TSA Allows Knives On Planes, Flight Attendants Union Calls Decision ‘Dangerous’

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Photo Credit: Reuters The Transportation Security Administration announced Tuesday that U.S. airline passengers will soon be allowed to carry small knives in their carry-on bags, a move that prompted swift condemnation from a flight attendants union.

The union for Southwest Airlines flight attendants called the decision “dangerous” and “designed to make the lives of TSA staff easier, but not make flights safer.”

The changes were made public by TSA Administrator John Pistole during an aviation conference in New York. Starting April 25, passengers going through U.S. airports can bring on board Swiss Army-type knives — specifically, ones with blades no longer than 2.36 inches.

This marks the first time such knives have been allowed on board since security was heavily increased in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Pistole told the audience that TSA screeners at the Los Angeles International Airport alone seized roughly 47 such knives a day over the last three months of 2012, according to Air Transportation World. “Frankly, I don’t want TSA agents to be delayed by these,” he said.

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Obama In Guns-To-Jihadists Cover-Up?

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Photo Credit: WNDIn a radio interview, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, questioned whether the Obama administration may be covering up the role played by the CIA annex in Benghazi in a possible scheme to run guns to rebels in the Middle East. The annex was attacked Sept. 11 along with the special U.S. mission in Benghazi.

Charged Paul: “There has been a lot made of the political cover up of President Obama’s administration saying this (Benghazi attack) had something to do with a homemade film from some guy in Los Angeles. But in reality the question is, or the secondary quotation is, why would they do a cover up? What are they covering up?” Paul said he has “a feeling that it had something to do with the CIA annex.”

“You know, a week before the ambassador was killed in Libya, a ship left Libya and docked in Turkey, and it actually interviewed the captain of that ship who said there were arms on board and that he actually witnessed the rebels taking the arms and disputing over who got what,” he said. “That there were grenade launchers; that there were significant arms being transferred.

Paul said it doesn’t prove the CIA was involved but raised the question of the purpose of the annex.

“The Libyan government is said not to have known that they were there,” he noted. “And is that the reason for the cover up? So there are a lot of unanswered questions.” Paul was speaking Sunday night on WABC Radio’s “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.”

Any arming of Middle East rebels would be considered highly controversial. Widespread reports have documented that Syrian and Libyan rebels consist in large part of jihadists, including members of several major al-Qaida groups.

Listen to audio:

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Pastor Jailed In Christian -vs.- Lesbian Case

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Photo Credit: WNDA Mennonite pastor has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for helping a member of his congregation flee the country rather than turn her young daughter over to her one-time lesbian partner.

Last August, Pastor Kenneth Miller, of Stuarts Draft, Va., was convicted in a Vermont court on a charge of aiding in international parental kidnapping. He admitted that he helped Lisa Miller (no relation to the pastor) and her daughter, Isabella, leave the U.S. in 2009 at Lisa’s urging.

It is the latest twist in one of the most talked-about and consequential child custody cases of the modern era. After childhood abuse led Lisa Miller into a dysfunctional life of addictions and homosexuality, she experienced a change of heart, converted to Christianity and left the homosexual lifestyle, in which she had lived as “spouse” to another lesbian woman, Janet Jenkins. During their same-sex “civil union,” Miller had given birth to a daughter, Isabella, conceived through artificial insemination.

As a new Christian, Lisa Miller’s all-consuming focus in life was to be a good mother to Isabella. However, after a Vermont judge demanded that Lisa allow her former lesbian partner, Janet Jenkins, to have unsupervised visits with little Isabella, Lisa’s nightmare – which continues to this day – got its start.

According to the testimony of experts and eyewitnesses, the court-ordered visits were severely traumatizing the child, and Isabella’s court-appointed advocate said Jenkins was “turn[ing] her world upside down.” A clinical therapist testified Isabella appeared “traumatized” by her visits with Jenkins, and that “unsupervised visits … could cause permanent damage to normal development.” A social worker testified the little girl “suffers from sleep disturbance and nightmares, having difficulty sleeping through the night,” adding that “Isabella also talks about death, and has expressed fear that if her mother Lisa dies she will be at risk. Without prompting, Isabella has said she is afraid that Janet Jenkins may take her away from Lisa.”

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Report: FBI Benghazi Survivor Interviews Delivered To Senate Intel Committee

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Photo Credit: APA source told CBS News that FBI transcripts of interviews with Benghazi survivors were turned over to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Along with the transcripts, were other documents relating to the deadly September 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi. Members of the committee have not examined the material yet.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R – S.C.) initially called for the FBI transcripts of Benghazi survivors back in December. Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R – UT) told Breitbart News that the State Department was not allowing members of Congress to see those who survived the attack.

The documents that came from the White House is the second set to be sent to Congress. The initial set of documents related to the attack were considered “insufficient” due to massive redactions:

“It was so redacted that there was no information whatsoever,” said the source, who spoke to Fox on the condition they not be identified. “There were some documents that were 100 pages with every word on the page redacted. They were worthless.”

