New ‘Gang of Eight’ On Immigration

Make way for a new Gang of Eight.

An octet of senators has begun to meet to discuss immigration reform, multiple sources told POLITICO. It’s a possible sign of progress on what’s expected to be a top legislative priority on Capitol Hill next year.

Sources said the fledgling group’s members include: Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, and Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mike Lee of Utah and Sen.-elect Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Some of the senators are already publicly teaming up on the issue. For instance, Schumer announced on “Meet the Press” shortly after the election that he and Graham were joining forces again on immigration, reviving talks from 2010 when the duo had outlined a four-point comprehensive reform proposal.

“Graham and I are talking to our colleagues about this right now and I think we have a darn good chance using this blueprint to get something done this year,” Schumer said on the Nov. 11 show. “The Republican Party has learned that being … anti-immigrant doesn’t work for them politically and they know it.”

Read more from this story HERE.

DeMint Move Ignites Talk of 2016 Presidential Run

photo credit: gage skidmore

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s surprise announcement that he will leave the U.S. Senate in January to take over leadership of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank has ignited speculation among grass-roots conservatives that DeMint may use the new post as a launching pad for a presidential bid in 2016.

“Jim DeMint will have a bigger microphone than before,” conservative direct-marketing pioneer Richard Viguerie tells Newsmax. “If he wants to, this opens up a lot more opportunities for him. I think there’s a decent chance that he’ll be a serious presidential candidate in four years.”

Viguerie called the move to Heritage “an intermediate step.”

“It’s going to be a boon to the cause, to Heritage,” he said. “And it gives [DeMint] a major opportunity to run for president in four years. And if so, he would be the instant front-runner among most conservatives.”

DeMint already had effectively term-limited himself by announcing he would not seek another six years in the Senate. When GOP hopes of seizing control of the Senate were dashed in November, he was looking at four more years of life as a back-bencher, with relatively little influence over legislation passed by the upper chamber.

Read more from this story HERE.

FEMA Teams Told to ‘Sightsee’ as Sandy Victims Suffered

Hurry up and wait.

That’s what first responders were left to do after being deployed by FEMA to assist in the storm-ravaged areas in the initial days after superstorm Sandy, FoxNews.com has learned. A FEMA worker who spoke to FoxNews.com described a chaotic scene at New Jersey’s Fort Dix, where emergency workers arrived as the storm bore down on the Atlantic Coast. The worker said officials at the staging area were unprepared and told the incoming responders there was nothing for them to do for nearly four days.

“They told us to hurry, hurry, hurry,” the worker, who works at the agency’s headquarters in Washington and volunteered to deploy for the storm recovery effort. “We rushed to Fort Dix, only to find out that our liaison didn’t even know we were coming.”

“The regional coordinator even said to us, ‘I don’t know why you were rushed here because we don’t need you,’” said the worker, who spoke out of frustration with the lack of planning and coordination following the devastating storm.

‘I worked in Katrina and Katrina was run better than Sandy.’

Read more from this story HERE.

FEC Report: Romney and RNC Donors Taken to the Cleaners

Federal Election Commission financial reports filed Thursday showed that two consulting firms with close ties to key staffers at the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee were paid more than $152 million by the three organizations that funded Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign.

FLS Connect, LLC, the Minnesota-headquartered firm where RNC chief of staff Jeff Larson was a partner from 1999 to 2010 and Romney campaign political director Rich Beeson was a partner from 2005 to 2007 and again from 2009 to 2011, received $56.3 million during the 2011-2012 election cycle. $38.6 million was paid to the firm by the Republican National Committee between January 1, 2011 and November 26, 2012, according to FEC reports. In addition, the Romney campaign paid FLS Connect $17.7 million during the same period . . .

Targeted Victory, LLC, the Virginia-headquartered firm that was co-founded by Romney campaign digital director Zac Moffat, received a total of $96.4 million during the 2011-2012 election cycle. $72 million came from Romney Victory, Inc., $22 million came from the Romney campaign, and $2.4 million came from the Republican National Committee.

