” state health department spokeswoman Leslea Bennet-Webb said.

Officials cannot be more specific about the number of patients who tested positive for HIV because of the state’s confidentiality policy that restricts public disclosure of HIV cases involving fewer than three people, Bennet-Webb said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Boy Scouts Propose Admitting Homosexual Boys But Keeping Homosexual Adults Out

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Photo Credit: Reuters

The Boy Scouts of America on Friday proposed lifting a ban on gay scouts but maintaining a prohibition on gay adults from leading troops, a compromise that attempts to end a fight that has split the century-old American institution into bitter factions.

Reaction from scouting supporters ranged from outrage to limited approval. The biggest organization in scouts, the Mormon Church, said it was studying the proposal, leaving uncertain the outcome of a May vote by scout leaders that will set policy. Gay rights groups said continuing to bar gay adults was unacceptable, but they welcomed the change for youths.

“The general feeling is that this is a bad move,” which could precipitate a major crisis, A.J. Smith, president of the Association of Baptists for Scouting, wrote in a website post, attempting to summarize Baptists’ views. “This is about a concerted effort to bring down a cultural icon. We must brace ourselves for the long haul on this one.”

The scouts’ decision is a focal point of a heated gay rights debate in the United States, where polls show public opinion is fast moving toward greater acceptance and a core of social conservatives stridently oppose such change.

In the coming months, the Supreme Court will rule on whether to strike down parts of a federal law that defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. In 2011, the military repealed a ban on openly gay soldiers.

Read more from this story HERE.

A Grim Day for a Small Town

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Photo Credit: Associated Press

By ANN ZIMMERMAN, SHELLY BANJO and NATHAN KOPPEL. This small town just off I-35, known in central Texas as a good place to pull off the highway for Czech pastries, spent Thursday coming to grips with a landscape of flattened homes and diminishing hopes that friends and neighbors will be found alive in the aftermath of a devastating explosion.

The blast Wednesday night at a fertilizer plant here has left more than a dozen dead, and 150 injured. It destroyed a school and 75 or so homes—damaging a sizable portion of a tightknit town of 2,800 with a Czech heritage that stretches back generations.

The majority of the dead are believed to be first responders, who had raced to the scene to try to tame a fire at the plant, not knowing the mammoth blast was coming. The explosion had the force of a 2.1 magnitude earthquake, seismologists said.

Law-enforcement officials are still sifting through the rubble in search of survivors, but none are expected, said Tommy Muska, the town’s mayor. Mr. Muska, who lost his own home on Wednesday, is a volunteer firefighter himself—as well as an insurance agent in town.

“Our town is definitely hurting,” he said. His office was flooded with insurance claims. Read more from this story HERE.

Crews seek survivors, bodies after Texas blast

By NOMAAN MERCHANT and JOHN L. MONE. Rescuers searched the smoking remnants of a Texas farm town Thursday for survivors of a thunderous fertilizer plant explosion, gingerly checking smashed houses and apartments for anyone still trapped in debris while the community awaited word on the number of dead.

Initial reports put the fatalities as high as 15, but later in the day, authorities backed away from any estimate and refused to elaborate. More than 160 people were hurt.

A breathtaking band of destruction extended for blocks around the West Fertilizer Co. in the small community of West. The blast shook the ground with the strength of a small earthquake and crumpled dozens of homes, an apartment complex, a school and a nursing home. Its dull boom could be heard dozens of miles away from the town about 20 miles north of Waco.

Waco police Sgt. William Patrick Swanton described ongoing search-and-rescue efforts as “tedious and time-consuming,” noting that crews had to shore up much of the wreckage before going in.

There was no indication the blast, which sent up a mushroom-shaped plume of smoke and left behind a crater, was anything other than an industrial accident, he said. Read more from this story HERE.

Gang of 8 Immigration Bill Would Provide $3k Incentive to Hire Immigrants Over Citizens

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Passage of the new bipartisan immigration reform bill could mean a $3,000 per year incentive for employers who choose a newly legal immigrant over a U.S. citizen.

The bill unveiled Wednesday says people who are granted provisional legal status will be treated the same as people “not lawfully present” under Obamacare guidelines, Investor’s Business Daily reports.

This means that provisionally legal immigrants will not be eligible for Obamacare tax credits or required to pay a tax penalty for failing to get health insurance – and employers won’t be fined for not providing them with affordable health coverage.

Read more from this story HERE.