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DHS Secretary Doubles Down On Sequester Illegal Alien Dump

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Photo Credits: Human Events Evidently Obama’s political technicians have analyzed the blowback from their release of illegal aliens to terrorize Americans into accepting tax hikes, and decided they still have a chance of turning public fury against their political opponents, because according to the Daily Caller we’re going to get more of it:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano promised to release more illegal immigrants into the United States, saying the budget sequester has left her no choice.

Several hundred detainees have already released because of the sequester, she insisted. They were released on bail, or because their legal status had changed, she said.

“We’re going to continue to do that … for the foreseeable future,” Napolitano said at a March 4 breakfast meeting hosted by Politico. “We are going to manage our way through this by identifying the lowest risk detainees, and putting them into some kind of alternative to release.”

She’s not even being honest about what has transpired so far, since news reports indicate a stunning 2,000 detainees have already been turned out, with another 3,000 to come. Remember the brief period, at the end of last week, when Team Obama was floating the excuse that this was all a terrible mistake made by that one obscure bureaucrat who got retired?

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Waxman On Keystone: ‘We Don’t Need This Dirty Oil’

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Photo Credit: APRepresentative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) – the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee – said that America does not need the “dirty oil” that would be imported through the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, which received long-awaited favorable environmental review from the U.S. government.

“We don’t need this dirty oil. To stop climate change and the destructive storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires that we are already experiencing, we should be investing in clean energy, not building a pipeline that will speed the exploitation of Canada’s highly polluting tar sands,” Waxman said in a statement on Friday responding to the government’s analysis.

In its draft environmental review released Friday, the State Department said the construction of the pipeline through much of the Midwest would not have a meaningful impact on climate change.

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California Woman Dies After Nurse Refuses To Perform CPR (+video)

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A California retirement home is backing one of its nurses after she refused desperate pleas from a 911 operator to perform CPR on an elderly woman who later died, saying the nurse was following the facility’s policy.

“Is there anybody that’s willing to help this lady and not let her die,” dispatcher Tracey Halvorson says on a 911 tape released by the Bakersfield Fire Department aired by several media outlets on Sunday.

“Not at this time,” said the nurse, who didn’t give her full name and said facility policy prevented her from giving the woman medical help.
At the beginning of the 7-minute, 16-second call on Tuesday morning, the nurse asked for paramedics to come and help the 87-year-old woman who had collapsed in the home’s dining room and was barely breathing.

Halvorson pleads for the nurse to perform CPR, and after several refusals she starts pleading for her to find a resident, or a gardener, or anyone not employed by the home to get on the phone, take her instructions and help the woman.

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Gore’s Group Says Obama EPA Pick Will Fight Global Warming (+video)

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Photo Credit: dantekgeekMinutes after President Obama announced that his pick to run the EPA would be the agency’s greenhouse gas foe Gina McCarthy, former Vice President Al Gore’s climate change group heralded the pick, an indication that global warming foes are expecting her to step up the administration’s green fuel effort.

“EPA is on the frontlines of climate action. It is more important than ever that President Obama and the new EPA administrator continue to enforce laws cutting climate pollution,” said Climate Reality Project CEO Maggie Fox. “Ms. McCarthy is an ideal candidate to continue the crucial work of promoting regulatory and market-based solutions to solve the climate crisis.”

Gore is the co-founder of the project and his videos are featured on their website. The group said that it is “dedicated to unleashing a global cultural movement demanding action on the climate crisis.”

See video:

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Obama Not Bluffing Over Iran Military Threat, Biden Tells AIPAC

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Photo Credit: Chip SomodevillaBarack Obama’s threats to use military force to prevent Iran securing a nuclear weapon are more than idle bluffs, vice-president Joe Biden told the biggest pro-Israeli lobbying group Aipac on Monday.

Biden said that while the US preferred a diplomatic solution to the standoff with Iran, a military option remained on the table.

“The president of the United States cannot, and does not, bluff. President Barack Obama is not bluffing,” Biden told the audience in Washington. Israel is seeking assurances of support from the US, should it decide to launch air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

There has been scepticism about Obama’s commitment to a military option against Iran, given the administration’s general unwillingness to be drawn into new conflicts after the experience of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Some observers feel that Obama’s threat is aimed purely at putting pressure on Iran to resolve the standoff diplomatically and not embark on another conflict.

Pro-Israel supporters of the military option, speaking at Aipac’s annual conference, attempted to counter Obama’s reticence by insisting the military option would only require an overnight air strike, rather than a prolonged conflict.

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Fed Preparing For Future PR Nightmare

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photo credit: medill dcEveryone wants the Federal Reserve to say how it will unwind the $3 trillion balance sheet amassed from years of quantitative easing.

Indeed, this was something of a hot topic in Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony before Congress last week.

One of the big issues the central bank faces is the inevitable loss it will have to take when interest rates rise and the value of the Fed’s bond portfolio declines.

Although not an economic problem — as “losses” for a central bank are pretty meaningless — there could be a PR problem when the Fed stops making payments to the Treasury from the interest income it receives on its bond portfolio.

Deutsche Bank strategist Stephen Abrahams recently explained why this could be such a nightmare:

The possibility of suspending remittances and carrying unrealized losses could complicate the Fed’s relationships with the rest of Washington and the public. While remittances help the federal government pay down debt, any shortfall in operating income leading to a suspension of remittances would require the Fed to borrow from Treasury.

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