Congressional Dereliction: Senate Democrats Vow to Support Executive Fiat on Debt Ceiling

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Senate Democratic leaders have sent a letter to President Obama pledging their support if he raises the nation’s $16.4 trillion debt ceiling unilaterally in the face of Republican resistance.

Support has been growing among Democrats in Congress for Obama to invoke the 14th Amendment or another legal justification for expanding the nation’s borrowing authority without congressional approval.

“In the event that Republicans make good on their threat by failing to act, or by moving unilaterally to pass a debt limit extension only as part of unbalanced or unreasonable legislation, we believe you must be willing to take any lawful steps to ensure that America does not break its promises and trigger a global economic crisis — without Congressional approval, if necessary,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democratic leaders wrote in a letter dated Jan. 11.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), Senate Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and Democratic Conference Secretary Patty Murray (Wash.) signed the letter.

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Hannity Foresees States Leaving Union If Federal Government Continues ‘Radicalized, Abusive’ Pattern (+Audio)

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On his Friday radio show, conservative talker and Fox News host Sean Hannity warned that the United States may fall apart if tax rates remain high.

“The states are now fighting and battling against their own federal government,” Hannity said. ”Same thing with individuals. If you live in a state like New York, New Jersey, California [or] one of these high-tax states [where] 60-plus cents of every dollar goes to taxes, you’ll say, ‘What the hell am I doing this for?’”

“A lot of people have told me that,” Hannity continued. “A lot of people are moving. … I noticed that Bobby Jindal moved to remove his state income tax. He’s not stupid. You know what’s going to happen in Louisiana? The same thing that is happening in Texas and Florida — their populations are soaring. They’re doing a lot better. State governments are fine. They’re surviving. They don’t have the property taxes they do in New York, which is obscene. In New York, you just pay and pay and pay and pay.”

States with lower taxes may soon decide they want to stop shouldering the burden of states with higher taxes, Hannity warned.

Listen to Audio:

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Local Law Enforcement CAN Block Federal Gun Control

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“A high-profile former sheriff who once sued the U.S. government over its gun regulations – and won – says it is the local sheriff who will have to defend Americans when and if the feds starting banning and confiscating guns.

Richard Mack, a former sheriff in Graham County, Ariz., joined with then-Ravalli County Sheriff Jay Printz in a lawsuit against Washington when Bill Clinton demanded sheriff’s enforce provisions of the Brady Bill gun control law.

He won. And since then he’s been at the front of a movement that highlights the responsibility of local sheriffs.

Now, as Washington gears up to consider imperious plans to limit guns, require fingerprinting and registration, impose additional taxes and fees, ban particular features or functions outright, and even confiscate weapons of self-defense, Mack has told WND that there’s hope remaining in local law enforcement.

It’s not complicated, he said. “Gun control is illegal and it’s against the Constitution,” he said. “What people don’t realize is that the Second Amendment was designed to protect us from the power of the federal government.”

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Obama Opposed Illinios Gun Ban Exception to Defend One’s Home

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As a state senator in Illinois, President Obama opposed legislation providing an exception to handgun restrictions if the weapon was used in the defense of one’s home.

Obama’s vote would have maintained the status quo, which made it a violation of municipal gun ban law to use a firearm to save your own life in your own home. But the bill was passed anyway without his support.

The vote is a sign of how committed Obama may be to strict gun control measures.

The Illinois vote is hardly ancient history, having occurred in 2004 as Obama was running for election to the U.S. Senate. In opposing the measure, Obama lined up well to the left of the mainstream . . .

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Loaded Revolutionary War-Era Cannon Found In Central Park

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NEW YORK— A dangerous and historic discovery was made in Central Park on Friday afternoon.

Parks workers came upon a live cannon ball, loaded in a cannon that is getting refurbished, CBS 2’s Lou Young reported exclusively.

The loaded artillery piece was one of two Revolutionary War-era cannons being stored at the park’s Ramble shed near the 79th Street transverse. Preservation workers for the Central Park Conservancy called police about mid-day after opening up the capped cannon for cleaning.

The NYPD released a picture of what its officers found: more than 800 grams of black powder still capable of firing, along with cotton wadding and a cannonball CBS 2’s Young spotted being carried in a white cloth by a Conservancy employee.

For John Moore, who is working on a book called “The Secrets of Central Park,” this is a new one.

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Jack Lew, 2011: Obama’s Budget Will Pay Down National Debt

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On February 13, 2011, President Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary nominee Jack Lew went on CNN and claimed that Mr. Obama’s budget will pay down the national debt.

