US Cigarette Smuggling Now a Multi-Billion Dollar Enterprise

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THE busy interstate highway that zips through Richmond, Virginia, and up to the crowded cities of the north-east has long been a conduit for handguns bought wholesale in Virginia and sold to drug-dealers in New York. Now I-95 is siphoning northwards another form of contraband: black-market cigarettes.

Because Virginia’s tobacco tax is the second-lowest in America, gangsters buy cigarettes there in bulk and sell them at enormous profit in New York and other high-tax states. At a minimum, they pocket a big chunk of the difference between what Virginia adds in tax—30 cents a packet—and the higher rates imposed elsewhere. New York’s tax, at $4.35 a packet, is the highest in the country.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimates that sales of illegal cigarettes cost government—local, state and federal—nearly $10 billion a year. For the smugglers, profits are better than those from cocaine, heroin, marijuana and guns, according to a report in September by the Virginia State Crime Commission. Moreover, the penalty for doing it—a maximum of five years in jail, under federal law—is considerably lighter than for selling drugs. If the smugglers were trafficking in heroin, they would face life in prison.

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How is Romney Dealing With the Election Loss?

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The man who planned to be president wakes up each morning now without a plan.

Mitt Romney looks out the windows of his beach house here in La Jolla, a moneyed and pristine enclave of San Diego, at noisy construction workers fixing up his next-door neighbor’s home, sending out regular updates on the renovation. He devours news from 2,600 miles away in Washington about the “fiscal cliff” negotiations, shaking his head and wondering what if.

Gone are the minute-by-minute schedules and the swarm of Secret Service agents. There’s no aide to make his peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches. Romney hangs around the house, sometimes alone, pecking away at his iPad and e-mailing his CEO buddies who have been swooping in and out of La Jolla to visit. He wrote to one who’s having a liver transplant soon: “I’ll change your bedpan, take you back and forth to treatment.”

It’s not what Romney imagined he would be doing as the new year approaches.

Four weeks after losing a presidential election he was convinced he would win, Romney’s rapid retreat into seclusion has been marked by repressed emotions, second-guessing and, perhaps for the first time in the overachiever’s adult life, sustained boredom, according to interviews with more than a dozen of Romney’s closest friends and advisers.

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Rand Paul Promotes Bill To ‘End Abortion On Demand Once And For All’

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Republican Senator Rand Paul says he wants to pass a Life at Conception Act to “end abortion on demand once and for all.”

Senator Paul, R-KY, recently recorded a message for the National Pro-Life Alliance (NPLA), talking about the legislation, which would declare unborn babies legal persons from the moment of conception and give them Constitutional protections.

The senator says Congress can legislatively overturn the Supreme Court‘s Roe v. Wade decision by passing a “personhood” law called the Life at Conception Act.

The law would establish that human life begins at conception, and extend 14th Amendment protection to babies in the womb.

Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in the 1973 ruling that if a fetus can be defined as a person, the “right” to abortion “collapses, for the fetus’s right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.”

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Norquist: Resurgent Tea Party Will ‘Dwarf’ First Wave

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Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, predicted on Friday that an upcoming “Tea Party second wave” will “dwarf” the first wave that propelled Republicans into the majority in the House during the historic 2010 midterm elections.

In an interview with “The Victoria Taft Show,” Norquist said the fiscal cliff negotiations and President Barack Obama’s second term will lead to a movement that will revolt against a government that spends, regulates, and taxes too much.

“We are about to have a Tea Party second wave that will dwarf the first wave and that is because while ‘spend too much’ brought the Tea Party into existence, we’re about to walk into ‘spend too much, regulate too much, and tax too much, all together,'” he speculated.

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Firefighter Fired for Installing Barack Obama Toilet Paper in Firehouse Bathroom

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A Florida firefighter is out of a job after putting toilet paper with President Barack Obama’s face in his fire department’s bathroom.

Clint Pierce, who admitted placing the Obama toilet paper in the restroom as a “gag,” had until 5:00 p.m. Friday to turn in his badge after the city of Pompano Beach, Fla. determined his joke was a disrespectful repeat offense, according to a report from the Sun Sentinel.

The Oct. 19 incident marked the third time Pierce brought political props onto city property, after he was told to stop.

“It was clearly a case of insubordination,” city spokeswoman Sandra King said Friday, according to the paper. “He had a similar situation of posting political messages on city property and he was given a free pass at that time and told to cease and desist and he did it again and really exacerbated the situation.”

Fire Chief Harry L. Small determined that Pierce’s actions showed “tasteless and disrespectful treatment” of President Obama and “caused significant divisiveness within the department and community.”

