Harvard, Yale Deny Connection To Controversial Democratic Donor Under Scrutiny

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Photo Credit: APA controversial donor with ties to prominent Democrats who is under investigation by the FBI may not have the qualifications he claims.

The resume of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida-based ophthalmologist and controversial Democratic donor, boasts medical education and experience at Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Missouri.

But none of those schools says it can find any record of Melgen, who claims to be a Harvard alumnus, the former chief resident of the University of Missouri’s ophthalmology department, and a former Yale intern.

Melgen is at the center of a Senate panel probing potential ethics violations by Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), who may have used his official position to benefit Melgen, a major campaign contributor.

Menendez is also under scrutiny for failing to disclose his use of Melgen’s private jet to take trips to the Dominican Republic in 2010. Menendez denied wrongdoing but in January of this year wrote Melgen a personal check for $58,500 to cover the cost of the flights.

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Police Forensic Scientist At Newtown Hearing: ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban Won’t Work

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Photo Credit: AP/Alex BrandonThe forensic scientist for the Bridgeport, Conn. Police Department sharply criticized proposed assault weapon and high-capacity magazine bans and pointed out the small number of crimes committed by high-capacity weapons in public hearing testimony last week.

Marshall K. Robinson, who said his area of expertise is “firearm and tool mark identification,” testified at the Gun Violence Prevention Working Group, which was convened at the Connecticut State Capitol in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

There he opposed statements from many of the other 1,300 speakers in attendance advocating for banning high-capacity AR-15 and AK-47 firearms.

Robinson pointed out that less than two percent of the firearms he has examined since 1996 that have been linked to violent crime in Bridgeport have been the caliber of AR-15 or AK-47 weapons.

“Since November 1996, I have examined approximately 2,370 firearms. Of that number 36 of them were either .223/5.56 mm or 7.62×39 mm,” Robinson said. “The percentage of those guns was about [1.5 percent].”

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Pentagon To Extend Certain Benefits To Same-Sex Spouses

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Photo Credit: Jeff Sheng/APThe Pentagon has decided to extend certain benefits to the spouses of gay and lesbian personnel, according to officials and people notified about the decision, responding to the increasingly vocal appeals of same-sex couples in the military.

The military expects to announce the decision this week.

Officials at the Pentagon would not say which new benefits the department has determined it can extend to same-sex couples without violating the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that bars the federal government from legally recognizing same-sex unions. Gay rights advocates have called for benefits including housing privileges, access to base recreational facilities and joint duty assignments for couples in the military.

Legal experts say, however, that the Pentagon will be unable to extend more than 100 benefits while the Defense of Marriage Act remains in place.

The new guidelines will be departing Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta’s final imprint on the armed forces. They will also come on the heels of two landmark changes undertaken under his relatively short tenure: the rescinding of the ban on openly gay service members and the decision to allow women to serve in combat units.

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Sierra Club Chief ‘Confident’ That Kerry, Obama Will Scuttle Pipeline

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Photo Credit: Center for American Progress Action FundSierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune predicted victory Tuesday in activists’ battle against the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline, calling President Obama’s vow to focus on climate change in his second inaugural speech a good omen.

“We are confident that [new Secretary of State John] Kerry will advise the president and the president will decide to reject this pipeline because it is such a clear first test of the president’s commitment to actually fighting climate change and … moving beyond these extreme sources of energy,” Brune said on WAMU’s “The Diane Rehm Show.”

In addition to Obama’s speech, the arrival of Kerry – a longtime advocate of emissions curbs – at the State Department has bolstered environmentalists’ hopes that Keystone will not receive a federal permit.

The State Department is heading the federal review. Kerry, in his Jan. 24 confirmation hearing before a Senate committee, kept his cards close to the vest on Keystone.

Stopping TransCanada Corp.’s proposed pipeline to bring oil from Canada’s oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries has become a top priority for environmental groups.

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Obama Misses 4th Consecutive Budget Deadline

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Photo Credit: U.S. Embassy Jakarta, IndonesiaPresident Obama missed the Monday deadline for submitting a budget to Congress, marking the fourth time in five years he has been late — and in a town where missing deadlines is routine, this one is beginning to get noticed.

The Budget Act requires that he submit a blueprint for taxes and spending by the first Monday in February, but only once, in 2010, has he met that deadline. This year, the White House hasn’t yet said when it will have a plan.

“Focus on substance over deadlines,” White House press secretary Jay Carney urged reporters aboard Air Force One as the president jetted to Minnesota to campaign for stronger gun controls.

But in an ironic twist, the president missed the deadline the same day he signed the aptly named “no budget, no pay” act, which withholds pay from members of Congress if they don’t pass a budget by their own legal deadline of April 15. That was attached to a bill that waives the federal debt limit through mid-May.

Republicans are trying to turn Washington’s focus toward the budget process and what they hope will be a renewed debate on spending cuts.