Read full story HERE.

Smith and Wesson Posts 48% Increase In Second Quarter Sales As Demand Surges For All Firearm Products

photo credit: gre.ceres

U.S. firearms manufacturer Smith and Wesson reported a 48 percent increase in sales in its announcement of the company’s second-quarter financial results for fiscal year 2013.

The company’s press release read: “Net sales from continuing operations for the second quarter were a record $136.6 million, up 48.0% from the second quarter last year. The increase was led by continued strong sales across all of the company’s firearm product lines.”

As CNSNews.com previously reported, gun sales have surged since the reelection of Barack Obama, reaching an all-time single day record on Black Friday this year with 154,873 background checks completed by the FBI.

Read more from this story HERE.

Unemployment Rate Falls; Number of Unemployed Stays the Same

If it looks like there’s something weird in today’s unemployment announcement, that’s because there is. While the U-3 unemployment rate has declined slightly, to 7.7 percent, that doesn’t seem to reflect an increase in the number of Americans who are actually working.

In fact, labor force participation, the more important statistic for American workforce measurements, is down slightly. The unemployment rate looks better because it’s being measured against a smaller denominator. At Eagle Daily Investor, which is owned by the parent company of Human Events, Paul Dykewicz explains why it’s important to look beyond the headline statistic:

” . . . in November, 2.5 million persons were “marginally attached” to the labor force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier. The data, which are not seasonally adjusted, reflect individuals who the federal agency described as not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. However, those people were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics explained.”

Read full story HERE.

Coburn: GOP’s 2014 Candidates Must Come from ‘Real World’

Breitbart News recently sat down with Oklahoma Senator Dr. Tom Coburn to get his thoughts on the fiscal cliff and what Republicans can do to win the 2014 midterm elections.

On November 15 Dr. Coburn gave a speech at the American Spectator’s Annual Dinner, addressing these issues. He called the current situation in America a “Valley Forge” moment for conservatives and suggested the GOP concentrate on a few points: truth, oversight, action, and accountability.

Dr. Coburn is famous for keeping an eye on wasteful spending by the government, but the majority of his colleagues ignore his reports. If the government took into consideration his reports and managed the waste instead of making excuses, the current financial mess would not be so difficult to overcome.

“Oversight isn’t very popular in Washington because politicians on both sides prefer to create new programs instead of looking at whether the programs we’ve already created are working,” said Dr. Coburn. “But I believe, oversight resonates with families because that’s how they live their lives every day. In the real world, people look at their budgets and make choices. In Washington, we make excuses, and defer choices to future generations.”

“The task before us is simple,” he explained. “Telling the truth, conducting oversight, taking action and holding politicians accountable will lead us out of our Valley Forge and on to victory.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Secret Service Under Investigation Over loss of Sensitive Files On Metro

The Secret Service is the target of an investigation into an “immense breach” involving the loss of two backup computer tapes left on a Washington, D.C., Metro train that contained sensitive personal information about all agency employees, contacts and overseas informants, according to multiple law enforcement and congressional sources.

The ongoing probe is one of 13 new investigations involving the Secret Service launched by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS-OIG) in recent months. The new investigations stem from information received during the course of DHS-OIG’s ongoing ‘Culture of Secret Service’ probe, requested by the Senate Homeland Committee in the wake of the Cartagena, Colombia prostitution scandal in April. While these new investigations are ongoing, the Culture of the Secret Service report is expected to be released sometime in the spring.

The Secret Service acknowledged the incident surrounding the lost tapes, but downplayed the security risk.

Sources said the tapes were lost on the Red Line of the Metro in 2008 by a young, low-level associate of a private contracting company that had been hired to transport them from Secret Service’s Investigative Resources Management division at the agency’s headquarters in the Penn Quarter section of Washington, D.C., to a secure vault in Olney, Md., where government agencies store contingency plans, documents and other backup material. The employee had volunteered to deliver the tapes because he lived near the location of the vault, but got off at the Glenmont, Md., Metro stop without the tapes, according to sources.