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Senate Expected To Take Up United Nations Treaty As Early As Tuesday

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photo credit: cliff1066

The Senate is expected to vote on the pro-abortion CRPD treaty on Wednesday and pro-life groups are asking pro-life advocates to contact members of the Senate urging them to vote against it.

The U.S. Senate is poised to vote on ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, after members voted 61-36 to move the treaty to the floor for debate.

The International Right to Life Federation says pro-life groups oppose this legislation because it leaves open the potential for the international community to permit sterilization or abortion for the disabled. The terminology, found in Article 25, requires, “free or affordable health care including the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based health programs.”

Bradley Mattes, president of the International Right to Life Federation, stated, “This is a misleading measure in that it does nothing to protect life. It is disguised as a way to ‘help’ the disabled. Instead it intentionally sacrifices the most vulnerable – the disabled and the unborn – all in the name of population control.”

He continued, “Many don’t realize that this international treaty could potentially supersede future attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

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Defense Intelligence Agency Setting Itself Up As Rival To The CIA?

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The Pentagon will send hundreds of additional spies overseas as part of an ambitious plan to assemble an espionage network that rivals the CIA in size, U.S. officials said.

The project is aimed at transforming the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has been dominated for the past decade by the demands of two wars, into a spy service focused on emerging threats and more closely aligned with the CIA and elite military commando units.

When the expansion is complete, the DIA is expected to have as many as 1,600 “collectors” in positions around the world, an unprecedented total for an agency whose presence abroad numbered in the triple digits in recent years.

The total includes military attachés and others who do not work undercover. But U.S. officials said the growth will be driven over a five-year period by the deployment of a new generation of clandestine operatives. They will be trained by the CIA and often work with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, but they will get their spying assignments from the Department of Defense.

Among the Pentagon’s top intelligence priorities, officials said, are Islamist militant groups in Africa, weapons transfers by North Korea and Iran, and military modernization underway in China.

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Couple Faces $97K in Fines for Using Their Own Driveway

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CLEARCREEK TWP., Warren County — The six-year dispute between Clearcreek Twp. and Howard and Lisa Gray shows just how complicated, combative and costly local land use issues can become.

The Grays obtained permission from a Clearcreek Twp. official to use their residential driveway in Warren County to get to buildings on the Montgomery County portion of their land. The buildings house the Grays’ storage and landscaping businesses.

But following complaints from neighbors, Clearkcreek Twp. ordered the couple to stop using the driveway to access their commercial area. A judge subsequently issued an order to that effect.

The Grays say they have no other feasible way to get to that land, and they now face contempt of court charges and nearly $100,000 in potential fines for resisting court orders.

“We are just confounded,” Lisa Gray said. “I am just very saddened.”

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Family Research Council: ‘We are Losing a Moral Standard in the Military’

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Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said former CIA Director David Petraeus’ recent resignation due to an extramarital affair “has opened the Pandora’s Box” for the Obama administration when it comes to standards of morality in the military.

“I think we should be very concerned about what’s happening in the military. General Petraeus isn’t the only one. We’ve seen other general officers that are currently either under investigation or have been disciplined for similar behavior, and I think we should be concerned when we are losing a moral standard in the military,” Perkins told CNSNews.com.

Perkins said immoral behavior in the military can damage military effectiveness, which is why military personnel can be prosecuted for having affairs.

His comments came in a recent interview CNSNews.com, in response to the question: “Do you see this issue as something that [Defense Secretary] Leon Panetta is going to have to deal with in the next four years?”

Perkins responded: “Unfortunately, I think this administration has opened the Pandora’s Box as it pertains to standards of morality in the military. They have pushed open homosexuality, it’s going to be hard to differentiate between different types of sexual behavior, and so it’s almost ‘anything goes’ in the military.”

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AAA Says Certain Ethanol Fuel Can Damage Cars, Asks EPA to Remove From Pumps

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The recently approved use of E15 fuel made from blending gasoline and ethanol could damage vehicles and void warranties says the American Automobile Association (AAA), which is urging the federal government to ban it from the market.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the fuel earlier this summer, but AAA says only five percent of vehicles on the road are approved by the manufacturers to use the special blend they say causes significant problems such as accelerated engine wear and failure, fuel-system damage and false “check engine” warning lights.

The auto club conducted a recent survey it says identifies confusion among consumers as to which vehicles can use the fuel — 95 percent of those surveyed had never heard of E15, which contains 15 percent ethanol.

“It is clear that millions of Americans are unfamiliar with E15, which means there is a strong possibility that many motorists may improperly fill up using this gasoline and damage their vehicle,” said Robert Darbelnet, AAA president. “Bringing E15 to the market without adequate safeguards does not responsibly meet the needs of consumers.”

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), former chairman of the House Science Committee, said the findings confirm concerns on Capitol Hill that the fuel can damage cars.

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