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Obama Embraces ‘Dark Money’

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Photo Credit: APThe creation of the dark-money group Organizing for Action is a sign President Barack Obama has no intention of repudiating the role of corporate money in political life during his second term, campaign finance experts suggest.

Advocates for reform, which Obama has previously claimed to support, are disappointed by his reversal.

“Organizing for Action marks a complete retreat for President Obama from his pledge to try to change the way we finance elections,” said Craig Holman, a government-affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, a nonprofit organization opposed to corporate money in politics. “It makes a total mockery of any effort to try to limit corporate money.”

Organizing for Action, which will replace Obama’s Organizing for America campaign apparatus, will attempt to channel the grassroots energy from the 2012 election into support for the administration’s policy agenda. OFA already has started wooing corporate donors, according to Politico, and will not be required to disclose its funding sources as a 501(c)4.

Politico reported that corporate representatives were asked for contributions at OFA’s unveiling event in January. A spokesperson for Walmart stressed that the company was invited to the event by a group called Business Forward, not Organizing for America.

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Doctors to Obama: You’ve Failed Again

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Photo Credit: WNDMembers of the Christian Medical Association had harsh words for Barack Obama after his latest attempt to mandate abortion coverage in Obamacare: You have failed.

“This latest version of the contraceptives and sterilization mandate remains unacceptable,” said Dr. David Stevens, executive director of the Christian Medical Association. “Since when does the government get to pick and choose which groups will get to enjoy First Amendment protections?

Our founders intended the First Amendment to protect every American’s freedom to act according to one’s conscience,” he said. “They didn’t specify that only groups deemed religious will be afforded this protection; freedom of conscience applies equally to all Americans.”

Dr. Gene Rudd, CMA executive vice president, joined Stevens.

“The administration fails to understand that many employers and individual Americans, regardless of a religious label or not, maintain strong conscience objections to participating in any, way, shape or form in a plan that promotes pills that the FDA says can cause the demise of a living human embryo – a developing baby in her earliest stage,” Rudd said.

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Naval Cuts Jeopardize US War Readiness, Experts Say

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Photo Credit: AP/US NavyThe threat of sequestration and looming budget deficits is already impacting the military readiness of the U.S., according to some defense analysts.

A recent Defense Department memo outlined the difficult steps the armed services must take to cope with the nation’s perilous fiscal situation. The memo recommended that the department fire administrative personnel, cut down on research and development, and cancel routine maintenance checks for naval ships.

“Cancel 3rd and 4th quarter ship maintenance availabilities and aviation and ground depot level maintenance activities,” the memo suggested.

The maintenance recommendations are particularly worrisome, and impact the U.S.’s naval preparedness, said Brian Slattery, a defense expert at the Heritage Foundation.

“The military is already having trouble in some circumstances meeting its readiness requirements,” he said in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Maintenance is already a pretty significant concern, particularly with the navy.”

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Emails Expose Southern Poverty Law Center Collaboration With DOJ

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Judicial Watch (JW), a Washington D.C. based non-partisan educational foundation, released some two dozen pages of emails it obtained on Tuesday revealing connections between the Department of Justice Civil Rights and Tax divisions and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

According to JW, the e-mails reveal “questionable behavior by agency personnel while negotiating for Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) co-founder Morris Dees to appear as the featured speaker at a July 31, 2012, “Diversity Training Event.” Judicial Watch obtained the records pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) submitted to the DOJ on September 10, 2012:

The Judicial Watch FOIA request was prompted by an apparently politically motivated shooting at the Family Research Council (FRC) headquarters in August, 2012. At the time of the shooting, FRC president Tony Perkins accused the SPLC of sparking the shooting, saying the shooter “was given a license to shoot… by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organizations as hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy.” On its website, the SPLC has depicted FRC as a hate group,” along with such mainstream conservative organizations as the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, and Coral Ridge Ministries.

The FOIA request specifically requested “any and all records concerning, regarding, or relating to the Sothern Poverty Law Center” between January 1 and August 31, 2012, including the Dees’ presentation sponsored by the Civil Rights and Tax divisions of the DOJ.

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Former Reagan Budget Director Warns Of New Housing Bubble

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerThe market may be rising, but according to one expert, all is not well on the home front.

David Stockman, former director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan administration, insists that the housing market outlook is not as cheery as some say.

“I would say we have a housing bubble … again,” Stockman told the Daily Ticker. “We don’t have a real organic sustainable recovery, because in a world of medicated money by the central bank, things aren’t what they appear to be.”

Stockman pointed to artificially low interest rates and speculation in the real-estate market as culprits.

“It’s happening in the most speculative subprime markets, where massive amounts of ‘fast money’ is rolling in to buy, to rent, on a speculative basis for a quick trade,” he said. “And as soon as they conclude prices have moved enough, they’ll be gone as fast as they came.”

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