Sources said the “personally identifiable information” — or “PII,” in government-speak — on the tapes includes combinations of the following: Social Security Numbers; home addresses; information about family members; phone numbers; dates of birth; medical information; bank account numbers; employment information; driver’s license numbers; passport numbers; and any biometric information on file with the Secret Service.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rich, Hypocritical Greenies Decry Endangered 20 Ton Whale Decaying on Their Prisitine Beach

Barbara Streisand woke up to the smell of nature at work this morning. As she breathed in the usually refreshing salt air of the Pacific ocean lapping at the beach below her stunning beachside Malibu mansion……

Rolling in the surf line, just upwind, was the rotting carcass of a dead fin whale.

Wildlife authorities think the whale, on the endangered species list, might have had a collision with one of the ships that ply the coastline. But the fact remained; this is a lot of nature to have going on in your front yard.

The exclusive surf side community is home to Streisand, Bob Dylan and many others in the Hollywood entertainment industry. This is ground zero for those who embrace and fund every “green” cause and proudly drive their Prius to show how pious they are about it.

Of course Barbara and her family could shift residences into the adjoining and interconnecting two other seaside mansions she owns, to try to avoid the smell of nature at work. But it seems the prevailing wind graces each residence equally.

Although rare for California, this particular stretch of beach is private. According to Carol Baker from the Los Angeles County beaches and harbors commission, the homeowners have responsibility to the high tide line and the state has control of the tide lands.

According to Cindy Reyes, executive director of the California Wildlife Center,
Los Angeles County lifeguards planned to try to pull the 40,000-pound carcass out to sea.

But fire Inspector Brian Riley said that won’t work.

“The carcass is embedded in the sand and impossible to tow free,” “Burial at low tide will be difficult as well as land removal. It’s in an area with bad access.”

It will be interesting to see if red tape will be cut in order to facilitate this “rescue.”

Will these residents get special dispensation from the usual quagmire of interconnecting environmental agencies, coastal commissions, building departments, fish and game, harbor traffic safety and every other local, state and federal ABC agency you can think of?

Meanwhile, residents of La Jolla, a community south of Malibu, have been petitioning the state and federal authorities for months, just to let them wash off rocks in the ocean near their community.

The rock strewn shores have become home to large groups of protected species who deposit large amounts of their feces. Evidently the stench is unbearable. But environmentalists and government regulators are adamant about disrupting the natural order of things. This part of the California coast is home to a more politically conservative group of residents.

With the violent death of the fin whale, a capital environmental crime has been committed. The whale is an endangered species; shouldn’t a full scale investigation be conducted before the body is even remotely considered to be moved? Where is the environmental CSI team?

This talk of bulldozing up a California beach in order to bury the carcass or move it is another assault on almost every environmental nerve ending. Where is the moral outrage?

If this were a true “green community,” and the residents were really concerned for the environment, they would let the whale carcass stay where it washed up naturally and let nature take its course for the next year. The whale would provide badly needed nutrition to the local marine animal/bird community.

Letting the whale carcass stay and decompose naturally, would also make an environmental statement louder than any horn from a Prius could make.

What are the chances? The answer is blowing in the wind.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Deposed GOP Lawmaker Suggests He Could Vote Against Boehner As Speaker (+video)

photo credit: gage skidmore

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) suggested Friday he might not support Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) for Speaker.

“Well, right now I’m not very happy with the Speaker so let’s see what happens over the next several weeks, let’s put it that way,” Amash said.

Amash is one of four House Republicans removed from their plum committee posts this week by Boehner.

The move has triggered opposition from outside conservative groups, some of whom have launched efforts to replace Boehner as Speaker. Within the GOP conference, the response has been more muted.

In an interview with CNN, Amash refused to say whether he would support Boehner for another term as Speaker.

Read more from this story HERE.