The plan, Lew said, “will get us, over the next several years, to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we’re not adding to the debt anymore; we’re spending money that we have each year, and then we can work on bringing down our national debt.”

Mr. Lew, of all people, should have known. After all, he was, at the time, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

But as this copy of the OMB’s own table makes clear, Mr. Lew’s televised promise to the American people was a sign of either deception or incompetence.

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NRA Says Meeting with Biden Disappointing; Accuses White House of Attack on Second Amendment

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NRA Says Meeting with Biden Disappointing

by Alexis Levinson

The National Rifle Association said it emerged “disappointed” from a Thursday meeting with Vice President Joe Biden and other gun owners’ groups.

The meeting was a part of Biden’s work on a task force on gun policy, established in the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. that left 20 children dead.

The NRA statement on the meeting said that the group was “prepared to have a meaningful conversation about school safety, mental health issues, the marketing of violence to our kids and the collapse of federal prosecutions of violent criminals.”

“We were disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment,” the statement said.

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NRA Accuses White House of ‘Attack’ on 2nd Amendment Rights

by Justin Sink

The National Rifle Association said Thursday it was “disappointed” by its meeting Thursday with Vice President Biden, accusing the Obama administration of using the time to “attack the Second Amendment.”

The statement, issued shortly after the conclusion of the conference, deflated any prospect of an unlikely alliance between the White House and the gun lobby group as President Obama looks to push a set of new gun regulations in the coming month.

It also likely signals that the NRA will oppose any legislative attempt to change federal gun laws in the coming Congress.

“We were disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment,” the group said in its statement.

“While claiming that no policy proposals would be ‘prejudged,’ this Task Force spent most of its time on proposed restrictions on lawful firearms owners — honest, taxpaying, hardworking Americans.”

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DEA Agents Arranged Prostitute for Secret Service Agent

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Two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents “facilitated a sexual encounter” between a prostitute and a U.S. Secret Service agent days before President Barack Obama visited Colombia for a summit meeting in April 2012, according to a Justice Department investigation obtained exclusively by NBC News.

A summary of the findings of the investigation, included in a Dec. 20 letter from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General to Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins, indicated that a third DEA agent present on the night of the incident was not involved in procuring the prostitute for the Secret Service agent.

“While DEA agent #3 was present for a dinner that took place earlier that evening with the USSS agent and the other two DEA agents, he was not present in the residence when the sexual encounter took place and played no role in facilitating it,” the summary said.

All three DEA special agents admitted that they had paid for sexual services of a prostitute, the investigation also found, and “used their DEA Blackberry devices to arrange such activities.” In addition, the report says the agents tried to destroy incriminating information or initially lied to investigators about the incidents. All three agents have high-security clearances.

The summary concluded that the agents’ actions did not warrant criminal prosecution. It said the U.S. Attorney’s Office also “declined to initiate legal proceedings.” It said the case had been referred to the DEA for “action it determines to be appropriate.”

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Video: NRA Has Added 100,000 New Members Since Sandy Hook Shooting

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The National Rifle Association has gained more than 100,000 new members in the past 18 days, the organization told POLITICO’s Playbook on Thursday.

The number of paid new members jumped from 4.1 million to 4.2 million during that time.

“Our goal is to get to 5 million before this debate is over,” the NRA told POLITICO’s Mike Allen.

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Obama’s CIA Nominee Won’t Use ‘Jihad’ to Describe Terrorists

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While concern has mounted that former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be secretary of defense should be blocked because of past expressed hostility for Israel, little attention has been given to CIA-nominee John Brennan’s view of Islam.

In a speech delivered Aug. 9, 2009, to the Center for Strategic and International Studies that is archived on the White House website, Brennan said using “a legitimate term, ‘jihad’ – meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal” – to describe terrorists “risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself.”

As WND reported, Brennan advised in the speech that U.S. foreign policy should encourage greater assimilation of the Hezbollah terrorist organization into the Lebanese government.

In a July 2008 article in The Annals, a publication of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Brennan argued it “would not be foolhardy, however, for the United States to tolerate, and even to encourage, greater assimilation of Hezbollah into Lebanon’s political system, a process that is subject to Iranian influence.”

Brennan argued Hezbollah “is already represented in the Lebanese parliament, and its members have previously served in the Lebanese cabinet, reflections of Hezbollah’s interest in shaping Lebanon’s political future from within government institutions.”

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